As long as cinema has existed, horror has been right there with it, and as long as horror has existed, there have been people looking to take a pop at it.

Long considered a cheap, low-brow genre reserved only for hardcore fans of jump scares and gore, horror has nevertheless endured, steadily evolving into a cinematic monster that holds far more influence over the film industry than many give it credit for.

From slashers to creature features to found footage - and everything in between - horror’s broad (satanic) church is one worthy of celebrating, and what better day to celebrate it on than Halloween itself?

Like some kind of twisted advent calendar, throughout October I’ve been counting down the 31 days to Halloween with my top 31 horror movies ever. And here were the horrifying results…

Ok so I’ll admit that - until very recently - I’d only ever seen Candyman once yet it was more than enough to scar me for life. It’s fair to say the film had it’s hooks well and truly in me as a kid, so if childhood trauma is how you measure a good horror, then Candyman should probably be further up my list. However, while it’s obviously a great horror with some serious societal relevance, the fact I couldn’t sleep or even look in a mirror properly for years after first watching it means I have a hard time putting it any higher.

Horror often works best when it keeps things simple and leaves the real terror to your imagination and Cube absolutely nails this. And I mean what’s more terrifyingly simple than shoving a bunch of strangers in a huge, cube-shaped, booby-trapped prison with absolutely no explanation or hope of escape?

I remember taking a punt on Cube in an HMV bargain bin once, knowing absolutely nothing about it, and being blown away by how well it works within its limited setup. Sure, the script and acting are a bit shaky and a couple of crap sequels undermined everything, but that doesn’t detract from what is a thoroughly terrifying concept and a fine example of why horror is at its finest when doesn’t over-complicate things.

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed the ending of any film - horror or otherwise - go so nuts, so fast.

What starts out as a fun take on your average teen slasher flick and a swipe at reality show culture rapidly spirals into bat-shit horror mayhem in its third act. No spoilers here but I will say this...The Cabin in the Woods really isn’t what you think it is.

Drew Godard gleefully undermines expectations to throw a fistful of horror spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks and while the end will leave you in a spin, you can’t deny the film’s effectiveness as both a solid, old fashioned teen slasher and a meta parody of the genre.

Over the years, there’ve been plenty of horrors who’ve tried (and often failed) to create iconic villains, yet few have - quite literally - nailed it like Hellraiser. As horror icons go, Pinhead is up there with the very best. Played with clinical malevolence by Doug Bradley, Pinhead - together with his gang of hellish S&M demons - is one of the few horror monsters to scare the shit out of me as both a kid and a grown-ass adult.

Hellraiser was, and is, a ground-breaking piece of horror cinema and shows that guts and gore need not come at the expense of intelligence, as it pairs horrific, nightmarish imagery with an impressive depth. Not all of it’s aged well, as visual effects that you’d generously describe as ‘good for their time’ and a never ending dirge of crap sequels have taken the shine off things, yet Hellraiser remains one of the most iconic and terrifying horrors of the 80s.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this but real life can be just as - if not more - horrific than anything cooked up on the big screen and Under the Shadow demonstrates this perfectly. Against the backdrop of the very real horrors of the Iran-Iraq war, director Babak Anvari carefully blends social commentary, war, and some good old-fashioned scares to devastating effect.

Combining stylish direction, great performances, an effective ghost story, and some timely themes, Under the Shadow is a proper hidden gem and one of the most impactful, thought-provoking horrors in quite some time.

Tim Curry’s iconic performance aside, the 1990 It miniseries never really did much for me. Sure, Curry’s Pennywise was terrifying and gave me a healthy distrust of clowns for years to come yet the rest just didn’t click. So, while this updated take on the Stephen King classic didn’t have to do a whole lot to top its predecessor, it nonetheless ripped through my (admittedly lowly) expectations like a demonic clown ripping through a kid’s arm.

At its heart, It is a coming-of-age tale that blends adventure, comedy, drama, and horror into a satisfying throwback to an era that Amblin built. Treating his young characters with warmth and affection, Andy Muschietti builds the film’s emotions from the ground up, ensuring that every member of the Losers Club feels well-rounded and relatable, while giving them an adversary just as terrifying as Curry’s original Pennywise.

It’s definitely not as scary as it could’ve been and leans a little too much on cheap jump-scares and nostalgia, yet that doesn’t stop It from being one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Taika Waititi is my spirit animal. His unique brand of humour probably isn’t for everyone but it certainly tickles my pickle and I don’t think it’s ever been stronger than in What We Do in the Shadows.

