The Top Ten Films of 2025

It's that time again! Regular readers will know this isn't actually a top ten list, rather it's more a recommended viewing list of films that either played festivals and have yet to get a UK release, or films that did get a release but which you might have missed, possibly due to unfairly bad reviews. Which means you won't see titles like SINNERS, WEAPONS, THE LONG WALK, COMPANION, THE LIFE OF CHUCK, KEEPER or BRING HER BACK on here because you can already find those on a load of lists so what's the point of repeating? Especially as you likely know those are worth watching anyway. No, here are the lesser known films that are worth your viewing time. As usual the rules stay the same: each film has to have been shown in the UK for the first time during 2025, either at a festival, or as a cinema, disc or streaming release. As explained above, popular successes aren't included but flops might well be if those flops were undeserved. Also as usual, while I didn't get to see everything, hopefully there will be enough amongst these recommendations that even the most seasoned enthusiast will find something they didn't get the chance to catch up with. I'm also not doing a 'worst of' list because we all know it's Luc Besson's DRACULA, don't we? Or possibly WAR OF THE WORLDS with Ice Cube, even if it was the interminable JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH that had me bored enough to end up considering what my favourite flavour of jam sandwich might be. Anyway enough of the bad, here's the good!

10 Silent Night Deadly Night

A grindhouse slasher movie remake par excellence. Mike P. Nelson's new version of the 1984 original keeps the best elements (child traumatised by seeing his parents killed by 'Santa' grows up to become lunatic slasher wearing the same festive outfit) but adds a lot more to the mix, including why the killer is creating his own advent calendar of death, a subplot about children being abducted, and a romance with a girl into true crime documentaries. Where SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT really scores big, though, is that here there's none of the irony, smugness or post-modernism of so many of those tiresome pseudo 1980s slasher tributes, the ones so keen to keep nudging you that ' this is just like the 80s, right?'. Instead here everything is played straight, which also helps make an outrageous sequence in the middle (that appears so gob-smackingly out of left field) a thing of near genius. There are some in-jokes but they are subtle and more to be nodded at by those in the know. If you're a slasher fan this is likely to leave you with a spring in your step and plans to make this an annual Xmas watch. The kind of movie Eli Roth wished he could make but never will.

9 Him

Opening to indifferent reviews from people who really didn't get it, for those of us who live for sitting down in front of alleged claptrap only to discover it harbours many delights, the rewards in HIM are rich indeed. The film starts off with some medical daftness ("He has a terrible head injury" a doctor says while we see X-Rays and MRI scans of a perfectly normal skull). In many films I would already be grinding my teeth but not here, because we then see our patient has had clips applied to his scalp wound so his head resembles an American football. After that we quickly follow our young wannabe GOAT footballer to the isolated Jess Franco-style architectural retreat of current GOAT (they say GOAT a lot, and we all know what tends to happen to them in films like this) Marlon Wayans to be trained up to possibly take on the mantle. From there we plunge headlong into a crazy mix of allegory and symbolism that suggests nothing we have seen so far should be taken literally. The film does hit you over the head with the 'Sport As Religion' stick a few too many times but it can be forgiven for the sheer bravado and enthusiasm with which some of the sequences are executed, particularly the ending. Reminiscent of the cinema of Alain Jessua (satire and blood transfusions), Lindsay Anderson and Boots Riley, and even a couple of the choicier episodes of South Park (especially one reveal close to the all-out bonkers ending where you half expect Kyle to turn up and say "Dude, this is really f*cked up right here). Many will disagree, but HIM is actually the film with Jordan Peele's name attached that gives you the most to think about. Director Justin Tipping is definitely one to keep an eye on.

8 A Mother's Embrace

A seriously decent cosmic horror picture from Brazil. Ana is on her first day back at work as a fire rescue officer after recovering from severe psychological trauma. Rio is in the grip of terrible storms causing flood damage and she and her team are called to a house they have been told is in imminent danger of collapse. The place turns out to be a care home for the elderly, and none of the inhabitants have any intention of leaving. Exactly why they won't leave is due to something quite deliciously horrible it would be shame to spoil, suffice to say A MOTHER'S EMBRACE cultivates an admirable atmosphere of creeping strangeness for over half its runtime, during which one could argue that very little happens, but tiny incremental events and the fantastic setting of the huge old care home with cracks in its walls and water coming in everywhere combine to quickly become unnerving. Marjorie Estiano delivers an excellent central performance as Ana and, like her character, you'll be wondering, and dreading, where it's all leading.

