Eisner (no offence) has no such reputational straightjacket to escape, and undoubtedly uses this freedom to greater effect than Romero. In place of the rambling nature of the original, he delivers a taut and effective case-study on the utter disintegration of a society brought down from within. Though sticking faithfully to the premise – a small town endangered by the crash-landing of military plane transporting a top-secret nerve agent – he pares back most of the loose ends and inconsistencies left by Romero and in so doing gives the film an efficient focus and engaging narrative. It’s a narrative effectively framed by his small-town setting, with Ogden County being sufficiently claustrophobic whilst avoiding veering too far into the twee. As events unfold, the genuine feeling of neighbourliness and community adds to the premise a heightened sense of terror. The eerily horrific encounter during the school baseball game sets the tone and pace nicely. In this context the overhead satellite image sequences are rather clunky and counter-productive, but not fatal to the atmospheric unravelling of the town.

Shorn of most of its social and political commentary baggage, the remake is palpably less ambitious than the original. That is not derogatory of the end product though, as the narrower focus is interesting, inventive and delivered with panache. There is no suitably or doubt about the government’s motives or actions in containing TRIXIE; indeed, the most successful element of Eisner’s remake is his discarding of the duel-narrative of the civilian and military perspective. It means we’re left to confront a force exhibiting none of the self-doubt or humanity of, for example, Colonel Peckem, which gives Eisner’s treatment a welcome relentlessness and enough momentum to overcome what quickly settles into a series of interconnected set-piece action sequences.

That said, the slim-line narrative does have less to sustain it as the inevitability of the town’s fate becomes obvious. Then bleakness approaches perilously close to boredom, and the scenario reveals seem less like steps integral to the plot and more like padding. Though probably 15 minutes or so too long, Timothy Olyphant’s superb performance as Sherriff Dutten is just about sufficient to the task of carrying the plot on his shoulders, and hues closer to the successful leading men of the NOTLD series than we’ve seen in many of Romero’s own recent efforts. All in all, the overall product is that rare thing – a remake that is at least equal to (and perhaps better than) the original.

Not that you can escape the maths. Our protagonists are Spain’s finest mathematicians, whose paths ultimately cross when they receive an invitation to attend an exclusive gathering organised by the elusive ‘Fermat’. The introduction of this unusual premise is handled well, and though the characters are fairly formulaic they’re framed sufficiently irreverently in opening to forgive them that and enjoy the fun. Of particular note is the rock star like adulation heaped on “Galois”, which appears to be particularly well deserved given that he has solved Goldbach’s conjecture. “Hilbert” also stands out, if only because he must surely spend his summers working as a professional Sir Laurence Olivier lookalike on cruise ships.

If it isn’t apparent by these early stages that you’ll need a large pinch of salt to get through the rest of the film, it will be when the boffins converge on Fermat’s Room. What then ensues is a series of mathematical ‘enigmas’ sent into the locked room via a mobile phone by the mysterious “Fermat”, with delayed or incorrect answers leading to the room contracting in on itself. This very quickly beds down into an utterly conventional murder (or, rather, maths) mystery rather than the kind of RAND Corporation training exercise you’d think such a scheme might entail. It also means that it will feel familiar to anyone who has watched an episode of Columbo. In fact, if you’ve seen the Mind Over Mayhem episode you’ll practically feel at home. It’s a shame really, as this fails to utilise what could have been a fairly unconventional and engaging plot device.

It also means that the characters suddenly seem utterly out of place, as though they’re the only ones who turned up to the party in fancy dress. You get a sense that even Piedrahita and Sopeña got bored of the maths, as the ‘enigmas’ recede into the background to make way for a run-of-the-mill whodunit. However, the failure to properly anchor the characters to plot removes any real sense of revelation and each new discovery tends to lessen rather heighten the suspense. Be sure to watch out for “Pascal” brake pedal story for a prime, and superbly hilarious, example.

Having said that, Fermat’s Room never outstays its welcome. Aside from the disconnect that emerges between the characters and the plot, the cast is sufficiently enjoyable and skilled, and present what they’re given with a earnestness that cannot fail but endear. In particular, the emergence of “Pascal” in the second half of the film provides a likeable cynic of a companion. As a self-declared “practical” mathematician he is as baffled as the viewer by overall scenario, and through him perhaps Piedrahita and Sopeña were signalling that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. Go into it expecting a well-executed mathematical pantomime, and you’ll not be too disappointed.

