It’s Halloween tonight, and it looks like it's too rainy and cold to go trick-or-treating, or knacker-drinking, depending on your age, so here’s our pick of the top scary films to stay in with some friends and scare yourself with.

5. Poltergeist

According to legend, EVERYONE involved with this film died soon after making it. That’s just an urban myth though, only four people died, so it’s probably fine and not cursed at all. You’ll be fine.

I probably don’t even need to write summaries of these films, so suffice it to say that some pissed of Indian ghosts want a nice family to get out of their gaff, and try to force them out by balancing chairs on top of tables, sucking people into TVs, and making trees eat people. 

Check out the upcoming sequel, Polterheist, in which some corrupt property developers build a bank on an Indian burial ground, only to have all the money nicked by ghosts. Starring Nicolas Cage.

Classic horror movie ingredients includes clowns, vortexes and a platinum blonde child.

4. Scream 

This film was a sleepover staple when I was a lad; we all wished we had a popcorn making thing that you cooked on a stove in an inflatable silver bag. It’s a pity Drew Barrymore never got to eat it, because she was dead, like everyone else in the film eventually.

This was the first meta horror film, where the characters commented on how idiots in horror movies usually acted, and then proceeded to do the same stupid stuff. Also the Fonz is in it, which is always a bonus. The sequels are not incredibly bad, but do not under any circumstances watch the spoofs, because just no.

Classic horror movie ingredients include sexy teens, stabbing, running upstairs when the killer is INSIDE THE HOUSE!

3. Nightmare on Elm Street

The original Freddy Krueger film spawned more progenitors than two rabbits with nothing to watch on TV.There’s now NINE films and a TV series, and Nightmare on Elm Street 10: Nightmare in the Hood, where Freddy wins the respect of his peers by beating Ghostface Killah at a rap battle, is out any day now.

Needless to say, this film is about a killer with knives for hands who kills you from your dreams. He’s like an evil Edward Scissorhands. Incidentally, Johnny Depp appears in this film, and in many people’s dreams. Like Freddy Krueger.

Classic horror movie ingredients include stabbing, sexy teens, sequels. 

2. Silence of the Lambs

This is more of a psychological thriller than the other stabby nonsense I’ve been recommending, in which a highly intelligent psychopath eats his way through high society. No, not at fancy dinner parties.

This film is terrifying in the way that zombie films aren't, in that the killer is completely lucid and reasonable, but he still wants to eat you. 

Buffalo Bill’s strangely arousing dance and fantastic tailoring skills make him the most interesting and well-fleshed out character ever. Check out the sequels to see Ray Liotta eating his own brain.

Classic horror movie ingredients include psychopathy, cannibalism, lambs.

1. Halloween

I’m mostly including this one because it’s called Halloween, but it is also the classic genre-defining horror film. It deals with a killer called Michael Myers, who later went on to star in Wayne’s World and Austin Powers, who indiscriminately kills sexy teens. 

It’s terrifying for the reason that he’s a complete unknown; no one knows why he kills people, or where he came from. He just stands in hedges in an inside-out William Shatner mask, looking at people. It’s freaky.

Avoid the sequels because knowing mysterious character’s back-story completely ruins them (new Willy Wonka for one) aaaaand also Rob Zombie.

Classic horror movie ingredients include stabbing, sexy teens, bodies falling out of closets, William Shatner.

Honourable mentions:

Leprechaun, Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, The Exorcist, Evil Dead II, Alien, The Shining, The Thing, Hellraiser.

 
Tanya Branagan