7 Man Finds Tape

 One from Nottingham's excellent Mayhem Film Festival. A man in a small Texas town discovers a video recording that shows a stranger coming into his bedroom when he was a boy. Then CCTV footage turns up of people suddenly falling asleep in the town high street and a van running someone over. MAN FINDS TAPE is found footage shot (on the whole) by characters who are themselves film professionals, collated with CCTV footage and other nicely static sources that eliminate the wobble cam that plagues the worst of the genre. It's one of those films that's hard to review without spoilers and would be a shame to say any more, and indeed to suggest the horror authors whose work this film is most reminiscent of. Awaiting a UK release, try and watch it cold if you can.

6 Content

Like MAN FINDS TAPE, CONTENT was another festival picture, in this case from Grimmfest. It's a film that tells its tale of a mad amateur film director creating footage for his proposed movie via deceit, kidnapping, blackmail and general threats by using screenshots, zoom meetings, text messages, and mobile phone footage. Writer-director Adam Meilich's film is a delightful surprise - assured, clever and blackly funny and one that almost demands an immediate rewatch. When a film is able to quote a host of classic found footage movies and you don't find yourself wishing you were watching any of them instead you know you're onto a winner. CONTENT is also awaiting a UK release.

5 It Needs Eyes

A teenager goes to live with her aunt after a family trauma and becomes immersed in the world of extreme online videos. She becomes obsessed with a missing woman known only as Fish Tooth and a nearby island where a boy drowned. Directors Zack Ogle and Aaron Pagniano really know what they're doing here, priming the audience with some online horrors and then performing a perfect balancing act of hinting at what might be going on but never fully explaining it. Influences include VIDEODROME and the fiction of M R James and by the time the film is over you'll be creeped out and asking plenty of questions in the best way.

4 Together

If you'd asked me the style of cinema I never thought we'd see in a mainstream multiplex (and this one disappeared from multiplexes very quickly) one name would have leapt to mind: Frank Henenlotter. And yet here we are with TOGETHER, a film that is by turns gloopy, bloody, painful, sexy, very funny and ultimately and above all romantic. Real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie star in a story where the couple they play end up getting fused together by some gloopy stuff they find in the woods. Hopefully needless to say the mechanics of this are far less important than the subtext. TOGETHER is an allegory for a long term relationship filtered through a BAD BIOLOGY lens with added Screaming Mad George-style lunacy to boot. The film is quite marvellous, by the way. They should have a study where they show it to couples and then ask them individually what they thought of it afterwards.

3 Bugonia

Good old Yorgos Lanthimos (and Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons). What a wonderful piece of work you've given us yet again, and a remake (of the Korean film SAVE THE GREEN PLANET) no less. Two conspiracy theorists kidnap CEO Emma Stone because they believe her to be an alien who wants to destroy earth. They are convinced her mother ship is close and want to go there with her to talk to her people. Are they insane or is there something to what they believe? Even once Lanthimos starts placing his cards on the table this one's clever enough that you'll still find yourself wondering. The story line works on multiple levels and that, combined with the oh so sly wit we've come to expect from this director (right the way back to DOGTOOTH) makes this one a winner. And Arrow are releasing SAVE THE GREEN PLANET early next year on disc so you can compare the two. Expect a review on here.

2 The Arbiter

And another from Mayhem gets the number two spot. Swansea-born director Marc Price's latest movie asks the question: What if Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS was low budget, British, and funny? Rival gangs of pyromaniacs, roller skaters, graphic designers, ice cream salesmen and others rule the city at night, turning parts of it into no-go zones that the police have agreed to stay away from as long as no guns are used and no property is damaged. But one gang is threatening to wipe all the others out and it's the job of Verril (Craig Russell) to act as arbiter between the gang leaders and the police to reach some sort of solution. THE ARBITER starts off hard and fast, flinging as much comedy as action at the audience in its opening act such that by the time things slow down a bit it has you firmly on its side, all the way to the highly satisfying conclusion. A genuine low budget treat and destined to become a cult favourite when it gets a UK release.

