15 Recent Horror Movies Destined To Become Halloween Essentials
2. The Conjuring
After cutting his teeth on the haunted house movie with Insidious, helmer James Wan returned to the genre of things going bump in the night, turning in one of the decade's best horror movies with relative ease.
What makes The Conjuring so bone chilling is the real-life inspiration behind the tale - 1970s Rhode Island farm house, gets riddled with spirits - and the inclusion of famous ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren. With the setting staged, Wan employs every trick in the well worn book to make this film a scarefest like no other.
There's not many horror movies that spend the first 15 minutes introducing us to a haunted doll of Chucky levels of creepy (Annabelle, if you're wondering) before pushing her into storage and ploughing into a bump in the night experience like no other. The spirits plaguing a bewildered looking Ron Livingston and his family are nothing out of the ordinary, all ragged and white-eyed, but it's how Wan sets up his scares that make this so difficult to watch alone.
The best scare scenes are too relentless to pinpoint - at a push, the moment it's revealed Patrick Wilson has some unwelcome guests hanging above him, still gives chills - just get on the sofa, have a cushion handy and be terrified by this masterclass in scaring.