Nothing But the Night (1972)
The one and only film produced by Christopher Lee’s production company, this sets up an interesting premise about a mysterious orphanage but fails to quite make it work
Horror
Nothing But Trouble (1991)
The only film ever directed by Dan Aykroyd, a bizarre oddity that was a huge flop on its initial release. The film is a strange comedy set in an American Gothic junkyard town where even the smallest legal infractions are punished by death. Aykroyd can’t seem to decide it the tone is comedy or horror
Nothing Left to Fear (2013)
A horror film produced by Slash of Guns’n’ Roses fame about a family moving to a new town only to find they have been brought there for a sinister purpose
Nothing Underneath (1985)
A superior example of the giallo film. Not quite up with the works of Dario Argento, this still has considerable stylishness, along with a plot that borrows from Eyes of Laura Mars
Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2010)
Film in the faux grindhouse style created by Tarantino and Rodriguez made as homage to the so-called nunsploitation genre. While operating on a low-budget, this has a great pulp energy that delivers in aces on all three title promises
Nudist Colony of the Dead (1991)
This holds the distinction of being the world’s first gonzo zombie film – oh and the first zombie musical too. Not many zombies (or nude bodies), the song lyrics are occasionally amusing but the film’s humour is schoolboyish, and the effort amateurish on the whole
The Nun (2018)
Another spinoff from The Conjuring films. James Wan is one of the finest horror directors of the 2010s but has had difficulty imparting his skills to the directors of the films he has produced. This feels like a fairground haunted house show of tedious and repetitive pop-up shocks that runs free of any connection to a plot
The Nun II (2023)
More from James Wan’s The Conjuring Universe, this places more focus on mood and atmosphere than The Nun’s ludicrous jump effects
Nurse 3-D (2013)
A splendidly trashy film that throws all good taste to the wind The title role is played by a sizzling, substantially undressed Paz de la Huerta. While deficient in acting ability, she delivers an hilarious voiceover
The Nurse (1997)
Psycho-thriller with Lisa Zane as a nurse seeking vengeance for the death of her father
Nurse Sherri (1978)
Al Adamson was a director whose output closely resembled that of Edward D. Wood, Jr. This was Adamson’s contribution to the 1970s fad for possession and exorcism films, although is a dull film lacking even in many of the shock tropes that the other Exorcist copies pulled off
Oasis of the Zombies (1981)
One of the original Nazi zombies films with zombies protecting an oasis that hides a gold treasure. This was made by prolific exploitation director Jess Franco meaning that much of the film’s potential is drowned in cheap production values and bad dubbing
The Objective (2008)
The co-director of The Blair Witch Project makes a film about soldiers lost in the desert encountering mysterious lights in the sky. Essentially Blair Witch but with lost soldiers facing UFO phenomena
The Oblong Box (1969)
One of the films seeking to exploit the fad for Edgar Allan Poe adaptations started by Roger Corman in the 1960s. This has nothing to do with the Poe story and mostly shuffles around the familiar elements of the cycle
Observance (2015)
A man surveilling a woman finds strange goings-on and becomes infected by something. This is essentially Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation played as a horror film; alas, while this does a fine job in the build-up, it lacks a third act that explains anything at all
Obsession (2025)
A nerdy guy’s wish to have a girl love him goes badly wrong turning her into something deranged. This became a word of mouth box-office hit and signals Curry Barker as a major new genre director
The Occupant (2020)
Spain’s Pastor Brothers have been rising genre name in the last few years. This is a psycho film concerning an unemployed man forced out of his apartment who returns to manipulate the life of the new tenant
Octane (2003)
Thriller where Madeleine Stowe’s daughter is abducted by a blood drinking cult while on a road trip
The OctoGames (2022)
The South Korean tv series Squid Games with people forced to play deadly versions of children’s games was a surprise international hit on Netflix. This is the low-budget horror copycat
Oculus (2013)
