Released soon on UK digital platforms from 30th September is Robert Heydon’s (Ecstasy) haunting psychological thriller ISABELLE (2019) starring Adam Brody (The O.C., Shazam!, Sleeping with Other People), Amanda Crew (Silicon Valley, The Age of Adaline), Zoë Belkin (Carrie, Kiss & Cry) and Sheila McCarthy (The Umbrella Academy, The Day After Tomorrow).
 
Moved house recently and praying there’s no secret evil hiding in the loft? To celebrate its impending release, we’ve taken inspiration from ISABELLE’s iconic plot and have selected ‘Top 10 Horror Films when a House Move Turns Evil’. Dating back to its pioneer, Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and into this generation’s newest classics, such as Get Out (2017) and Mother! (2017), we hope this could further inspire you to create a piece of your own?
 
 
ISABELLE will be available on Sky Store, iTunes and UK digital platforms from 30th September
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Directed by: Robert Heydon
Synopsis: A young couple's dream of starting a family shatters as they descend into the depths of paranoia and must struggle to survive an evil presence that wants nothing more than their very own lives.
Key Stars: Amanda Crew, Adam Brody, Zoë Belkin

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Synopsis: A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.
Key Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris

Directed by: Jordan Peele
Synopsis: A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.
Key Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford

Directed by: Danny DeVito
Synopsis: A young couple has a chance to move into a gorgeous duplex in the perfect New York neighborhood. All they have to do is bump off the current tenant, a cute little old lady.
Key Stars: Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, Eileen Essell

Directed by: Claire Denis
Synopsis: Two American newlyweds in Paris experience a love so strong, it almost devours them.
Key Stars: Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle

Directed by: Michael Haneke
Synopsis: Two violent young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.
Key Stars: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch

Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Synopsis: A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.
Key Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd

Directed by: Sam Peckinpah
Synopsis: A young American and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment.
Key Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan

Directed by: Roman Polanski
Synopsis: A young couple moves into an apartment only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When the wife becomes mysteriously pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins to control her life.
Key Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon

David Watkins is a horror writer based in Devon in the UK. His most recent novel is The Devil’s Inn (4* - Joe X. Young, Ginger Nuts of Horror) and you can purchase a copy here:
(UK) https://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Watkins/e/B00HVW89IU?
(USA) https://www.amazon.com/David-Watkins/e/B00HVW89IU?
 
You can contact him on Twitter via @joshfishkins or Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7880694.David_Watkins?
 

THE FIRST HORRR BOOK I REMEMBER READING 

Christine by Stephen King, but I have waxed lyrical on this site about that before!

THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING 

One of the Dracula films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. I was probably around 9 or 10 so it would have been on TV. I still have a soft spot for those old horror films and I think some modern horror film makers could learn a lot from them – less is more, we don’t need so much blood and gore for effective horror.



THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

That’s a really tough question! There are a few contenders. Do you pick Dracula?
Frankenstein? Jekyll and Hyde? I Am Legend? The Stand?  These would all be worthy winners (although The Stand has a terrible ending). Any of Clive Barker’s early books also deserve a place on this list (Weaveworld is a personal favourite). However, anything with monsters (however allegorical) is not really scary. Things like war truly terrify me and the thoughts of my kids going to a conflict just brings me out in a cold sweat. Therefore, whilst it is not considered a horror book, I’m going to go for All Quiet On The Western Front.


THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 
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Easy – The Thing (1982). Everything about it is just spot on and I absolutely love the ending. I’ll come back to this later.

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

My opinion on this would probably change if you asked me this question next week. This is like one of those ‘greatest film’ or ‘greatest album’ questions: it’s so subjective, there can never be a right answer.
 