Comedy horror is a tough thing to pull off and there have been plenty of efforts that have ticked one of genre boxes but rarely both, yet What We Do in the Shadows gets the balance just right. In true Waititi form, the film’s humour is quirky and irreverent but with a ton of heart as it puts a vampiric twist on the mockumentary format.

Obviously, it’s not a particularly scary film but it cleverly plays with the tropes of the horror genre, injecting just the right mix of blood and humour to be both a loving tribute to and an effective satire of classic vampire flicks. After Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit it’s clear Waititi is destined for big things, but after the cult following that What We Do in the Shadows has built and the success of the spin-off series, I very much doubt this is the last we’ve heard from him in the horror genre.

At its heart, horror is a simple thing. Find yourself a good hook and your job is half done. Back it up with a cracking script and you’ve got horror gold on your hands.

A tight, emotionally punishing alien invasion horror, A Quiet Place lives up to the hype of its simple - but killer - premise to ensure it never slips into gimmickry. Pushing the silent twist to the limit, the film makes the most of its small cast and restricted environment to offer an unrelenting level of tension that few other horrors can touch.

Through John Krasinski’s assured direction, a talented cast led by Emily Blunt, and an intimate, emotionally charged family setup, we’re dragged kicking and (silently) screaming through the mill in a tense and terrifying tale of love, survival, and freaky blind aliens.

What’s your favourite scary movie you say? Well this is certainly one of them.

The film that defined a horror generation...and the film that made it nigh on impossible to have a horror movie without meta elements for decades to come.

Make no mistake, Scream was a game changer for the genre, spawning a million imitations and just as many parodies, even to this day. Combining comedy, whodunnit mystery, and every slasher cliché in the book, Wes Craven created a monster of a movie that works as a subversive horror satire that honours the traditions of the genre while blazing a trail for its future.

For its part in shaping horror history, Scream deserves all the academic plaudits it has received, yet, more importantly, it’s an absolute blast of a film. Inventive, funny, and often harrowing, Scream is a stone cold slasher classic.

Remember when every lazy Hollywood studio under the sun bled Japan dry of all its horror? I do. It wasn’t pretty.

Almost all these remakes were absolute garbage, yet one stood out as an exception to the rule. Against all the odds, The Ring actually went and lived up to the high standards of its Japanese predecessor, even if it couldn’t quite top it.

There really isn’t much to choose from between the two versions but I’ve always given the original - Ringu (Ring) - the edge, purely for its deep roots in Japanese folk law and its more patient approach.

Ringu certainly isn’t in any rush to scare the bejesus out of you, choosing instead to slowly build its dread before unleashing its terrifying long-haired monster on you just when you’re at your most vulnerable. The entire film is a masterclass in horror execution and although the central concept of a haunted videotape looks kind of quaint to a modern eye, it works well as an insightful comment on our ongoing technology dependence.

In the wake of the film’s success, Hollywood scooped up and shat out every Asian horror they could get their hands on, yet Ringu and its remake remain the gold standard of this trend.

As one of the finest films to walk the line between horror & comedy, I distinctly remember first watching An American Werewolf in London as a kid, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. In truth, both are perfectly acceptable.

Met with a mixed critical reception at the time, An American Werewolf in London would nonetheless go on to became both a touchstone for a million comedy horrors to come and the absolute pinnacle of the werewolf subgenre.

There are plenty of dark laughs to be had along the way but just as many moments of squishy, gooey gore for horror fans to get their teeth into.

Nearly 40 years later, John Landis’ film feels surprisingly fresh and remains an incredibly visceral experience, with genuinely shocking moments of prosthetic body horror and gruesome practical effects that stand up surprisingly well to today’s standards.

Marrying gothic and modern horror styles effectively, An American Werewolf in London showed just how you reimagine the classic Universal Monsters effectively, something that plenty of bigger budget attempts have spectacularly failed to grasp since.

The mightily impressive debut feature from Australian director Jennifer Kent, The Babadook is two films for the price of one. On the surface, it’s a creepy monster movie about a shadowy character from a sinister kid’s storybook - the slender-fingered, top hat-sporting Babadook - who lurks in the dark corners of the screen and the edges of your imagination.

Yet, dig deeper and The Babadook is a heart-breaking drama about a mother dealing with grief and her mental health amidst the spiralling behavioural problems of her six-year-old son. Many horrors have depicted troublesome demon-children and the struggles of their parents before but few have done it as effectively as this.

