Talking Horror

Horror movies are back, and they’re bigger than ever. In 2025 alone we’ve had a string of major releases, including Weapons and Bring Her Back. Here Sir! film and TV critic Boyd Hilton and Mike Muncer, creator and host of The Evolution of Horror podcast, sit down to discuss this new wave of chillers, as well as what makes a classic horror film.

Boyd Hilton - It strikes me, Mike, that 2025, even more than ever, has seen a resurgence of horror films. And good ones at that, apart from the terrible reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer. But as the aficionado who's been monitoring all this on your podcast, does it feel that way to you?

Mike Muncer - I think it's been a super strong year, probably more than for a while. We had a great period, sort of pre-COVID, when we had stuff like Get Out, Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Witch, but then I think things paused. But 2025 has been astounding, hasn't it? A lot of people are talking about movies like Weapons and Bring Her Back not just as being some of the biggest films of the year, but also some of the best. Sinners is probably going to get some Oscars attention as well. It's been really nice to see horror doing well critically and commercially.

BH Yes, one of the big hits has been Weapons, which I loved, and that did really well at the box office as well as with critics. You could quibble over whether it's more a thriller than a horror movie, but it's pretty horrific in the end.

MM Yeah, I think it far exceeded expectations in terms of box office. But horror is a genre where you can have a completely original property, and it can do really well commercially. A lot of the time, horror films will just attract audiences because of the concept and word of mouth.

BH One of the interesting things about Weapons is the extent to which it does or doesn't explain what the fuck is going on. So the freaky, witchy woman Gladys, played brilliantly by Amy Madigan, suddenly arrives quite late in the story and when we get to see what she's up to, the central mystery of the disappeared kids is "solved". Sometimes I feel the more you explain everything, the less it feels exciting. What do you make of how horror films are resolved in that way? Would you rather have everything explained to you, or would you rather leave some mystery?

MM I veer towards wanting the mystery. Take a really classic example like John Carpenter's Halloween, where Michael Myers is wearing a mask and killing babysitters, and no one really knows why. It's like he's a complete blank slate of a character. There's no rhyme or reason to what he's doing. There's no explanation or background origin story. And then as all the sequels or remakes were churned out, they slowly tried to pad all that out, and I think people disliked that. I think he becomes less powerful and less scary the more you explain him. So much about what makes horror work is the unknown. What scares us is not quite being able to understand why certain things happen. So on the whole, I would say it's better not to over explain.

BH Absolutely. Psycho famously ends with a clunky explanation of what we've just seen, which almost ruins the whole film.

MM I love that feeling of a horror movie ending, and we're left with this kind of cold uncertainty that still keeps us up at night. Having said that, Weapons has a really satisfying climax. It's almost like a cartoon, like a Looney Tunes style of situation.

BH We're in quite a witch-y time aren't we? With Weapons and Bring Her Back. But it's a way more extreme end of the witch scale isn't it? Sally Hawkins' character is monstrous.

MM Yes she's a wicked stepmother – literally – because she's a foster mother who's secretly performing occult witchcraft, and she's kind of sacrificing her own foster children. And that's so different in tone, isn't it? That is a really bleak, nasty, quite sad, depressing movie. It really doesn't pull any punches, and the ending is a real downer in comparison to Weapons. And I, personally, I love that.

BH I admire it a lot but found it quite gruelling. And I can watch pretty much anything no matter how gory or disgusting. But Sally Hawkins is incredible, isn't she? It's a jolt to see just how horrible she is in this, after all her classy performances in films like The Shape of Water, Paddington, Happy Go Lucky etc. And then suddenly we see her go completely demented in this.

MM It's such a good choice of casting. Actually, I spoke to the Philippou brothers, who made the film, and I think they played on that – the fact that she's known for quite wholesome, kind, soft characters, even in The Shape of Water, which is kind of a monster movie. Seeing her completely let loose as this evil hag is interesting, and I think they were playing on other "hagsploitation" movies too.

