The Gore Connoisseurs

Since the protagonists of your average horror movie are teenagers, it's not such a surprise that one of the genre's set pieces has become the classroom scene. From Halloween to Hereditary , we unpick four of the most memorable. Horror filmmakers often use classroom scenes to unpack the themes of their movies, allowing viewers to make metaphorical links between the film's villain and more abstract concepts like destiny and existential dread.  Teenagers in horror films can find themselves drifting off as their teacher waxes lyrical about Hamlet one minute, only to be rudely awakened by masked serial killers and demonic old ladies the next. If you thought you had painful memories of your schooldays, check out what these guys had to go through. Halloween (1978) - Laurie has a date with destiny What's going down? Studious Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is distracted from her English class by Michael Myers watching her at the window with murder on his mind. ...

Netflix's offering of original horror movies has been patchy at best, but their latest release Cam immediately piqued our interest. The movie explores the modern phenomenom of cam girls: women who stream erotic performances, allowing their viewers a say in the what happens on screen in return for cash. Alice (Madeline Brewer) is scaling the Top 50 of her website, until a mysterious lookalike steals her account and starts to break down the delicate online boundaries Alice uses to protect herself. It's available to stream now , but is it worth a watch? Cam 's hits It's written by former cam girl Issa Mazzei; hence why the details feel so authentic. The rivalries between the women; the sinister boundary-pushing of their male clients; the pressure for the women to constantly outdo their previous performance – all of it feels real. Mazzei faced some ugly misogyny when pitching the movie to studios , but thankfully Blumhouse realised the film's potential ...

Lowkey British chiller  Possum  certainly wins the award for Silliest Name for a Horror Movie, but is it any good? This moody, largely silent study in Lynchian strangeness and English grottiness will seem like a drag to some, but bear with it and you may find it oddly bewitching. Possum' s hits Sean Harris as an absolute weirdo who may or may not be a paeodphile and Alun Armstrong as the world's shadiest uncle. A definitely-unsuitable-for-children puppet which is a) indestructable and b) probably alive. It really looks nothing like a possum. A scenic backdrop of scrappy moorland and post-industrial decay which shows off rural England at its worst. An atmosphere of unrelenting dread courtesy of the Radiophonic Workshop's experimental score. Possum' s misses The unrelenting bleakness. Though Harris and Armstrong give complex performances, it's near-impossible to sympathise with either of their characters. Leaves itself very open to the "...