A Hor­ror Trav­el­ogue: 31 hor­ror movies from 31 dif­fer­ent countries

How does the geog­ra­phy of your upbring­ing deter­mine the tex­ture of your night­mares? To find out, we’re embark­ing on a blood-cur­dling, globe-trot­ting jour­ney through hor­ror cin­e­ma to bet­ter under­stand what keeps us all up at night. Thir­ty one films from 31 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, each with their own dis­tinct styles, themes and sociopo­lit­i­cal subtexts.

Inspired by the clas­si­cal myth of the Lui­son, a South Amer­i­can wolf crea­ture, The Nazarene and the Wolf is an uncon­ven­tion­al were­wolf tale about the cursed son of a farmer’s fam­i­ly. When he is near­ly 18 years old, Nazareno falls deeply in love with the beau­ti­ful Grisel­da but he also learns that the vil­lage leg­ends are true and as the sev­enth-born son he is fat­ed to become a were­wolf. Meet­ing with a dev­il sur­ro­gate called Mandi­ga, he is pre­sent­ed with a choice: give up love with Grisel­da and be cured, or be doomed to be a mon­ster. One of the most suc­cess­ful Argen­tin­ian films of all time, The Nazarene and the Wolf has estab­lished itself as one of the more impor­tant films in the country’s his­to­ry. Pre­sent­ed as a dream inject­ed with South Amer­i­can mythol­o­gy and Catholic imagery, the film draws on the lurid sen­su­al­i­ty of the Argen­tin­ian land­scape to flesh out what might oth­er­wise be a famil­iar sto­ry of doomed love.

Wake in Fright may be the quin­tes­sen­tial Aus­tralian film and some may argue that it is, in its own way, a hor­ror film. The Babadook how­ev­er, shifts per­cep­tions and let us in on a ver­sion of the coun­try rarely screened. Far away from the cen­tral con­ti­nent, The Babadook presents a more fem­i­nine and sub­ur­ban ver­sion of Aus­tralia as the nar­ra­tive pins itself on an iso­lat­ed sin­gle moth­er deal­ing with her dif­fi­cult child alone. Bat­tling the expec­ta­tions to fill the roles of moth­er and provider, the wid­owed Amelia has not had time to grieve the death of her hus­band, as her men­tal state unrav­els. As she begins to fear that the mon­ster from a mys­te­ri­ous book has been stalk­ing her home, real­i­ty and night­mare begin to blend into one. A psy­cho­log­i­cal mind ben­der that tack­les the hor­rors of moth­er­hood in the face of iso­la­tion and gen­dered expec­ta­tions, The Babadook stands out as one of the best hor­ror films of the past decade.

No vam­pire has ever been quite as ele­gant as Del­phine Seyrig in Daugh­ters of Dark­ness. A smil­ing bot­tle blonde baroness with eyes on a young cou­ple at a vaca­tion resort, Daugh­ters of Dark­ness rep­re­sents a sleek euro hor­ror that blends French sen­si­bil­i­ties with a Bel­gian flair. While draw­ing on inter­na­tion­al stylings from both Amer­i­can and French cin­e­ma, the film’s unique sur­re­al­ism sets it apart from most Euro­pean les­bian vam­pire films of the era. Shot in two of Belgium’s great­est hotels, dat­ing back to ruth­less King Leopold II, which echoes through­out the film’s cen­turies-long lega­cy of vio­lence the film is stamped with Belgium’s colo­nial his­to­ry of vio­lence. And chan­nel­ing a com­ic tone through sur­re­al­ism, the film evokes one of Belgium’s great­est artists, the sur­re­al mas­ter Rene Magritte who threat­ened the com­fort of the mun­dane by ques­tion­ing the sur­face val­ue of objects. Seyrig’s impos­si­bly beau­ti­ful vam­pire hid­ing below her smil­ing sur­face is humanity’s poten­tial towards self-moti­vat­ed vio­lence and oppression.