1 Hallow Road

A couple (Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys) receive a 2am phone call from their daughter who has crashed the family car in a forest and believes she has run someone down. Almost all of the rest of the film is the couple's drive to find out exactly what has happened. I'm not going to say any more because that would spoil it, but I lost count of the times I applauded director Babak Anvari's (often subtle) directorial touches that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. What I will say is that HALLOW ROAD is like one of those great 1960s black and white British B movie programmers that were nothing but 80 minutes of tension. Superb use of sound and voices to make things even more excruciating is reminiscent of Nigel Kneale's During Barty's Party. Held over in the few cinemas it saw distribution to because of excellent reviews, out of all the films on this list this is the one that deserved a bigger release. 

And that's it! As usual my thanks to the organisers of the festivals we attended this year (Mayhem, Grimmfest and Abertoir), all the companies who send me films to review, everyone involved with running the three cinemas we are lucky enough to have in this area, and most of all everyone who reads, and is hopefully entertained by, these reviews. Did it point you to some films you enjoyed? I hope so. I'll be back next year with more but until then be nice to each other & I'll see you in 2026

The Top Ten Films of 2024

It's time once again for HMC's annual round up of the films of the year. As usual the rules stay the same - to qualify for inclusion, each film had to have been shown in the UK for the first time during 2024, either at a festival, or as a cinema, disc or streaming release. Big budget studio successes don't get a look in, but big budget studio flops are fare game because those flops might be undeserved. Also as usual, while I didn't get to see everything this year, hopefully there will be enough amongst these recommendations that even the most seasoned of film enthusiasts will find something they didn't have the chance to catch up with.

Bubbling Under

First, let's have the films that didn't quite make the top ten but which I thought were highly worthy of mention anyway:

Boy Kills World

"Do you know how hard it is to get a cereal company to sponsor mass murder?" There are parts of BOY KILLS WORLD that reach near-ROBOCOP levels of satirical violent SF perfection, and I found myself hard pushed to think of another film I've enjoyed as much on the big screen in the same way since the Verhoeven classic. The script is witty, the camerawork is kinetic while never resorting to shakicam confusion, and the choreography of some of the fight scenes is something else, with the highpoint being a set piece of utter carnage at a television studio.

Monkey Man

A bloody excellent action revenge thriller, with the emphasis on the bloody. And the excellent. It's Dev Patel's first film as a director (he also stars) but everything is executed so perfectly you'd be forgiven for thinking he's been doing this kind of thing for years. In a nice bit of 'reverse inspiration' the villains are right out of Hindi/Bollywood cinema (and splendidly portrayed), while the action scenes are excellent. The best thing about it, however, is that whereas a comparable film like JOHN WICK feels like a movie directed by a stuntman (and I don't mean that disparagingly - WICK is a classic), MONKEY MAN is a film made by a storyteller with an effortless feel for narrative. No info dumps, no awkward exposition, just a good story told really well. In fact it gets everything right. Patel's character even has a dog. Does it die? Didn't I just say this film does everything right? And well done to (producer) Jordan Peele for rescuing this from its planned streaming release and getting it into cinemas.

Longlegs

Oz Perkins' first film to get a proper multiplex UK cinema release is a superbly creepy serial killer thriller. Nicolas Cage is (arguably) at his most terrifying as the titular character whom FBI agent Maika Monroe is on the trail of. It's not quite as gorgeous or weird or visually arresting as his previous GRETEL AND HANSEL, but as a bid for the mainstream while maintaining integrity as an auteur this is satisfyingly unique and uniquely terrifying in places. The only people who might be disappointed will be those unfamiliar with Perkins' oeuvre and if that's you, start with 2015's THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER (aka FEBRUARY) and work from there.

Civil War

There's something rather brilliantly British about Alex Garland's CIVIL WAR. The trailers promise an almost Marvel-style action picture whereas in fact this is much more informed by things like Terry Nation's Survivors, the second half of HG Wells' War of the Worlds and (yes) THREADS. As the film went on a part of me wished there was no dialogue at all, just a dispassionate voice-over narration like that employed by Peter Watkins in his classic (and somehow similar in feel) THE WAR GAME. The film takes no sides because it doesn't need to. It's a journey through madness and death where there are no winners. Scenes of utter horror are played out in jolting juxtaposition against the beauty of the American landscape and some of the imagery is by turns starkly cold and emotionally wrenching. Ignore the negative reviews, this is a future classic and a remarkable piece of speculative cinema about the world we're living in right now. Quite possibly Garland's best.

Ok those were the runners up. Here we go with my top ten list of films from 2024 that I think are highly deserving of attention. 

