The Canal

You can give this Dublin-set horror a miss, as it rehashes every haunted-house trick in the book, with some ‘Shining’-style psychological creepiness thrown in. Rupert Evans is David, a film archivist who becomes obsessed with a grisly 1902 murder committed in the house where he lives with his wife and kid. He discovers the case – a man who killed his cheating wife and dumped her body in a nearby canal – by chance, while archiving old newsreels.

It’s a clever set-up, but otherwise ‘The Canal’ is all stiff acting, tapping behind the walls and ghosts who look like Madame Tussauds waxworks. Unspooky.