All the writers I mentioned earlier would be deserved winners in this category, plus people like Jo Nesbo (great crime books and he’s written some for children too), Alastair Reynolds (great ideas, endings a bit suspect), Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert (Dune alone should be enough), Joe R. Lansdale (see later), Joe Abercrombie (Lord Grimdark himself) and of course Clive Barker (Legend). Obviously these are all genre authors, and I would point anybody sniffy about genre books to these writers to help change their opinion. I’m not a big fan of literary fiction where nothing really happens or every major character is completely detestable. Will Self falls into this category for me – I’ve tried several times but I just don’t get the love.
 
Christ, I haven’t even mentioned Matheson, Wilde, Steinbeck, Dickens or Shakespeare. Aaargh. Too hard. Next.

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

I don’t pay that much attention to covers really (honest). It might make me pick the book up but it’s more about how that first page reads.
 
However there are some great examples out there.
The Rising cover lets you know you’re in for a wild ride – look how it adapts the Vitruvian Man and morphs it into something grim. It doesn’t give anything away. Why is there a balloon? Why are there eyes in the sewer? It sucks you in immediately. The Books Of Blood cover is just nuts and is a great introduction for the weirdness and genius it contains.
 

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

Star Wars. It’s all there – spaceships, heroic men and women, massive shadowy picture of Darth Vader in the background and of course, the lightsaber in Luke’s hand. With the various revelations in Return Of The Jedi, I think the way Leia is at Luke’s feet is a bit suspect. Close runners up are Alien (the tagline is awesome) and The Thing.

THE BEST BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN

Choose between my children? Never! I’ll let the reader decide.

THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

My very first, and no, I didn’t publish it. It was a high fantasy tale, complete with wizards and warriors and it was utterly, utterly shite. Is that a cop out? Yes, it is, but I’ve only published three books so far so can’t really nominate any of them.

THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME
Underrated is hard, and ‘overrated’ is an adjective that could be more easily applied to most things these days. It seems that everything is ‘the best of the year’ – even in January! If you read a computer games review site, people don’t rate a game if it scores less than 80% - what’s that all about? 80% is a great score! 50% means its average – what’s wrong with that? If you believe review scores, then just about every game released in the last few years is significantly better than average. Hmm.
 
I have read a lot of books, seen many films, listened to way too much music and some things resonate with me and some don’t.
 
Take The Last Jedi as a case in point – I didn’t much care for it personally, but my friends, who are not as invested in the Star Wars world, all thought it was great, for precisely the same reasons I thought it was a bit naff. Look at the opening scene: Poe says ‘Holding for General Hux’. It got a big laugh in the cinema, but it makes no sense whatsoever. Why do they even know what ‘holding’ means in the Star Wars universe? How does he even get through to the General of the enemy fleet? I felt they weren’t true to the world they’d created. Don’t get me started on the flying force Leia though – there may be children reading.
 
Rant over and back on topic: I’m going to go with The Thing simply because it was rated so poorly on release and yet is one of the greatest films ever made, in my humble opinion. Everything about it is completely brilliant – the special effects, the direction from John Carpenter, the entire cast, the ambiguous ending and the atmospheric music. Special mention of course to Bill – son of Burt – Lancaster who wrote the thing. Scriptwriters very rarely get any credit, but this script is fantastic.

THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME
This is another tricky one, because what do you mean by underrated? Is it reviewed badly or sold badly or just not heard of? I have a lot of love for Robert McCammon’s work – especially They Thirst and Swan Song but I don’t think they’re so much underrated as unheard of – especially in the UK. I believe McCammon had a falling out with his publisher, but he is now beginning to become – deservedly – more popular again.
 
More people need to be aware of JR Park’s Mad Dog or Wayne Smith’s Thor for example (and a quick mention of CC Adams here as he recommended them to me).
 
There are many authors in the independent world who should be better known, who are also really supportive, knowledgeable and extremely talented (the swines!). I won’t name any because I’ll only forget someone and that would be embarrassing. Suffice to say, British horror is in a great place right now.  

THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

I’m not sure that he’s underrated, so much as criminally under-appreciated in the UK, but I would go for Joe R Lansdale. His Hap and Leonard series are great fun with two superb main characters, but I first read Lansdale’s books in the late 80s with his books The Drive-In and short story collection By Bizarre Hands.
 