Trying to put my finger on quite why I didn’t has increased my confusion. Taking its component parts in isolation, I should at least conclude that it was average. Plot = interesting enough. Cast = Adequate for the task. Script = Can’t really complain. Direction = Nothing stands out as atrociously bad. It’s only when these are gelled together than the flaws emerge, and I think they arise out of Oren Peli’s decision to use the found footage format.

I realise that criticising a horror film for implausibility is akin to criticising an apple for not being an orange, but the found footage genre demands an added level of believability.   By casting the viewer as a direct participant in the story and turning the camera into their eyes, we rightly subject such films to a heightened level of scrutiny. You can forgive flights of fancy when you’re cast in the traditional viewer role of passively watching a story unfold on screen. There the space belongs to the cast and crew, and they can treat it how they like in telling their tale. When you’re brought into the action in the way that found footage films do, you can rightly ask “am I supposed to believe this?”

Paranormal Activity falls down in being implausible within its own terms of reference. We are expected to believe that our protagonists are both terrified but prepared to stay in their house. We’ve all cried out in frustration that victims in horror films never think to call the police when Michael Myers is clearly standing outside or just moved instead of calling in Father Damien Karras. In Paranormal Activity, we’re presented with a young, affluent couple who are prepared to suffer mental and physical harm instead of simply moving. As such, the entire endeavour lacks that credibility that is so fundamental to found footage films.

So we are left with a series of disjointed set-pieces revolving around the recordings taken of the couple as they are in bed waiting for the next attack, without the buttress of a credible conceptual framework. The interventions of a couple of demonologists come across as rather mocking to the audience as a result of this, like those video clips you often saw on old PC games when you progressed to a new level. Absent is any incremental ratcheting up of terror and subtle revelation of the hopelessness of the situation of the type that rightly distinguished Blair Witch. Contrast the scene where Heather breaks down in the tent on realising what was happening and what was likely to happen, to Micah’s synthetic anger at the demon in his house and you’ll realise how far short Paranormal Activity falls in properly utilising the found footage technique.

It never really recovers from those failings, and is ultimately constricted by a format it does not use but cannot discard. It might have been an entertaining enough offering had it done one or the other, but instead it plummets between two stools. The cast, particularly Micah Sloat, fall into a similar trap, having insufficient gravitas to carry the weak format but presenting as too polished to come across as credibly amateur. We are thus forced to endure what becomes a rather sedentary exercise in going through the motions accompanied by a rather unlikeable couple awaiting the inevitable. The resorting to use of a Ouija board midway through suggests that even the crew were getting bored, and has all of the feel of a game of horror film ‘join the dots’.

These flaws may have been ironed out in the sequel, but until then you’re better off looking to Rec if you’re after a decent heir to Blair Witch. Perhaps the nicest thing I can say is that it wasn’t the worst film we saw that night.

Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film unashamedly in the mould of Creepshow and Tales From the Crypt, which themselves largely took their cues from the horror comics of the 50s and The Twilight Zone. It tells four separate but overlapping stories set in a small town celebrating Halloween. As with almost all anthology movies, these vary in tone and impact, but since the film a whole runs to a lean 79 minutes none are allowed to outstay their welcome. All comply to the tried and trust formula of a spooky setup followed by a gruesome twist ending. The slightest story, “The Principal”, features a brilliant turn from Dylan Baker, channeling the likes of Re-animator’s Jeffery Combs, propping up an otherwise fairly thin plot. “Surprise Party” and “The School Bus Massacre Revisited” are more substantial, the former boasting a terrifically full-on conclusion and the latter featuring some genuinely impressive atmospherics.

Like Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat concludes with a one-hander featuring a veteran actor being tormented in his home; but instead of EG Marshall and thousands of insects, here we have Brian Cox and a pumpkin-headed demon called Sam. This segment is the undoubted highlight of the film. Sam is a brilliant creation; in a twisted take on A Christmas Carol, he pops up throughout the film as a warning to those who fail to respect the traditions of Halloween, but he reserves particular ire for Cox’s cantankerous Mr Kreeg, whom he pursues until he changes his ways. Cox gives a no-holds-barred performance, and the fight descends into some hugely enjoyable Evil Dead II-style slapstick/splatter.

