Thinking about what to do over Halloween can be as tricky as thinking about what to do over New Year’s Eve; you know you should be doing something as all your other Americanised friends (I don’t mean that as an insult) have organised going out to somewhere or something that requires them to wear whatever sluttish/poorly made costume they could conjure up in a few minutes.

Let me get one thing straight with you: I LOVE Halloween, not because it gives me the excuse to dress up as Batman (again) and put on a gruff, Christian-Bale-from-Dark-Knight voice, or because it gives me the legal excuse to scare children who venture onto my doorstep, but because you can have a great night just by sitting in front of the TV watching a well-executed horror film, surrounded by a select choice of tasty snacks and beverages. Yes, you may occasionally be interrupted by the occasional teenager knocking on your door for Trick or Treat, at which point you are allowed to verbally abuse them for their terrible excuse of a Halloween costume, then refuse to give them that mini-bag of Haribo (how is having a ‘Scream’ mask a good effort when I can still see your trackies tucked into your socks and Rockports!?), but all this mild interruption merely adds to the in-house horror movie experience.

So, for all of you who are spending Halloween tucked up on the sofa with your girlfriend/boyfriend/cat/dog/imaginary friend, allow me to provide you with my Top 5 Horror Movies since the turn of the millennium. The reason why I’m restricting this list to just the last 10/11 years is because we are all generally well educated on the classics (The Shining, Halloween, The Exorcist etc.) and thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight some more contemporary horrors. Some you may have seen, others you’d never have contemplated popping into your DVD player or illegally downloading.

I’ve left out of this list comedy-horrors like Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, but these are all fun films that are more than worthy for your Halloween viewing.

Also, feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments below; this list is by no means definitive and will hopefully start a healthy, mature conversation.

5 Saw

Forget all the increasingly poor sequels that post-dated this original; Saw is a well-paced, exciting and intense horror-thriller that has interesting moral conundrums at it’s core. It introduced a new and memorable villain to the genre via Jigsaw (mainly represented by that disturbing clown puppet on a tricycle, who offered innovative ways of making his victims kill themselves) and is one of the only modern examples that executes the power-of-suggestion to make you squirm in your seat, rather than using visceral tactics tiredly used in many ‘torture-porn’ films. It also had a final twist in the narrative that, for many, was the stand-out point of a film that opened up a whole new sub-genre of horror film making.

4 Ju-On: The Grudge

Again, forget the numerous American remakes and Japanese sequels; the original Ju-On was spine-tingling, creepy and horrifying without the need of excessive gore or horrendous deaths. Ju-On‘s success mainly lies in the use of visual manipulation (‘did I just see what I thought I saw?’) and an excellent use of sound to create tense, claustrophobic set pieces. It’s key villains, a set of ghosts in the shape of a scorned woman, a young boy and a cat, may not sound overly scary, but when they are appearing under your bed or in the shower they become powerful entities that are highly intimidating and, most importantly of all, highly memorable. Like Ringu, Ju-On‘s success also lies in the way it makes you think about it once the credits roll; every time you pass that mirror in the hallway you’ll be questioning if it’s your reflection you saw…

3 The Descent

Visceral, brutal, terrifying; three key words that sum up what is the best British Horror film of the last decade. Some will say that honour should go to 28 Days Later, but I believe The Descent is more successful in it’s execution as a horror film. The narrative, about a group of female extreme-sport enthusiasts who go on a caving expedition in the Appalachian Mountains, manages to conjure up three separate antagonists that the group must deal with: 1) the claustrophobic and dangerous caving environment, 2) the ‘crawlers’ and, perhaps most significantly, 3) each other. Influenced by such classics as The Thing and Alien, director Neil Marshall manages to weave the dual-threat of the degradation of the group’s trust with each other combined with the human-monsters that are picking them off one-by-one that makes for an increasingly edge-of-your-seat experience that won’t be repeated or bettered for many years to come.

2 Gin Gwai (The Eye)

(Warning: trailer has some spoilers)

Perhaps more of a psychological thriller/ghost story, The Eye still has the ability to shock, scare and intimidate you in ways that more gory, bloodthirsty productions can’t. The concept alone, about a young, blind woman who starts seeing strange things after undergoing a cornea transplant, allows writers and directors The Pang Brothers to conjure up some very disturbing arcs that places the protagonist in highly uncomfortable situations, encouraging us to adopt her point-of-view for many of these scenes. Its effective mixture of slow-build scares, out-of-the-blue shocks and devastating finale makes this not only one of the best horror films of the decade, but one of the most emotional narratives of the last ten years. Being in an elevator won’t feel the same again.

1 The Orphanage

Not content with creating one of the best films ever in the form of Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo Del Toro produces and presents this fabulous ghost story from writer Sergio G. Sanchez and director Juan Antonio Bayona. When a wife and mother decides to reopen the orphanage she once inhabited as a child, little does she realise that the ghosts of the children she once played with have some rather naughty tricks up their sleeves. When her son goes missing during the reopening of the orphanage, she is convinced that the ghosts are the ones responsible. So begins a story of supernatural discovery, interchanging villains and shocks and scares that will have you cowering. What makes The Orphanage my No.1 is not because it shocks and scares better than any other horror film of this century (it doesn’t) but because it emotionally compels you and encourages a strong bond and empathy towards the mother’s plight as she desperately seeks all solutions to her son’s whereabouts. Believe me when I say it won’t be the haunting tension that will have you blubbering by the end of it.