What makes the horror genre so brilliant is that it doesn’t care about the sensibilities of its audience. Well. actually, it does. It just doesn’t care about preserving them. To be sat in the cinema about to watch something scary is to be sat in preparation for the confronting of any demons and any paranoid fears. For a few hours, a gruesome retelling of an urban legend or spiritual myth is made real and lingers in one’s subconscious. But that fear was already present, what horror writers and directors do is simply coax out the anxieties of a collective consciousness and make them ‘real.’ They add a little weight to those fears. There’s a genius in that. The goosebumps, the hands covering the eyes, those are all reactions to the nuance of the horror genre, built up of leading camera shots, unassuming protagonists, and a queasy unsettlement that lies like a thick, dense fog inside the room. The following films are testament to that.

5. The Hills Have Eyes, (2006), dir. Alexandre Aja
A remake of horror royalty Wes Craven’s 1977 original, The Hills Have Eyes takes the conventional bus-breaking-down-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trope to new extremes. As a family are terrorised by a group of mutants, the horrifying effect of this terrorisation lies in the means by which it is employed. Brute force and being burned alive are only a couple of the methods the group uses. While watching people being hunted, we realise the dangers of something as common and everyday as surveillance. The hills have eyes, and those eyes aren’t passive. Craven and Aja build on the fear of the ‘other’ by having their antagonists removed from humanity, and yet, not wholly removed from being human. It’s enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

4. Ringu (The Ring), (1998), dir. Hideo Nakata
Before the 2002 American version of The Ring reached us and became an instant classic, the original Japanese version existed and still reigns supreme. Nakata’s directing style is simple and full of leading camera shots, while the depiction of the dark-haired girl crawling through the TV is used without the escaping effect of background music. It focuses on the relationship between the viewer and the film: we become concerned about our activity of watching TV because it is integral to the narrative. The girl crawls towards the protagonist and we remain rooted to the spot, watching, half-expecting the phone to ring, half-expecting the girl to appear before us too.

3. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, (2005), dir. Scott Derrickson
Based on a true story, The Exorcism of Emily Rose takes the fear of the spirit world and places it into the life of a student. Whether the real life Emily Rose, Anneliese Michel, suffered from spirits or simply required medical assistance as a sufferer of epilepsy, the film’s use of disembodied voices, religious symbolism and the combination of slowly tilting one’s head while smiling means it still seeps into nightmares today. With a combination of sweeping out-of-body shots, and the camera panning to alarm clocks showing the terrifying 2am witching hour, Emily Rose’s ‘possession’ is depicted alongside a court case attempting to figure out the details. Derrickson trusts the knowledge of the viewer, playing the rational against the supposable in a very clever, very scary few hours.

2.The Evil Dead, (1981), dir. Sam Raimi
Five college students decide to go on holiday in an isolated cabin in the woods. Unleashing demons and spirits after finding an audiotape, The Evil Dead is a gory low-budget horror which gained rave reviews from Stephen King. It’s an instant classic, playing up to every stereotype of the horror film: bloody, charged with adolescent hormones, and featuring disembodied voices humming and laughing to truly unsettle the viewer. Raimi’s cast is compelling and suited to the genre, a mixture of naïve and American. While the narrative may be predictable, it doesn’t seem to matter. Predictions may be correct but the film, regardless, is deserving of its cult status, scary in aiming to be nothing but scary, and made even more so with low-budget cosmetics, a good cast, and a demon-filled plot.

1. Ils (Them), (2006) dir. David Moreau and Xavier Palud
A French-Romanian horror said to be based on true events, the terrifying power of Ils is that, unlike the other films on this list, the antagonist is not a spirit, a mutant, or a video-tape. A young teacher moves to Romania with her lover and discovers the idyllic nature of the countryside is not all that it seems. Psychologically driven, the pair are terrorised for just over an hour. Escalating from the throwing of mud at a car to intrusions inside a house to brute force, Moreau and Palud build up a string of events to a truly unpredictable ending. The film concludes but leaves behind a tangible unsettling atmosphere, one that persists for days.