Phantasmagoria. Meaning projections of the unknown: witches, spirits, and other supernatural imagery, or dreamlike sequences in which the subject is entranced with everchanging illusions or deceptive spells, horror cinema in its modern incarnation. Bloody bonfires flicker, the taste of crisp autumn air lingers, and frenzied parties stretch on until dawn, where pieces of costume seem to dissipate throughout the night. This chosen selection of cinema includes some of my favourites, each seeking to embody the season and all its quirks, from intense blood soaked scenes, to ritualistic witchcraft and the lingering dread of being haunted by the unknown. When I taste autumn air, these pictures come to mind.

Pearl

Starting off more subtle in its horror imagery, Pearl is a character study which explores repression, the uncanny and a desperate yearning to be seen, all festering beneath the harvest sun. As a horror, Pearl is seemingly more tame than most, the technicolour world Pearl inhabits remains shiny yet simultaneously sinister. Despite the work itself being heavily camp, Mia Goth manages to ground it in sincerity, a very challenging thing to achieve, yet she does so flawlessly. As such, her performance as Pearl stands as one of the strongest in her catalogue, behind her eyes you see the isolation and hunger, each smile emblematic of her slow desperate descent into madness. Peal is an illustration of the everpresent drive to escape one's current circumstances and cling onto something more, to make something out of yourself in its rawest form, only to fail over and over and watch those closest to you get there first. Its true horror is the inevitability of failure, a reality more scary than any old ghost story or masked killer. A pastoral nightmare.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROECT

Nothing can be said about The Blair Witch Project that hasn't already been said a thousand times in every intro to filmmaking class, and yet it remains one of the most potent, anxiety inducing experiences out there. Gaslighting the movie. Practice wise it's ingenious, demonstrating how limitations when filmmaking often turn out to be its greatest strength, think Jaws or The Thing. Unlike Pearl, whose more sinister moments are draped in a pastoral dreamscape, The Blair Witch Project is more liminal, purposefully attempting to play on the viewers innate fear of the unknown. Its horror doesn't necessarily stem from what we see, but from what we don't. The shaky camera, the audible trembling in the cast's breath, the raw uncomfortable arguments we’re forced to be privy to, it's all unbearably human. At some point within this picture the forest itself becomes an organism of its own, feeding off of the group's innate fears and insecurities, and in turn heightening them to an inhuman degree.

HALLOWEENTOWN -

A choice that I forgot up until the last minute, and I refuse to leave out as to upset 5 year old me, which in turn has led me to this moment right now, at 1am, writing this article. I digress, Halloween

Town is pure nostalgia bait and I love every second of it. This isn't a fearful horror, but a celebration of it, a playful embrace of everything silly and spooky about the season. I was debating whether to include this, as although it's very Halloween appropriate it isn't necessarily a horror, not for a 22 year old me anyways. However I just looked at some images (try ‘halloween town scary') and the uncanny valley has never been deeper, and now im unsure if im gonna sleep tonight. I digress again, this movie captures a sense of wonder and whimsy that is almost impossible to recreate. Debbie Reynolds’ Aggie Cromwell radiates warmth and charm, making the unknown feel safe and secure, and grounding this fantasy with her presence.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003)-

An horror staple, and a new look at the beloved final girl troupe. A greasy, screaming slice of Americana, dripping with sweat, blood, and gasoline. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a relentless watch, taking the American staple roadrip plotline and subverting it into something suffocating and disorienting. Unlike the 1974 original, where rural post Vietnam America was seen sunbleached and starving, a gradual decay of the old world acting as reflection of a country disillusioned by war and economic decline, an organic rot plastered against forgotten highways. In its modern incarnation, director Marcus Nispels instead develops on this idea and goes even further, industrialising it to an almost mechanical degree. The world itself feels manufactured, the horror no longer organic but engineered. Violence here feels systemic, as if the land itself is designed to consume you. Jessica Biel’s portrayal of Erin gives a then modern take on the final girl, not virginal nor naïve, but resilient, physical, and human. She isn’t the saintly moral survivor of 70s horror, but a fighter, a mirror of those set out to kill her. By the film's end, soaked in blood and sweat in the back of a stranger's truck, her laughter is cathartic, surpassing plain joy and becoming more emblematic of a spiritual release.

THE VVITCH -

More than most films on this list, The Witch isn't a conventional horror watch, with no jumpscares and little to no gore, instead this films horror is more ritualistic, born of spirituality, faith and corruption, viewers are shown how isolation can break a mind, and in turn manifest something darker. Set on the edge of the wilderness this film is at some parts stunning, yet foreboding. Robert Eggers crafts a world that feels sacred, supernatural and gritty all at once, a place where the divine and the damned seem to coexist beneath the same murky skies. Throughout such, Anya Taylor-Joy's Thomasin continues to ground the events in reality, a girl seemingly torn between devotion and desire, between repression and awakening. She acts as a catalyst for great change. Her final act, both terrifying and transcendent, redefines liberation through sin, reframing the entire picture up to this point. ‘Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?’ By the end we recognise the great horror, a realisation that God may not be watching, and the family's suffering and pain never had any meaning to begin with.