The less­er known mas­ter of Brazil­ian genre cin­e­ma, Ivan Car­doso, infus­es the music of the Brazil­ian lan­guage into the rhythm of his films. After the death of her hus­band by a mur­der­ous plant, a dance teacher retreats from the world to a small cab­in. Drawn out by some friends in order to help stage a bal­let called ​‘The Sev­en Vam­pires’ at a night­club, the per­for­mance she helps orches­trate goes wrong when a very real mur­der takes place on stage. The bour­geois crowd, how­ev­er, believes the inci­dent to be all a part of the act and clap along as a dancer is lit­er­al­ly eat­en alive on stage. Play­ing with mis­di­rec­tion and irony, Car­doso treats sex and vio­lence with the irrev­er­ent plea­sure of a trick­ster demon. Play­ing with voyeurism and genre tropes, Car­doso uses edit­ing and music to defy audi­ence expec­ta­tions and sur­prise them through twists the blend hor­ror and comedy.

As a hor­ror film set in sub­ur­bia, Gin­ger Snaps takes advan­tage of the shift­ing sea­sons to present Cana­da as polite­ly unevent­ful. A were­wolf nar­ra­tive that serves as a metaphor for men­stru­a­tion, two goth sis­ters are late bloomers until Gin­ger, the old­er sis­ter, is attacked by a lycan­thrope. Sud­den­ly, her body starts to change she nav­i­gates the puber­ty mine­field of new hair, new desires, and a new body. Canada’s lit­er­ary his­to­ry based on themes of sur­vival is satirised through the all-too-com­fort­able life of these girls and their wicked­ly macabre imag­i­na­tion. Cap­tur­ing so deft­ly the mun­dane ordi­nar­i­ness of Ontario sub­ur­bia, the theme of sur­vival is reimag­ined as an inter­nal rather than an exter­nal con­flict. Fem­i­nized hor­ror at its best, Gin­ger Snaps blends con­tin­ues in Canada’s lega­cy of body hor­ror estab­lished by mas­ter David Cro­nen­berg with a new twist.

Doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers are look­ing to inves­ti­gate ghost sight­ings in an aban­doned sana­to­ri­um in this found footage hor­ror com­e­dy from Cos­ta Rica. The film­mak­ers here are arro­gant, while they search for proof of ghosts with lit­tle faith in the peo­ple they speak with. Using their doc­u­men­tary project as an excuse to get atten­tion from girls, they are soon faced with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there may very well be lurk­ing in the van­dalised hall­ways of the old hos­pi­tal. With the increase in para­nor­mal tourism, the film offers a com­pelling insight into a land­scape that ignites the hor­ror imag­i­na­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly por­tray­ing the ulte­ri­or motives of bro-film­mak­ers works remark­ably well as a means of work­ing around the bud­getary lim­its the film has been con­strained by. Sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, such as a psy­chic, sim­i­lar­ly shed some insight into the leg­ends and beliefs of some of more super­sti­tious ele­ments of Cos­ta Rican folklore.

“What you are about to see is a hor­ror film,” Jan Švankma­jer says in his intro­duc­tion to Luna­cy. Com­bin­ing live action and his stop motion, Luna­cy is a trib­ute to the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the Mar­quis de Sade. With hints of both in the film’s sen­su­al and irrev­er­ent nar­ra­tive, the film takes place at an asy­lum where the line between keep­ers and inmates has long been blurred. Sub­ver­sive sur­re­al­ism bleeds into the film as time and space are rede­fined along non-lin­ear tra­jec­to­ries. Horse-drawn car­riages pass over high­ways and hint at the loom­ing future that inter­mit­tent­ly bleed into the film’s sub­con­scious mind space. Fright­en­ing more for it’s treat­ment of ram­pant pow­er abus­es and the fragili­ty of the human mind than grotes­query, Luna­cy por­trays a micro­cosm of a soci­ety in which the most debased crim­i­nals and moral offend­ers are deemed the care­tak­ers of the rest of us.

