Directed by Nick Murphy, this is a genuinely creepy thriller that follows the first rule of horror: what you don’t see is scarier than what you do see.
Imelda Staunton is excellent as a member of staff at the school, while Dominic West is pretty good as one of the teachers who becomes romantically involved with Cathcart.
On the down side, too much happens in the last 10 minutes, so the ending does seem a little rushed. And the deliberately ambiguous ending may frustrate.
Magic was presumably influenced by Dead of Night, which had a section that explored a similar scenario.
The film is brilliantly directed by Richard Attenborough. Burgess Meredith (the Penguin from the Batman TV show) is excellent as Corky’s agent, Ben Greene, who soon learns that nothing is quite as it should be.
Kurt Russell stars as one of a group of US researchers working in Antarctica, where the team encounter an alien life-form able to take on the form of other beings – including dogs and humans.
The plot cleverly explores how no one can trust each other because of the risk that any one of them could have been taken over by the alien. There's plenty of tension, and – although I don't love his acting style – Russell is pretty good in the lead role.
It features a series of short stories framed within one wider narrative. Each of these tales deals with some kind of supernatural occurrence. The best of these, by some distance, is the one featuring Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist whose dummy takes on a life of its own. It's chilling and unnerving, unlike the other segments, which seem a little too mannered and silly to really work – with hammy acting that doesn't help. There's also a "comical" story about a deceased golfer who returns to haunt his rival.
You have to admire the ambition of this construction, even if not all of it works.
Stanley Kubrick's terrifying, mesmerising classic both adapts and adds to the Stephen King horror novel.
Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) and his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) spend the winter snowed in at the remote Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), has a special gift of telepathy – also known as shining. As isolation takes hold, Jack suffers a mental decline that is only accelerated by supernatural events.
Nicholson is superb in the lead role – both funny and convincingly insane.
The music is incredible. It's hugely atmospheric. The "tricycle" scenes around the lonely corridors are hypnotic. The psychological domestic drama is perfectly blended with a supernatural thriller. It's surreal and impressionistic, but with a strong narrative pull.
It's scary, thanks to expert pacing and also Carpenter's ominous, exciting music. The film looks terrific, too, and is visually striking.
It's in love with America: a celebration of cars, cheerleaders, drive-ins, and rock 'n' roll.
As well as the horror element, it's a story about friendship and growing up. There's very strong characterisation. Keith Gordon plays Arnie Cunningham, the nerdy boy who buys the 1958 Plymouth Fury and is quickly possessed by her. John Stockwell plays his friend Dennis, and Alexandra Paul plays Leigh Cabot, a new girl at school that both Arnie and Dennis are drawn to. Harry Dean Stanton plays the investigating detective.
There’s a lot of gore but very little dramatic tension, partly because you see way too much of the werewolf. No mystery or suspense can survive close-up scenes of a monster that looks slightly ridiculous.
A far better film is American Werewolf in London (1981), in which director John Landis addresses similar subject matter with wit and imagination.
A boy is given a small, furry creature for Christmas. But his new pet spawns further little cuties that become a lot less appealing when they then transform into mischievous, giggling little monsters.
It’s a clever film that works as a sort of fairy tale and also as a homage to previous monster films, many of which are seen on TVs in the background of this film.
It’s inventive how each gremlin is given its own identity, and the scene in which they take over an entire cinema is an imaginative delight.
Plot-wise, it only works because no one ever asks what species the creatures are or seems especially surprised to see such a remarkable life-form. But it's not really about the plot. It's more of an excuse to cram as many different gremlin scenarios as possible into 106 minutes and it achieves this in a way that's hugely entertaining.
Three astronauts are sent on a secret Apollo mission, and the two men that land on the lunar surface find evidence of sinister alien life.
Even though the aliens are essentially rock creatures, the film never turns silly. There’s a lot of threat and tension, made more extreme by the “authentically” fuzzy, distressed footage.
It’s a little like a cross between The Blair Witch Project and Alien, but it's refreshingly different too.
The only criticism is that it’s never explained how the footage is recovered.
Nicole Kidman is a mother of two children living in Jersey in 1945. The family begin to hear strange noises and see odd things in their large old house. They are joined by a new housekeeper, a gardener and a mute girl, and the inexplicable happenings become more frequent. It’s difficult to say more without spoil the film, which all hinges on one massive plot twist.
Kidman is superb as a woman on the edge, driven by love for her children and a profound sense of loss after her husband failed to return from the war. Fionnula Flanagan is perfect as the housekeeper Bertha Mills – an initially reassuring and later fairly unsettling presence. The suspense is built up expertly, with added tension coming from the reactions of the children to the way events unfold.
Music by writer/director Alejandro Amenábar adds to the sense of threat, and the uncanny atmosphere – big, dark echoing spaces, the persistently swirling mist outside – is sustained well.
A writer (James Caan) crashes his car in a snowstorm and is rescued by his “number-one fan” (Kathy Bates), who unfortunately turns out to be a psychopath. She keeps him in her home against his will and forces him to write another book, while regularly having violent episodes and taking out her anger on him.
The real genius of this tightly plotted film is the bleakly humorous thread running through it. Director Rob Reiner somehow makes this terrifying saga into a black comedy. Kathy Bates is cartoonishly scary, and judges it just right.
The suspense is almost unbearable – especially when Caan is exploring the empty house as Bates is driving back to it – and there are a couple of absolutely unforgettable scenes.
Monroe is excellent as the doomed 19-year-old who is constantly pursued by a supernatural being, having suddenly discovered that her life has become a terrifying nightmare.
The idea of a malignant entity forever edging towards you is deeply unsettling, and it’s to the credit of director David Robert Mitchell that the film sets out its “rules” and keeps to them. The premise is faithfully explored and not messed around with for the convenience of the storytelling. It’s clever, too: you begin to spot various walking individuals planted in certain shots who may or may not merely be ordinary people. The film makes you question everyone and everything.
You could see “it” as being a metaphor for sexually transmitted disease, or even for sex itself. Or you can just accept it as a horror film.
Slow panning shots add to the suspense and all-round creepy feel.
A “risk-management specialist” (Kate Mara) is sent to a scientific facility in a rural location where the L-9 artificial being has been created. This being (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) is a super-advanced augmented human but with a violent side that begins to cause problems when she turns on one of the staff. To complicate things further, those members of staff have personally invested in Morgan as their precious daughter and seem bewitched by her incredibly advanced development.
Like Blade Runner, the film raises moral questions about the value of human life when it’s not entirely human. Unlike that innovative classic, it has a rather unpleasant aesthetic – a deliberate cold, nasty quality. It’s also extremely violent – which is kind of the point – but the later sections make for horrible viewing. Expertly made as it may be, I found it difficult to take much away from the film.
