Normally, in the timeless netherworld between Christmas and New Year, Martin Jameson sits down, stuffing his face with After Eights and Baileys Irish Cream, and puts together two top-tens: one for science fiction, the other for horror. But this year it’s a little different…

At the end of 2024, I am scratching my critical beard. Yes, of course there are movies that can easily be categorised, but if one thing has distinguished the fictional cinematic output in a year of stomach churning unease in the real world, it has been how so many films have been pushing at the boundaries of convenient genre classification.

It would be easy to say that this simply reflects the uncertainties of our age, but I think it speaks to something more culturally significant. As we approach the quarter century, these are angry, fearful times, but just as we need to express our rage and terror with honesty like never before, we have, ourselves, created a set of suffocating strictures, borne of well-meaning aspirations to diversity, inclusion, and, worst of all, a finger-wagging fear of ‘triggering’ anything that might constitute a genuine emotional response of any kind whatsoever. Essentially, this is killing naturalism (revisionist ‘historical’ movies are the worst culprits) and in response it’s no wonder that film makers look to the fantastical where those paralysing ‘rules’ don’t have to apply.

In genre – sci-fi, horror, fantasy – rules are supposed to be broken; audiences are supposed to be upset; are supposed to be shocked, disturbed and, thank the gods, offended. Offend me, trigger me!! That’s what art is for.

In Genre, everyone can hear you scream, and that’s the point.

20. The First Omen – was nowhere near as bad as we had a right to expect. In fact, it was pretty decent, albeit mainly memorable for the height disparity between Ralph Ineson’s Father Brennan, a full seven inches taller than Patrick Troughton in the Richard Donner original.

19. Blink Twice – Zoe Kravitz’s horror take on #MeToo made a decent stab of satirising the evil of Jeffrey Epstein and associates. The trouble is that the reality was far more brutal and horrific. Perhaps if Kravitz had stuck to the confrontational honesty of her original title – Pussy Island – she might have struck closer to the rotten heart of her target.

18. Maxxxine – I always look forward to my annual dose of horror insanity from Ty West and Mia Goth. The world of 1980s video nasty production should have been perfect territory for this team, but while it misfired a few times too often, it was still enjoyable fare for the seasoned horror nerd.

17. Alien: Romulus – A back-to-basics Alien sequel made by Fede Álvarez with love and respect for Ridley Scott’s 1979 original. The first hour, at least, is cracking stuff. Haunted House horror meets monster sci-fi. I was in my happy place.

16. Poor Things – Yorgos Lanthimos’s steampunk gender fantasy was one of the movie ‘events’ of the year, garnering multiple Academy and other awards. It was lovingly crafted, and Emma Stone deserved her acting gongs, but in retrospect the whole was less than the sum of its immaculately rendered parts, and buckled under the weight of its 1980s men’s group philosophising.

15. Love Lies Bleeding – Part hard-boiled small-town Lesbian noir, part magical realist fantasy, Rose Glass’s follow up to the excellent Saint Maud might be a bit bumpy as genre mash-ups go, but Kirsten Stewart is on top form, and the movie didn’t get anything like the attention it deserved.

14. Late Night With the Devil – Fans of Inside Number 9 will feel this ‘found footage’ horror set in a 1970s late night chat show is familiar territory, but it’s excellently made and a lot of fun.

13. The Substance – Coralie Fargeat’s 141 minute satirical body-horror doesn’t know when to stop (50 minutes sooner would have been good), but it is lapel-grabbing cinema, with Demi Moore giving female age stereotyping a magnificent, retina-searing middle finger.

12. Strange Darling – Largely ignored by critics and audiences alike, J T Mollner’s twisty, dislocated horror-thriller asks deeply unfashionable and uncomfortable questions about consent, violence and femininity. There is absolutely no way that a script like this would see the light of day in the UK, and we are all the poorer for that. I loved it.