This Egypt­ian ghost film with a gial­lo flavour jumps right into the action. In a high-end mod­ernist home, a house­wife set­tles in for the night until a strange inci­dent lead her to run away in fear. Part Pol­ter­geist and part The Enti­ty, the film makes it ambigu­ous as to whether or not a super­nat­ur­al pres­ence is lurk­ing in the home or if a duplic­i­tous hus­band is try­ing to make it seem that way. So much of the film’s impact lines on the shoul­ders of actress Mariem Fakhr El Dine who chan­nels skep­ti­cism that devolves into a slow build­ing mad­ness. In one scene, she is awok­en in the mid­dle of the night by a noise down­stairs only to stum­ble upon her phan­tom dop­pel­gänger bleed­ing at the neck and strug­gling to hold onto ​“life”. Is this all a dream or an elab­o­rate fan­ta­sy? Rather than be a goth­ic hor­ror, the film seems to be about more con­tem­po­rary fears and makes an allu­sion to clas­sic hor­ror films like Psy­cho to cre­ate a post-mod­ern atmosphere.

The stark black and white cin­e­matog­ra­phy of The White Rein­deer is only ampli­fied by the incred­i­bly white snow that dom­i­nates much of the film. Blind­ing and oppres­sive, the snow con­ceals a dif­fi­cult life where life fol­lows the herds of rein­deer that pro­vide the snow dwellers with what they need to sur­vive. Amid this dif­fi­cult land­scape, a beau­ti­ful woman falls in love and gets mar­ried, only to be sep­a­rat­ed from her hus­band for long peri­ods of time as he goes off to work with the rein­deer. Frus­trat­ed and lone­ly, she vis­its a shaman who offers her a love potion that goes hor­ri­bly wrong. Inspired by Finnish folk­lore, the film grad­u­al­ly devolves into a phan­tas­magor­i­cal expe­ri­ence where the nat­ur­al world is as decep­tive as the human spir­it. Dri­ven by ani­mal­is­tic pas­sions that over­ride sur­vival­ist impuls­es, the recur­ring appari­tion of a leg­endary white rein­deer dri­ves a divid­ing line between the real and the dream world.

In a hor­ror nar­ra­tive that could almost only be born from the ten­sions between reli­gion and class bur­rowed in France’s cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, Mar­tyrs chal­lenges the lim­its of the human body and spir­it. Not for the faint of heart, it rep­re­sents a more main­stream side of the French extrem­ist hor­ror move­ment of the 2000s, which focus­es on trans­gres­sive motifs. Mar­tyrs opens up with the escape of a young girl from an out of use slaugh­ter­house where she has been tor­tured and pushed to her phys­i­cal lim­its for an extend­ed peri­od of time. Years lat­er, with the help of a friend, she seeks revenge by the peo­ple who impris­oned her as a child only to be recap­tured. Focused on class and gen­der abus­es, the film roots the tor­ture of its sub­ject in a quest for evi­dence of life after death. Old school Catholic moral­i­ty dic­tate the film’s tra­jec­to­ry and inspire the cal­lous cru­el­ty of its upper crust villains.

Rather than be a remake, Wern­er Her­zog intend­ed Nos­fer­atu the Vampyre to be in dia­logue with FW Murnau’s 1922 mas­ter­piece. Con­nect­ing the height of the Ger­man cin­e­ma to the New Wave of Ger­man cin­e­ma, he rein­ter­pret­ed the clas­si­cal vam­pire nar­ra­tive for a new age. While bear­ing many sim­i­lar­i­ties to its silent coun­ter­part, Herzog’s film is root­ed more deeply in both empa­thy and real­i­ty. Empha­sis­ing vam­pirism as dis­ease, along with Nos­fer­atu arrives mil­lions of rats which descend upon the Ger­man coun­try­side and bring the plague along with them. Rather than be a scourge, Klaus Kinski’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the pal­lid vam­pire has been imbued with deep sen­si­tiv­i­ty and long­ing. Her­zog, who has long been fas­ci­nat­ed with the sub­lime in nature, here maps it onto a super­nat­ur­al being who rep­re­sents the con­tra­dic­tions of humanity’s fragili­ty and dura­bil­i­ty in the face of our own mortality.

