And now: the final installment in our quirky and bizarre month-long review of the horrorful.

Horror movies are great at illustrating just how awful most human beings are. And not the killers, I mean the victims: whether they be valuing self-preservation over everything (and everyone) else, ignoring the obvious presence of a supernatural menace or marching bravely and directly at seven-foot-tall men with giant machetes. And if you take the daft lack of self-awareness inherent in horror characters (barring our Mike), mix it with the cringe-inducing lack of self-awareness of John Hughes characters and add a huge amount of pretense, what do you have? Art school students. [...]

Horror movies are rarely beautiful. The gore can be impressive, the atmosphere can be expertly created, the cinematography but the movies are rarely allowed to be beautiful. Dust Devil is beautiful. And not just because they shot it in a desert. It's a great piece of horror, a great western and a great piece of cinematic achievement all at once. Not bad for a demon in a cowboy hat.

There's nothing funny about Deathdream. Most horror films, when given the right context, can be made fun of in some way. Show The Exorcist to a room full of drunk people in daylight and it's the funniest movie ever made. And as for torture porn? Well, there's a difference between undeniable dread and undeniable nausea. But Deathdream—because of what it's topic, the quality of performances and the subtle way it creates unease—is an unshakably grave movie. It also happens to be one of the best movies about the after-effects of the Vietnam War.

Everything about Session 9 feels wrong. Every moment feels a little off and every exchange of meaningless work banter is loaded with a little more tension than you'd expect. Every shot of an abandoned room or a tree seems to be concealing or foreshadowing. It's like watching "Friends" without the laugh track: it makes you want to claw your eyes out.

One problem with torture porn is that it's boring. As cringe-worthy and scientifically dubious as the violent scenes in the new age of splatter are, the rest of the movies tend to be a no-holds-barred explicit look on how things can totally suck. The poorly photographed anonymous characters sleepwalking from scene to scene, marching towards a squishy and meaningless climax, could lead you to believe torture porn leans more towards the "porn" end of its name. The only "torture" is paying to see it and how strongly the man beside you smells of perspiration.

The sad thing is, From Beyond could only ever have been a disappointment. Re-Animator was such a perfect schlock horror movie, with its mix of creeping dread, savage gore and an incredible hammy villain. And when Jeffrey Combs gets up in that mix, giving one of the greatest displays of anti-heroics ever committed to celluloid, you've got yourself a fake-blood barn burner. Director Stuart Gordon's sophomore horror movie was never going to be able to match up.

Horror movies are so powerful because of the many different ways artists can spin the archetypes. They aim for the most visceral and basic of reactions, but how they go about getting these responses can be fascinating even when the movie is terrible. Such a pity then that zombies and horror have been assaulted by petty gate-keepers of imagined rules, pounding on their leather back copies of What Zombies Should Do, their mouths frothing at the idea someone has defiled the blessed system and their trousers troubled at the idea of a Zombie Tsar who vets all films for their level of adherence to lore. Horror movies are about [...]

Horror sequels are a lot less formulaic than the cast of Scream would have you believe. Sure, there's a definite sense of having to re-bottle the lightning that made the first bottle so awesome. But because the hook of the movie is already in place, the residual weirdness can come to the fore along with the bits people liked the movie from the first movie. That's why Pinhead isn't that big of a deal until Hellraiser 2 and why Jason doesn't get his mask till the second movie. Because horror plots are often so flimsy, sequels often allow for an evolution of ideas and a more refined pass. That's why [...]