10 Best Horror Movies Of The Decade

Long lauded as one of the finest horror movies of its kind, The Babadook is both an allegorical trip through grief as well as a genuinely terrifying experience from start to finish. Coupling a children's storybook monster with a widow attempting to work through the loss of her husband alongside raising their problem son, The Babadook is an exhausting peek into a world of pain that doesn't need gore to instil fear. Mother and son are stalked by an entity that wants to tear them apart, and oh boy, does attempting to stop it cause a whole load of issues.

The Babadook works on a number of levels - using both peripheral appearances of the titular beast's form to instil that it's always watching, then throwing a whole load of expert sound design over the top to really seal the deal. Just like The Grudge's low death rattle, Mr Babadook's ominous creaks roll around the house in bone-chilling fashion, with his presence felt far before it's seen by his atmospheric manipulations.

Truly, the movie feels like stepping straight into a broken mind and desperately trying to fix it before the walls crumble around the edges, with low-level anxiety running in a thick vein down the middle. It's cold, it's bleak, and it knows how to make watchers uncomfortable - making for a audio-visual storyboard of tangible emotion as much as a cinematic experience. It's one hell of a movie.