Per­vert­ed and macabre, Sin­ga­pore Sling blends ele­ments of hor­ror and film noir. Shot in black and white with evo­ca­tions of Otto Pre­minger and Josef von Stern­berg, the film is about an unhinged and inces­tu­ous moth­er and a daugh­ter team who take in a bleed­ing and sub­dued detec­tive who arrives at their doorstep. What ensues are a series of grotesque and hilar­i­ous pow­er games involv­ing BDSM, sex, and vio­lence. Rather than build up sus­pense through incre­ments, the film embraces max­i­mal­ism and excess. Each shot takes full advan­tage of the fore­ground and back­ground, while the per­for­mances are deliri­ous phys­i­cal. Not for the faint of heart or the prud­ish, Sin­ga­pore Sling por­trays two beau­ti­ful and lib­er­at­ed women bend­ing moral­i­ty to such extremes that they bare­ly even seem human any­more. Blend­ing ele­ments from Greek tragedy and com­e­dy, direc­tor Nikos Niko­laidis dis­turbs the per­cep­tion of the ancients as the pin­na­cle of high art by draw­ing out from them their most absur­dist and hor­rif­ic motifs.

Bright­ly sat­u­rat­ed colour dom­i­nates Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, about the mir­a­cle cure that keeps women look­ing and feel­ing young. Dizzy­ing and dark­ly fun­ny, Dumplings presents a dis­tinct­ly fem­i­nine take on hor­ror focused on the tribu­la­tions of age­ing and the per­cep­tion of women as care­givers. Set along the bor­der of Hong Kong and Chi­na, the film fol­lows an actress who wants to look young again in order to recap­ture the atten­tion of her wealthy hus­band. She vis­its Aunt Mei, who pre­pares her spe­cial dumplings filled with abort­ed human fetus­es. Among the film’s loca­tions is Lai Tak Tsuen, a pub­lic hous­ing devel­op­ment that’s pres­ence book­ends the film’s cen­tral action. Serv­ing as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of class divi­sions, it’s unusu­al bicylin­dri­cal design serves not only as vagi­nal imagery but empha­sis­es the film’s atmos­phere of oppression.

As much a com­e­dy as it is a slash­er film, Drau­gasaga is set at a tele­vi­sion stu­dio haunt­ed by a red-head­ed Amer­i­can women. With many styl­is­tic flour­ish­es that seem inspired by B‑movie hor­ror films from the 1970s, the film over­comes bud­getary lim­i­ta­tions with com­e­dy and idio­syn­crat­ic direc­to­r­i­al flour­ish­es. A young man is employed at a tv stu­dio as a night watch­men and spend his nights play­ing with a female cowork­er but soon the line between real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy begin to blur. Set in the real­i­ty of a tele­vi­sion stu­dio lends some prac­ti­cal advan­tages, but sim­i­lar­ly, helps empha­sise the dan­gers of los­ing your­self to cin­e­mat­ic fan­tasies. While most of the film takes places indoors, a beau­ti­ful scene in a warm café by the har­bour only helps to fur­ther serve the film’s insu­lar envi­ron­ment where imag­i­na­tion can thrive.

The wind blows through the tit­u­lar man­sion as a nar­ra­tor explains the ill-fat­ed affair of two lovers with­out names. Their mys­te­ri­ous fate cap­tures the atten­tion of the mansion’s new own­er, who finds him­self enthralled by a spir­it whom he believes is the beau­ti­ful lover who once lived in the house. With one mys­tery falling over the oth­er, The Man­sion inter­twines fate and coin­ci­dence, as piece by piece the sto­ry of the two lovers comes togeth­er. With strong dos­es of goth­ic romance, the almost cav­ernous man­sion is beau­ti­ful­ly adorned and labyrinthi­an. The ques­tion of the beau­ti­ful woman who, like a spec­tre, appears around the house blurs the line between good and evil inten­tions. With evo­ca­tion of pre­vi­ous lives, she sug­gests that this is not the first time they’ve met and they are the ill-fat­ed lovers of leg­end. The only thing keep­ing them apart now is his life, that she urges him to aban­don so they can once again be together.