10 Lord of Misrule

An engrossing, well made folk horror picture that gets so much right it's a joy to watch. The production design and set dressing are wall to wall creepy and there are fine performances from the leads, with Ralph Ineson playing the leader of the Pagans and a bunch of British character actors who look born to play weird villagers. The literate script that deals with the Christian versus Pagan religion is by Tom DeVille, best known to readers here for his 2000 TV anthology series URBAN GOTHIC.

Guiding everything with a sure and steady hand is director William Brent Bell. I've previously likened Bell's style to some of the better British B horrors of the 1960s like Don Sharp's WITCHCRAFT and LORD OF MISRULE may well be his best film yet. It's assured, creepy and doesn't miss an opportunity for a well-orchestrated scare or a chance to build creeping unease.

9 Schlitter - Evil in the Woods

When he was a boy, Lucas was witness to his brutal lumberjack father accidentally running over Lucas' best friend Matthieu. Years later he is summoned back to the family home after a fire has destroyed it and two charred corpses have been found within. Matthieu's father never found out how the boy died and he seems overly willing to help Lucas and his friends. Is he as friendly as he seems? Is he actually wheelchair-bound? And doesn't he seem to have an unnatural penchant for designing complex animal traps?

A highly entertaining, gory, revenge-driven horror thriller from France, the title smacks of comedy but schlitting apparently refers to the lumberjack practice of shifting logs using a sledge. That said, while SCHLITTER is played dead serious, if you're the kind of person who can chuckle at the cheekily outrageous excesses of a SAW film this is going to be right up your alley. In fact while SAW has Jigsaw, Schlitter's villain could perhaps be nicknamed Bandsaw.

8 Immaculate

A great, gory, EuroShocker in which a nun travels to a remote convent and finds herself pregnant by supernatural means. The film cranks up the crazy about 30 minutes in, and the final act is just barnstorming, with all kinds of stuff that it would be too spoilery to mention here. If you're a nunsploitation fan you'll probably enjoy the fight in the bath, and the film even manages to inject some politics into all the mayhem and get away with it. Sydney Sweeney is excellent in the lead (she'd not really registered with me until this) and seeing as this was apparently a passion project for her she now has my full attention. Will Bates provides an effective music score that is half Lost Hearts hurdy gurdy and half James Horner's NAME OF THE ROSE, and we even get the theme from Bruno Nicolai's score to THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES while the nuns are hanging out the washing. Marvellous. 

7 Love Lies Bleeding

A fantastic noirish thriller that's arguably even better than director Rose Glass's excellent SAINT MAUD, thanks to a great cast of familiar faces (Kristen Stewart, Jena Malone, Dave Franco and Ed Harris with his Fried Barry hairstyle) and at least one new one (Katy O'Brian), an intriguing plot and some really great directorial touches that embrace the weird, the psychedelic and especially (for me anyway) the gothic. There are touches of Cronenberg, Lynch and Refn in here but Glass is too good a director for any of that to feel derivative. 

6 The Coffee Table

A film that displays some of the broadest swings between humour and horror ever put on screen. Many, of course, will not find the film funny at all and it likely takes a very special kind of black sense of humour to appreciate it. I'm not going to say what happens but suffice to say Caya Casas' THE COFFEE TABLE is likely to make as many 'Best Of' lists as 'Most Hated' lists purely because of how skilful it is at achieving what it sets out to do. I thought it was brilliant in its excruciating execution and I'll leave it at that, I think.  

5 A Different Man

I was a big fan of writer-director Aaron Schimberg's 2018 CHAINED FOR LIFE and his new film, A DIFFERENT MAN, is even better. Sebastian Stan plays a man with severe neurofibromatosis who is given a cure. Assuming a new identity he then tries to get a starring role in a play that, unbeknown to everyone else involved, is all about him, but finds that at every turn both in the play and in life he is upstaged by the constantly upbeat Oswald (real-life neurofibromatosis sufferer Adam Pearson from UNDER THE SKIN and CHAINED FOR LIFE). Stan and Pearson both deliver Oscar-worthy turns while some of the subject matter (and especially the 'strong sex' bit) will probably ensure A DIFFERENT MAN won't get anywhere near that particular awards list. By the final shot I was thinking 'this is so excruciating it's just like a Ramsey Campbell comedy' as it cut abruptly to black.

