20 Horror Films Where Humans Are The Real Monsters

10. Possum (2018)

Despite being written and directed by Matthew “Garth Marenghi” Holness, Possum is a devastating misery from beginning to end, taking a bleak social realist palette and setup, and pairing it with a barrage of nightmare images. And it gives us a revelatory turn from Sean Harris, abandoning type and coming in strong (or, you know, weak) as disgraced children’s puppeteer Philip Connell.

Returning to his childhood home and shacking up with his uncle Maurice (Alun Armstrong), Philip is a mess of depression, anxiety, and trauma, looking to shy away from society and the world, while being haunted by his own creation. Despite trying time and again to get rid of it, his spider-like marionette Possum keeps returning, and each time takes on a life of its own, stalking him, chasing him, and consuming what little sanity Philip has left.

But there’s more to it than haunted puppets, because Philip is haunted by his past, and a room in his old, destitute home that he dares not enter. This is where he was physically and sexually abused by Maurice throughout his childhood. Far from being repentant, when Maurice’s crimes are brought out into the open, he gleefully recounts his physical and emotional dominance of his nephew. Oh, and the source of Philip’s most recent ruin – the boy he has been accused of interfering with, kidnapping, and perhaps killing? - Maurice has him locked up in a chest in his bedroom.