Midi-Minuit Fantastique: l’intégrale Vol.1 edited by Michel Caen and Nicolas Stanzick was the first of four projected hardcover volumes from Rouge Profonde to collect and update all twenty-four issues of the influential 1960s French film magazine.
It might still not have been the film that the fans wanted, but at least Gareth Edwards’ 3-D Godzilla was better than Roland Emmerich’s re-imagining back in 1998, as Bryan Cranston’s troubled nuclear engineer uncovered the truth about seismic anomalies in Japan before being killed-off halfway through the movie.
Universal’s origin story, Dracula Untold, re-imagined how Prince Vlad Tepes (an uncharismatic Luke Evans) was turned into one of the undead by Charles Dance’s Master Vampire to defend his family and his kingdom against the invading Turks. It didn’t suck as much as some critics claimed, but could have done without the TV movie coda.
Poor old Ben Affleck’s Nick Dunne was suspected of murdering his missing wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) in David Fincher’s twisty psychological thriller Gone Girl, based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn.
Despite starring Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple and being based on the novel by Joe Hill, Alexandre Aja’s delayed supernatural thriller Horns flopped at the box-office.
Susan Sarandon’s small town detective investigated a series of gruesome sacrificial killings in The Calling, which also featured Gil Bellows, Ellen Burstyn and Donald Sutherland.
January became the new Halloween, as American distributors opened their low budget fright-fests for a post-holidays audience.
A trio of high school graduates investigated the death of a witchy neighbour in Christopher Landon’s improved fourth sequel Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which neatly tied the series together, despite diminishing box-office returns.
A young boy’s obsession with a creepy pop-up storybook featuring the eponymous child-eater was the basis for Jennifer Kent’s Australian-made chiller The Babadook.
Annabelle was a prequel featuring the possessed doll first seen in The Conjuring (2013). It was even slightly better than the earlier film, which isn’t saying much. Meanwhile, after the success of The Woman in Black, Hammer’s The Quiet Ones was a dull supernatural mystery set in 1974, in which Jared Harris’ team of paranormal investigators looked into the case of a woman (Olivia Cooke) who believed that she had been possessed by a doll named “Evey”.
Set forty years after the superior 2012 film, Hammer’s sequel The Woman in Black: Angel of Death starred Helen McCrory as the headmistress of a group of young World War II evacuees forced to stay at the still-haunted Eel Marsh House.
A young woman (Karen Gillan) had to convince her brother (Brenton Thwaites) that they should destroy the haunted mirror that killed their parents in Mike Flanagan’s effective low budget chiller Oculus, which appeared to be inspired by Amityville II: The Possession and was expanded from the director’s award-winning short film.
Loosely based on an uncredited H.P. Lovecraft’s story ‘From Beyond’, Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter followed Katia Winter’s investigative journalist as she tried to discover what happened to a missing friend.
A group of friends attempted to discover why one of their number committed suicide after playing with an occult board in Ouija, another PG-13 horror movie from Platinum Dunes aimed at teenagers. It cost a reported $5 million to make and opened at #1 at the US box-office over Halloween with a gross of just $10.7 million.
Jim Sturgess’ new doctor arrived at a remote madhouse run by a creepy Ben Kingsley in Brad Anderson’s Bulgaria-shot Stonehearst Asylum, which was based on a well-known story by Edgar Allan Poe. The impressive supporting cast included Kate Beckinsale, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Caine, Jason Flemyng and Sinéad Cusack.
A slumming Aaron Eckhart played the immortal Creature who teamed up with a race of Gargoyles to battle an army of evil demons led by Bill Nighy in Stuart Beattie’s pulpy I, Frankenstein in 3-D. It was based on a graphic novel by Kevin Grevioux.
In the British-made Evil Never Dies, a former gangster (Harry Payne) used his suppressed psychic abilities to investigate a series of occult murders in a small Norfolk village. Former Doctor Who companion Katy Manning portrayed his wife.
A couple of New York police officers (Eric Bana and comedian Joel McHale) teamed up with an unorthodox priest (Édgar Ramírez) to combat a series of demonic possessions in Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us from Evil.
Rob Zombie wisely pulled out from reportedly directing V/H/S: Viral, the third entry in the diminishing series, while another group of uninteresting characters attempted to survive twelve hours of homicidal mayhem in Los Angeles in the violent sequel The Purge: Anarchy.
John Jarratt’s outback psycho pig-hunter returned to butcher more backpackers in Wolf Creek 2, Greg McLean’s sequel to his 2005 movie.
A newlywed couple (Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway) discovered something nasty lurking in the woods in Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon, and a would-be starlet (Alexandra Essoe) entered into an unholy pact with a sinister organisation to gain fame and fortune in Starry Eyes.
Tilda Swinton’s 3,000-year-old vampire found herself in a languid ménage à trois with her undead musician husband (Tom Hiddleston) and her provocative sister (Mila Wasikowska) in Jim Jarmusch’s art house horror Only Lovers Left Alive. John Hurt turned up as a vampiric Christopher Marlowe.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was an Iranian vampire movie, filmed in black and white by writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour and set in a ghost town haunted by a lonely undead woman (Sheila Vand). Elijah Wood executive-produced.
Flight of the Conchords comedians Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi wrote and directed the New Zealand mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, in which they starred as vampire flatmates along with Jonathan Brugh.
Parents John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon were worried about their walking-dead daughter (Aubrey Plaza) in the zombie rom-com Life After Beth.
Proving that there was still some creativity left in the “found footage” concept, Elliot Goldner’s directorial debut The Borderlands (aka Final Prayer) channelled M.R. James in its story of two Vatican investigators (the excellent Gordon Kennedy and Robin Hill) who were sent to investigate paranormal activity at an isolated West Country church.
The helmet cameras worn by a team of explorers revealed the juddery horrors that awaited them in the catacombs beneath Paris in John Erick Dowdle’s “mock documentary” As Above, So Below. Although the plot didn’t make a lick of sense, the film’s creepy occult mythology still made it worth watching.
A honeymoon couple (Zach Gilford and Allison Miller) found themselves dealing with an unexpected Satanic pregnancy in Devil’s Due. A remote-controlled “Devil baby” was used to scare pedestrians while promoting the film in New York City.