Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, The First Omen is a visually arresting and exciting addition to an underachieving franchise that ups the stakes in this saga of evil rising in an increasingly secularised world.

Set in 1970s Rome, The First Omen stars Nell Tiger Free as Margaret, a novice nun from Massachusetts who is transferred to Rome where she is to take her final vows. Working in an orphanage, Margaret is drawn to Carlita (Nicole Sorace) a disturbed child whose mysterious past reveals a sinister plot to bring forth the birth of the antichrist.

Stevenson leans into the weirder aspects of the Omen story to create a religious horror mystery in which nightmare inducing imagery and body horror gore combine with rich period detail and stellar photography by Aaron Morton. Nell Tiger Free, meanwhile, delivers an astonishingly good performance as a fragile soul who undergoes a physical, spiritual, and psychological journey through hell.

With the China Brothers delivering tight efficient scares and Phoebe Tonkin providing a committed lead turn, Night Shift proves to be a solid addition to the pantheon of great hotel-motel horror movies.

Night Shift stars Phoebe Tonkin as Gwen, a new employee at the All-Tucked Inn motel, whose first shift just so happens to be during that time when the freaks come out to play. Inherited by the well-meaning yet overwhelmed Teddy Miles (Lamorne Morris), the All-Tucked Inn is overdue for a significant rehaul, with rats and cockroaches’ consistent guests at the establishment and the swimming pool engulfed by a nasty sinkhole. To top it off there may be a ghost in room 13, and a convicted murderer is on the loose.

Night Shift doesn’t necessarily reinvent the hotel horror movie, yet the China Brothers sure have fun with the sub-genre, combining paranormal, slasher, and crime mystery elements in the one horror package, resulting in a pleasantly terrifying stay.

Small in scale yet big in frights, Beezel is a terrifying horror experience that also introduced a new movie monster for the horror masses to feast on.

Directed by Aaron Fradkin (who wrote and produced the film with his wife Victoria), Beezel tells the story of how three generations of families are hounded by a sinister presence living beneath the floors of a New England home.

An independent feature that features great horror imagery and a fantastic score, Beezel often uses the power of anticipation with lingering shots of dark basements and claustrophobic crawlspaces leading to nightmare fuelled pay-offs that most mainstream films wish they could pull off.

Unnerving body-horror Stopmotion delves into the relationship between art and madness, resulting in an innovative and frightening feast for the senses.

A terrific Aisling Franciosi stars as Ella Blake, the put-upon daughter of famed stop motion animator Suzanne Blake (Stella Gonet) who decides to break-free and create her own stop motion project. Isolated from the world, Ella’s passion-project soon becomes a living nightmare that demands flesh, blood, and murderous obsession.

The feature-film directorial debut of Robert Morgan, Stopmotion is a stunning achievement that melds the worlds of real-life horror and stop motion animation fantasy to create a grizzly and terrifying portrayal of an artist unravelled by her horrific vision.

Arcadian treads on familiar ground in its story of an alien horde invading the world to cataclysmic results. Regardless, director Benjamin Brewer has delivered a film that is equally impactful as a horror and drama, with Arcadian filled with emotional stakes that enhances the films’ sensational scares.

Arcadian stars Nicolas Cage as Paul, a single father to twin boys Joseph and Thomas (Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins), who has kept his family safe on their fortified farm ever since the Earth was invaded by night-prowling alien beings over a decade ago. When Thomas is injured near his family farm, Paul must find him before night falls.

The alien monsters in Arcadian - odd in look and macabre in their application of murderous violence- are a frightening and vicious entry in the pantheon of sci-fi movie monsters. Nicolas Cage, meanwhile, plays a paternal figure with an impressive restraint, his hardened veneer occasionally breaking during those rare moments of joy, such as an impromptu driving lesson given to his sons, a moment of “normalcy” within an existence constantly on edge.

Directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods deliver an intelligent and crafty psychological religious horror in Heretic that takes its themes of faith, disbelief, and anti-religious bigotry seriously, while also playing their audience like marionettes as we are led from one scenario to the next with hand-over-face anticipation.

Heretic stars Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton (respectively), missionaries for the Church of Latter-Day Saints who find themselves at the front door of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant).

With a snowstorm brewing outside, Barnes and Paxton agree to enter Reed’s house and gab about God. It doesn’t take long for Mr. Reed’s façade to slip, leading to a twisted battle of survival as Reed tests the spiritual mettle of these Mormon women through his increasingly violent attempts to convince them that their belief in God is based on a lie.