In this Iran­ian hor­ror film, two young women go to a uni­ver­si­ty near Tehran but their creepy accom­mo­da­tions leave much to the imag­i­na­tion. With their dor­mi­to­ry locat­ed in a dark and moun­tain­ous region, leg­ends of elves and fairies liv­ing in an aban­doned build­ing inspire late night explo­rations through its haunt­ed halls. Blend­ing com­e­dy and hor­ror, the film uses mis­di­rec­tion such as unveil­ing the inex­plic­a­ble cry of a baby pierc­ing through the cob­webbed ruins as a cheeky ring­tone rather than evi­dence of super­nat­ur­al forces. A film about con­cealed temp­ta­tion, the fairies are able to trans­form their appear­ance and lure young women towards cor­rup­tion through trick­ery. Super­nat­ur­al and real world evils blend into each oth­er, as one of the girls encoun­ters repeat­ed­ly a phan­tom man with brown teeth who may be a spir­it or a vagrant. He begins to haunt her and even far from Uni­ver­si­ty it seems she can­not escape his influence.

Mass hys­te­ria has long been a favourite theme of hor­ror film­mak­ers but placed onto the first Israeli slash­er it feels par­tic­u­lar­ly sub­ver­sive. When a group of friends run into dis­grun­tled police offi­cers in the woods, the abuse of pow­er spread like a dis­ease. Set most­ly in a pri­mal for­est haunt­ed not by super­nat­ur­al crea­tures but by bear traps and mines, soci­ety imbued with rage and hatred does the rest of the work as the tropes of the slash­er genre are twist­ed for a dark­ly com­ic effect. Unsat­is­fied with the polite­ness that only leads to more trou­ble for our pro­tag­o­nists, Rabies turns the sub­text of pow­er abus­es into the text itself as the behav­iours of a rogue police offi­cer only leads to more anger and vio­lence. As pow­er itself lies between good and evil, it makes the per­fect vil­lain in this tight, back­woods Israeli horror.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin syn­the­sised beau­ti­ful­ly the virtues of the hyper-stylised gial­lo move­ment. Blend­ing the gen­res crime ele­ments with the more poet­ic influ­ences of night­mares, a beau­ti­ful woman, Car­ol, dreams that her neigh­bour had been bru­tal­ly mur­dered only to find that police are inves­ti­gat­ing that very crime. Scared and con­fused, she becomes the prime sus­pect in a mur­der she only remem­bers from a night­mare. With a twist­ing nar­ra­tive inter­rupt­ed by hazy dreams, Car­ol los­es more of her­self as she sus­pects things aren’t quite as they seem. Focused on find­ing answers, Car­ol starts rebuild­ing and search­ing for char­ac­ters, places and things from her night­mares in order to piece togeth­er exact­ly what hap­pened that night. The film seems dipped in sat­u­rat­ed colours and cob­bled togeth­er from fash­ion spreads brim­ming with stun­ning women and over the top locales, a feast for the spir­it and the eyes.

Takashi Miike has invari­ably come to define Japan’s genre cin­e­ma in the con­tem­po­rary age. Often mak­ing three or four films a year, Miike is ruth­less­ly pro­lif­ic but still main­tains a high­er than aver­age hit ratio. Back in 1999, he released one of the films that intro­duced him to an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence: Audi­tion. About a wid­ow­er who strug­gles to meet women and decides to host audi­tions to find a girl­friend, the tables turn on him when the woman of his dreams, Asa­mi, turns out to be a crea­ture of night­mares. What begins as a slow burn dra­ma about decep­tion quick­ly turns to all-out hor­ror, as per­cep­tions are not what they seem as sur­face man­ners con­ceal ulte­ri­or motives. Toy­ing with the image of the ide­al Japan­ese woman, the film sub­verts expec­ta­tions and tack­les the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women through a dark plot of vio­lence and revenge.

