Here are my 10 favourite horror films of the past 25 years. They are not necessarily “the best” – who can claim any list to be definitive? – but each of them stands as a genuine achievement in filmmaking and have affected me on a very deep and powerful level.

10. A Quiet Place
2018, USA, d. John Krasinski.
Who would have guessed the guy from The Office would have such a directorial talent within him? A Quiet Place excels well and above most other horror films by infusing the story – a family hiding out from sound-sensitive carnivorous aliens – with an enormous amount of depth of character and human emotion. The characters feel very real. The threat against their lives is visceral. The grief, which underlies the entire film, is overwhelming. Emily Blunt is absolutely outstanding in this, as is Millicent Simmonds – a deaf actor playing a deaf character, in a hugely positive step for disability in cinema.

9. New Religion
2022, Japan, d. Keishi Kondo.
There have been more than a few Japanese horror films on this list. My favourite is one that I hesitate to recommend; not because New Religion is not exceptional, but because I honestly do not know if there is an easy means for anyone to follow my recommendation and see it. I saw it at the Osaka Asian Film Festival in 2023, and to my knowledge it has failed to receive any kind of international festival run or subtitled home video release. If you get the chance, take it: this is mournful, deeply unsettling cinema about a mother grieving a lost child and a mysterious stranger obsessed with photographing her. I long to see it again.

8. Incantation
2022, Taiwan, d. Kevin Ko.
This unexpected blend of Buddhist mythology and found footage horror is criminally under-seen and under-appreciated. As found footage it scrupulously observes the narrative rules that most similar films risk breaking. As horror it brings a specifically Chinese cultural basis to bear on a Ring-like story that is brilliantly effective. Like that film, it uses modern-day technology and culture to explore something very old and folkloric. It is classic old-school horror fare, but exploits the technology of cinema to make it both immediate and visceral. This was my favourite film of its year.

7. Nope
2022, USA, d. Jordan Peele.
Nope is neither as frightening as Get Out, nor as strange as Us, but Jordan Peele’s third feature stands as a striking and hugely inventive film. It is a story of abducted horses, and ominous lights in the sky, and the financial challenges that come from running a farm -all told as a modern horror movie. It is shot brilliantly by Hoyt van Hoytema, and has a weird vibe of early Spielberg. Supporting actor Michael Wincott is sensational – it was about time a filmmaker gave him the kind of project he deserved.

6. The Substance
2024, France/USA, d. Coralie Fargeat.
The only film from 2024 to make my top 50, and it rockets into sixth place: that, if nothing else, should emphasise what an excellent and provocative horror movie The Substance is. A middle-aged actor (Demi Moore), finding herself pushed out of her job for being too old, receives a chance to rediscover her use – at a terrible cost. This film has laugh-out-loud satire, confronting body horror, and hugely effective performances across the board. Fargeat, whose debut film Revenge is easily one of the century’s best thrillers, is a sensational filmmaker.

5. Midsommar
2019, USA, d. Ari Aster.
Ari Aster’s Midsommar does so many things that good horror isn’t supposed to do. Horror movies are supposed to be short: Midsommar runs close to two-and-a-half hours. Horror movies take place in the dark: so much of Midsommar occurs in broad daylight. The film’s success briefly led to a new term: ‘elevated horror’, as if Midsommar and its contemporaries were somehow a higher form of art than a regular run-of-the-mill scary movie. It’s an odious, class-based term. In truth Midsommar stands up as simply a great film alongside the other 49 on this list.

4. Get Out
2017, USA, d. Jordan Peele.
Yes there are three other films that I liked more, but if there is a single creative person whose arrival on the horror scene this century filled me with excitement, it is Jordan Peele. He seemed to come out of nowhere, following up a career in sketch comedy with some of the most inventive and effective horror the USA has ever seen. Before Us and Nope (both listed earlier), he knocked audiences out with Get Out: smart, terrifying, race-based horror that felt as if it genuinely had something worthy to say. It was rewarded with – among other things – only the second Best Picture Oscar nomination for a horror film this century (the other was Black Swan).

3. The Mist
2007, USA, d. Frank Darabont.
The greatest adaptation of a Stephen King horror story ever made. A mysterious thick mist descends from the mountains over a small American town, leaving a cross-section of the community trapped inside a supermarket. Invisible horrors lurk outside. Impossible human horrors are unveiled inside. It is superbly paced and shot, and it is impeccably performed by a cast that includes Thomas Jane, Andre Braugher, Marcia Gay Harden, and Toby Jones. There is another aspect that sends this film so forcibly to third place: if you haven’t seen The Mist I won’t spoil it, and if you have seen it you know what I am writing about.

2. Climax
2018, France, d. Gaspar Noé.
If the ultimate purpose of horror is to horrify, then Climax – a drug-fuelled thriller by Argentina-born writer/director Gaspar Noé – is inarguably one of the most effective ever. Playing out like an ode to Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), it sees a dance troupe celebrate together after their final rehearsal – only someone has spiked the punch. What follows is a nightmarish midnight to dawn odyssey of sex, violence, death, murder, and paranoia. It is a poster child work of the New French Extremity, a post-1990s movement of French confrontational cinema, and once seen cannot be forgotten. Anyone sensitive to violence should, more than any other film on the list, avoid it like the plague.

1. Raw
2016, France, d. Julia Ducournou.
So let me tell you about Raw, my favourite horror film of the past quarter-century. It is about a young woman – a vegan – who follows her parents and sister into veterinary school. After being forced to eat meat at a hazing ritual, she grows unnaturally obsessed with eating flesh, including – and particularly – the flesh of other people. Like Climax, the film is a highlight of the French New Extremity: bold, transgressive, violent, and sexual. Like the best horror cinema, Raw is allegorical. It is a horror film made by a woman about horrors committed to women. It is simply remarkable.