As you might have guessed, Trick ‘r Treat isn’t hugely original, but Dougherty’s brilliantly witty, atmospheric direction holds everything together. In anchoring everything to a single town, he creates a real sense of location that is at once familiar but at times hauntingly alien; in “Surprise Party”, for example, the town’s festivities very quickly move from being jovial to threatening. The film is filmed with memorable and striking imagery: the aforementioned Sam, the decayed school bus half submerged in the lake, Kreeg’s front garden filled with carved pumpkins. The mood may predominantly be light-hearted, but Dougherty shows such craft it’s hard not to be dazzled.

The main point of divergence between Trick ‘r Treat and its predecessors is Dougherty’s decision (apparently taken during post-production) to cut between the stories rather than telling them in series. The downside to this is that the first 20 minutes or so are largely fairly leisurely-paced setup, to the extent that I was starting to wonder whether or not the film had been somewhat over-praised. Nevertheless, once all the stories are in motion, he delivers a genuine thrill ride that largely avoids the pacing problems that blight other anthologies.

Perhaps inevitably for a film that wears its influences so strongly on its sleeves, Trick ‘r Treat feels simultaneously very 80s and very 50s. But in an era where mainstream horror is becoming increasingly po-faced and misanthropic in its shocks, to see a modern, studio genre film that revels in a sense of well-crafted scary fun is hugely refreshing. It’s obviously a travesty that mainstream audiences were denied the opportunity to see this film on the big screen, but it points to bigger problems in Hollywood’s current handling of horror. This film easily stands alongside the likes of Creepshow and Carpenter’s Halloween as a definitive Halloween movie, one that you will want to watch – in company – every October. Yet the studios seem content to mark Halloween with the grungy nastiness of the Saw films rather than something far more inclusive, accessible and in keeping with the spirit of the season like this. (British readers who think this is overstating the case may like to reflect on just how widely Halloween is celebrated in the US). And Trick ‘r Treat impresses because despite the gore, murder and dismemberment, it retains the atmosphere of good, clean fun. So chalk this up as yet another horror blog telling you to buy this film, watch it, and tell your friends. As Sam is keen to stress, Halloween traditions must be respected…

And the plot is simple, Incredibly so. Omitting the spoiler ending, it centres entirely on a man trapped in a telephone box. Given that simplicity, there’s not a great deal I can say about the nuts and bolts beyond observing that they’re perfectly calibrated to serve the purpose of the film. La cabina has the wonderful grittiness that’s so often a feature of Spanish film, from the look and sound through to the willingness to conceive of and present average characters to convey added realism (those who’ve seen Timecrimes will know what I mean). By average, I of course don’t wish to disparage the efforts of Jose Vazquez. He takes possession of every second of the role of ‘Man in the phone box, and the virtues of the gritty, simplistic approach can be observed in contrasting this with something like Phone Booth.

What La cabina manages to capture perfectly is the collective psychological blindness that emerges in totalitarian societies which allows most people to live a ‘normal’ life. While the crowd surrounding the phone box are initially sympathetic and concerned, once it becomes clear that they are powerless to help they quickly turn their backs in an attempt to ignore – or mock – the obvious elephant in the room, or ‘Man in the phone box’. In drawing out his reaction and that of the various characters who stumble across him, Mercero dances between light drama, comedy and Twilight Zone-esqu eeriness with such effortlessness that the impact of the ending is doubly horrific.

This reaches its apotheosis when the box is eventually removed; no-one seeks to question the circumstances of this or batters an eye-lid that someone can be randomly plucked from the street by seemingly faceless authority. Not that La cabina is a simple tirade against authority, for on some levels the state is presented as hapless and incompetent rather than chilling. The police who turn out to assist are more reminiscent of the German officers in ‘Allo, ‘Allo than they are the ruthless agents of the Franco regime. It’s nevertheless astonishing that La cabina secured a release during the Caudillo’s lifetime.  Its message is nuanced but clear; in some societies, people can and do disappear in circumstances as brazen as from a public square in broad daylight surrounded by large crowds. You’ll be hard pressed to find a film that conveys the true horror of that fact better.