A couple of years ago, the hauntingly eerie Absentia made Mike Flanagan into a must-watch director; this is his follow-up – the story of an evil mirror that, while slightly the lesser of Absentia, conducts some undeniably effective games of reality and illusion
Oddity (2024)
An Irish film that develops an incredibly uncanny atmosphere as a blind clairvoyant turns up at the home where her sister was murder and deduces the truth about what happened
Of Unknown Origin (1983)
Underrated film with Peter Weller as a Wall Street banker who has his life overturned in trying to deal with a tenacious, seemingly hyper-intelligent rat that invades his home
Off Season (2021)
From the increasingly underrated Mickey Keating, a film about a ghostly small town where Keating creates an incredibly eerie and haunted atmosphere
The Offering (2016)
Singaporean film that offers an assemblage of cliches elements from various horror films in a mishmash of hauntings, possession, occult happenings and ominous Biblical portents that make little sense in terms of explanatory rationale
The Offering (2022)
Undeniably reminiscent of the standout The Vigil, a horror film set around an Orthodox Jewish funeral home that creates great uncanny mood
Officer Downe (2016)
Comic-book adaptation about a cop that is resurrected from the dead to take on the toughest assignments. Feels like a throwback to an 80s film like Maniac Cop or Dead Heat where the film is killed by the tiresomely cliched appropriation of the faux grindhouse aesthetic
Offspring (2009)
A strong and at times quite brutal film about a town that is terrorised by attacks from a feral cannibal family. The controversial The Woman was a better-known sequel
Ogre (2008)
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
Old (2021)
M. Night Shyamalan gets more of a bad rap than he is due. I am happy to argue that this, which is set around a beach where people rapidly age, is one of his best films to date
The Old Dark House (1932)
A classic Old Dark House thriller from director James Whale, a droll comedy of wonderfully stylised Gothic mood and featuring a near-perfectly cast line-up of eccentrics creeping about
The Old Dark House (1963)
The oddest collaborations of its era – between Hammer Films and William Castle renowned for his sensationalist gimmicks, who conduct a remake of James Whale’s droll horror comedy. Alas, Castle only turns out a broad farce
Old Man (2022)
Lucky McKee, director of May and The Woman, makes a film about two men meeting at a cabin in the woods where secrets emerge amid psychological tensions between the two
Old People (2022)
German film in which the elderly abruptly turn and begin attacking the young en masse
Oldboy (2003)
Electrifyingly ultra-violent film from Park Chan-wook who ably borrows from Takashi Miike. The film equally becomes a conceptual twister as the protagonist is forced to go on a reality-bending quest through his own life.
Oldboy (2013)
Spike Lee’s English-language remake of Oldboy is an abortion. Where Park Chan-Wook directed the original with an insane energy, whereas Lee only delivers a formula action film and fumbles the ending
Older Gods (2023)
An original work that conjures a fantastic sense of ominous Lovecraftian cosmic horror as a man is haunted by a cult whose purpose is to wake a slumbering deity that is dreaming all of reality
The Omen (1976)
This is where all the cliches of Devil Children began. A big hit among the 1970s occult boom, this is essentially Sunday tabloid Christianity – a lurid, doom-filled take on Book of Revelation End Times prophecies that moves with a slick polish and a series of schlocky deaths every few minutes
The Omen (2006)
The classic 1976 Anti-Christ film is given the remake treatment. The production look slick but quickly disappears into forgettability
Ominous (2015)
Another of the films with sinister-sounding adjectives that sprung up in the wake of Insidious, this is a cut price copy of The Omen about a child resurrected from the dead who causes a series of deaths
Once Bitten (1985)
One of several vampire comedies that came out in the 1980s , an unfunny effort with a young unknown Jim Carrey as a teen looking to lose his virginity being seduced by vampire countess Lauren Hutton
100 Bloody Acres (2012)
An Australian Backwoods Brutality comedy, which amusingly inverts the genre’s clichés, not dissimilar to Tucker and Dale vs Evil
One Cut of the Dead (2017)
The idea of a zombie film all shot in a single take. This proves a novelty amusement but then the film spins this on its head and becomes positively ingenious.