His horror books are really hard to get hold of in the UK - for example, at the time of writing this, I could get a copy of The Drive In from Amazon for £538.18. That’s outrageous! Does Joe come with it, to read it to you? You can’t currently buy a physical copy of The Drive-In 3 in the UK. I just don’t understand this as he’s a great writer and his horror is every bit as good as the Hap and Leonard books.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST

Around twenty years ago, this question would be easy to answer: anything by Ramsey Campbell. He wrote one book (I think it’s The Hungry Moon but not I’m not sure – sorry Ramsey!) and there’s a scene where a scarecrow turns to look at someone and it terrified me.
 
I don’t scare that easy, or so I thought, and especially in books. However, I’ve read a lot of horror in the last couple of years and Adam Neville’s No-One Gets Out Alive is really scary. I don’t want to give any spoilers here, but the way the heroine is stripped of all exits is more terrifying than the ghosts and evil in the house. A tremendous book.

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT

I have just finished the third draft of my monsters in Exeter book: The Exeter Incident. There are monsters living under Exeter and for various reasons they come to the surface to try and take over the city. I think it’s fair to say it doesn’t end well for the fine folk of Exeter. It’s taken me far too long to write it and I suffered a major loss of confidence whilst doing so. I suspect it will have a few more drafts before its ready, but it’s with my loyal beta reading team right now. I’m hoping a small press will snap it up – anybody interested…?

What is it about the Resident Evil series and remakes, eh? In a genre saturated with limp and lilly-livered, half-hearted, concieved by board-room, written-by-committee reboots, re-imaginings and other vague epithets for uninspired cash-ins, one would expect any attempt to dive back into the “survival horror” phenomena of the late 1990s/early 2000s to be doomed from the outset.
 
And yet, as Capcom's remake of the original Resident Evil demonstrates, occasionally, when the stars are right, when the auguries are kind, a species of the same magic occurs and the opportunity  sell video games  by the bucket load goes through the roof. 
 
Resident Evil is always going to be a part of horror canon in video games. Beyond that, even: part of the mythology and tradition of the genre. For most of us that were fortunate enough to grow up with video games as a medium, to have evolved as they evolved, Resident Evil was one of the many moments in which we realised the state of play has changed. For the first time in our young lives, we realised that video games were capable of more; that they could affect us in the same manner as film or literature, that we could be as terrified, disgusted, appalled, engaged with their narrative and aesthetics as in any other medium.
 
The sequel, Resident Evil 2, solidifed and capitalised upon that, delivering a far more expansive, experimental experience that shifted tone from Night of the Living Dead to something somewhere between Dawn of the Dead and The Thing (with more than one or two nods to David Cronenberg for good measure). For many, it still stands as a favourite of the entire franchise: a high watermark, despite its obvious limitations and deficiencies in the present day climate.
 
For years, we have been clamouring, begging, waiting with baited breath, for Capcom to work the same magic with it as they did the original. For years, we have been denied; not a whisper, not a rumour, not a breath of possibility.
 
Until late 2018, when Capcom exploded the internet and reduced us to deliriously excited thirteen year olds again with not only confirmation of the remake but footage and images from what appeared to be an almost complete game.
 
For my part, excitement was tinged by a note of caution. Yes, it was wonderful to see familiar environments, characters and various undead gribblies rendered in such beautiful, up-to-date graphics. Yes, it was extremely pleasurable to be caught up in the swell of positivity surrounding the game.
 
However, was it really possible that Capcom could work the same magic twice? 

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The last instalment of the Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil 7: Bio Hazard, suggested that the company had indeed been listening to what its established fanbase want from the series, dragging it sharply away from the corny, action-horror titles that bedevilled its latter years and which almost dissolved what love even its hardcore fans maintained.
 
However, was it possible to create a game so necessarily “retro” in terms of its structure, mechanics and storyline yet simultaneously make it palatable to present day sensibilities?
 