Pairing clever jump-scares and eye catching horror imagery with the painful depiction of one parent’s struggle to keep their head above water, The Babadook takes us on a nightmarish ride of terror and heart-wrenching drama that lingers long after it has retreated into the shadows.

To this day, I still feel a bit let down by 28 Days Later’s ending, yet that shouldn’t take away from what is quite possibly my favourite first half of a horror movie ever.

Granted, the last 18 months of varying degrees of lockdown have got us used to seeing usually rammed city streets empty, yet back in ‘02, seeing central London this eerily quiet is quite the image to start your movie with. It’s a truly terrifying sequence and one that’s even more impressive when you hear just how Danny Boyle pulled it off without the help of CGI or any significant budget

Building on this audacious start, Boyle puts a unique twist on the classic zombie formula by trading in the usual shuffling undead for jacked-up rage zombies, giving 28 Days Later an unnerving edge and an unrelenting threat throughout.

Despite its modest budget, 28 Days Later was a runaway success and helped prompt the zombie craze that followed. At this point, the entire zombie subgenre has died a death, but 28 Days Later remains one of its high-water marks.

As one of the figureheads of the genre’s recent renaissance, Ari Aster has stormed into horror folklore in no time. His masterful command of the genre belies his lack of experience and his recent success with Midsommar solidified this. But it was his debut, Hereditary, that really showcased Aster as one of the most promising horror directors working today.

It takes a lot for a horror film to truly terrify me these days but I can safely say it’s been a long, long time since I’ve been as completely on edge as I was watching Hereditary.

Part supernatural thriller, part folk horror, all nerve-shredding terror, Hereditary is a strange and deeply uncomfortable viewing experience featuring one of the finest horror performances of recent times from the genre’s most put-upon mum, Toni Collette. Collette’s character is dragged to hell and back as an artist who’s haunted in every sense by her late mother, an abusive and manipulative woman who now wishes to gain control of her grandchildren from beyond the grave.

The finale is an absolutely bat-shit crazy, WTF-athon that sends the film into a whole different realm of insanity, but up until then Hereditary is an atmospheric, unbearably tense cinematic experience that combines real life horrors with classic genre tropes to keep you on edge.

No one does body horror like David Cronenberg. The man is an absolute master of squishy, gloriously icky horror and has made quite a career from grossing out a dedicated legion of followers.

The latter portion of his career has seen a softening of the director’s approach, but his early years were very much spent offering the most outrageous and revolting imagery a VHS tape could handle. And right there, caught in the middle, is The Fly.

Combining the kind of wince-inducing gore of his formative years with a more measured, emotionally charged approach, The Fly is Cronenberg’s finest work and one of the few horror remakes to actually improve on its predecessor.

Backed up by a fantastic performances from Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, The Fly is a visceral riches-to-rags tale that splices together horror and science fiction to absolute perfection.

Taking Goldblum’s passionate scientist Seth Brundle from his physical peak to the hellish depths of life as a manfly - removing everything that made him human in the process – The Fly is a terrifying and unnerving vision of horror transformation. Helped along by some of the finest practical horror effects around, The Fly remains a timeless genre classic that hasn’t aged a day since its release.

More than any other movie on my list, Shaun of the Dead operates as a comedy first and a horror second, but it does both so well there’s no way I could leave this slice of fried gold out of things.

Combining the low key slacker comedy of Spaced with classic zombie action, Shaun of the Dead puts a fresh, everyman, nice-cold-pint-down-the-Winchester-until-it-all-blows-over spin on a well-worn genre.

Direct from the brains of frequent collaborators Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the film piles on the horror homages while neatly balancing its narrative between inventive zombie kills and the surprising emotional tug of Shaun’s fight to stop his life spiralling out of control.

It also happens to be one of the most infinitely quotable horrors going and the foundations for one of the finest ice cream-based trilogies in cinema history.

|Do you want anything from the shop?

Fun fact: my first ever viewing of A Nightmare on Elm Street was done from under a duvet when my arse of a brother more or less forced me to watch while we were far too young. I was a permanently terrified kid, so such viewing habits were pretty standard practice back in the day.

As expected, when I got round to watching it properly a few years later, it still scared the living shit out of me. So much so that I’d lie awake for hours at night, fighting sleep with every fibre of my being. So, if the mark of a good horror is to mentally scar a child into a state of insomnia, this has to be considered one of the very best.

Despite an onslaught of shocking sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street remains a classic. Spearheaded by an on form Robert Englund as one of horror’s most iconic villains, the film breathed new life into a slasher subgenre that was rapidly growing stale.