One Cut of the Dead in Hollywood (2019)
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest and most hilariously original takes on the zombie film of recent. This is a sequel
One Hour Photo (2002)
Robin Williams gives a creepy performance as a one hour photo employee with stalkery tendencies who becomes obsessed with a family
100 Feet (2008)
This lifts the premise of Disturbia – protagonist confined to home detention who spies a killer next door – but then asks what would happen if the space they were confined was haunted
One Missed Call (2003)
Cult director Takashi Miike jumps aboard the J-horror fad of the 2000s and makes a Ringu copy that substitutes haunted videos for haunted cellphone calls. Two sequels and an English-language remake followed
One Missed Call (2008)
Probably the worst among the mid-00s fad for English-language remakes of Japanese horror films. Takashi Miike’s original is reduced to affectless CGI pop-up scares
One Missed Call 2 (2005)
Sequel to the Japanese original, not the English-language remake. This quickly forgets about haunted phonecalls and becomes even more of a copy of Ring, the inspiration of the original, and fails at generating spooky atmosphere
One Missed Call: Final (2006)
Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call was one of the more popular of the Ringu-influenced Japanese ghost stories, concerning a viral curse passed by cellphone calls. This was the second Japanese sequel
1BR (2019)
A girl moves into a new and welcoming apartment complex only to be imprisoned and tortured by her neighbours into following the code of moral precepts by which they live
Oni Baba (1964)
A classic Japanese ghost story (kaidan eiga) about two women who survive by preying on passersby. This adopts the lyrical realism of the era and builds to reach an incredibly haunted conclusion
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Individualistic indie director Jim Jarmusch tackles the vampire film. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are fantastically well paired as the two bored title lovers. Beautifully filmed but, typical of Jarmusch, one where not a lot happens
Open House (1987)
Shabby entry in the slasher genre with a radio talkback host receiving calls from a killer who is slaughtering female realtors
Open Water (2003)
A true story about a couple on a diving expedition who are accidentally stranded in a sea of sharks. A minimalist film, shot almost completely at sea, that works up incredibly raw tension
Open Windows (2014)
This Nacho Vigalondo film prefigured Unfriended with everything taking place on a computer screen. A far more adventurous film with a wildly entertaining plot about celebrity stalking
Opera (1987)
This may well be the finest of Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers. Set around the production of an opera, this offers a series of murder set-pieces staged with an artistry that is as extraordinary as their sadism
The Oracle (1985)
From cult director Roberta Findlay, this is a film about a haunted ouija board. What is going on doesn’t make a lot of sense but Findlay serves up a series of bizarre deaths that prove entertainingly absurd
Orca (1977)
After his crass remake of King Kong, Dino de Laurentiis went on to make this blatant copy of Jaws, which was widely ridiculed. Contrarily, i rather liked it – a Moby Dick by way of Jaws, it comes with some visually fantastic moments
The Ordeal (2004)
A Belgian-made venture into Backwoods Brutality territory that keeps heading into stranger and more disturbing places until it almost seems to be taking place on another planet altogether
Orgy of the Dead (1965)
Thought to be a long-lost Edward D. Wood, Jr film for many years. Although only written by Wood, this has all the bad acting and hilarious purple prose of a Wood film. The film consists of strippers doing routines in a graveyard
Orphan (2009)
Another variant on the evil child film featuring a maliciously psychopathic Isabelle Fuhrman
Orphan: First Kill (2022)
I was fairly ho-hum about the first Orphan but this is a sequel that entirely surprises you
The Orphan Killer (2011)
Modern-day run through of the slasher film with the heroine pursued through a school by an axe-wielding maniac. This leaps into the basics with a real brutality and wades in buckets of gore
The Orphanage (2007)
A Spanish ghost story that effectively eschews modern jumpshock tactics in favour of subtle old-fashioned scares
Orphans and Angels (2003)
New Zealand made film about a woman who falls under the influence of a sinister stranger who plies her with drugs
Oƨombie (2012)
This surely takes the cake amid the fad for wacky zombie films in which Osama bin Laden is resurrected as a zombie. Imagine a mash-up between Zero Dark Thirty and a zombie film
The Other (1972)
Classic horror film about good and evil twins that creates a good deal of sinister effect and arrives at a much imitated twist
The Other Side of the Door (2016)
From Johannes Roberts, the director of 47 Meters Down and other works, an undeniably spooky variant on Pet Sematary set in Mumbai as a mother unwittingly resurrects her late son’s spirit
The Others (2001)
Alejandro Amenabar directed ghost story made not longer after The Sixth Sense that works with nicely subtle effect and arrives at an unexpected twist ending that turn the standard haunted house tale on its head
Otis (2008)
Film about a big overweight psycho who abducts girls and makes them enact a fantasy of being a cheerleader. Produced by one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project
Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008)
Bruce LaBruce made the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film with L.A. Zombie. This was an earlier trial run, less a porn film and more down around the level of a student art film
Ouija (2014)
