My top 5 horror films:
Alien.
Ridley Scott's ‘Alien’ was a great take on the original 'haunted house' story; unfortunate occupants of an inescapable setting in dire peril. It’s a true classic, in which the crew of the Nostromo follow up on a 'distress call', and in so doing, pick up a parasitic organism which begins exterminating the crew one by one. The dark corridors of the ship and pitiful helplessness of the cast, when faced with such a formidable killing machine, make for a compelling view. The sequel ‘Aliens’ is different, but a great movie nonetheless. The other films are a mixed bag, and the less said about the ‘vs’ films the better.

The Fly (1986).
There’ve been a few versions of ‘The Fly’, the hubristic story of a maverick scientist who figuratively flies too close to the sun with his teleportation experiments (loosely based on Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’) but the 1986 film starring Jeff Goldbloom is by far the best. When he accidentally combines his DNA with that of a housefly, he is subject to some truly horrific mutations in which his human form slowly deteriorates, and man-fly takes over. As well as his increasingly freakish appearance, equally disturbing is his fly-like behaviour such as vomiting onto his food before he eats. Not for the faint-hearted.

Let the Right One In
Straight out of Sweden in 2008 came ‘Låt den rätte komma in’, with the focus of the story being on two children. Well, a 12 year old boy by the name of Oskar, to be exact; the other is a centuries old vampire with the body of a young girl, known as Eli, whose only apparent friend is a reclusive, elderly man with unsavoury nocturnal habits. It’s both a horror and love story, with the child actors providing sterling performances. Like a Hemingway novel, a great deal of the content in LtROI is in the subtext – particularly the meaning of the ending.

The Silence of the Lambs
FBI star pupil Clarice Starling gets fast-tracked out of her training programme to assist in the ‘Buffalo Bill’ case – an insane serial abductor and killer of “it rubs the lotion on its skin” fame. Her first task is to quiz the incarcerated psychiatrist-serial murderer Dr Hannibal Lecter, for clues as to Bill’s identity and frame of mind. The chase to catch Bill before the death of a Senator’s daughter takes a back seat to Antony Hopkins’ performance as Lecter, which earned him the 1992 Oscar as ‘Best Actor’, as he skilfully manipulates the law in order to escape confinement.

The Omen (NOT THE REMAKE!)
Damien Thorn is not the  wee boy he may at first seem. Entrenching a new horror trope forevermore, ‘creepy kid’, The Omen’s premise is that a man, Robert Thorn, secretly switches the dead baby which was stillborn by his wife with a mysterious orphan who was born on 6th June, 1966 at 6 in the morning, without her knowledge so as to not leave her distraught. This is shown to have been not a terribly smart move when all kinds of ghastly things begin to occur as Damien grows up, and Damien’s terrifying identity becomes clear. There’s great music throughout, too.