5 films to watch on Halloween

Let's be clear about this - the following five horror movies are not the best horror movies of all time. You could find better horror movies to watch on Halloween (if you are so inclined). But these films - as disparate as they might at first appear - are thematically linked. And I find the theme linking them fascinating and they all contain something that makes a horror film at least unsettling, if not properly chilling.

And it is fair to say that there are spoilers ahead.

First up, with have The Omen. A film notorious for its increasingly inventive death scenes (something that would come to dominate the franchise), the film includes the impaling of a former Doctor Who and the decapitation of a key character. It is also a masterwork in faux pomposity, even down to inventing a poem from the Bible to add credence to its really rather ludicrous story. Yet the reason why this film remains credible in my eyes has nothing to do with the fancy deaths or the admirable efforts by all concerned to play their roles with a straight face despite some of the outlandish scenarios and the wince-inducing dialogue. At the heart of this film there is a force so powerful, and so unstoppable, that as soon as you come into conflict with its malign intentions it kills you. You can't run; it will find you and despatch you. The Exorcist may have had the spinal tap sequence, the vomiting, the weird nightmares and the aggressive demon, but in the end the Church saves the day and the little girl is Ok. Contrast this with the ending to The Omen - the heroes are all dead and the demon child is now with the President of the United States of America. All the efforts of those on the side of the good were for naught - evil wins.

Which is also true in Paranormal Activity. Of course, this film doesn't have spectacular death scenes. It didn't have the money to film such things. Instead, what it does have is an unstoppable force that, despite the best efforts of the couple at the centre of the film (which are a lot more credible than those in The Omen but just as ineffective), is always going to win. And in a sense, the demon in Paranormal Activity is than the satanic forces at play in The Omen. See, in The Omen people die when they try to interfere with the progress of the antichrist. In Paranormal Activity the main characters have done nothing to warrant the haunting and the eventual death/possession. The demon is just fucking with them because it can. It is a chilling concept - something far more malign and powerful than you decides to terrify, stalk, attack and then possess you and kill your lover. In fact, that force - given it is invisible - might even be in the room with you now... but that's enough of that.

You could argue that the students in The Blair Witch Project have done something to invoke the witch's wrath - although the witch's revenge does seem a little excessive for the "crime" of simply shooting a documentary on her manor. Nonetheless, The Blair Witch Project fits in with our theme, as the trio of would-be documentary makers end up at the mercy of an unseen, malevolent force determined to stalk, terrify, and then remove them from the face of the earth. True, some people don't rate The Blair Witch Project but for me it works because it makes its main characters so helpless. To a large extent it is a claustrophobic film despite being filmed in the open air, because the power of the witch is such that she manages to make the forest into a prison that the protagonists just cannot escape from. The fact that the witch - like the demon in Paranormal Activity - is unseen merely adds to the feeling that the power of the supernatural element in the film is massive.

You can see who the source of evil is in The Medusa Touch - he's played by Richard Burton and everything. But this underrated, clever little film slowly chips away at the methodical, orderly approach taken by the police investigating an attempted murder and shows the awesome power in the mind of the antagonist. This is a man who makes Carrie White look tame - he has the power to destroy space missions, to make planes crash into buildings and - in the climax of the film - "bring the whole edifice down on their unworthy heads" as he destroys a Westminster Abbey filled with the ruling elite. The fact that the police managed to save some from the disaster is a pyrrhic victory; the final scene shows that the human monster has another - potentially must more devastating - target in mind. And he is still able to attack despite having been beaten into a bloody pulp and having been ripped off a life support machine. Such is the level of his misanthropy that effectively being killed will not stop the carnage.

You can also see the menace in the remake of Dawn of the Dead - although in this case it is not one man, but a whole world suddenly filled with cannibalistic zombie maniacs. The premise is not a million miles away from most zombie films - if you go outside, someone's going to bite off your face. But where this version of Dawn of the Dead succeeds is in making the situation in which the characters find themselves so utterly hopeless. The female lead only survives the initial outbreak through blind luck, and the mall that provides a brief respite is also located mainly through luck. When the group do try to do something to better their situation, it tends to go badly wrong. Trying to make things better in this film comes with a hefty body count. And this film does what surprisingly few zombie films are prepared to do - it ends with a clear indication (if you watch through the credits) that there is no option of sailing off happily into the sunset - in fact, the end of humanity is here, crushed under the weight of a world of zombies, and there is no hope.

Which is what makes all five films so striking - the evil/malign forces at play in each film are so powerful that the humans in the films are rendered helpless in the face of those forces. It doesn't matter whether it is satanic forces, or a demon/witch or a world full of zombies, whatever you do against them, you will fail and they will ultimately destroy you. Films like this strike at one of the fundamental (yet often false) assumptions many people have - that you are in control of what happens to you. These films depict far more powerful forces rendering individuals helpless even over questions of their own survival. And on so many levels, that is true horror for a good many people.

Enjoy your Halloween!