Martin Jameson presents his annual round up of the best horror movies…

For me, the joy of putting together an end of year ‘best of’ list is looking back at the 136 movies I have watched and comparing the notes I made at the time with what has stayed with me weeks or months later. It’s that emotional, retinal afterimage that gives a film its true value.

Plus, there’s always a pattern. If 2024 was notable for its genre crossovers 2025 has been striking by the absence of effective science fiction on the big screen with horror in its traditional forms taking centre stage, perhaps because globally fear is in the air. Movies like Mickey 17, The Running Man and Avatar: Fire and Ash, which might have been milestone releases in other years, felt weary and pointless. Perhaps, we are now so cowed by real world consequences of dystopian tech in the form of killer drones and climate breakdown, algorithms and A.I. there’s not much point fictionalising it any more.

Accordingly, the year kicked off with Robert Eggers’ lumbering take on F.W. Murnau’s benchmark Nosferatu, which, while setting the bar for classic horror retrospection, hasn’t lodged itself in my emotional memory at all, and hence doesn’t make my top ten. Other big horror releases that failed to lodge included 28 Years Later and Weapons. Instead, my chart rundown begins at:

10. Presence – Stephen Soderbergh’s ghostly POV movie, may have come over a bit like Casper, The Friendly Ghost as if reimagined by M. Night Shyamalan but it distinguished itself by going for its central stylistic premise and sticking with it. In the same breath, I could mention microbudget Brit-flicks Hallow Road and Restless, neither of which quite landed but were admirable for their dogged adherence to their simple central idea.

9. The Carpenter’s Son – If you missed this horror take on the Messiah’s biblical backstory think Smallville, but with Jesus, Satan and added leprosy. Roundly mocked by some, while it is hilarious in places, notably when Nicolas Cage’s Joseph starts intoning about ‘S’taaan’, Noah Jupe was convincing as the young J.C. and director Lofty Nathan deserves an award for the sheer chutzpah of getting it made.

8. The Surfer – Fresh from tutoring the Son of God in GCSE Woodwork, Nicolas Cage turned it up to eleven squared as the title character of Lorcan Finnegan’s movie, losing the plot (in more ways than one) in his attempt to ride the waves with his son on an Australian beach ruled by a macho surfer cult off their heads on hallucinogens. Over-the-top and then some, it still managed to be a masterclass in open air claustrophobia.

7. Keeper – There was more effective claustrophobia, as Osgood Perkins revealed a hitherto untapped talent for horror subtlety in this slow burn chiller mood-piece exploring the insatiable appetite for immortality reminiscent of Let The Right One In.

6. Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro’s fulfilment of his life’s ambition to reinvent Mary Shelley’s masterpiece ought to have been the movie event of the year. Instead, it came and went – to Netflix streaming – in the blink of a reanimated eye, but where it lacked genuine horror punch it made up for it in sheer cinematic bravura, so it was sad to see it relegated to the small screen so quickly.

5. The Rule of Jenny Pen – Geoffrey Rush gives a career best performance as a curmudgeonly retired judge being tormented by fellow care home resident John Lithgow at his most demonically menacing. With nods to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? James Ashcroft’s intense psychological horror is genuinely scary, especially if you’re teetering on the edge of old age like this reviewer.

4. Good Boy – If Presence caught the attention by being shot entirely from the POV of a ghost, then Ben Leonberg’s Cabin-in-the-Woods chiller from the point of view of possibly the world’s cutest dog was even more memorable. Whether or not it quite sustained for the whole 75 minutes, canine star, Indy (a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever) had my heart a tremble from go to the inevitable woe.

3. A House of Dynamite – I may get a slap on the wrist from my esteemed editor for mixing genres here, but Katherine Bigelow’s horribly plausible nuclear chiller – a sort of Failsafe for the 21st century but without the happy ending – was by far the most viscerally terrifying 112 minutes I spent in a movie theatre this year.

2. Sinners – Top drawer vampire action acted as a conduit for a thoughtful essay on the Americanisation of the US’s migrant communities. In that respect, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is surprisingly close to The Brutalist, only shorter, more entertaining, less pretentious and actually more culturally astute… plus it has a score to (un)die for… literally.

1. Bring Her Back – While Sinners may have been the most technically ‘impressive’ horror offering of 2025, it is Bring Her Back that has stayed with me. I’ve seen both movies twice, but the Philippou brothers’ triumph by making us both cower and care with all our hearts. Sally Hawkins pulls off the extraordinary feat of embodying a woman with the most evil of intent, but for whom we feel, if not sympathy, then understanding. My film of the year by a very long way.

 

These are strange times for genre. The world stands unstreadily on the brink of terrifying realities, which far from being beyond our imagination, are already snapping at our heels. Let us all hope and pray that 2026 is the year when we start to push these fears back, safely, into the imaginative realm.

I’m not holding my breath.

 

 

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