A sincere dilemma. If the game wasn't close enough to the original, it risked alienating or arousing the ire of its established fans. If it cleaved too closely to its “survival horror” roots without introducing enough to remove it from that experience, then it ran the risk of being crude, clunky and unsophisticated (not to mention lacking in any and all surprise).
 
You can therefore understand my apprehension when I first sat down to play the game; an experience I decided to share via my YouTube channel (links below) so that I might have some record of my immediate emotional responses.
 
Damn, Capcom. Just damn.
 
I don't quite know how they do it, at this point: when most of the monolithic, traditional video game companies are collapsing on themselves amongst mires of toxic work practice, legal scandals, a profound lack of understanding concerning their own consumer bases etc, Capcom is the outlier: they not only have their fingers buried firmly in the pulse of their intended market, they also maintain an ability to understand what makes their products work that is rare and enviable in mainstream video gaming.
 
Resident Evil 2 doesn't just do what the remake of the original did; it surpasses that as profoundly as it surpasses the PS1 game on which it is based:
 
The balance of old and new, the traditional fan-pleasing elements that have been re-jigged to make them simultaneously nostalgic and surprising, with factors that are entirely novel is sublime. Absolutely sublime: Capcom have managed to create an experience that is simultaneously familiar and cutting edge; an action horror game that marries the mechanics of the old and the new in such a way as to reveal fresh appreciation for both.
 
First of all, the game looks incredible. At this stage in the current video games console generation, it's difficult to impress through sheer aesthetics. 

​This game looks sublime. The environments, the character models, the various zombies, monsters and abominations all seethe with the most unbelievable detail. Whilst you'll be moving too fast and through corridors that are far too dark to notice it most of the time, both characters and monsters are affected by environmental elements such as rain, smoke, fire etc. Early on, when the player characters (either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield, depending on who the player chooses) find themselves outside in the pelting rain, glistening moisture pools in the recesses of their clothing, droplets bead in their hair and on their weapons. Wounds they have sustained remain as scars or marks on their bodies, along with stains and tears in their clothing.
 
This factor escalates the further you progress in the game, both characters becoming notably more tattered and besmirched the deeper into Raccoon City they delve.
 
The various species of monster and abomination to be found throughout the environments boast similar qualities: shoot a zombie in the face or chest, the wounds will remain, no matter how far away you progress from them. The models also boast degrees of detail whereby players can shoot off limbs or parts of limbs, surgically taking them apart or crippling them, which is not only aesthetically incredible but also lends a surprising amount of depth to combat.
 
Environments are stunningly recreated, both familiar rooms and corridors and entirely new arenas, the sheer level of detail so achingly beautiful, it's almost a shame that the player will be sprawling through most of them in a dazed and confused panic.
 
As in the original game, environment is all important here: the game's story is fairly sparse, adding in a few new elements and refining others but generally relying more on atmosphere and tension than overt narrative to carry the day.
 
From the escalating dereliction of the Raccoon City Police Department to the infested and grotesque sewer systems below, the game goes out of its way to make every setting as fraught and oppressive as it can be. Combined with an incidental score that is nigh perfect, every step of the game is dripping in sheer ethos, in dread, paranoia and mounting terror.
 
A new feature that helps to emphasise this beyond any dream or possibility of the original game is one cribbed from Resident Evil 7, whose engine this game pushes to the Nth degree:
 
The flash light.
 
Various areas within the game lack lighting, meaning that the player has to rely on the extremely focused and narrow illumination provided by the character's flashlight. This renders areas that might otherwise be fairly mundane exercises in heart-stopping terror, the flashlight beam playing over things that the player's eye interprets as monsters or zombies in waiting, causing them to panic and blunder into the pack of G-Virus infested creatures just waiting around the next corner.
 