When The Eye, the second film jointly directed by Hong Kong’s Pang Brothers, emerged in 2002, it was released into a very different climate to their 1999 debut, Bangkok Dangerous; US studios were hungry for Asian properties that would play well in the West, and to some degree the Pangs seem happy to meet this demand. Essentially, the main problem with The Eye is the nagging sense that it’s continually got one eye (ho ho) on the international market, and as a result the rather promising storyline feels unnecessarily reined in and hampered by the fairly conventional execution.

The plot comes on like an extended episode of Tales of the Unexpected, telling the story of a young violinist who, blinded since childhood, is given an transplant to rescue her sight only to be plagued by terrifying visions courtesy of the mysterious donor. It’s not an unfamiliar setup, but it has the tantalising potential to deliver some truly perspective-bending, disturbing visual madness; sadly the Pangs opt to deliver their scares through a series of wholly conventional, Westernised jumps and crashing noises rather than delving too deeply into Mun’s relative isolation and inner world. It seems fairly clear from the outset to the audience what’s going on here, and so the mystery becomes more focused on Mun and Dr Wah’s investigations into the donor; but sadly this thread falls flat by offering very little in the way of intrigue. The duo’s investigations manage to hit the right track straight off the bat, and from then on it’s a very easy and unchallenging ride to the resolution. The lack of twists or tonal modulation is wholly surprising, and what should be set-piece visual moments – the donor’s world bleeding in and out of Mun’s – are handled without flair, like a poor man’s David Lynch.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing to enjoy here. The Eye is unoriginal, but it’s a slick enough piece of work, with a well-paced story and a sympathetic treatment of its characters by both the Pangs and the cast. Angelica Lee acquits herself fairly well as Mun, and even though Dr Wah comes across as being slightly too credulous for a member of the medical profession, Laurence Chou makes him likeable enough. The film also successfully pulls off an audacious twist an hour through which is beautifully trailed and genuinely had me kicking myself for not getting there sooner. However, much of the disappointment of the film stems from the climax. The Pangs attempt a Ringu-style double ending, which falls flat for two reasons; primarily, the supposed ‘first’ resolution is so low-key as to barely register, while the coda promises spectacle but actually ends up limp and uncinematic. Hideo Nakata’s film succeeded by following a nerve-shredding climax with a moment that managed to top it for nail-biting innovation, but in following a tedious resolve with a botched Hollywood-style blow-out, the Pangs ensure their film end on more of a whimper than a bang.

All of which is not to say I didn’t find The Eye enjoyable enough; it’s undemanding fare that passes 100 minutes pleasantly enough, and as I said earlier, it does have that twist at the sixty minute mark. Unfortunately, it could – and should – have been much more than that. The Pangs clearly have an eye for a story and an undeniable ability behind the lens; if they had let themselves off the leash a little and delved more into the nightmare world they describe this could have been a film to rank alongside the wave of Asian horrors that broke a couple of years earlier. Ultimately, The Eye isn’t nearly disturbing nor – frankly – gory enough to either serve the story it wants to tell nor to differentiate itself from the NC-17 rated mush that’s marked Hollywood’s recent output. Ironically, The Eye is an Asian horror that tries too hard to satisfy foreign notions of what Asian horror is. Given that the film has been re-made in both India and the US, the Pangs have played the market and won, but at the cost of the x-factor that had American execs looking East in the first place.

Largely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents veers between taut, psychological thriller and ghost story with such seamless accomplishment that it’s easy to see why the distributors were baffled as to how to bracket it. In the red corner, we have all of the hallmarks of the Poe-esque ghost story: the Gothic mansion, whose beauty and tranquillity is forever stained with family tragedy and shame. Into this is added the external innocent, in our case Deborah Kerr’s Miss Giddens, a Governess who has been sent to take charge of two orphans kept at a distance by their benefactor uncle. At first enchanted with her new life, Miss Giddens rapidly comes to discover that this is a corrupted Eden; stifling under the oppression of a collective and hidden shame, and, perhaps, something supernatural to boot.

