John Carpenter has described this ghost story as a “little exploitation horror movie,” but even by those standards it’s pretty much a bust. As shipwreck victims from 100 years ago haunt a historic town on the Pacific Ocean, Carpenter’s ensemble cast of random characters – including Jamie Lee Curtis as a drifter, her real-life mother

With the pace and feel of an early-evening shadow creeping across the floor, this 1999 feature from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan announced the emergence of a bracing and assured talent. Haley Joel Osment – whose face has the decaying cuteness of a jack-o’-lantern the day after Halloween – proves riveting as a boy who sees

This import perfectly captures kids at play, as well as something related but darker. Ten-year-old Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) leads an idyllic life in rural Italy until one day he comes across a covered pit next to an old farmhouse and on further investigation finds … Exactly what, the movie leaves up to you. Such ambiguity

What struck me as a heinous thriller in 1995 now seems – in the wake of a rash of explicit, torture-driven horror flicks – like something that verges on restraint. Then again, maybe this is just a demonstration of how subtle chills are more effective in the end. The details of the serial killer’s crimes

Nearly 14 paragraphs of introductory, explanatory text still couldn’t make sense of this video-game adaptation, which involves ancient civilizations, creatures of darkness, secret government agencies and bizarre experiments on orphans. Oh, and yes, there is a mad scientist. It’s all bad-movie good for a while, then just deadening. With Christian Slater and Stephen Dorff –

New levels of horror lunacy are achieved with this jokey entry in the Child’s Play series about a killer doll. Jennifer Tilly jiggles and squeaks as the doll’s lover – even after she becomes a doll herself – while the gonzo murders pile up (at one point Chucky proposes with a recently dismembered ring finger).

At heart a haunted-house flick, this remake of a Japanese hit follows an American (Sarah Michelle Gellar) having trouble adjusting to her new life in Tokyo, where her caregiving job for an older woman involves, among other things, a pale little boy in the closet who meows. At least the theme of cultural dislocation allows

This early horror comedy from Peter Jackson, also known as Braindead, reveals the director’s gonzo tendencies before he reined them in for the Lord of the Rings films. A mama’s boy (Timothy Balme) finds catering to mommie dearest even harder when she turns into a zombie (now it involves gluing slabs of flesh back onto

London has succumbed to a virus that turns anyone infected into a homicidal maniac. Almost everyone has been wiped out – except for a hospitalized bicycle courier (Cillian Murphy) who awakens from a weeks-long coma to find his world irrevocably changed. With his thrilling revisionist zombie movie, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach) suggests civilization