The various beasties from the original are all re-imagined here, some, such as the iconic Licker, retaining much of their original designs and natures (enhanced by some wonderful new environmental mechanics relating to their blindness and reliance on sound) whilst others are more profoundly repurposed:
 
What was a unique boss encounter in the original game, the Cronenbergian “Birkin Spawn,” is here a more distressing but less unique enemy; a species of creature that has infested the sewers beneath Raccoon City and which looms shapelessly from the filth to grab the player, its flower-like mouth-parts blossoming to vomit toxic bile and parasitic worms. Likewise, the plant-creatures from the underground labs have been re-imagined as a specific form of zombie; human carcasses that have been infested with G-Virus mutated plants, making them some of the most unique and abstruse enemies in the game.
 
But perhaps most notable -outside of the named “boss” entities the player encounters- are the zombies themselves.
 
Far from simply recreating the slouching, head-shot vulnerable entities of the original game or even the re-jigged species encountered in the Resident Evil 1 remake, Capcom have gone back to the drawing board with their iconic monsters, subtly re-designing the way they behave and operate to make them as threatening as can be:
 
Whereas in previous Resi titles, a good headshot or a sufficient amount of damage would be enough to put most zombies out for good (significantly diminishing their threat as the games progressed), here, that simply isn't so:
 
It's going to be something of a surprise for many players familiar with this series when they come upon their first congregation of undead, assuming blithely that they know how to deal with them, only to find the old tricks not working. It's possible to pump round after round, magazine after magazine into these bastards and they won't go down. Even when they do, most get back up again in a matter of moments, no matter how traumatically wounded they are.
 
This is not like previous games where it's possible to “clear” corridors and make areas safe by simply eliminating the zombies and monsters they contain:
 
There is a far more fraught and legitimate “survival horror” element to these encounters, in that the player must determine between wasting valuable ammunition (which is phenomenally rare) or risking being caught whilst dodging past the zombies and thereby placing themselves in a more precarious situation health-wise. Given the general scarcity of ammunition, this is entirely deliberate: the new way in which Capcom want players to approach each situation: there's a tactical element to combat in this game that is simply absent in previous instalments, a level of consideration that one would most certainly not expect from the B-movie stylings of this particular franchise.
 
This also has the added factor of making the common or garden zombies threatening again.
 
One of the most pronounced changes in this version of the game is the level of tension. Whilst the original was indeed a master at fraying the player's nerves, leaving them poised on the edge of their seats whilst opening the next door, turning the next corner, here, that factor is conflated to the power of N: the sheer number of zombies in certain areas is intimidating, as are the ways in which they can now follow the player through doors and also pour in from the outside through unbarred windows.
 
Whereas the original game had areas that could be rendered “safe zones,” that isn't necessarily true here: familiar areas or those that are revisited too much will become newly infested as zombies approach the police station from outside, pouring through smashed windows or flung open doors.
 

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Perhaps the most terrifying element of the game comes in the form of a familiar enemy from the previous games, but which only occurred in the tertiary “B” scenarios for each character:
 
The biological super-weapon and assassin that is “Mr. X.”
 
Here as in the original, Mr. X is a gigantic, trench-coat wearing behemoth sent in by the Umbrella Corporation to dispose of any survivors or witnesses to the tragedy fast claiming Raccoon City. An invulnerable, silent and expressionless monstrosity, Mr. X occurs at particular points throughout the game's many campaigns, stalking the player through areas previously assumed to be safe, following them based on movement, sound and vibration.
 
Whereas most monsters in the game are pre-determined, spawning in at particular areas, Mr. X is dynamic: an entity that exists whether you as the player are present or not. As such, he can be anywhere after he initially occurs:
 
The player will lose track of him after scrabbling away through the corridors and stairwells of the police station, hearing only vague echoes of his footsteps. Evetually, even these recede, leaving the player in a state of simultaneous tension and relief. Then, they'll open a door and head cautiously down the next corridor only for X to emerge around the corner, moving with such predatory economy, such monolithic malice, the only option is to panic, turn tail and scrabble back to whatever safe spaces or hidey holes they can recall.
 
