Three classic horror films to watch this October

It’s October and so — in case you hadn’t noticed all the horror-related content that’s suddenly appearing on streaming platforms, cinemas and television channels — it is the time of year at which Americans (and by extension all of us in the globalised, digital age) get ready to have the bejesus scared out of them.

Here - in the spirit of Halloween and all things spooky - are three films that offer plenty to scream and think about without needing to resort to cheap trickery or buckets of gore to achieve their very different but effective and chilling aims.

The art house essential:

• The Witch — Showmax

Director Robert Egger’s 2015 debut firmly marked him as a filmmaker to watch and offered a deeply unsettling atmospheric horror ripe for a variety of allegorical interpretations. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Thomasin a young Puritan woman in 1630 New England whose life and that of her deeply religious — and frankly sometimes very creepy — family are fatally changed after their youngest child disappears in the forebodingly dark woods next to their humble house.

Suspicion, mistrust, jealousy and of course accusations of witchcraft soon follow as the family turn on one another and things get slowly but increasingly and unbearably discomforting and uneasy. It’s all conveyed with very little trickery, gore, violence or effects thanks to Eggers’ masterful control of all the aspects of the film from its soundtrack to its lighting and performances. Eggers knows when to let his audience use their imagination and when to give them just the right-sized jolt of uncanny terror to make the hairs on their necks standup in fright. 

Underneath it all is a terrifyingly pertinent message about zealotry, isolation and the role of the fear of the unknown as lesser heralded but significant factors in the origins story of the US that foreshadow the bigotry, madness and insanity of the Trump era. A refreshing, reinvigorating, overwhelmingly creepy entry into the folk-horror genre that says so much about not only the situation and times of its story and characters, but also of our own present and the dangers of ignorance.

Trailer: 

The stone-cold classic:

• Vampyr — YouTube

Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer, seemingly dissatisfied with the acclaim heaped on his brilliantly evocative 1928 silent, historical drama The Passion of Joan of Arc, was determined that his next film would find not only critical but popular success. He took a trip to England to learn what he could of the new technology of sound that was changing the movie business and he determined that his new film would have sound and deal with the ever popular theme of the supernatural. He was so determined to get Vampyr made that he even agreed to cast its chief financier — the Dutch movie-lover Baron Nicolas De Gunzburg — in the lead role.

What emerged from the imagination of the always singularly curious and innovative Danish director was a film that didn’t quite achieve what he had hoped when upon its release in 1932 it was lambasted by critics and rejected by audiences. It took decades of future cinephiles to return Dreyer’s quietly chilling and visually nightmarish tale of a young, supernatural-obsessed drifter who finds himself in a very strange house in the countryside, to its rightful place in film history.

Though it finally only featured a few lines of dialogue — none of which were recorded on location but rather added in studio later — a haunting musical score and some carefully chosen sound effects, the film still benefits from Dreyer’s careful curation of sound to add to its air of portent. It’s also rightfully celebrated for giving us some of the most memorably dream-like and beautiful images ever put on screen.

Most of the tropes we associate with psychological horror films make their first appearance here and it affirms Dreyer’s place as one of the truly great filmmakers in cinema history, whose influence continues to be felt and seen in the work of generations of imitators.

Trailer:

The diamond in the rough:

• The Omen - Apple TV+

It’s often overshadowed in the annals of horror by its more critically acclaimed rival The Exorcist, but Richard Donner’s 1976 tale of the antichrist is a subtler, quieter and often even creepier example of psychological terror and supernatural unease. Avoid all the terrible sequels and the disastrous 2006 remake — this is the only Damien you need.

Its story is not the most original — a US diplomat couple who can’t conceive are given a child to adopt by Catholic priests in Rome, who turns out to be more than a little strange and very dangerous — but its solidly unshowy direction, use of perfectly timed trigger points and excellent performances make it a solidly scary classic that’s been much copied and parodied but not very often bettered. It’s all tautly directed by Donner and rattles along at fast but well-timed pace towards its final 20 minutes, which are some of the most chilling you’ll ever see on screen.

It also, like any truly great horror film, has some bigger life lessons to offer, not least of which is never to accept a seemingly no-strings-attached gift from Catholic priests in the middle of the night in Rome.

Trailer: