Emily Blunt in a scene from upcoming horror film A Quiet Place.
Emily Blunt in a scene from upcoming horror film A Quiet Place.
Horror is having a moment. Last year marked the biggest yet for the genre at the box office, with unprecedented hits like It and Get Out.
The latter film has gone on to land four Oscar nominations, an impressive feat for a film whose genre is often ignored by the Academy Awards.
Horror's winning streak looks set to continue, with 2018 stacked with a number of highly-anticipated films looking set to scare the pants off audiences around the world.
We've rounded up five you should brace yourselves for.
It's once in a blue moon that a film receives the same kind of praise Hereditary received when it premiered at Sundance Film Festival a few weeks ago. Critics described the film as one that doesn't just scare: it traumatises. "This isn't a scary movie," wrote The A.V. Club's A.A. Dowd, "It's pure emotional terrorism."
Starring the underrated and always excellent Toni Collette, Hereditary appears to follow a family who are haunted by supernatural occurrences after the death of their grandmother – but you can bet the story's probably not that simple.
Hereditary is distributed by industry game-changers A24 (the studio behind The Witch, It Comes at Night and Green Room) and it even has the iconic character actress Ann Dowd in it. Prepare yourself.
A Quiet Place (April 5)
Horror that plays with our senses - and deprives us of them - often strikes gold; the chilling Lights Out (2016) looked at what hides in the dark, while the hyper-tense Don't Breathe (2016) pitted its characters against a blind villain.
Next to play with that formula will be A Quiet Place, starring real-life husband and wife John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (with the former on directing duties).
The film establishes a post-apocalyptic world in which a supernatural evil is attracted to sound, forcing a family to live in silence and communicate in sign language. As well as looking scary as hell, Krasinski also put in the effort to hire a real-life deaf actor in child prodigy Millicent Simmonds.
A Quiet Place looks it'll be an incredibly tense, eerily silent watch – make sure you're not the first to scream in the cinema.
Winchester (February 22)
"Based on a true story" is always a great hook for horror films. No matter how much creative license the filmmakers take, any link back to reality makes a horror just that much scarier.
Winchester: The House that Ghosts Built is based on the real-life story of firearms heiress Sarah Winchester, who lived in a mansion believed to be haunted by the lives taken by the rifles her husband invented.
But for some, the unparalleled Helen Mirren sauntering around a mansion in a gothic black gown, while ghosts are busy wreaking havoc, will provide enough entertainment for some.
Annihilation (March)
This mind-bending sci-fi horror is directed by Alex Garland, who pushed the boundaries of sci-fi with his directorial debut Ex Machina (2015). Annihilation follows a team of scientists – played by a knockout cast of Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodrigues and Jennifer Jason Leigh – who enter into a stunning, surreal zone called "The Shimmer" which appears to be bending the laws of nature.
Kiwi viewers will have to wait for Annihilation to arrive on Netflix in order to see it, a decision made after a producer believed it was "too intellectual" to profit from a worldwide theatrical release – which, when you think about it, is a pretty great problem for a film to have.
Far too many horrors rely on cheap effects and jump scares for entertainment, but trailers for Annihilation make it look like something new entirely.
Just when you thought the zombie genre was reaching the end of its life, The Cured seems ready to breathe new life into the concept with a fresh, socio-political take.
Set in a world in which a cure has been found to turn zombies back into people, The Cured follows a woman (Ellen Page) who welcomes her brother-in-law back into her family as society spurns the former zombies and treats them as second-class citizens.
The film throws up a number of allegories about our society, and while some horror fans may be deterred by its slow pace, critics say The Cured tightly builds towards a "harrowing action climax". This may be one for fans of scary films that resonate deeper, and frighten in more than one way.