To the uninitiated, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s horror appears to derive from Freddy Krueger’s monstrous looks and murder tool of choice, but this assumption is well wide of the mark. What really sets the film and its villain apart isn’t the scarred face or the gloves, it’s the invasive way Freddy penetrates the most intimate of things - your dreams - attacking in a place you can’t escape and where you’re supposed to be most empowered.

Throw in some terrifying and brilliantly inventive kills (including one of my all-time favourites on a very fresh-faced Johnny Depp) and you have yourself the stuff of horror legend. And one of these days I’ll finally fully recover and get myself a decent night’s sleep.

For the sake of time and space, I wanted to keep entries on my list to one per director and/or franchise, so, for that reason alone, Night of the Living Dead didn’t make the cut. Make no mistake though, George A. Romero’s directorial debut and the birth of the ‘...Dead’ franchise is a brilliant film. It’s just that its follow up is a better one and the foundation from which the entire zombie subgenre is built.

I will hold my hands up and admit I’m not the biggest zombie fan in the world but you have to acknowledge greatness when you see it and that’s absolutely what Dawn of the Dead is.

Balancing the joys of a good old zombie gore-fest with a scathing critique of consumerism, Dawn of the Dead goes for both the gut and the brain in a way that few horrors can touch.

Arriving a full decade after Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead is an entirely different beast, as Romero takes the raw materials of his first film, injects buckets of blood, guts, and social commentary to come up with the definitive zombie flick.

Politics and horror have always gone hand in bloody hand, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of this tight relationship than with Jordan Peele’s Get Out.

Anyone who claims Get Out isn’t a horror is just plain wrong, and while some have dressed the it up as anything but just to score a few edge points, the film is horror to its very core.

Visceral, immediate, socially conscious, and genuinely terrifying, Peele’s debut may feel like an extended Twilight Zone episode at first but the film runs far deeper than that, functioning as a blistering attack on a very modern form of racism underneath all the scares.

Horror has been on something of a roll in recent years and Get Out was a huge driver behind this as it serving up genre thrills while going out of its way to engage your brain cells.

Unwilling to compromise his political message or his film’s blood-soaked mayhem, Jordan Peele rewrote the horror rule book with Get Out and pulled together a movie that hits deep and satisfies on many levels.

You don’t get the nickname “The Master of Suspense” for nothing. Over the course of several decades, Alfred Hitchcock dedicated his career to earning that moniker, with film after film perfectly pitched to manipulate and terrorise audiences. However, it wasn’t until Psycho that the world got to witness the director’s powers in full force.

While it’s been parodied, spoofed, referenced, prequelled, and remade to death over the years, nothing can take away the sheer psychological power of the original. Cleverly subverting expectations, Hitchcock crafted a deeply unsettling thriller that deconstructed fear, desire, sexuality, and the human psyche to leave audiences reeling.

Few horror films have had quite the cultural impact as Psycho and nowhere is this more evident than in the iconic shower scene. Harnessing the horrifying power of suggestion, this brutal murder scene remains one of the most recognisable and terrifying moments in cinema history, one that would play a major part in helping Psycho attain almost mythical horror status for decades to come.

For better or worse, the indelible mark The Blair Witch Project left on the horror genre can still be felt more than two decades after its release. 1999 was a big year for cinema but few films would have as big an impact as The Blair Witch Project.

Guaranteed to split opinion, I still consider it a masterclass in lo-fi horror filmmaking and while the ‘found footage’ sub-genre has pretty much died a death by now, you can’t deny just how mind-blowing the whole thing was at the time. Bolstered by a viral marketing campaign that would change the movie industry forever, the film’s tactic of selling the central story of three missing documentary filmmakers as genuine paid off handsomely.

Grossing almost $250 million on a tiny $60,000 budget, Blair Witch comes out as one of the most profitable horrors of all time, second only to Paranormal Activity - a film that owes more than a little debt to its found footage predecessor.

Oh...and I still find the film genuinely terrifying. By opting for suggestion and abstract scares to keep viewers on edge, and by allowing our mind to fill in the blanks, rarely has a less-is-more approach to horror been so effective

In a time before slasher movies dominated the horror scene, there was John Carpenter’s Halloween - the subgenre’s first benchmark and the night a horror icon came home.

In another example of low cost horror perfection, Halloween put every penny of its minuscule production budget to good use. From Michael Myers’ basic-but-now-iconic mask to Carpenter’s no frills (but no less iconic) score, the film left every drop of its blood up on screen.