4 Joker: Folie à Deux

Is this the most misunderstood and inappropriately maligned movie of the year? I liked JOKER but JOKER FOLIE A DEUX takes things to a whole other level, or rather levels because this is a film that needs a few viewings to take everything in. It's like they kept offering Todd Phillips more money to make a sequel until he said 'Ok, but you're not going to like it'. I half expected him to appear at the end saying 'Well what did you expect this was going to be like?' Of course it wasn't going to make a profit. It's a $200 million deadly serious art house project, and a glorious one at that. Years from now there will be essays unpicking every scene, every nuance, every thing it has to say about comic book movies (and the fans thereof) and likely provoked exactly the reaction amongst many that it was intended to. The reaction to it this year has felt much like the reaction to John Carpenter's THE THING in 1982, and I wouldn't be surprised if it takes 20 years for it to start getting the recognition it deserves. Marvellous.

3 The Substance

There's the flavour of fairytale to Coralie Fargeat's THE SUBSTANCE, the story of an older woman who wishes she was younger and believes she is willing to pay the terrible price to achieve that wish. It's a great, complex, visceral piece of work, one so skilfully told that its runtime doesn't feel anything like its actual 141 minutes, and, as alluded to by many, it does indeed go completely insane in the final act. It's also extremely funny, with frequent moments of grotesquely gleeful hilarity comparable to the very best of South Park, especially the climax (I couldn't stop chuckling). As such it definitely won't be for everyone but if you love body horror, Peter Jackson's early gorefests, and the concept of large numbers of people being hosed down with blood you'll have a very good time with this.

2 Dead Talents Society

A frenetic, next level WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS from Taiwan about ghosts and the highly competitive lifestyle many of them seem to end up 'enjoying' in the afterlife, filmed with the manic energy of Joseph Khan's DETENTION and easily as funny as both. No idea if a UK release has been secured yet but if you enjoyed either of those films (and especially if you loved both) this one's a must see.

1 Blink Twice

Regular readers will think I might be biased in awarding the number one spot to the film with the strongest Jess Franco vibe of the year (and there were others), but there's  so much to love and appreciate about Zoe Kravitz's directorial debut that if you haven't seen any of the films on this list this is the one you should start with. If you do love EuroHorrors of the 1970s you'll find plenty of touchstones in this, from the posh island location run by blokes you just know are rich perverts, to the two girls dropped into that very situation where they realise something is just wrong, to the fact that BLINK TWICE isn't even the film's original title - distributor Amazon apparently forced director Zoe Kravitz to change it from her preferred title of PUSSY ISLAND very late in the day (now there's a Franco - or even a Joe D'Amato - title for you). It's the film DON'T WORRY DARLING could and should have been, but it's actually much more than that, with a fine cast of familiar faces amongst the support (Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osmont, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis) and best of all some truly inspired direction from Kravitz leading to moments of soul-squirming weirdness and dread.

And that's it! As always, many thanks to the festival organisers, the companies who send me films to review, everyone involved with running the cinemas we are lucky enough to have in this area, and most of all everyone who reads, and is hopefully entertained by, these reviews. Once again my desk is piled high with discs awaiting review for next year, but until then this is me signing off. Be nice to each other & House of Mortal Cinema will be back in 2025. 

The Top Ten Films of 2023

It's time for HMC's traditional 'Best of Year' list (now in its twelfth year!). As usual the rules are that the film has to have had a release in 2023 for the first time - either at the cinema, at a festival, or on Blu-ray. Big budget widely-released studio successes (like BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER, two films that made the biggest splashes of the year) don't get a look in because you already know about them. Instead what I'm presenting here is a list of films that are all highly worthy of attention but which even seasoned film fans may have either missed or don't even know exist. It should also be pointed out that despite my best efforts, the arrival of Magnus the Utterly Splendid Brindle Staffordshire Bull Terrier at HMC has meant I haven't been able to catch all the new releases or all the festival films, so if your favourite of the year isn't on here it may well be because I haven't seen it yet. Ready? Ok here we go!

10 My Mother's Eyes

The new film from WOMAN OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS writer-director Takeshi Kushida, which received its UK premiere at this year's Frightfest. Combining mad science, maternal guilt and cellos, the latest film from Kushida feels like the next natural step in what is promising to become a fascinating oeuvre. A woman suffering from retinitis pigmentosa is going slowly blind. During an episode of blindness she crashes her car and renders her young daughter paralysed from the neck down. A revolutionary new contact lens allows her to see again, and linking it to a VR headset allows her daughter to live through her eyes. But the scientist has his own reasons for having created the device. Perhaps needless to say, none of this ends well, Stylish, moving and (eventually) blood drenched, this is one that's going to reward repeat viewings.

