Drag Me To Hell

“I don’t want your cat, you dirty pork queen!”

When loans officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) refuses a time extension on a loan to Mrs. Ganush, the old woman places a curse on her which will result in her being taken to Hell in a few days time.

The Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi followed his Spider-Man trilogy with this 2009 horror-comedy, complete with clairvoyant readings, a talking demon goat and the most terrifying hankerchief in the history of cinema.

 

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

“One, two, three, knock on the wall.”

Produced by Guillermo del Toro, this 2007 Spanish horror film sees Laura (Belén Rueda) move her family back to her childhood home, an orphanage. Problems arise when she discovers that her adopted son Simón – a role which 400 children auditioned for – says he has a masked friend named Tomás and, after an argument with Laura, Simón goes missing.

 

Paranormal Activity

“I promised you I wasn’t going to buy a Ouija board. I didn’t buy a Ouija board. I borrowed a Ouija board.”

Made for an estimated $15,000 and filmed entirely in writer/director Oren Peli’s own home, 2009’s Paranormal Activity sees a couple become increasingly disturbed by a nightly demonic presence after moving into their new suburban home.

The movie relaunched the found-footage horror genre a decade after The Blair Witch Project and has spawned dozens of imitations over the past few years, with its own Latino spin-off Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones in cinemas early next year.

 

The Devil’s Backbone

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.”

Another spooky treat from writer/director Guillermo del Toro, this Spanish-Mexican gothic horror film is set in 1930s Spain during the final year of the Spanish Civil War. The 2001 movie sees ten-year-old Carlos, the son of a fallen Republican war hero, left by his tutor in an orphanage in the middle of nowhere.

Considered by Del Toro to be his most personal film, The Devil’s Backbone was inspired by the director’s relationship with his uncle, who supposedly came back as a ghost.

 

Insidious

“I can’t have somebody coming into our home and telling us the reason our son is in a coma is because his soul has floated off somewhere in another dimension.”

Written by Leigh Whannell (Saw I-III) and directed by James Wan (The Conjuring) respectively, this gleefully bonkers 2010 American movie stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne as the parents of a boy who inexplicably enters a comatose state and becomes a vessel for ghosts in an astral dimension.

Shot in just three weeks, you certainly can’t accuse Insidious of being predictable.

 

What’s your favourite paranormal movie of the past decade? Let us know below…