Led with scream queen regality by break out star Jamie Lee Curtis and horror’s most unstoppable serial killer, Halloween is, like Myers himself, an absolute force of nature that still has the power to keep you checking the dark corners of your home four decades after its release.

A shout out also goes to the 2018 sequel that’s as close as the franchise has come since to recapturing the essence of the original and has somehow resurrected the series just when you thought it was dead. Probably the less said about its recently released follow up the better.

For a film not short on shocking moments, perhaps the most startling is just how The Exorcist has managed to retain its potency almost five decades after its release.

There’s something so inherently wicked & unnerving about what William Friedkin captured with The Exorcist that, even after all these years, just the process of pressing play to watch the film feels like a sin in itself.

Recounting the story of a mother forced to endure the gradual possession & subsequent exorcism of her daughter - played by an unnervingly mature Linda Blair – The Exorcist like all good horror films, kicked off a wave of imitators, causing widespread satanic panic in the process.

As evangelical audiences recoiled at the fact that the devil had not only come to cinemas, but was now getting Oscar noms, it was clear Friedkin’s film had hit a cultural nerve.

To this day, the sight of the infamous exorcism sequences, which include the young Regan strapped to a bed switching between vomiting demonic rage and heart-breaking vulnerability while her mum slowly cracks in another room, are a genuinely uncomfortable & deeply disturbing watch

Ultimately, The Exorcist was a monumental moment in horror history. As the first horror nominated for a Best Pic Oscar, it went a long way to legitimising the genre as worthy of critical acclaim & cultural conversation, laying the foundation for everything that would follow.

I have genuinely had past conversations with people who flat out deny that Jaws is a horror film. They are wrong. When a movie scares the shit out of an entire generation to the point that they can’t go anywhere near the ocean, you’ve got yourself a bonafide horror my friend.

Not only did Steven Spielberg usher in a new dawn of blockbuster cinema with Jaws, the film remains, to this day, one of the most taut and terrifying things put to screen.

Part strategy, part down to technical difficulties, Spielberg doesn’t even show you the shark for most of the film, yet the tension and terror is palpable throughout. He’s there - somewhere - and he’s waiting for you. The horror is as simple as that and it works.

And when we finally see Bruce (for that was his name) as he pops out to confront Roy Sheider’s Sheriff Brody while he chums behind the Orca, it created one of cinemas most enduring images.

Despite the countless spine-chilling accomplishments Stephen King has achieved on page, it’s a real shame that relatively few of his tales have achieved the same impact in live-action.

Standing head and shoulders above everything however is The Shining. Despite King’s hatred of the film, it remains the finest adaptation of his work as Kubrick ups the supernatural ante on the author’s claustrophobic tale of spiralling madness and makes it something else entirely.

While Jack Nicholson’s uninhibited performance as the progressively unhinged Jack Torrance is undoubtedly what sticks with you, Kubrick’s vision offers so much more than that. You’ve got Shelly DuVall’s tortured Wendy, terrifying twins, tidal waves of blood, never ending hallways, mind-fuck visits to room 237, a garden maze, reverse mirror writing, axes, and a bizarre final shot that literally chills you to the core

Kubrick infamously put his cast and crew through the shitter to attain horror perfection and he pretty much did it, as The Shining remains a truly iconic moment in the genre’s history.

Not since George A. Romero’s first two ‘...Dead’ entries has there been a sequel so utterly different from its predecessor. In the 5 years between The Evil Dead and its follow up, everything seemed to change.

As great at the first film was, director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell were older and wiser by the time Evil Dead II rolled round and it showed.

Everything is sharper, wilder and more disgusting this time around, as Ash finds himself both the deadite-killing protagonist and the possession-plagued antagonist...and still stuck in cinema’s most messed up cabin in the woods.

You’ve got Ash’s iconic chainsaw hand, Jake getting chomped by Henrietta, Ash’s hallucination and of course that curve-ball ending that led to Army of Darkness. While Evil Dead II’s story may not stick as much as other horror classics, there are no missteps here. It’s all groovy.

I mean, who doesn’t love a chain saw-wielding Texas madman wearing a mask made from human skin?

I guess if you’re one of the teens that stumble upon him and his psychotic cannibal family, you’re probably not the biggest fan, but for the rest of us and for every horror fanatic out there, what’s not to love?

Dismissed by many as “despicable” when it was released, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre went on to become a cult favourite and gradually evolve into a genuine horror classic.

