'... the definitive guide to what properly messes us up.' ― SFX Magazine
'Glasby anatomises horror's scare tactics with keen, lucid clarity across 34 carefully selected main films – classic and pleasingly obscure. 4 Stars.' ― Total Film
The Book of Horror introduces you to the scariest movies ever made and examines what makes them so frightening. Horror movies have never been more critically or commercially successful, but there’s only one metric that matters:
are they scary? Back in the silent era, viewers thrilled at
Frankenstein and
Dracula. Today, the monsters may have changed, but the instinct remains the same: to seek out the
unspeakable, ride the
adrenaline rush and
play out our fears in the safety of the cinema.
The Book of Horror focuses on the
most frightening films of the post-war era –
from
Psycho (1960) to
It Chapter Two (2019) – examining exactly
how they scare us across a series of key categories. Each chapter explores a seminal horror film in depth, charting its
scariest moments with
infographics and identifying the related works you need to see. Including references to more than
100 classic and contemporary horror films from around the globe, and striking illustrations from Barney Bodoano, this is a rich and compelling guide to
the scariest films ever made.
The films:Psycho (1960), The Innocents (1961), The Haunting (1963), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Exorcist (1973), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Who Can Kill a Child? (1976), Suspiria (1977), Halloween (1978), The Shining (1980), The Entity (1982), Angst (1983), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990), Ring (1998), The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Others (2001), The Eye (2002), Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), Shutter (2004), The Descent (2005), Wolf Creek (2005), The Orphanage (2007), [Rec] (2007), The Strangers (2008), Lake Mungo (2008), Martyrs (2008), The Innkeepers (2011), Banshee Chapter (2013), Oculus (2013), The Babadook (2014), It Follows (2015), Terrified (2017), Hereditary (2018), It Chapter Two (2019)