9 Another Day to Live Through

Satu (Lene Kqiku), a young woman hiking through forestland, meets the much older Lauri (Timo Torikka) who directs her to the cabin she is seeking. The next thing she knows she is waking up in bed with Lauri attending her, with no memory of how she got there. The longer she stays in the cabin the more time seems to be distorting and folding in on itself. Sidney Salkow's 1964 THE LAST MAN ON EARTH plays constantly on the television in the lounge, and eventually Satu ends up parroting dialogue from it. Lauri seems to drift in and out of her reality as the days blur one into another. She sometimes eats breakfast on the cabin's veranda while the dead body of someone lies just beyond the cabin's steps. Eventually all the pieces fall into place. Or do they? That in essence is the appeal (and likely also the turn off for some) of writer-director Peter Simmons' film, because by the end you'll be asking all sorts of questions, ruminating on all sorts of possibilities and, if you've been in what can best be described as a 'Jess Franco state of mind' you'll be wanting to watch it again. Finland is having a great year in horror and this is another unexpected surprise, and a must-see if you love weird art-house fractured narrative 1970s-style EuroHorror. Released on digital in the UK from Reel 2 Reel Films.

8 Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives

Another UK Frightfest premiere, and a somewhat unwieldy title (presumably to help distinguish it from the plethora of other HOME SWEET HOME movies out there) for this German production that turned out to be an unexpected highlight of the festival. Shot in one take, that was actually something of an unnecessary gimmick in the telling of a supremely creepy ghost story. As the sun sets a pregnant woman arrives at the remote country house of her husband's family. It's deserted and as she starts to wander round she discovers a secret room filled with African artefacts and a diary that describes a terrible event in the past. Some great scary moments as well as a gradually building atmosphere of dread and inevitability leading to a final shot that's just right all made this one a winner.

7 Good Boy

The old-fashioned tale of girl meets boy, girl discovers boy is millionaire and girl goes out with millionaire, is given a gleefully perverse spin in GOOD BOY, which was another (along with THE KNOCKING) of this year's Frightfest offerings from Finland. Sigrid believes she's met the perfect man in rich, handsome young Christian, except for one thing: his dog Frank, or rather the fact that Frank is actually a man in a dog costume who, according to Christian, wants to be treated as a dog at all times. There's more going on, of course, but it's unlikely you'll guess exactly where this one is going by the decidedly kinky and over the top climax. A bit like a lengthy and especially odd episode of Inside No.9, (they could have called it Furry Shades of Grey - thanks Mrs Probert!) GOOD BOY is the kind of off-kilter, disturbing, well-made low budget horror fare that Frightfest was designed to showcase. After the end credits have rolled you'll still be wondering about the horrible possible reasons for the final shot. 

6 Mother May I?

Released by Vertigo on Digital in the UK, MOTHER MAY I is the story of Emmett (Kyle Gallner) who inherits his mother's remote house in rural Connecticut. Once he arrives there with his fiancé it transpires that Emmett is harbouring deep resentment towards his deceased mother because of, it seems, abandonment issues. Anya fancies herself as an amateur psychoanalyst (we learn her mother is a real one) and tries to get Emmett to open up about his feelings. However, everything gets complicated when one morning Emmett wakes up to find Anya has taken on the persona of his mother. Is she embarking on a potentially dangerous attempt at psychotherapy? Or has Emmett's mother actually taken possession of her? As well as a carefully thought out script that's acted well, the film benefits immensely from some stunning visual compositions, making the most of the lush countryside that surrounds the house and inserting blurred, ghostly, Jamesian images into it for maximum effect. One overhead shot of a boat on a lake looks like a white eye staring out of a sea of darkness so if you want it there are cosmic horror allusions, too. 

