What films to watch this Halloween

Halloween is about a lot of things - for the students for Nottingham, for example, it seems to be about energetic yet faintly unconvincing costumes and the consumption of scarily large quantities of booze. For kids, it seems to increasingly be about demanding treats or offering tricks - even in this country. For me, though, it is about watching horror on the TV.

Now, let me clarify - I'm not talking about the visceral, gut wrenching horror that you might see in the Saw film series or torture porn flicks like Hostel. There's arguably a place for those sort of films - certainly, the money studios make on those films show that there is both a market and a fan-base for those types of movies. But for me they are horrific movies, but seldom actually manage to be scary. It is a different type of film that is genuinely unsettling.

My own favourite - possibly of all time - is Ghostwatch. It created a massive response when it was first broadcast, and is a key point in the ongoing popular genre of the mockumentary. It manages, through astute use of its framing device and through careful, almost clinical use of a ghostly figure, to drag the viewer into the fictional world and leave them deeply unsettled at the very least. It takes the simple word "Pipes" and turns it into a powerful entity whose potential reach is both awesome and terrifying. It is like the very best of Nigel Kneale combined with creatively astute people who understood that unconventional means can make a ghost story more effective than ever. There's a generation of children who were shocked by Ghostwatch when it was first broadcast, and remember it to this day. And often their memories end with "and we turned it off before it reached the end."

A more traditional, yet still very creepy, ghost story is The Woman in Black. Whilst I'd recommend the book, there is also a very effective film adaptation - if you can get hold of it. Unfortunately, the novelist hates the film adaptation, and it took me a lot of searching to get hold of a copy of the video. However, it was worth the effort since it manages to produce some very creepy moments and some genuinely terrifying moments. Through the locations used for filming, the music, the restrained acting and the occasionally glimpsed but always striking apparition of the woman in black, it convinces you that there is a malign force in a remote house. A malign force that is determined to damage those it comes into contact with. The most memorable scene is probably the one when Arthur Kidd awakes to the sound of a ghostly child, only to be menaced by a looming vision of the woman in black. Yet for me the creepiest scene - and the one most evocative of what the tone of the film is like - is the scene where Arthur Kidd, alone at Eel Marsh House, encounters the woman. He sees her staring at him, and as she slowly starts to move towards him, he turns and flees into the house, locking the door behind him, panicking.

As I said, you'll be lucky to get hold of a copy of The Woman In Black, so instead The Innocents does a very similar job, but with added ambiguity. Again, there are menacing figures seen from a distance and then - very suddenly - up close. But unlike in both The Woman In Black and Ghostwatch, The Innocents (a film adaptation of The Turn of the Screw) refuses to categorically state that ghosts exist. Either we have a very powerful haunting that is trying to harm two children, or we have a couple of children in the care of an unstable and increasingly delusional woman. The horror comes from the fact that the ending is inevitable - even if it cannot be conclusively explained.

So those would be my suggestions for a bit of spooky Halloween viewing - and if you are in the US, it may also be worth seeing Paranormal Activity. Not having seen it myself, I have no idea whether it is any good, but it looks like a good choice for anyone who wants more from their horror films than a bit of blood and guts.