The Gore Connoisseurs

The set-up for this low-key 2014 horror flick may seem like a Sinister rip-off, but stick with it and chills will ensue. The opening of The Canal leans into haunted house clichés hard. Mark (Rupert Evans) and his pregnant wife Claire (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) are introduced in the midst of a house viewing . Mark straight up sees a ghost, but still goes ahead with the purchase. Some may argue he deserves what's coming for him. Yet these are patient ghoulies. We flashforward five years to find Mark has discovered through his job as a film archivist that - surprise, surprise - the house boasts a history of gruesome murders. More pressingly, it looks like Claire might be having an affair with a Hot Ponytail Dude. The parallels to Sinister are clear. Mark - like Ethan Hawke's dickish true crime writer - has a job which makes him naturally inclined to deep dive into his new home's dark past. There's a lot of business with old timey film projectors and creepy ar...

IT: Chapter Two may be one of the mostly hotly anticipated horror flicks this year, but the first part of Andy Muschietti's adaptation of Stephen King's novel was far from perfect. Although  IT: Chapter One is undoubtedly enjoyable and gloriously nostalgic, it also has some glaring problems. Such as: 1) It's easy to escape Pennywise - just shut the door One of the most annoying shots in the entire film is the resigned look on Pennywise's face when Bill (Jaeden Martell) escapes his clutches by fleeing the basement and shutting the door. Surely it's not beyond the remit of a demonic clown to follow Bill through said door. Shit like this keeps happening. In the movie's homage to The Ring and Sinister,  Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) emerges from the image on the projector, only to promptly disappear again when the kids open the garage door. No tenacity, this clown. 2) The heavy-handed Carrie callback In what comes across as a clunky homa...

Typewriter , Netflix 's latest Indian horror, blends pre-teen comedy, clever scares and ghoulish gore. It narrowly gets away with it. The plot of five-part Netflix series Typewriter is incredibly busy. It involves school-age paranormal investigators, creepy-as-hell doppelgangers and a long-dead mass murderer looking to make a comeback from beyond the grave. The scares, when they come, are arresting, but they're dotted inbetween gentle comedy and heartfelt character development. The supernatural mechanics at play may be elaborate, but at the heart of the series is Sam (Aarnaa Sharma) - a kid who becomes obsessed with ghosts in the hope of reconnecting with her deceased mother. Sam leads a gang of preteen ghost hunters looking to "catch" a spirit they believe to be haunting the creaky Bardez Villa. Legend has it that, following the unexplained death of a celebrated writer in the house, his typewriter churned out his most famous work, The Ghost of Sultanpur...

Get Out 's Allison Williams and Dear White People 's Logan Browning star in Netflix's B movie Black Swan about rival cellists. Yet somehow it doesn't quite work. The main problem is a common one for ambitious horror flicks – it tackles dark, very serious themes in a superficial way. Cast your minds back to 2008's Teeth , another film with an interesting subtext that was tonally all over the place. Most people agree Teeth is a black comedy, a body horror twist on a coming of age drama. Yet the plot sees the heroine Dawn repeatedly raped by pretty much every man she meets. 2008's Teeth sees heroine Dawn repeatedly raped... yet it's still a black comedy? True, these men do get their comuppence. Dawn fortunately has a toothed vagina, so it's soon raining severed dicks. But there's something horribly grim about watching repeated scenes of sexual abuse not taken very seriously. The Perfection  needs to treat its characters with mor...

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 "...

Argentinian horror  Terrified ( Aterrados ) has earnt a clutch of festival gongs and some are calling it the scariest film of the year. But is it any good? It's a Shudder exclusive and caught our eye for its social media buzz and creepy as hell poster. But does Terrified earn a place on your Halloween watchlist?  I rarely see something in any horror movie that I’ve never seen before, but five minutes into #Terrified on @shudder and... Well... Holy fuck. — Ben Rock (@Neptunesalad) October 27, 2018 Just finished #Terrified on @shudder ! Wow!!! pic.twitter.com/QcupQ2jaG2 — Michael “Myers” Aiello (@Michael_Aiello) October 21, 2018 Finally got around to watching ‘Terrified’ @shudder ..... no just no...so creepy it made my eyes water. No sleep tonight 🙈🙈but definitely worth a watch. You cant hide behind a cushion &read subtitles #underthebed #terrified #creepy #nosleep #horror #horrorfan #horrorfam pic.twitter.com/DKMNvXRejU — Wendy (@WendyJP81) O...

Our series on feminist horror films continues, as we take a look at some modern classics. We're going in chronological order, and exploring three of the most interesting 21st Century horror films from a feminist perspective: Teeth, Hush and The Witch . In the latest installment of our series on feminist horror, we look at a broad cross-section of what feminist horror means in the 21st Century.  4) Teeth (2007) In a sentence:  The tonally uneven story of a chastity-promising teenager who discovers she has a toothed vagina. It's perhaps one of the most misunderstood horror movies ever made. What goes down: Dawn (Jess Weixler) is the star speaker at a chastity youth group, but she's struggling to stick to her resolutions when not-so-handsome stranger Tobey (Hale Appelman) appears on the scene. It quickly turns out that Tobey isn't as benevolant as he seems, but thankfully Dawn has a secret weapon against male violence: a toothed vagina. Was th...

We've been poking around YouTube trying to find the best horror short films so you don't have to. This week: Final Girls by Michelle Hanson Synopsis:  Jessica (Anna Leeper) and Courtney (Cat McApline) are a lesbian couple hiding out in a tent after their friends have been dispatched by a crazed masked killer. Courtney, like the cast of  Scream,  is clearly a horror nerd and has realised that only one of them can survive and become The Final Girl. Background:  The horror genre has a bad rep for its handling of female characters, particularly the "final girl" trope. This slasher flick cliche has a lone women – who is typically presented as less sexual and more intelligent than the other female characters – surviving the carnage. Think Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , Friday the 13th. The trope is still going strong with modern slashers like You're Next  or even Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead remake. Michelle Hanson has tackled this horror trope...

We've been poking around YouTube trying to find the best horror short films so you don't have to. This week: The Quiet Zone by Andrew Ionides . Synopsis:  A commute goes disastrously awry when Ella tells a noisy passenger to be quiet in the silent coach of a train. Background: "It was kind of based on a series of bad journeys I had into work," writer/director Andrew Ionides explained in an interview at the NYC horror film festival. "Unfortunately I witnessed a few passengers annoying people in the quiet zones [on trains]. Being the sick, twisted writer that I am I thought 'what if?' and it resulted in this kind of stalker story." Ionides has been directing short films for the last six years. The Quiet Zone premiered in 2016 and was part of the official selection for the Screamfest horror film festival that year. Pros: It's properly scary if you've ever been alone on a long, dark commute. It takes everyday frustrations (noisy passe...