Brutal, bloody, shocking, and deeply unsettling on many levels, the film uses its exploitative trappings to explore a huge range of themes, becoming one of the greatest slashers ever in the process.

Much like Jaws, there are plenty of folk out there that refuse to acknowledge The Silence of the Lambs as a horror film and these people should probably spend the night in Buffalo Bill’s house before having a rethink.

On a fundamental level, how a film about a cannibal and a serial killer with a penchant for wearing women’s skin could be considered anything but a horror is beyond me.

For me, The Silence of the Lambs remains a crucial part of horror history. It was a moment of horror transcendence that proved the genre’s legitimacy to the world and, after taking home five Academy Awards (including Best Picture), showcased its full potential.

Made all the more impressive by the fact he’s barely on screen, Anthony Hopkins’ performance is a thing of horrific, manipulating beauty as he crawls into both our and Jodie Foster’s minds with minimal effort. While Bill is the traditional villain of the piece, Hannibal Lecter is something else entirely and at the heart of The Silence of the Lambs’ true horror.

Hopkins’ antagonistic turn with barely a muscle moved is deeply unsettling and works perfectly up against Forster’s career-high performance as Clarice Starling. With a calm, affable demeanour that effortlessly gives way to the most sadistic, malicious actions imaginable, Lecter remains one of cinema’s greatest horror monsters.

Despite its relative lack of blood or traditional scares, The Silence of the Lambs is the perfect blend of psychological and visceral horror that, like Lecter, is a thoroughly unnerving viewing experience that you won’t see coming until it’s far too late.

Naturally, when there’s horror, death is never far behind, yet rarely has it been so stiflingly omnipresent than with Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.

With the accidental death of their young daughter hanging heavy over them, a married couple (Donald Sutherland and Julien Christie) travel to Venice as they attempt to come to terms with their enormous loss.

While there, they’re haunted by a series of mysterious occurrences and harrowing reminders of death, including an encounter with two elderly sisters who bring warnings from beyond and a small figure in a red raincoat that stalks them from the shadows.

Channelling the spirit of Hitchcock, Roeg delivers a chilling and menacing story that balances the supernatural with a deep and unsettling look at the impact of grief on a relationship.

With a thick layer of doom enveloping the entire film, Don’t Look Now is a psychologically and thematically dense examination of the human psyche with one of the most shocking final reveals of any horror since Psycho.

As with many great horrors - ones that really stand the test of time - John Carpenter’s The Thing was initially dismissed as little more than gross-out schlock upon release. However, here we are a little under four decades later and the film has now been reassessed as a classic worthy of a place among the genre’s greats.

Blending sci-fi and horror to terrifying perfection, The Thing creates a taut, tense atmosphere of paranoia and gnawing doubt that gets an icy grip on you and never lets go.

Following the spectacularly bearded Kurt Russell and his rugged crew at a remote Arctic research facility as they’re besieged by a relentless shapeshifting alien, the film uses its frozen setting to create a bleak, ominous atmosphere that feeds on your deepest, darkest fears.

Pairing gut-level horror with some of the finest - and most grotesque - practical effects the genre has to offer, The Thing is Carpenter at the top of his game. Keeping you guessing and doubting yourself until its bloody end, the film has grown to become a stone cold classic, taking both horror and sci-fi to terrifying new places in the process.

You can argue all you want about whether or not Alien is truly a horror but try telling that to an 8-foot tall killing machine with razor-sharp teeth and acid blood. Not arguing now, are ya?

On their own, Xenomorphs are pure nightmare-fuel and the kind of horror monster that’s just as terrifying lurking in the shadows as it is getting right up in your face, yet Ridley Scott’s Alien brings so much more than that to the table.

There’s no two ways about it, regardless of whether you think it’s more sci-fi than horror, Alien is straight up terrifying. Draining every drop of horror out of a relatively limited setup, Scott stacks up the suspense and the surprises to unbearable heights in what is, even to this day, the most terrifying film I’ve ever watched.

And all of this is topped off by one of the most iconic heroes in all of cinema. Rugged and badass but fragile and relatable, Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley absolutely owns every second of screen time as a woman driven to extremes in the most extreme situation imaginable.

By the time Aliens rolled around 7 years later, the franchise was beginning to morph into another beast entirely, as it travelled down a more action-centric path, but, while there are certainly arguments to be made that its sequel is a better film, Alien is definitely the better horror and - in my humble opinion at least - the best horror film of all time.