As Mr. Reed, Grant delivers his scariest and strangely his most compelling performance yet. Grant has played villains before, yet his performance in Heretic is a special breed of scary, a combination of charming gentlemanly politeness, smug know-it-all ego, and cold savagery.

The Irish horror movie Oddity is a superbly frightening supernatural tale that also works as a murder mystery.

Oddity stars Carolyn Bracken as Darcy Odello, a blind clairvoyant who seeks to solve the murder of her twin sister Dani (also Bracken) who was brutally slayed in her new country abode while her psychiatrist husband worked the nightshift at the local mental facility. A year later Darcy visits the place of her sister’s death with vengeance in her heart and a strange wooden mannequin for company.

Director Damian Mc Carthy (Caveat) delivers a chilling ‘whodunnit’ headlined by terrific performances from Carolyn Bracken and Gwilym Lee, not to mention an unsettling creation in the form of a wooden mannequin that makes Annabelle look like a Barbie doll.  

The Robert Eggers directed remake of the 1922 German silent movie Nosferatu delivers an artistically uncompromising and doom-laden gothic horror about death, covenant, and the insidious nature of evil.

Set in the (fictional) German of Wisborg in 1838, Nosferatu stars Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, a newly-wed woman whose dark past delivers death to her doorstop in the form of the enigmatic vampire Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). With the help of her husband Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and Swiss alchemist Prof. Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), Ellen must stop Count Orlok before his foreboding shadow engulfs them all.

A genuinely scary opening scene in Nosferatu sets the stage for an unnerving gothic horror vampire movie in which Eggars delivers nightmare inducing imagery that seeps dread on the screen. Lily-Rose Depp delivers a stunning breakthrough lead performance that is erotic, disturbing and sympathetic in equal measure. Bill Skarsgard, meanwhile, is absolutely terrifying as Count Orlok, the monstrous vampire whose larger-than-life presence and intense gaze is heightened by a shuddering Eastern-European accent that is both growl and whisper.

An innovative serial killer thriller that messes with genre perceptions and gender dynamics, Strange Darling is an electric horror story of hunter and prey delivered by an exciting new filmmaking talent in JT Mollner.

Sweet Darling begins with an opening crawl that brings us up to speed regarding one of “the most prolific and unique serial killers of the 21st century”.  Through a series of six non-sequential chapters, we learn how a hook-up between Willa Fitzgerald’s “The Lady” and Kyle Gallner’s armed and dangerous “The Demon” leads to a high-stakes pursuit of killer and victim that is riveting in all its facets.

Mollner pulls off something of a miracle in his ability to deliver a fresh and exciting take on an over-represented sub-genre of horror/thriller film, with his excellent writing and unconventional story structure reminding somewhat of early Quentin Tarantino. As the “Lady” and “Demon” (respectively), Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner deliver exceptional performances. Fitzgerald is especially excellent in her portrayal of savagery and fragility inhabiting the same warped mind.

Presented as a lost recording of the “live TV event that shocked a nation!”, Late Night with the Devil is a unique horror movie experience in which scares are delivered under the bright lights of prime time. It is a feat that Australian directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes pull off with impressive flair, with the transparent nature of the late-night TV format restricting the usual horror cheat-codes of dark lighting and jump-scare sound trickery.

Late Night with the Devil stars David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, the struggling late-night host of Night Owls who after time away to grieve the death of his wife returns with a special Halloween episode in which the feature guest is a teenage girl named Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) who was recently saved from a satanic cult. It turns out, though, that Lily has a demon inside of her, a frightening fact that Jack and his audience will soon have to reckon with.

Set during the late 1970s, the Cairnes brothers tap into strong psychological and spiritual effect the fear, violence, and paranoia of that decade had a upon the American people, especially when scenes of chaos and war were displayed on TV sets across the nation while Charles Manson and Anton Lafey jockey for screen time against Johnny Carlson.

In a rare leading turn, Dastmalchian delivers one of his best performances as a man whose desire to ascend his status as a mid-tier talk show host results in ramifications sinister and deadly, yet sure to boost those slagging ratings. Great too is Ingrid Torelli as a wide-eyed teen dealing with demon’s literal and metaphoric, and Fayssal Bazzi who delivers a scene-stealing turn as a medium plagued by a nefarious spirit.