And forget any tactics you might think carry over from the original game; no amount of wasted ammunition will put this monster down for good; the most you can hope is to delay him for seconds before he heals, gets back up and resumes his chase. 

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In and of himself, X isn't terribly dangerous to the player: he's quite slow and plodding, his skull-pulping attacks are cleanly telegraphed and easy to avoid.
 
But that does nothing to dilute the raw panic he inspires simply by the fact of his presence. That he can occur almost anywhere, invading areas that the player might assume safe, enhances this factor to the point whereby the sight of him emerging through a door several sizes too small for him is enough to inspire screams of pure terror.
 
This is where the game's sound design truly comes into its own: the original Resi games were revolutionary in their use of sound and music to enhance atmosphere. Here, that tradition has been noted and run with, the various environments the player encounters all boasting their own stunning incidental music as well as sound effects that make the player feel truly immersed in this decaying, zombie-infested disaster area.
 
Many enemies, the zombies included, utilise sound to determine their actions: fire off shots, and zombies will immediately turn and lurch your way. The aforementioned Lickers boast a brilliant new dynamic in which they are blind, relying on sound to zero in on their targets: whilst they might inspire a panicked player to start unloading shotgun shells into the dark, a far more efficient tactic when one hears their tell-tale rasping breaths and hissing chitters is to stop, slow down and simply creep past them.
 
Mr. X epitomises and encapsulates these qualities: not only does he have his own heart-thumping incidental music, it's possible to hear him clomping through the walls and floors of the police station as he seeks you out. Keen-eared players may even use this element to determine where he is at any given time and plan their routes to avoid him. But the most sincere effect of this is fear. Fear of being stalked, of knowing that this invulnerable, remorseless, unreasoning killing engine is slowly tracking you down and will inevitably show up when you are at your most desperate, hemmed in by hordes of the living dead, down to your last few shells or magazines. 

 
This is before we even begin to comment on the superlatve reimaginings of fan favourite monsters like William Birkin, a constantly-mutating, Cronenbergian nightmare who is here, if anything, even more revoltingly brilliant than he was in the original.
 
Flaws? All forgivable, given just how stand-out, jaw-droppingly stunning the rest of the game is. Interestingly, most of the game's major issues derive from its source material: as in the original, the story is a little underbaked for both characters (though efforts have been made to expand upon this and lend things a little more pathos). The player characters also react in B-movie, fairly glib manners to scenes of atrocity and utter abomination (again, a matter of the game's heritage and a wider flaw of the Resi series in general).
 
It's also far, far more difficult than the original, with the natural limitations upon ammunition and healing items of a “survival horror” game ramped up to sometimes insane degrees (certainly in the B scenarios for each character, which naturally assume you've already played the A scenarios and are therefore somewhat familiar with the game's layout). There were times when the lack of ammunition and the sheer number of enemies I had to negotiate had me in despair, but then, that is “survival horror;” the key emotion it is designed to evoke.
 
And here, it does so beautifully, in a game whose original incarnation is two decades old.
 
 
If you would like to see me scream and panic whilst attempting to negotiate this game, consider checking out my “let's play” at the following: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_3YQW0lAL2Ok23qr4MTG2juSQllvo4dT
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​ This incredibly popular movie happened to possess a multitude of weapons that provided a new level of scariness. Rusty blades, pitchforks, and scythes were some of the tools that made a huge difference when possessed by evil children. This is the ultimate set of tools for those seeking variety and spice from their horror genre.

​Candyman is an infamous persona when it comes to the horror genre and use of weapons, and it was credited mainly to Tony Todd's performance. However, his larger-than-life image was credited mainly by a large hook and bees that encircled the blood. These were enough to give a horrific end to almost every victim in the movie. If bees were unable to complete the job, such a large iron hook on the list of such an influential person was enough to send victims into the chill. It is easy to see why Candyman became an iconic character when it comes to the horror genre in the 1990s.