Obses­sive female friend­ship is pathol­o­gised in Alu­car­da, a rein­ven­tion of the Mar­quis de Sade’s sis­ter nov­els Jus­tine and Juli­ette, set with­in a Mex­i­can con­vent. The inno­cent Jus­tine encoun­ters the trou­bled Alu­car­da (Drac­u­la spelled back­ward) and the pair becomes very close. Wan­der­ing the coun­try­side, Jus­tine and Alu­car­da acci­den­tal­ly unleash a demon­ic force into the con­vent, what fol­lows is a hor­rif­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of the meet­ing of super­sti­tion and reli­gion. Some of the most unset­tling images in all of hor­ror emerge from Alu­car­da, not the least, the bizarre rit­u­als of this spe­cif­ic reli­gious order where under their habits the sis­ters wear yel­lowed and blood­ied rags. In the film’s final chap­ter, these nuns act as mum­my like spec­tres who wan­der through the lit­er­al cave-like halls of their con­vent as fire rages around them. Larg­er than life in many ways, Alu­car­da show­cas­es the kind of female rela­tion­ships that make peo­ple uncom­fort­able and the envi­ron­ments that breed obses­sive and insu­lar friendships.

Far from a tra­di­tion­al hor­ror film, the vil­lain­ous killer of Spoor­loos has games on his mind as he sets his mark on a young woman. While most of the film fol­lows the young woman’s boyfriend as he tries to find the truth behind her dis­ap­pear­ance, Spoor­loos nev­er con­ceals the iden­ti­ty of the offend­er. This film is not a slash­er or even a mys­tery, but rather a philo­soph­i­cal under­tak­ing of the mind of a kid­nap­per. The Van­ish­ing unveils near­ly every­thing to the audi­ence, except the exact nature of the tit­u­lar van­ish­ing. Build­ing sus­pense in a non-tra­di­tion­al way, the audi­ence is hand­ed all the evi­dence at face val­ue and is chal­lenged to inter­pret it while fol­low­ing along with the nar­ra­tive. Cere­bral rather than vis­cer­al, the film creeps under your skin and offers a unique and as of yet, unrepli­cat­ed, cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence in dread.

Fil­ipino hor­ror The Echo is cast in petu­lant shades of green and yel­low. Mar­vin has just moved into his new apart­ment and quick­ly notices that his neigh­bour, a police offi­cer, repeat­ed­ly abus­es his wife and child. Afraid of author­i­ty and torn as to what to do, he vol­un­teers to help the poor young moth­er by shel­ter­ing her daugh­ter from her father’s vio­lent out­bursts. With hor­ror drawn from the inter­nal con­flict of want­i­ng to do what’s right and fear­ing the con­se­quences of an unchecked vio­lent author­i­ty, The Echo explores per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty and con­se­quences of stand­ing up to the police and how vio­lence has a way of echo­ing through time and space. With­in the con­crete and most­ly win­dow­less apart­ment com­plex, pain stem­ming from one par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal act of vio­lence spreads like a phan­tom through the film’s envi­ron­ment, even­tu­al­ly bleed­ing out into the greater world.

Inspired by the true events of a con­vent in Lour­des, France, Moth­er Joan of the Angels is one of the great­est Pol­ish films. The film depicts life in a con­vent where the nuns, under the guid­ance of Moth­er Joan, have all gone mad. Sent to inves­ti­gate the inci­dent of mass hys­te­ria, the Father Józef Suryn wit­ness­es the per­ver­sions of reli­gious wor­ship and rit­u­als with­in the con­vent walls. Far from a tra­di­tion­al hor­ror film, Moth­er Joan of the Angels builds an atmos­phere of oppres­sion with stark con­trast­ing blacks and whites and rig­or­ous for­mal com­po­si­tions that empha­sis­es the twist­ed bod­ies and mal­formed expres­sions of the appar­ent­ly pos­sessed nuns in con­trast with the stiff con­vent walls. Rather than depict demon­ic pos­ses­sion with the dra­mat­ics of say, the sub­tle­ty of Moth­er Joan’s vil­lainy blurs the line between con­scious rebel­lion and the sug­gest­ed evil that has appar­ent­ly crept into her soul and spread to her flock.

