Stephen Jones - Best New Horror #26

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.

In The Pyramid , a group of American archaeologists found themselves being hunted through a lost subterranean tomb by a flesh-eating Anubis, and an alien abductee went on a killing spree in Stephen King’s fictional town of Derry, Maine, in Almost Human .

Actor/comedian Bobcat Goldthwait directed the zero-budget “found-footage” backwoods thriller Willow Creek , about a couple of documentary film-makers (Bryce Johnson and Alexie Gilmore) on the trail of the legendary Bigfoot.

The Remaining was a faith-based horror film in which a group of wedding guests found themselves battling demons after being left behind following the Rapture. Unfortunately, co-writer/director Casey La Scala seriously botched the “found-footage” concept from the beginning.

Vic Armstrong’s Left Behind was yet another faith-based film about the Rapture, which starred no less than Nicolas Cage as an airline pilot who missed the calling. The $16 million movie, which was a remake of a 2000 direct-to-video production based on a series of apocalyptic novels, also featured Lea Thompson and William Ragsdale.

Family secrets were revealed by a torrential rainstorm in Jim Mickle’s low budget We Are What We Are , a remake of a 2010 Mexican film featuring Kelly McGillis, Michael Parks and Larry Fessenden.

Adam Wingard followed up his acclaimed home-invasion chiller You’re Next with The Guest , in which Dan Stevens’ mysterious “David” inveigled his way into a family’s home.

Jesse Eisenberg’s government clerk found his life being usurped by a devious doppelgänger in The Double , based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Vegar Hoel’s survivor from the enjoyable 2009 film returned to battle Nazi and Russian zombies in the even better Norwegian sequel Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead .

In Kevin Smith’s horror comedy Tusk , Michael Parks’ backwoods seafarer transformed a visiting podcaster (Justin Long) into a walrus. Haley Joel Osment and Johnny Depp turned up in surprising supporting roles.

Minnie Driver and Meat Loaf starred in the musical/comedy/slasher film Stage Fright , while co-writer Marion Wayans starred in the comedy sequel A Haunted House 2 , which once again spoofed contemporary horror movies through crude humour and stupidity.

Set ten years after the previous entry, Matt Reeves’ epic 3-D Dawn of the Planet of the Apes saw intelligent simian Ceasar (Andy Serkis in a remarkable motion-capture performance) and his genetically evolved apes forced into a war with Gary Oldman’s leader of the human survivors by vengeful, machine gun-toting primate Koba (Toby Kebbell).

Oldman was also one of the stars of Brazilian director José Padilha’s stylish reboot of RoboCop , which replaced the humanity at the heart of the 1987 original with unrelenting comic book violence. The cast also included Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman as the cyborg cop.

Mark Wahlberg’s eccentric inventor and his hot daughter (Nicola Peltz) found themselves embroiled in yet another galactic war in Michael Bay’s overlong third sequel Transformers: Age of Extinction . Thankfully, the always-watchable Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer were on hand to take audiences’ minds off the giant CGI robots beating the crap out of each other.

Antonio Banderas’ insurance investigator discovered that robots in a dystopian future were illegally altering themselves in Automata , which also featured Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster and the voices of Melanie Griffith and Javier Bardem.

Toby Stephens’ morally conflicted scientist created a self-aware cyborg (Caity Lotz) that was turned into a killing machine by the British government in Caradog W. James’ low budget The Machine .

Joaquin Phoenix’s divorced loner fell in love with his phone’s artificial intelligence (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) in Spike Jonze’s Her .

A synthetic drug allowed the titular heroine (the excellent Johansson again) to use the full potential of her mind, giving her god-like powers in Luc Besson’s bonkers action thriller Lucy while, in a very different performance, the actresses’ sexy alien travelled around Scotland picking up lonely men to feed upon in Jonathan Glazer’s low budget gem Under the Skin .

Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway’s astronauts set out to save mankind by discovering a new planet in Christopher Nolan’s overly emotional Interstellar , which featured a surprise cameo by Matt Damon as an earlier space explorer.