Blumhouse horror film based around the Parker Brothers boardgame. Modern multiplex horror films don’t come more generic than this. On the other hand, you cannot deny that debuting director Stiles White creates some occasionally quite spooky moments, it’s just that the rest of the show comes entirely by the numbers
The Ouija Exorcism (2015)
Another title jumping on the fad for ouija board films we’ve had since Blumhouse’s Ouija series, this concerning an ouija board that has a malevolent spirit trapped inside it. Routine tension by the numbers – possessed people with glowing eyes are just not that scary
Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
Blumhouse’s Ouija didn’t get many good reviews but they proceeded with a prequel here. This is automatically the better film from the outset by employing Mike Flanagan, behind amazing works like Absentia, Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, as director, even if it comes out as one of Flanagan’s lesser works
Ouija Shark 2 (2022)
A sequel to the Gonzo Killer Shark film Ouija Shark, this goes even crazier
Ouija Shark (2020)
Another in the spate of deliberately ridiculous killer shark films concerning a ghost shark that emerges from an ouija board
Ouija: Summoning (2015)
A bafflingly incoherent effort – quite what it is about I am at a loss to explain. The sole distinction it has that it was repackaged from its anonymous original title to market it on the tail of Blumhouse’s Ouija: Origin of Evil despite the fact an ouija board only briefly features at the start
Out of the Blue (2006)
Film based on a true-life shooting spree in the tiny nowhere New Zealand town of Aramoana
Out of the Body (1989)
A cheapie from cult Ozploitation director Brian Trenchard-Smith about a man having clairvoyant visions of an astral killer
Outback Vampires (1987)
One of the most head-scratchingly bizarre efforts among the great Ozploitation fad – a comedy about vampires in an Australian Outback town
Outcast (2010)
Absolutely fascinating Irish-Scottish film about people hunting each other with arcane sorceries on a rundown Edinburgh council estate … Compulsively fascinating in its often enigmatic approach, while depicting magic on screen in a way unlike anything we have seen before
Outlaw (2007)
British vigilante film that strains at issues of social relevance but only ends up parroting Death Wish cliches
Outpost (2007)
Above average revival of the Nazi zombie concept in a film that has spawned two sequels. The plot of soldiers venturing into an old bunker is conducted with tight, lean suspense and some undeniably gory dispatches
Outpost: Black Sun (2012)
Outpost was a solid and reasonably effective rehashing of the Nazi zombie theme; this was the first of two sequels. The first had a formula that seems difficult to mess up but this does – it’s over half the film before we get zombies after which we get Just the Same As Before and little more
Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz (2013)
Outpost was a modestly effective Nazi zombie film. This was the second of two sequels, a prequel that goes back to depict the original Nazi experiments
Outside Ozona (1998)
Thriller following several different people as they drive towards the title Texas town, while a serial killer calls into an all-night radio talkback
The Outwaters (2022)
An ultra cryptic Found Footage film about mysterious happenings in the desert
Over Your Dead Body (2014)
The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play
Overlord (2018)
J.J. Abrams’ produced film about soldiers encountering Nazi mad science experiments during WWII. Despite a decent budget thrown at it, this was a box-office failure. It may be that in a genre where we have gravitated to films about Nazi zombies and Nazi moonbases, this was just too tame
The Owners (2020)
Maisie Williams and an aging Sylvester McCoy in a film about house burglars who break in to a home to discover sinister things afoot
The Oxbow Cure (2013)
Canadian film about a woman alone in a cabin that has a set-up that seems to be heading in the direction of an effective horror film about cabin fever and/or paranoia – only for things to then get completely baffling as to what is happening
Oxygen (1999)
An abduction thriller that draws much influence from The Silence of the Lambs with Adrien Brody as a smooth criminal genius manipulating his interrogator
Ozark Sharks (2016)
A surprisingly amiable entry in the gonzo killer shark genre from director Misty Talley who seems to be making this her own genre niche
P2 (2007)
Tense and twist-filled thriller with Rachel Nichols trapped inside a carpark building by a psychopathic Wes Bentley
Pacific Heights (1990)
Thriller in which landlords Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith’s lives are terrorised by psychopathic tenant Michael Keaton
The Pack (1977)
Solid and effective entry in the 1970s Animals Attack genre with a group on an island under attack by killer dogs
The Pack (2015)
Rather effective Australian killer dog film. The film streamlines anything extraneous in the plot and gets down to the business at hand of a family living in the Outback being terrorised by a pack of wild dogs, at which you have to admit it generates a reasonable hand of tension
The Pact (2012)
Modestly effective film about a haunted suburban house. Debuting director Nicholas McCarthy produces a number of accomplished and eerie scares that stand him as a promising new name. The film weakens in the last act when trying to tie everything together with an improbable rationale
The Pact II (2014)
The Pact was a modest and rather effective ghost story about a serial killer hiding inside the walls of a house. This seems to be straining to find some way to justify any relevance a sequel – for one, where do you go with the premise? Another killer hiding inside a different family home?
Pale Blood (1990)
A vacant and stylistically empty modern vampire film that is all posed mood