A goth­ic hor­ror that does lit­tle to dis­pel asso­ci­a­tions with Drac­u­la, this film is inspired by a 1936 novel­la about a leg­endary undead woman and the rela­tion­ship she forges with a young man, Egor, vis­it­ing the house she haunts. Rel­e­gat­ed most­ly to the sump­tu­ous man­sion, the film takes place deep with­in Egor’s mind. He con­trols the action as the film main­tains his point of view, and his voice over draws us into his thoughts and fears. With a dreamy atmos­phere, the film blurs the line between the con­scious and sub­con­scious mind as Egor gets pulled deep­er into a romance with the undead. As the film goes on he becomes more dis­con­nect­ed with the world of the liv­ing, los­ing him­self to the past. Short on jump scares, the film tack­les the fragili­ty of our own real­i­ty espe­cial­ly in the face of tremen­dous loneliness.

Inspired by a clas­sic Russ­ian folk­tale, Viy was giv­en lib­er­ties in its reli­gious depic­tions by the oth­er­wise strict USSR. With a hazy blue colour and visu­al effects rem­i­nis­cent of the silent works of FW Mur­nau, Viy evokes a fright­en­ing fairy tale intend­ed for old­er chil­dren. Set in the Ukrain­ian coun­try­side, beau­ti­ful Ortho­dox church­es and cen­turies-old towns set the scene for a beau­ti­ful chal­lenge of faith as a priest pre­sides over the three-night wake of a beau­ti­ful young woman. Every night, how­ev­er, she ris­es from her death­ly slum­ber to chal­lenge him, while he bat­tles the forces of evil with just some salt, his bible and his belief in God. Evok­ing a per­vert­ed pas­toral poet­ry, the film’s nat­ur­al envi­ron­ments are cast in a hazy blue light and evoke oth­er­world­li­ness that con­tributes to the film’s fairy tale qual­i­ty. The film’s final act unex­pect­ed­ly show­cas­es an extrav­a­gant hor­ror set piece with oth­er­world­ly demons descend­ing upon the small farm house.

Shock­ing­ly sen­su­al and with a vam­pir­ic twist, Park Chan-wook’s Thirst is inspired by Emile Zola’s nov­el of for­bid­den love, Therese Raquin. As much a hor­ror film as it is the sto­ry of an illic­it sex­u­al affair, the film presents vam­pirism as a med­ical exper­i­ment gone wrong rather than some ancient evil. This shifts the moral ques­tion away from temp­ta­tion and updates it for a con­tem­po­rary age as it chal­lenges human­i­ty to stand up for their own actions rather than shift the blame on some out­side force. Deeply entrenched in irony, Park Chan-wook chal­lenges pre­con­cep­tions about the genre and por­trays a thor­ough­ly mod­ern vam­pire sto­ry. Among oth­er things, Thirst explores the human cost of liv­ing for­ev­er and the self-destruc­tive capac­i­ty for obses­sive car­nal attrac­tion. Park Chan-wook has long become the rare film­mak­er to appeal to both gore­hounds and Cannes and Thirst may very well be his masterpiece.

One of the shin­ing lights of the found footage film, [Rec] aban­dons many of the genre’s con­ceits by angling the pres­ence of a cam­era through a tele­vi­sion crew work­ing on a feel-good seg­ment about fire­fight­ers at work. As they arrive on the scene of emer­gency in an apart­ment com­plex, with­out much notice they are all put under quar­an­tine lock­down as a strange ill­ness has spread through the res­i­dents. Blend­ing first-per­son scares with the obses­sive fears of Catholic guilt, the film show­cas­es the birth of an epi­dem­ic in real time, work­ing towards a rap­tur­ous­ly hor­rif­ic set piece built around the meet­ing of reli­gion and sci­ence in the form of an ema­ci­at­ed vic­tim of demon­ic possession.

