Another singular force from 2015, Évolution is one of the more recent entries into the pantheon of Great Surrealist French Cinema. An undeniable visual feast with color grading for the studious eye, it is incredibly thin on plot and spilling over with tense atmosphere. The film’s pithy, enigmatic characters offer only glimpses into the meanings of its many inexplicable scenarios, yet it’s best viewed as metaphor, as a puzzle not to be solved but to be interpreted. I feel like it makes for a fascinating deconstruction of the relationship between mother and son, of womanhood and child-rearing and how the two interact. In the same breath, it operates exceedingly well as a mood piece; you can comfortably let go of any questions you might have concerning plot and lose yourself in the uniquely dark world the film presents. Watching it was like wandering into some sort of post-coital apocalyptic oasis torn out of an uncanny never-ending dream; like edging my way around an aquatic wormhole high off some underdeveloped form of acid. Regardless of what you make of it after the credits have rolled, one thing for sure is that Évolution is the type of sci-fi horror the world could do with a lot more of.

Coherence (2013)

If you loved Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, then Coherence is probably right up your alley. The film having been produced on a low budget (50k USD to The Invitation’s 1M USD) and shot entirely in a single stretch of neighborhood, director James Ward Byrkit has to rely on his actors to commit tenacious, delicately textured performances (and he largely gets them, including a fine turn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Nicholas Brendon). While the film isn’t strictly classifiable “horror” like the other four on this list, it wields an equal amount of power to disorient. Manipulation and reduplication of reality; disassociation from your own self, your friends and family; losing control of your insecurities til they start to gnaw at your happiness — these are all human fears, some rational and some irrational, all of which Coherence masterfully preys on. At its peak it’s one hell of a mind-bending ride, teasing and testing your capacity to keep up; coherence, ironically, is one of the last things you’ll find here. But I mean that in the best way possible: it’s the quest for coherence that makes this indie so much fun. Once the science-fiction shifts into cerebral hyper-drive and starts playing ping pong with your expectations, the film expands its own conceptual maze at exponential rate. Oh, and, further complicating the affair, there’s an excess of wine — glasses being refilled anxiously. A thoughtful, engaging, economical achievement, Coherence begs for repeat viewings.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

You may have heard about The Blackcoat’s Daughter, the debut feature from writer-director Oz Perkins — son of Anthony Perkins aka Norman Bates from Psycho. If you haven’t heard of it yet, I strongly recommend you look into it because it’s one of the most quietly disquieting films from the past few years. I would have included it on this list had it not been for the recent surge of press it’s received, despite its being released initially in 2015. Long overdue, highly deserved. Instead, I wanted to position the spotlight on Osgood’s most recent output as writer-director: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, a film as unconventional as its title. Perkins lends his films an oppressive atmosphere when he works from behind the camera, a feeling of real wear and history seeping out of every detail, every frame and captured facial expression. It’s almost like a kind of tiredness, as if the world inhabited by the characters existed long before the film was shot. This is truer than ever of Pretty Thing, a piece of art that’s so deeply entrenched in its own story and style that it somehow feels haunted rather than just focusing on an old haunted house. This is no ordinary ghost story — or, at least, it doesn’t play like one. Perkins, with the help of an amiable Ruth Wilson, generates scares (well, not so much scares as much as one pervasive chill) by saturating his film with a gloomy ubiquitous identity. Featuring Gothic 19th century costumes to rival those Nicole Kidman donned in The Others, an eerily hypnotic score, and sequences that intimate grief in blood-curdling fashion, Pretty Thing should leave a lasting impression on anybody seeking a good ol’ tripped-out ethereal experience. Everything about the movie is fine-drawn, pastel, deliberate, sensuous. It’s one of the most poetic ghost stories I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing unfurl.