Simon Crook

Horror works best in short bursts. Think of your own nightmares: they aren’t sprawling epics but quick, disquieting shocks of dread. No wonder, then, that horror anthologies go back to the earliest days of the genre. In 1919, Austrian director Richard Oswald bundled together a series of eerie tales into the film titled, well, Eerie Tales, inaugurating a subgenre that persists today. But by their very nature, anthology films can also act as tossed-off stopgaps for directors in between more serious projects. Done right, however, these cinematic short-stories can pack enough scares into a tight runtime that are every bit as terrifying as any feature-length fright. Here are 11 standout collections, chosen by film journalist and horror author Simon Crook. Recommended: 😱 The 100 best horror movies of all time🩸The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories🎃 Best Halloween Movies🤔 The 20 best movies based on true stories

The movie industry has always been crawling with monsters, and we don’t just mean those old-school studio heads who use to torment starlets. We’re talking about the monsters borne from childhood nightmares, or the deranged imaginations of some very creative adults. We’re talking predatory aliens. We’re talking vampires and werewolves. We’re talking skyscraper-sized apes, sentient globs of carnivorous space goo, interdimensional leather daddies and razor-toothed sewer clowns. In some cases, the monsters of cinema have become as famous as any actor – movie stars unto themselves.  It’s those most iconic beasts, demons and kaiju we’re saluting in this list of the greatest movie monsters of all-time. A few caveats: this list largely follows the same parameters as our monster movies list, meaning that it steers away from non-mutated animals – sorry, Bruce the Shark and the spiders from Arachnophobia – as well as slasher villains such as Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. But zombies? Trolls? Brundlefly? You’ll find them all below.  Recommended: 👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time👹 Cinema’s creepiest anthology horror movies🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

Aquesta inofensiva comèdia de terror es confabula com un frenètic homenatge a pel·lícules com 'La purga'. Per raons que mai no s'expliquen, els pares comencen a assassinar els seus fills: les mares esquarteren els recent nascuts, els avis maten els nets i a l'escola hi ha grans massacres. Mentre l'epidèmia es va estenent per tot Amèrica, dos germans es troben tancats en el soterrani de la seva casa. Podran evitar que esbotzi la porta una lliga d'invasors liderats pels seus propis pares? I el millor de tot és que, tant si està pronunciant un monòleg sobre joguines anals o cantant 'The hokey Cokey', la presència d'un Nicolas Cage desencadenat i sense perruca està en perfecta sintonia amb la sobrecafeïnada direcció de Brian Taylor.  

Powered by a vintage Nicolas Cage wig-out, this merrily tasteless horror-comedy plays like a frantic mash-up of ‘The Purge’, ‘The Crazies’ and ‘Serial Mom’. For reasons never explained, let alone explored, parents start butchering their offspring: mothers murder newborns, granddads kill grandsons, and school runs mutate into rabid massacres. As the epidemic burns across America, siblings Anne Winter and Zackary Arthur find themselves bunkered in the basement of their suburban home. Can they fend off a home invasion staged by their own frothing parents? And can anyone survive Cage’s freeform jazz interpretation of a raging dad? Whether he’s delivering a monologue about anal beads or singing ‘The Hokey Cokey’ while sledgehammering a pool table, Cage’s performance is wildly in sync with Brian Taylor’s over-caffeinated direction. As a horror movie, ‘Mom & Dad’ is a fiasco – Taylor’s frantic visuals suggest a man mainlining Red Bull, a style too impatient for anything remotely approaching tension. As a satire, however, it’s a scream. Granted, the delivery’s as shrill as a banshee stepping on a Lego brick, but here’s a film with something to say about ageing anxiety, Middle America’s materialist vacuum and the parasitic resentments triggered by raising children. Luis Buñuel he most certainly isn’t, but Taylor wack-a-moles taboos with an infectious glee that will have anyone with kids emitting a cathartic howl. Fun for all the family, then.

Esta inofensiva comedia de terror se confabula como un frenético homenaje a películas como 'La purga'. Por razones que nunca se explican, los padres empiezan a asesinar a sus hijos: las madres descuartizan a los recién nacidos, los ancianos matan a sus nietos y en la escuela hay grandes masacres. Mientras la epidemia se extiende por toda América, dos hermanos se encuentran encerrados en el sótano de su casa. ¿Podrán evitar que una liga de invasores liderados por sus propios padres derribe la puerta? Lo mejor de todo es que, tanto si está pronunciando un monólogo sobre juguetes anales o cantando 'The hokey Cokey', la presencia de un Nicolas Cage desencadenado y sin peluca está en perfecta sintonía con la sobrecafeïnada dirección de Brian Taylor.

'I was a little chimp with a chip on my shoulder. Then I became a gorilla…’ Shot over four years, this excess-all-areas bio-doc chronicles the evolution of mixed martial artist Conor McGregor, a silverback blessed with whack-a-mole-hammer fists, a talent for trash talk and ferocious, swaggering charisma. He’s introduced to us living in his mum’s spare room, claiming benefits and dreaming of his Ultimate Fighting Championship debut. By the end of Gavin Fitzgerald’s film, the Irishman has powered through a rags-to-riches arc, flooring champions with a single punch and attracting the adoration of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sports docs like this are all about luck, and Fitzgerald gets plenty of it, despite the film wrapping before that infamous Floyd Mayweather brawl. McGregor’s trajectory is like four Rocky movies crushed into one – the underdog rise, staggering victory, chastening defeat, then a dogfight revenge match that goes right to the final round. You couldn’t make it up. Still, there’s a question here: how close do you get to your subject before you become a disciple yourself? With no distancing voiceover, the film submits to McGregor’s will completely. Given the fighter’s taste for controversy, you’d expect Fitzgerald to land a few probing counter-shots but he seems more fixated on McGregor’s sudden vast wealth (the mega-mansion, the supercars, the private jets), which is drooled over with a suspiciously covetous gaze. As a bombastic insight into twenty-first-century sport