The sound of snow falling, like creep­ing insects, sets the tone for Sweden’s Let the Right One In. As a bul­lied boy befriends a young girl who hangs around the play­ground at night, he finds in this aloof play­mate his first and only friend. She lives with a father fig­ure who acts more like a spurned lover than a guardian and strange hap­pen­ings start appear­ing about town. Long­ing and lone­li­ness meet as the pair become clos­er and their bond over their shared ostraci­sa­tion and cap­tur­ing deft­ly the alien­ation that comes with long win­ter nights, direc­tor Tomas Alfred­son twists the per­ceived safe­ty of a Swedish sub­urb for hor­rif­ic effect. The promise of com­fort offered by these neigh­bour­hoods only pro­vides the illu­sion of a per­fect sub­ur­ban life, which only tar­gets it’s more weak­ened ele­ments. A dis­turb­ing take on the cycle of vio­lence which presents no alter­na­tive and no real end to it, cre­ates a creep­ing sense of dread that fol­lows you well after the cred­its roll.

A dark secret looms over Shut­ter, a Thai hor­ror about a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who starts to see bizarre and night­mar­ish appari­tions in his pho­tos. Play­ing on techno­pho­bic fears of the dan­gers of tech­nol­o­gy as con­nect­ed with old­er super­sti­tions about sud­den or unre­solved death, Shut­ter car­ries over old fears into a new age. Cen­tral to the film’s haunt­ing is the echoes of a sui­cide and secre­cy as the fail­ure to address the past and trau­ma of those around you has a way of weigh­ing you down (often quite lit­er­al­ly). Cast in cool tones, the film has the atmos­phere of a morgue except the red glow of the dark­room which punc­tu­ates some of the film’s most impor­tant rev­e­la­tions and is the source of so much dread. Strange­ly pre­scient in regard to the per­va­sive­ness of tech­nol­o­gy in our lives, Shut­ter angles to put a super­nat­ur­al edge on mechan­i­cal advancements.

Robin Hardy’s The Wick­er Man, may very well be a sole fig­ure in the pagan-musi­cal hor­ror genre. Wrapped up in the mys­tery of a miss­ing girl, Sergeant Howie arrives on the remote Sum­merisle where the res­i­dents have aban­doned Chris­tian­i­ty in favour of Celtic pagan­ism. Rap­tur­ous­ly sen­su­al, the uptight Howie strug­gles spir­i­tu­al­ly as his hard­line Chris­tian­i­ty comes up against the seem­ing­ly lib­er­at­ed sex­u­al­i­ty of the island. A spir­i­tu­al mys­tery as much about reli­gious oppres­sion as it is about a miss­ing girl, the film explores the nature of reli­gious belief from the out­side while reveal­ing Howie’s own hypocrisy in his own belief sys­tems. With a kind of rhyth­mic ener­gy, the film has a unique and dis­joint­ed cadence that inspires a trou­bling unease, espe­cial­ly as matched with the over­cast but nonethe­less visu­al­ly sun­ny envi­ron­ments. Fac­ing for­got­ten Celtic rit­u­als revived dur­ing the hip­pie move­ment with the uptight Protes­tantism that came to dom­i­nate the UK over the cen­turies, the film mar­ries two dis­parate ide­olo­gies that threat­en rea­son and jus­tice with­in con­tem­po­rary society.

A re-imag­in­ing of hor­ror itself, The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre draws on the hope­less­ness of an impov­er­ished coun­try­side as slaugh­ter­hous­es and drought exem­pli­fy the scorched Texas land­scape as imag­ined by Tobe Hoop­er. Reflect­ing in the sense­less of the grow­ing dread of a seem­ing­ly end­less war and the death of 1960s ide­al­ism, The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre ush­ered in a new age of Amer­i­can fears where heroes are nei­ther brave or par­tic­u­lar­ly clever, only lucky. The Amer­i­can cin­e­ma is one of intense con­tra­dic­tions, rep­re­sent­ed too often by the machine of Hol­ly­wood, the films emerg­ing from the dream fac­to­ry have nev­er been able to reflect the total­i­ty of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence – least of all, with­in the hor­ror genre. Low bud­get­ed and dirty, The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre rep­re­sents at once the stretch­ing infin­i­ty of the land and the stun­ning resource­ful­ness of its great­est artists.