Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

Hugh Jackman’s washed-up fighter trained a boxing robot in Shawn Levy’s Real Steel , based on the story by Richard Matheson, and five scantily-clad women used their fantasies to escape from a mental institution in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch .

In Dominic Sena’s ludicrously entertaining Season of the Witch , a pair of disillusioned fourteenth century Crusaders (Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman) were forced by Christopher Lee’s plague-ridden Cardinal to escort a suspected witch (Claire Foy) to a remote monastery. After being attacked by wolves and zombie monks, they discovered an even greater evil awaited them at their destination.

Cage also starred as a vengeful escapee from Hell on the trail of an evil satanic cult leader in Patrick Lussier’s 3-D Drive Angry , which, despite the non-stop action, flopped at the box-office.

Based on another graphic novel series, Paul Bettany’s futuristic vampire-hunter had to rescue his kidnapped niece in the 3-D Priest , while Anthony Hopkins’ ageing exorcist teamed up with a young priest (Colin O’Donoghue) to banish a demon possessing a pregnant Italian teenager in The Rite .

Director Guy Ritchie and actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law were reunited for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows , a sequel to the 2009 film, as the Great Detective tried to prevent a devious Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) from starting the First World War.

After eleven years, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette returned for Wes Craven’s Scr4am , which updated its scares for a new generation who couldn’t care less. Despite featuring TV heroines Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell and Hayden Panettiere, it became the lowest grossing entry yet in the spoof slasher series.

Tony Todd returned to the series as a creepy coroner in Final Destination 5 , in which the survivors of a bridge collapse met their graphic demises in gore-drenched 3-D.

Colin Farrell was the vampire that moved-in next door in the surprisingly good 3-D remake of the 1985 comedy-horror film Fright Night , which also featured David Tennant in the original Roddy McDowall role.

Rebecca De Mornay’s mad matriarch dominated her sadistic sons in Mother’s Day , a remake of the 1980 slasher film of the same name, while Leighton Meester’s crazed stalker put a kitten in a clothes dryer just to make her point in The Roommate , a risible PG-13 rip-off of Single White Female (1992).

A belated prequel to Tim Burton’s 2001 remake, Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a surprise box-office hit, opening at #1 in America.

Paul W. S. Anderson directed a silly 3-D steampunk version of The Three Musketeers starring his wife, Milla Jovovich, who criticised Summit Entertainment on Twitter for failing to market the movie properly.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead was part of a Norwegian team that discovered something under the Antarctic ice in The Thing , a belated and pointless prequel/remake of John Carpenter’s 1982 movie (which itself was a remake).

Meanwhile, Carpenter himself directed The Ward , in which Amber Heard’s teenage pyromaniac ended up in a spooky 1960s insane asylum.

Husband and wife stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz refused to promote the final cut of Jim Sheridan’s Dream House , which gave away all its surprises in the trailer and quickly sank without trace on both sides of the Atlantic.

In America, Hammer’s psychological thriller The Resident went directly to DVD, despite starring Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Christopher Lee. At least it received a negligible cinema release in the UK, as did the pagan thriller Wake Wood , another Hammer production that had been sitting on the shelf for a few years.

Co-scripted by Stephen Volk and director Nick Murphy, The Awakening was an atmospheric low-budget period ghost film set in a haunted boarding school.

Given its slightly more than $1 million budget, James Wan’s Insidious turned out to be one of the most profitable films of the year, taking more than $53 million at the US box-office. Produced by the team behind the terrible Paranormal Activity franchise and written and directed by the creators of the Saw series, it was an intentionally old-fashioned ghost story about parents fighting for the soul of their son.

Two sisters discovered footage of themselves from 1988 that proved they had always been a magnet for the supernatural in Paranormal Activity 3 . Made for just $5 million, the prequel opened in the US at #1 with a gross of $52.6 million — the biggest horror film and best October opening ever.

Shark Night 3D served up college co-eds as chum, while a group of foxhunters became the hunted in Blooded. Apollo 18 was another “found footage” flick, this time set on the Moon.

A brother and sister wandered around a forest investigating the paranormal in the Spanish-made Atrocious , while the Norwegian Troll Hunter was like The Blair Witch Project with giant furry trolls.

Guillermo Del Toro produced Julia’s Eyes , Guillem Morales’ Spanish supernatural thriller in which Belén Rueda’s Hitchcockian heroine investigated the death of her blind twin sister. Del Toro also produced and co-scripted Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark , a loose remake of a 1973 TV movie, about an old manor house haunted by little evil critters.

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In starred Antonio Banderas as an obsessed plastic surgeon in an art house homage to Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (aka Eyes Without a Face ).

Gustavo Hernández’s Spanish thriller The Silent House played out in real time and was based on a true murder mystery that happened in 1940s Uruguay.

Louise Bourgoin was the female Indiana Jones battling mad scientists, dinosaurs and reanimated Egyptian mummies in Luc Besson’s comic book-inspired The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec .

Kirsten Dunst and Alexander Skarsgård were unlucky enough to schedule their nuptials for the same day as a rogue planet was about to crash into the Earth in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia , which debuted in America on video-on-demand.

Mike Cahill’s Another Earth was another indie feature, in which a woman (Brit Marling) won a trip to an identical planet orbiting her own world.

The Dead was a low budget zombie film shot in Africa, and the bargain budget zombie apocalypse continued in the British-made The World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries .

The horror comedy Dylan Dog: Dead of Night , which starred Brandon Routh as a paranormal investigator, took under $1 million during its opening week in the US.

A pair of assassins discovered that there was more to their latest job than they expected in Ben Wheatley’s Kill List. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil was a low budget spoof on backwoods slasher films, while Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds swapped bodies in the comedy The Change-Up .

More tragedy than Greek, Theseus (future “Superman” Henry Cavill) led his Olympian chums against Mickey Rourke’s evil King Hyperion in Tarsem Singh’s overblown Immortals , released in “epic 3-D”.

Your Highness was a witless fantasy spoof that somehow managed to feature James Franco, Natalie Portman and Charles Dance in its cast.

Despite Jason Momoa’s solid Hyborian warrior, and Ron Perlman as his father, the 3-D Conan the Barbarian was a disappointing origin story of Robert E. Howard’s sword-wielding hero.

Audiences were colour-blind to the 3-D The Green Hornet , in which Seth Rogen’s mugging millionaire became a crime-fighter with the aid of Jay Chou’s far more intelligent Kato, and Ryan Reynolds made a lightweight Green Lantern in Martin Campbell’s disappointing origin story of the DC Comics superhero.