5 Monolith

Deservedly playing a number of UK festivals this year including Frightfest and Abertoir, MONOLITH is a fine science fiction piece from Australia, set in a single location and with only a single actress (Lily Sullivan from EVIL DEAD RISE) onscreen. A disgraced reporter chances across a story regarding something people can only describe as a black brick. A few telephone calls and interviews later and it sounds as if various people across the world have received mysterious black bricks that have changed their lives. Then it's revealed that internal scans of the bricks' structures have revealed mysterious symbols folded in on themselves, each different for every brick / person. Combining a strong allegory for how we deal with guilt with a mounting sense of dread, cosmic horror & possible alien invasion, MONOLITH is a riveting and fascinating watch.

4 Sick of Myself

Writer-Director Kristoffer Borgli was in UK cinemas recently with the Nicolas Cage-starring DREAM SCENARIO. Released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome earlier in the year was this, his previous effort and one well worth seeking out. SICK OF MYSELF is a razor sharp satire on the nature of modern narcissism starring Kristine Kujath Thorp as Signe, a young woman so self-obsessed that she goes to increasingly horrific lengths to get the attention she craves, from trying to get dogs to bite her, to ingesting large quantities of pills known to have severely disfiguring side effects. Her artist boyfriend is almost as bad, and her sexual fantasies are fuelled by who she imagines might come to her funeral (and who would be refused entry). As her condition worsens and she becomes both the subject of front page newspaper articles and the poster girl for a fashion house  one wonders where it will all end. By turns horrific and hilarious, and often both at the same time. DREAM SCENARIO is good but SICK OF MYSELF is great. 

3 Red Rooms

Pascal Plante's RED ROOMS uses the courtroom drama to provide a searing commentary on true crime obsession while also being a tense and grim thriller in its own right. Fashion model Kelly-Anne is obsessed with the trial of alleged serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, accused of chopping up three teenagers and filming their deaths as a live broadcast to a 'Red Room' on the dark web. But the video of the final murder, the one that might either clear or condemn Chevalier, is yet to be found. Should she go looking for it? Or just carry on spending her nights sleeping outside the courtroom to make sure she gets a good seat at the trial every morning? RED ROOMS is a real surprise - well directed, cleverly written and sensitively performed. You never see a drop of blood but this might just be the most horrifying film of the year.

2 The Moor

25 years after a series of child abductions in a small Yorkshire village one father is still determined to locate the body of his missing son, and he's prepared to go to supernatural lengths to do so if necessary. Needless to say it all goes horribly wrong. There's much of Machen (stone circles, petroglyphs, something possibly lurking beneath the land) in Chris Cronin's excellent THE MOOR, a film that drops you into the location of the title (in the case the Yorkshire moors) and proceeds to scare you silly. Cronin really knows how to make an already pretty forbidding landscape seem all the more brooding, and despite all that wide open space this is splendidly claustrophobic when it needs to be. One of the best of the year and deserving of a cinema release to experience all that panoramic grimness on the big screen. We'll see if gets one in 2024

1 Godzilla Minus One

At a recent ComicCon writer-director Takashi Yamazaki was challenged about the alleged $15 million budget of GODZILLA MINUS ONE, only to reply that he wished they had actually had that much money to spend. Which just makes its success all the sweeter and all the more impressive. GODZILLA MINUS ONE is jaw-droppingly marvellous, blew me away, and was the best time I've had at the cinema since LAST NIGHT IN SOHO almost exactly two years ago. After several of years of trying hard to like major Hollywood studio fantasy movies I had almost forgotten what it was like to watch something as good as this. Quite possibly a candidate for best Godzilla film ever, and one that's worth watching on a great big screen with an excellent sound system and a full audience. The pin-drop silence during the (fantastic) climax may well end up as one of my favourite cinema-going moments of all time. As I write this the film is still on general release in over 400 screens in the UK and is No.2 at the box office. Well done to everyone concerned.

OK! Somehow I manage to keep putting together this list, even though with the event of Magnus I didn't expect to see enough great films to warrant a top ten this year. In the end I didn't even have space to include PEARL (Ti West's best film by far in a somewhat chequered career) or WHEN EVIL LURKS (from the talented Argentinian team who made the equally recommended TERRIFIED,  but both of those are very much worth watching, as is EVIL DEAD RISE, the surprisingly successful (and far superior) follow up to 2013's EVIL DEAD reboot. Normally this is where I sign off for the year but Eli Roth's THANKSGIVING is getting a UK digital release on New Year's Day so this year it will be Eli who will be getting the final post. However I will take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed the reviews this year. I never expected the site to last this long & I already have five films waiting to be written about here on my desk for 2024. So until the next time be nice to each other & I'll see you all again soon.