If this was as far as it went, The Innocents would still be hailed as a ghost story of stunning execution. Clayton was blessed with seeming to catch a few of his cast and crew at the peak of their game, and cinematographer Freddie Francis was undoubtedly one of them. Much has been written about his pioneering use of hazing and blurring in the scenes involving the apparitions. Rightly so, as without it the latent ambiguity of Miss Giddens experiences would be lost. However, that one aspect of his work has to be set in the context of his genius for giving the entire film an ethereal aura, which is at one and the same time intoxicating and deeply unsettling. He was undoubtedly assisted in this by the wonderfully tense screenplay of, among other, Truman Capote and Sir John Mortimer (how often do you get to write that?). It rockets along, and in avoiding the pacing pitfall suffered by most period piece ghost stories gives The Innocents a very modern feel. By lulling the viewer into this dreamlike state, Clayton has us perfectly positioned to share Miss Giddens’ journey with her.

Which leads us into blue corner; the psychological dissection of our intriguing protagonists. Cinema studies of the human conditions work best when they have a cast decent enough to carry them off. Here, Clayton was again fortunate in drawing a once-in-a-career performance out of Kerr. She wrings out the hidden frustrations, anxieties and desperations of Giddens with an increasingly startling and unsettling intensity, perfectly balancing her position as both victim and tormentor. It’s a testament to his performance that the ten-year old Martin Stephens (he of Village of the Damned fame) provides a perfect counter-foil to an actress at the top of her game. The two of them dominate the screen as they seek to define and determine the nature of their relationship, and through that the truth behind what is happening at Bly House. Descending from sweet playfulness through to mutual (and even paedophilic?) dependency, we’re left with the wonderful frustration of asking whose story has this been all along: his or hers?

Whether through design or default, The Innocents will always provoke debate between those who see it as a ghost story and others who view it as a character study. It doesn’t matter one way or the other; Clayton provides a textbook example of how to do both.

You can’t help but be left wondering if this is what he was attempting to do with Opera. The question has little to do with the setting (nor indeed title) but arise more because of Argento’s use of raw emotion as the central plot driver, often at the expense of coherent storytelling. Such an elevation might have been disastrous in a lesser director, but as ever with Argento you’re willing to moderate your critical faculties somewhat as you get drawn into his confused, uneasy but always beautifully rendered world.

The tale of a young operetta mysteriously targeted by a deranged killer might seem perfectly conceived to provide Argento with a fodder conveyor belt, but the opera backdrop actually serves as a nice distraction and allows him to indulge in some uncharacteristically self-indulgent fun. You can’t help but see something of Argento in Marco, the horror film director turned rather harried opera director, and you wonder whether the constant criticism of the latter (due, we learn, to his liberal re-interpretation of Verdi’s Macbeth) accounts for the former’s reluctance to give opera a go. Ian Charleson’s snarling performance suggests that it might well be. We (sadly) never get to enjoy Marco’s crow-laden Macbeth for anything longer than a few brief snippets, but it does provide Argento with just the right backdrop to set in place the best revelation of a murderer since Quincy, M.E. On a more serious level, the opera background initially gives Argento a relatively staid and comforting bolt-hole to retreat too in between the flashes of anarchistic slaughter. On every sensual level, the opulently rendered theatre provides welcome relief from the usual Dario butchery in the way that his music school did in Suspiria.

While seeing opera in film always adds a nice layer of bombast to proceedings, Argento deftly allows the edifice of what is happening on stage to sink into the background and allows the underlying terror and tragedy to bubble the surface. That is the undoubted strength of Opera, transforming what might otherwise have been a rather lumpy, incoherent and self-indulgent project into a film of stunning vision and genuine merit. Undoubtedly, there are some splutters, stops and starts along the way. It perhaps takes a little longer than it should for Betty’s predicament to be elevated from the bog standard hunter’s prey to tragic heroine (something the distractingly beautiful Christina Marsillach handles with real aplomb, despite Argento’s purported difficulties with her). Those are minor quibbles though, and they quickly fade into obscurity when we’re forced to step back and behold the patchwork of deliciously macabre situations visited upon Betty in their tragic totality. At that point you realise that opera’s loss is horror’s gain.

