Horror films were reviled as one step up from pornography – now the genre is a force to be reckoned with

The unleashing of scary films traditionally goes into overdrive in the run-up to Halloween and this year is no exception. Fancy some English folk horror? Here are Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark as grieving parents digging into rural Yorkshire’s pagan past in Daniel Kokotajito’s Starve Acre. Perhaps Euro horror given an English-language makeover is more your style? James Watkins’ Speak No Evil, a remake of Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 Danish psychothriller, stars James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi as a chummy British couple who invite an American family they meet on holiday to spend the weekend at their lovely country house. (But will it preserve the grim ending, like the Funny Games remake, or chicken out, like Hollywood’s The Vanishing?)