LET'S BREAK MY GROUND RULES RIGHT AWAY! Despite me not wanting to go for the obvious ones, I kind of have to put The Haunting here. It was probably the first film that made me aware of the power of cinema, late one night at the age of 12. This is a mostly pretty faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, at least until the last act. It largely eschews complicated effects, instead relying almost entirely on the cinematography and sound design to elicit the sense of dread that permeates the no-longer-titular house.

Also, pro tip: don't watch the 1999 remake, which is essentially the opposite of this film in every conceivable way.

GOTHIC, 1986

Dir.: Ken Russell. UK: Virgin Vision.

Oh, boy, a Ken Russell film! True to form, this manages to engage with an ostensibly high-brow and artsy topic in a profoundly vulgar manner; it's about the Shelleys trip to Geneva in 1816, the one with the infamous horror story competition! The film's basis in fact is, like a lot of Russell's work, rather suspect, instead focussing on evoking a particular feeling. I mean, we can presume that the party weren't actually haunted by malevolent spirits during their stay. On the other hand, how the tale relates to the Romantics' combination of debauchery and philosophy is interesting to consider as it descends into fever dream territory.

HOUSE, 1977

Dir.: Nobuhiko Ōbayashi. Japan: Toho.

Despite what some people seem to suggest, House is very much the film it wants to be. The film deliberately skews young; much of what happens in the film being derived from the fears and imagination of the director's pre-teen daughter, on the basis that children are less bound by rational explanation than adults are, with the effects accordingly pitched at a fantastic unreal level. The resulting film is a psychedelic fairy tale, a horrific cartoon, and a satirical romance all rolled into one.

GHOST STORY, 1974

Dir.: Stephen Weeks. UK: Stephen Weeks Company.

An odd film to have a mid-'70s vintage, Ghost Story is a small, rather old-fashioned, er, ghost story in a period when horror films seemed to be getting bigger and flashier; an M.R. James-esque tale, coming after things like Don't Look Now, The Exorcist (both 1973) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), it must have all seemed quaint and/or dated, depending on how charitable people were being. Shot on location in India (playing the part of the home counties) with an eclectic cast, the film makes up for its meagre budget with an impeccably strange atmosphere and design.

CRIMSON PEAK, 2015

Dir.: Guillermo del Toro. USA: Universal Pictures.

While there are probably better films I could've gone for, I decided on this one over its main competition for the fifth slot because it's readily and legally available to rent/stream online. Ostensibly Del Toro's homage to the, as he put it, "the Grande Dames" of Haunted House movies, specifically referring to The Haunting and The Innocents, combined with a salute to more grand scale horror films such as The Shining. In terms of whether it achieves that… I feel it's honestly too grandiose and effects laden to really capture the feeling of the former two which play far more on the imagination. This shows the ghosts… like, a lot. Still, it ties everything all up in a lovely Gothic wrapper, playing with some real tropes of the form with its Bluebeard-esque story, and, sure, why not have a more legitimately effects heavy piece to go along with the others on the list?

There were a bunch of other candidates for this list, such as the ones I decided to specifically rule out at the start, the 1989 version of The Woman in Black which was recently re-released after many years, or the 'Bakeneko' three parter from Ayakashi (2006) which screened at Annecy so I considered cheating and counting it as a film. The main alternative contender was 1972's The Stone Tape, in case you were wondering, but as I'd already put down Ghost Story which is apparently less available to stream than I thought… in a legal fashion anyway (I'm sure I've seen it on Amazon, but there's no sign of it now, so…), I decided it was better to have another easier-to-acquire option, given the timing of this post and the vague idea of it giving you ideas of what to watch tonight.