11. Sasquatch Sunset – As my kids would say: ‘What even is this film?’ Eschewing CGI or vaguely convincing prosthetics, it’s Jesse Eisenberg and chums dressed up in shaggy Bigfoot suits, barely pretending to be anything other than a bunch of actors yomping round the forests of Northern California exploring the (non)human condition via the medium of mythical giant apes.  What’s not to like?

10. Sky Peals – As my kids would say: ‘What even is this film?’ On the one hand, it’s a movie about a lonely guy working nights in a motorway service station. On the other, that motorway service station is reminiscent of the alien ship in Close Encounters, holding the secrets to his father’s disappearance. A slow burn, wonderful curiosity.

9. Furiosa – The Mad Max universe finally rediscovers its mojo just 43 years after Mad Max 2, which was the last time George Miller got the balance of story and internal combustion steampunk ultraviolence as well tuned as this.

8. Never Let Go – While not the scariest of cabin-in-the-woods paranoid survival horrors, Halle Berry didn’t get anything like the attention she deserved for a career-best performance in this thoughtful, and at times challenging drama. If you didn’t catch it in the cinemas (it came and went very quickly), it’s well worth hunting down, not least for the unusual agency given to its juvenile leads.

7. A Quiet Place: Day One – After the ho-hum disappointment of a Quiet Place Part II, this prequel is arguably the best of the three movies to date, moving and scary in equal measure. A hard trick to pull off, but with Lupita Nyong’o owning every frame, it makes for a highly satisfying 100 minutes of largely dialogue-free apocalyptic monster horror sci-fi.

6. Heretic – While at times it has the quality of an extended Socratic, Miltonian debate on the nature of faith and evil, by rights, Heretic, should feel stagey with its long dialogue heavy scenes, but such is the skill of Hugh Grant’s performance, it manages to stay grippingly cinematic throughout. Intelligent horror at its very best.

5. All of Us Strangers – A mood piece about loneliness, sexuality and grief? Or a haunted house ghost story? You decide. But enjoy Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy at their very best while you do so.

4. Monkey Man – Dev Patel’s breathless  directorial debut – a non-stop, visceral, head-banging, ultra-violent, blood-soaked, pugilistic orgy, arriving on our screens by way of John Wick, Bollywood, Hong Kong; by way of the late Tony Scott with Essence de Walter Hill; by way of Hindu myth, the Mahabharata and even a soupçon of Karate Kid for good measure – didn’t get anything like the praise or attention it warranted, so I’m sticking it near the top of my list in a humble attempt to remedy that.

3. Speak No Evil – Dismissed by some as a nuts and bolts home invasion variant, this English Language remake of the 2022 Dutch-Danish original is tighter than a gnat’s mankini. The plotting is a screenwriter’s delight, the suspense and scares all brilliantly executed. Not a line is wasted, every frame moves the story on and James McAvoy is at his believably manic best.

2. Grand Theft Hamlet – As my kids would say: ‘What even is this film?’ A ‘documentary’ recorded entirely inside the virtual reality of Grand Theft Auto online, two out of work actors, in hunky avatar form, attempt to stage the entirety of Hamlet without getting totaled by ‘griefers’ or blown to pulp by stray RPGs. The movie asks more questions than I can list here, the most important of which is: ‘What even is reality?’

1. Bird – For its first 45 minutes, the only genre Andrea Arnold’s latest celebration of jiggly-wiggly camerawork belongs to is that of tiresome post-Loach gritty urban poverty porn… until it becomes something else altogether. As indefinable genre mash-ups go, this is right up there, with Barry Keoghan’s tattoo-emblazoned Bug laying the butt-dancing ghost of Saltburn firmly to rest. Nykiya Adams is surely destined for a Best Newcomer gong for her portrayal of the deeply conflicted Bailey. And as for Frank Rogowski’s Bird… well… is he, or isn’t he? My film of the year.

I’ve loved 2024 for its imaginative cinematic invention, and while it would be rational to fear what 2025 has in store for us in terms of war, despotic regimes, the rise of the far right – not to mention climate breakdown – as long as Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t treat us to Megalopolis II we should be fine.

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