In truth, the Blind Dead films were always going to be difficult to sustain, but coming less than a year after Return of the Blind Dead, it’s amazing how quickly the quality threshold nosedives. Tombs of the Blind Dead was a slightly wonky but stylish and original take on the undead genre, and whilst Return was largely a rehash of its predecessor, its quicker pace and silly characters actually made it a good deal more fun. The Ghost Galleon demands a viewing largely for its astonishing premise alone, in which a boatload of swimwear models become stranded at sea during a failed publicity stunt and are soon menaced by the Templars (aka the Blind Dead) and their ghostly ship.

With its heady mix of babes and zombies it feels like de Ossorio is aiming this one squarely at the booming European exploitation market, but to the disappointment of masturbators everywhere it’s actually by far the tamest entry into the series. The leaden pacing means it feels like an eternity before the Templars actually turn up to have their way with the boat girls, but when they do the deaths occur offscreen, meaning the bulk of the film is taken up by the none-too-interesting antics of Howard Tucker, “the famous sporting goods magnate” (his words, not mine) who is determined to ensure that the disappearance of the models doesn’t affect his business too badly. None of the characters here are particularly sympathetic, especially Professor Gruber, who for a man of science is amazingly credulous and superstitious.

Whereas Return of the Blind Dead felt like a worthy sequel, The Ghost Galleon feels like a particularly sloppy attempt to spin the concept into a franchise. The previous films both developed – in different ways – the Templar backstory, in a bid to give the creatures a bit of depth and motivation. Here, there’s none of that; de Ossorio presumes that we already know all the important stuff and essentially uses the Templars as little more than monsters. The nautical setting, although effectively claustrophobic, robs the film of the visual sumptuousness that raised its predecessors above their peers; the slow motion shots of the Templars atop their zombie horses were high points of both films, and their absence is keenly felt here.

That said, the ending is absolutely terrific, as the unstoppable creatures rise out of the water to menace the survivors as they lie panting on the beach. It’s a moment that reminds you keenly of the visual flair that de Ossorio showed earlier, and only serves to remind you how dull the preceding 95 minutes have been. The success of the first two Blind Dead films lay in the panoramic landscapes and the intriguing backstory; both are absent here and the film is all the weaker for it.

Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator ticks all of those boxes. I confess here that I haven’t yet read H.P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator”, but I don’t think it’s too essential. One of the beauties of good splatter horror is that the means are as important as the ends, and on every level Re-Animator is a joy to experience.

That is not to say that Gordon ever takes the attention of the viewer for granted, nor is he content in offering the film equivalent of junk food. The premise of the deliberate re-animation of the recently deceased is a worthy a subject for discussion as any you will find. Where I think Gordon is especially canny is in framing his story such without ever letting such deep and sombre themes act as a drag on viewer enjoyment.

This is especially obvious in the development of the central character, Dr. Herbert West, who is beautifully brought to life by Jeffrey Combs. When we first encounter Herbert he is styled as your typical creepy mad scientist, just returning to the USA from Europe where some level of mystery surrounded his activities. We are first expected to view him as the outcast, whose gory machinations are being pursued with an utter disregard for the moral and physical consequence. About mid-way through there is something of a gear change though, and in his disregard for the moral questions surrounding his work are hints that he wants to conquer death either because he fears it or to help those who do fear it. This was deftly handled by having the utterly likeable, all-American Dan Cain befriend Herbert. By providing the viewer with the reassuring moral compass of Dan we don’t get too bogged down.

That is as well, because when Gordon opens the throttle Re-Animator descends into some of the most manic, memorable and thoroughly enjoyable gore I think you’ll see. At times, his imagery practically jumps off the screen at you. You realise what a complete package Gordon offers when this violence is tied into a fantastically dark comedy script. He keeps the cast on something of a tight leash in terms of direction, and to excellent effect. By having them play it straight, it retains its artistic integrity and retains the freedom to really push the boat out in it terms of its visuals. The headless Dr. Carl Hill is one example of many.

There is no shame in a film choosing to deliver its message by going down the splatter horror route. When it is done badly, it should rightly be dismissed as pointless exhibitionism. When it is done properly, it offers up an utterly refreshing experience on every level of viewer engagement. Re-Animator could serve as a master class in getting it right, and I only hope that the upcoming House of Re-Animator brings it to the attention of a new generation of viewers.