John Kramer was the star of Saw, as the terminal tyrant managed to end his victims with a stunning game at every time. Every game masterminded by Kramer was of the highest order – partly because they were almost impossible to escape and they involved complex tools and traps. The various inventions of Kramer terrified viewers across all movies in the franchise. The jigsaw trap was among the first tools that turned out to be a very horrible way to kill his victims. The vast number of tools used to kill victims trying to win his games gave this movie cult status. Similarly, this weapon ranks as the number one when it comes to taking out victims and scaring viewers.
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What’s your take on this? Do you know of other weapons? Leave a comment below!

Author’s bio: Joshua Sherman lived in L.A. for five years, having worked in the movie industry. Movie enthusiast, husband, father, tech fanatic. Joshua also traveled to over thirty countries and wrote poems for years.

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When I think childhood fears, the first that comes to mind: monsters in the closet, or under the bed. Now, is that on the top of my personal list? Although I did keep my closet door closed—at all times, mind you—I’d have to say this proved pretty manageable. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Clowns…rather terrifying. However, for me, that was another easy fix. No clown movies. No clown Halloween costumes. No clowns at parties. And, minimal contact with Ronald McDonald at the fast food chain.
 
So what did frighten me? We’re about to get deep. You ready? Okay, the most terrifying thing for me as a child: abandonment/isolation. A vivid memory for me, incidentally involves the previously mentioned fast food restaurant. I ventured to the restroom on my own. All was well until I couldn’t open the door on the way out. Either the lock was tricky, or I was too inexperienced with these types of doors. Cue the dramatic music and a tiny me screaming and pounding on the door. Those few minutes sent me into a sweaty panic. What if I never get out? What if my family leaves me here? I think I was too young to worry about death—or maybe not! Eventually, a worker keyed me free, and my mom was there with open arms. Whew… yet, these feelings still unnerve me today.
 
Another traumatizing scenario: my parents dropping me off at day care. A reality: parent/s work. I’m sure I comprehended that. But, why was the solution to leave me with a bunch of strangers? Not to mention, I had a few awful experiences there. Once a kid threw a rock at my head—to me, it actually felt like a small boulder. The problem: none of the adults cared. This triggered the fact that my parents left me to suffer. The abandonment: intense.
 
Flash forward. As an adult, I completely get it. Now, being alone—by choice—is blissful to me. However, every once in a while when someone cancels plans or does some other ‘normal’ thing, these feelings surface. One of the most horrific movies, in my opinion, is The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I can’t stand the thought of every person I know and love turning into an alien who cares nothing about me. It’s not only the ultimate abandonment, but it’s supernatural! Eek! Also, I think the profound psychological terror here is that no one loves me. As humans that’s a primal need. If that’s not met, for me, it’s freaking scary.
 
This definitely makes it into my writing. I isolate or abandon all of my characters in some way, whether it’s via a loved one’s death, or locking them in a basement. Also, let’s not forget that ignoring ourselves, our intuition or truth, can be a fatal decision—and is perhaps the worst kind of betrayal. The trick is finding new ways to bring out this fear in my characters, and ultimately the reader. I’m definitely up for the challenge…

As well as writing an excellent entry in our Childhood Fears series of articles, Theresa has also generously set us up with a competition to win one of four signed copies of Fountain Dead (three copies for US residents and 1 copy for a UK resident.)

To enter the competition simple retweet this tweet and  leave a comment telling us who you would least like to be haunted by. 

Mark is uprooted from his home and high school in the Twin Cities and forced to move with his family into a Victorian in Nowhere-ville. Busy with the relocation and fitting in, Mark’s parents don’t see what’s unfolding around them—the way rooms and left behind objects seem alive with a haunted past.
Of course, Mark keeps his ghostly encounters to himself, all the while sinking deeper into the house's dark, alluring, and ultimately terrifying history. As romantic entanglements intensify, the paranormal activity escalates. Past and present come together. Everything is connected—from the bricks in the walls to the hearts beating in their chests, all the secrets of Fountain Dead are finally unearthed.