20 Best Horror Movies Since 2000

The 21st century has witnessed a new wave of South Korean cinema, not least with Park Chan-wook's revenge trilogy, notably with Old Boy, starring Choi Min-sik. Min-sik returned to the revenge genre with I Saw The Devil, a modern masterpiece of horror in which he portrays a psychopathic serial killer being hunted down by the fiancee of one of his victims.

Directed by Kim Jee-woon, I Saw The Devil represents a landmark moment in South Korean cinema and perhaps the pinnacle of the revenge thriller/horror movie in general. Its central premise - the hunter becomes the hunted - sees secret service agent Kim Soo-hyun (a superb performance from Lee Byung-hun) planting a tracking device inside the killer so he can catch, torture and release him.

Full of great set pieces and some exceptionally choreographed moments of pure violence (a multiple stabbing scene in a taxi cab echoes the dizzying in-car shot from Children Of Men, but with lots more blood), I Saw The Devil is also a surprisingly emotional affair with an ending which hits audiences in their emotional core.

It's a film which harks back to the famous quote from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”