BH Oh, I love hagsploitation.

MM Same. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, right?

BH Absolute classic hagsploitation. Did the Philippou brothers say how Sally Hawkins felt about the more extreme, nasty moments in Bring Her Back?

MM They said that she was absolutely up for it. I think she was really impressed by the script, and by their previous film Talk to Me, and maybe she wanted the chance to do something a bit different too. It's a long way from Paddington.

BH Do you still get affected by shock moments, and by properly scary horror films, considering you see all of them and you talk about so many of them on your podcast?

MM I do, and I really hope that never goes away. I don't ever want to become too jaded. I guess the reason I love horror is because I love films to kind of give me a bit of an emotional reaction. I love movies that really mess me up in certain ways, and so I'm always chasing that feeling. I want a new horror film to scare me or disturb me or shock me and Bring Her Back does all that. There's a moment of body horror when the young boy is chewing on the knife. Oh God, I had to look away.

BH Does it strike you that there's a real increase in body horror particularly?

MM Yeah, I think it's having a bit of a moment. It might be something to do with COVID – the idea of films dealing with real life horrors, but in more of a fantastical way. We haven't had that many films that are explicitly about the pandemic. But instead, we have had quite a lot of movies about the decay of the human body. So we're seeing zombie viruses in something like 28 Years Later, rather than a real medical virus.

BH The franchise which delights in the most elaborate kills is surely Final Destination, and the latest film in the series, Bloodlines, did not disappoint. Those films are loads of fun, right?

MM So much fun, and I talk about them a lot in the context of slasher movies, because once upon a time, if we go back to Halloween, it was a very low-key scary, atmospheric movie where you really cared about the characters. You cared about Jamie Lee Curtis, you wanted her to survive. And then as the slashers went on through the 1980s, they started becoming more about the kills, and "how gory can we make the deaths?" Then we get to Final Destination, and there's not even a real killer any more. You don't really care about the characters. You're just watching a series of really elaborate kill scenes. But they are so entertaining, so I don't really care that these films don't have a lot of subtext. And they don't really have characters that you particularly love, because I'm happy to see them die in creative, elaborate ways.

BH I can't remember who any of the characters are at all, but I had a blast anyway. Can we talk about Scream? How excited are you about the new Scream film [Scream 7]?

MM I am a bit of a Scream fan, as it was my first gateway into horror. I grew up in the mid 1990s, so it was the very first horror film I ever saw as a kid. And this new one is bringing back Neve Campbell. They're actually bringing back a whole bunch of cast members from the old films, even people – David Arquette and Matthew Lillard included – whose characters have died. I'm intrigued to know what they're going to do with that, and why those characters are coming back.

BH What was it about Scream that captured your imagination?

MM Neve Campbell... Well a lot of people older than me think of Scream as a film very much looking back, commenting on the tropes of the genre, and it's poking fun at films like Halloween or Friday the 13th, and obviously all the characters reference horror films in it. But I didn't know any of the films it was referencing. I think that's the genius of Scream. Even if you didn't know that it was poking fun at the tropes, it still worked as a really good horror film.

BH That combination of Kevin Williamson's script and Wes Craven's direction worked fantastically. It was that marriage of those two extraordinary sensibilities that made it work.

MM Exactly. And it effectively gave me a watch list, because I was hearing the characters talk about all these horror films, which I then sought out after watching.

BH Finally, let's pick our top fives: what are your favourite horror films as of now?

MM I'd go for Get Out which is absolutely perfect. Then I'd have Scream, The Shining – which I think is still the scariest movie I've ever seen. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a masterpiece as well. And I really like The Descent. And the original Halloween: an absolute classic.

BH That's six films, but we'll allow it. I'd go for: The Exorcist, Dressed to Kill, Carrie (yes, two from Brian De Palma), The Shining as well, and finally Dario Argento's Deep Red. With an honourable mention for The Omen, which I absolutely love. Thanks Mike.