NOSFERATU (2024) -

Atmosphere, intention and precision. So few directors can shape beautiful shots which take place at night time without making it impossible to see, yet Eggers manages to achieve such so masterfully.

His take on Nosferatu feels reverent and sculpted, a gothic love letter of desire. As a consumer of the classic novel by Bram Stoker (thank you English A levels), I wish they held a little bit longer and expanded on certain characters especially near the end, however what was expanded on and reimagined was truly deliberate and effective. Foremost, the performances seen were amazing, truly the acting olympics, there is no weak link. We all know William Dafoe excels in these atmospheric period pieces, but Lily-Rose Depp’s performance specifically blew me away, her delivery and body control are amazing, each gesture deliberate and studied. When reworking Dracula, Egger saw to condense the novels, combining both Mina and Lucy into Ellen, and although I would've preferred an extension, Ellen' s embodiment of both Mina’s purity and devotion, as well as Lucy’s fragility and doom is achieved so flawlessly I cannot fault it. I digress, the entire cast are like relics of another era, fully submerging themselves in this gothic realism, suspended somewhere between life and memory. As a fan of the source material, the ending did take me off guard initially, however the raw grotesque beauty of the scene is striking to say the least, as well as strangely uplifting in its execution, haunted grace. Death feels less like punishment and more like transformation or release, the boundary between victim and monster blurring until they are one and the same, and suffer this fate together.

HOCUS POCUS -

A classic no one dares slander. The Sanderson sisters are Halloween, campy, scary, seductive, vindictive. They flow through these states with ease, and none of it feels forced. The imagery of this world seems so familiar it feels like folklore, the amber glow of streetlights, the dust covered shelves of the sisters cottage, it all feels lived in yet utterly suspended in time, like a memory you can't fully recall. The plot itself is simple, something akin to an early 2000s Disney movie, yet the iconic characterisation of not only the sisters, but the wider cast of Max, Dani and of course Binx, is why it remains at the forefront of so many peoples minds when the word halloween comes up, an everpresent staple in pop culture, at least within my lifetime. The film channels a kind of suburban witchcraft, one that blends childish wonder with a hint of the uncanny, speaking to the ritual of Halloween as renewal and the temporary suspension of order. Horror seen through the eyes of the nostalgic.

THE CRAFT -

The craft is peak 90s cinema. It holds such power, authenticity and atmosphere, all contained by black leather, spellbooks and silver studs, magic shown in a new light both visually and tonally. Its pure 90’s excess, black shades, Catholic iconography, slow zooms and wind machines. But beneath the aesthetic is something deeply human, a desire for community, to be loved, powerful and pretty. The film’s power lies in its duality: part supernatural fantasy, part coming of age story. It captures that adolescent restlessness, the desire to belong and to control, to be more than what the world allows. One thing I believe sets the craft away from its predecessors are the lack of labels, the craft doesn't moralise, it lives and breathes within the grey. Witchcraft isn't necessarily treated as a spectacle, but as an allegory for growing up and coming into your own power, learning what you're truly capable of. The cast is stacked, with solid performances all around, however I'd be remiss to not mention the standout Fairuza Balk aka Nancy Dows, one of my favourite performances in all of cinema. She

embodies utter chaos yet remains charismatic and attractive, her intimate connection to Manon and desire for power blurring the line between the divine and delusion.

SCREAM -

The horror movie. Ionic. Self Aware. Meta Commentary. The horror genre must've been a boring time before Scream was released. Scream took all that seemed familiar not only in the slasher genre, but the wider horror scape, and crafted something that felt vaguely familiar, yet fresh and exciting. The opening scene with Drew Barrymore alone remains not only one of the best establishing openings within horror, but also acts as one of best bait n switches in cinema history, even down to the advertising positing her as the lead, only to be brutally killed and hung within the first fifteen minutes. Pure, unfiltered, cinema.

On the other hand, Scream 4 is arguably a strong candidate for best in the series, especially by today's standards, and stands as my personal favourite in the franchise. Emma Roberts’ Jill is the perfect evolution of the Ghostface archetype, building off of the originals Stew and Billies motives, which although were driven partially by familial ties, ultimately acted in the hopes of framing someone else for the killings so they could “be the survivors” and “make a movie about it.” Jill is seemingly an evolution of these goals, wanting to become the center of attention in the digital age, acting to eventually become the new Sydney Prescott, the new soul survivor. Her goal doesn't stem from revenge, but the urge to be seen, a distortion of Stew's goal however seemingly more calculated, narcissistic and performative, desperate for recognition in a world obsessed with visibility. ‘I don't need friends, I need fans’. I’d also regret not mentioning the near end sequence where Jill throws herself around the room, trying to sell the story, a bloody, perverse performance art which cements Jill as one of the most self aware, yet unhinged, Ghostfaces in the franchise.

Kass Lahcen Boujdi, born in 2002, is a London based screenwriter whose work focuses on character driven stories that delve into the complexities of human nature and the darker sides of the psyche. He studied at the University of East Anglia as well as San Francisco State University, and holds IMDb credits for his work.

Phantasmagoria: Projections of Horror for the Silver Screen