To accompany his Top 10 SF movies, regular SFB contributor looks at the big screen horrors that have caught his eye in 2023…

2023 hasn’t been a vintage year for horror, missing those classics that truly resonate with our deeper universal fears or expose the cracks in our resilience to the ‘geists’ haunting this particular ‘zeit’. Perhaps, because the world is so stressful at the moment, our fears have nowhere to hide. If Horror is about playing hide and seek in the darkest shadows of the collective psyche, then when the world is just plain scary to start with, it’s harder for movie scares to find their niche. This might explain why a couple of contenders in this year’s list aren’t traditional horror at all – but, rather, explorations of naked brutality.

10. Scream VI – I enjoyed the first Scream movie way back when, but lost patience after the second, and didn’t bother again until this sixth instalment was hailed as reviving the franchise. It’s certainly entertaining, and the meta stuff is fun, but once you’ve been as meta as Scream there’s no way back and it’s impossible for it to be truly scary at all.

9. The Eternal Daughter – While Tilda Swinton has been rightfully lauded for her acting chops as she haunts herself in Joanna Hogg’s worthy mother-daughter guilt-fest, this is film drama borrowing a few horror tropes rather than truly understanding them. Anally retentive horror purists may find themselves frustrated. Why are you looking at me?

8. Unwelcome – Whether you call them leprechauns or, more correctly, ‘Far Darrigs’, the knife wielding Celtic imps in John Wright’s really quite bonkers folk horror are just too silly to take seriously. Despite – or because of – the gales of laughter around the cinema when I saw it, Unwelcome was memorably entertaining.

7. Pearl – More bonkersness ensued with Ti West’s blood-spattered slice of American Gothic. I’m not sure it amounted to very much, but like Unwelcome it was hugely entertaining, and Mia Goth is a compelling screen presence.

6. The Blackening – An exploration of racist stereotyping (and self-stereotyping) through the medium of Cabin-In-The-Woods comedy horror. Laugh out loud funny with a few decent jump scares. It gets a bit lost in its final act, but largely achieves what it sets out to do, especially when it shakes itself free from the legacy of Jordan Peele’s era-defining Get Out.

5. Tin & Tina – Damien, Regan, The Midwich Cuckoos – who doesn’t love a sweet looking kid possessed by malevolent forces? And that’s without even talking about Kevin. Hiding in the shadows of Netflix’s international catalogue, this Spanish chiller looks like a B-Movie, but makes an intelligent stab at the worst excesses of state-sanctioned Catholicism and the legacy of fascism in post-Franco Spain.

4. Infinity Pool – Cronenberg Jnr attempts to out Cronenberg his Dad in this in-your-face orgy of masochistic brutality. Hedonistic tourists get to watch themselves being brutally executed in a high concept movie that strains at the boundaries between horror and just plain horrible. I rather liked it.

3. Piggy – It is often said that the best horror sits in the shadows, but in Carlota Pareda’s impressive debut feature, you are squinting your eyes in the blinding afternoon sun of a run-down town, somewhere in central Spain, as Sara struggles with her weight and her self-image – not to mention the bullies that subject her to unrelenting daily taunts – and the danger lurking in plain sight. Claustrophobic Spanish horror at its best.

2. Holy Spider – Where does graphic true crime end and horror begin? It was hard to avoid this question, pinned to my seat, watching Ali Abbasi’s fictionalised account of Iranian serial killer Saeed Hanaei. This is brilliantly executed cinema – and truly horrific – although this isn’t the horror of the psyche, rather the horror of human brutality stripped bare for all to see.

1. Talk To Me – Possibly the most traditional of this year’s picks, an exquisitely plotted and emotionally driven teen horror. The tropes may seem familiar, but true to Australia’s recent run of genre-redefining movies, Talk To Me tells a great story whilst saying something profound about grief, addiction and psychosis. Best of all, it doesn’t cop out in its final act. My most satisfying horror experience of the year by far.

Here’s to 2024 – may its horrors be confined to the silver screen… please.

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