The ongoing trend for “found footage” horror movies, influenced by the decade-old BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, turned to the post-AMITYVILLE haunted house sub-genre for a tiny-budgeted feature that became 2009’s most profitable sleeper hit. Like the best of its forebears, it is a harrowing and authentically performed exercise in the terror of the unseen, as - largely via a fixed camera set up in their bedroom - we follow the terrorization of a young couple in their nice house by what will turn out to be a malevolent demon. Director Oren Peli - shooting in his own house with two very credible lead actors - has us looking for ghosts that never appear, raises neck-hairs you thought you never had from static shots of nocturnal nothingness and makes brilliant use of a format that was in danger of seeming old-hat. Best of all, in a decade that showed us everything (mostly in the form of torture), here’s a horror movie that realizes just how creepy the simple things can be (a slowly opening bedroom door, a revelation of footprints in flour) when handled expertly in the right context. It was an audience-divider, for sure, but it will prevail as a classic of its kind.

By all rights this movie should have been a prominent fixture on the 2007 “Best Of” list - that being the year of its original scheduled release by distributor Warner Bros, who instead shelved it for two years and gave it a token straight to DVD bow this past October. Too bad for everyone’s sake that the movie turned out to be a must-see on the big screen : a visually gorgeous, consistently inventive and surprising anthology horror consisting of four cannily interwoven creepy tales bound together by a vivid Halloween night setting. Beautifully enhanced by Douglas Pipes’ music, Michael Dougherty’s film doesn’t hit a single false note and pulls off many bonafide scares (especially in the sinister school bus episode), though it’s the final story, with Brian Cox as a grouchy recluse beset by a diminutive, persistent trick or treater from Hell, that takes a potentially clichéd TRILOGY OF TERROR-derived premise and turns into something wonderfully frightening, funny and unpredictable.

Along with the atmospheric BOOK OF BLOOD and the stylishly visceral MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, the far more serious DREAD continues a pleasing upswing in the quality of Clive Barker-derived movies. This one, expanded with much skill by Anthony DiBlasi from the original short story, charts the extremes explored by a small group of emotionally and physically scarred Boston college students - in particular Shaun Evans as a tortured artist haunted by the axe murder of his parents. Punctuated by genuinely shocking moments - notably the grimness of the “meat room” and a horrifying scene of self-mutilation in a bathtub - this bleakly ironic psychological horror film is nonetheless restrained throughout, never gratuitous…and absolutely shattering.

   Although it met with widespread critical hostility and audience ennui, the sequel Rob Zombie said he would never make turned out to be the boldest, most frightening HALLOWEEN movie for a long time. Zombie gamely alienates most of the target audience by turning the previously repetitive, safe franchise into a misanthropic assault on the senses shot on dirty, grainy 16mm and dominated by punishing, brutal murder scenes. Scout Taylor Compton bravely makes her Laurie Strode a credibly washed up and unsympathetic shell of a human being ; Malcolm McDowell sheds all comparisons to Donald Pleasence by fleshing out his far different (and funnier) take on Dr Loomis ; and Brad Dourif’s Sheriff Brackett proves to be his best genre role in years in one remarkably emotional moment in which he discovers the corpse of his still-recovering daughter (Danielle Harris). All this plus Tyler Mane’s terrifying incarnation of Myers and the surrealistic fantasy interludes featuring Sheri Moon Zombie and a white horse, make this a HALLOWEEN sequel refreshingly unlike any other.

   The first - and least seen - of two domestic-set faux-verite horror films on the list this year, this is a harrowing, superbly realized depiction of a fucked up modern family for a generation weaned on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and BIG BROTHER. Pastor Adrian Pasdar is either too busy fooling around or too much in denial to notice that his two kids are deeply disturbed - but his obsessive home movie documentation of the family reveals to us increasingly unsettled viewers that something very, very grim is unfolding. The movie largely takes the form of “found footage” excerpts of the family at various holiday times, and is rife with extraordinarily uncomfortable moments - though the real horror comes when, after more than an hour of watching their behavior from a third party point of view, the perspective shifts to that of the two kids.

   Writer-director Paul Solet’s feature-length adaptation of his own 2006 short film of the same name features a career-redefining performance by Jordan Ladd as a widowed young woman who carries an apparently dead baby to term and then has to service its unnatural craving for fresh blood. Drawing off a range of influences from Larry Cohen to Cronenberg to Kubrick, Solet makes haunting use of an eerily aseptic widescreen frame and a mournful score while avoiding overt violence in favour of disquieting, horrific details. It opts for gory melodrama in the final reels but even this shift in tone cant dilute its intelligence or the impact of Ladd’s atypically three-dimensional performance.

   Avant-garde artist/filmmaker Tom Six - evidently influenced by the deranged likes of Cronenberg and Miike - has a lot of sick fun with this outrageous modern-day spin on the old mad-scientist horror yarn. Crazy genius Dieter Laser creates his own “human centipede” by stitching three unsuspecting young people together mouth-to-anus for no other reason than he wants to play God. Laser’s marvellous Udo Kier-ish turn and some genuinely show-stopping moments of physical horror and blackly funny gross-ness make for a memorable slice of Grand Guignol.

   Phillip Ridley’s Faustian horror movie, set in a credibly grim modern Britain overrun with gang violence, features a terrific central performance by Jim Sturgess as a scarred loner haunted by demons, prejudice and unrequited love for a girl - though it’s the latter that involves him entering into a diabolical pact with the enigmatic “Papa B”. Although not without its flaws and pretensions, this beguiling combination of visceral horror, poignant character study and a gritty lament of our troubled times is exceptionally well made and boasts a beautiful soundtrack by David Julyan. One of the most ambitious genre films of the year.