The British horror renaissance

Inspired by this piece from the Garudian:

Interest in homegrown horror was rekindled by Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later in 2002 and grew with the success of Shaun of the Dead, Neil Marshall's The Descent and Christopher Smith's two films Creep and Severance.

So this list deals with the last decade (and counting) revival in the fortunes of the British horror movie (you can monitor new releases here, and there is one for short films), I'm sure the creative people were out there but it was 28 Days Later than got the purse strings loosened. Defining "British" is always going to be subjective, Hammer, for example, made a return in 2007 but some of the films they've produced have been co-productions filmed abroad (like Let Me In), but we'll include them as this this list is partly to show the strength of the British film industry when it comes to horror films. For that reason I will also include movies filmed in the UK as it all helps bolster the home-grown efforts (like World War Z).

Of course, that isn't to say that all these films are great, some of them are awful, but the level of quality is higher than I've found on most of my other lists.

Also making 2002 a cut-off is pretty arbitrary as it includes Dog Soldiers and Deathwatch that can't have benefited much from the 28 Days Later effect, and it excludes many interesting films that pre-date it, like The Bunker and Lighthouse, but it is still a good line in the sand if we want to look at recent British horror films and it does seem to be a genuine phenomena.

See also: Contagious violence, it shouldn't be a surprise, given the film that kickstarted everything that a lot of the films here also feature over there but the sub-genre (and zombie films) are easy to do with simple make-up and effects, and there is also an explosion in them in general. Also hoodie horror films feature strongly as a reflection of modern concerns. In addition there are quite a few films that fit into the backwoods horror and folk horror, both of which are undergoing a resurgence too (both of which can also be done on a limited budget). In fact, in most sub-genres I've been tracking, a big hit film has combined with improved distribution and cheaper technology to give a spike in the number of films produced.

Links: British horror revival blog from MJ Simpson, the co-founder of SFX magazine and the author of the upcoming book Urban Terrors: New British Horror Cinema 1997-2008, a guide to the 114 key films of that period. I only found it part-way through making the list but it has proved invaluable for filling in the gaps here (it also helped confirm I was on the right lines with the list name), so if you like this list follow his blog and be sure to pick up his book (if it goes well there is chance of a sequel - there are clearly going to be more films in the few years after 2008 than in the decade before). He has also provided round-ups of the releases in 2010 and 2011, noting that in 2001 there were 3 British horror films but in 2010 there were 48 (the 2010 round-up only includes 32 because he discovered more afterwards) and in 2011 there were 41 (not counting further revisions), my count below is different but the proportions are similar. There were more again in 2012, 14 of them zombie films, more than one a month and more than the annual total for most years (in fact so many I made a list for British zombie films). Which does flag up that something is going on here. Frightfest is also worth keeping an eye on, it is the UK's leading horror film festival (I have yet to attend but I will one day) with a strong focus on British movies and, even if you can't make it, because it is run in conjunction Film4, they run a week's worth of films and interviews on their TV channel (it is where I first heard about Kill List, for example).

The count: I have gone through and counted all the full length British horror films and put them into a spreadsheet and graph.

Which really does show an upwards trend, from less than one a month to one ever 3 days, just in the noughties - rapidly passing the levels of the boom period for British horror: the 60s and 70s. If you look back further you'll see that horror film production in the 90s were often down to similar levels to the early 50s when we were shaking off the effects of a world war (the chilling effect of the video nasty era? after all hardline BBFC chief James Ferman retired in 1999 and it was only then that a lot of the banned movies started to be passed uncut). A really impressive upswing , although it makes it impossible to keep up with all of them even if you wanted to. However, the number do suggest the renaissance was under way before 28DL, even if the success of films like it (Shaun of the Dead, etc.) have inspired film-makers and made financiers take British horror films seriously, helping to build momentum. I'd also flag up my comments above, as the growth in some horror sub-genres parallels what we see here, suggesting that the ease of film-making and distribution now means there will be more films but there is also clear evidence for successful films have an important effect on the types of films being made (the best example of zombie films - the first 3 Romero films created a spike in zombie movies with a lag of a year or two - I have rather a fine graph to prove my point).

I did also stumble across this piece about horror fiction and Tory governments:

A cursory glance at the points where horror fiction did enjoy periods of resurgence do tend to follow an upward graph with Tory fortunes.

...

Now, after two years of government by coalition of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, horror is on the rise again.

So we can see a big spike in British horror films after 2010 (a jump of 50%) but there is usually a lag of a few years between inspiration and realisation, plus the Thatcher/Major years (1979-1997) saw a real dip in output between high points of the 60s/70s and the current upswing. So I'm not buying this when it comes to films, and if we are talking about fiction then... show me your numbers - I've shown you mine after all.

Caveats: There could be a recentist bias to an internet movie data base but IMDB has been going since 1990, so you'd imagine that'd be smoothed out by now and the British horror film industry isn't that large, but does attract a lot of rabid fans, so you'd imagine it'd be difficult for too many films to fall through the gaps. The opposite might also be a problem - there might be a bias against more recent movies as it can take a while for information to trickle through. However, this seems to largely apply to tagging and working out what sub-genres films fit into which are user added features and can be a bit arbitrary and subjective, while the location of production company is going to be a well-defined fact and much more likely to be properly registered here when the film is added (I have found a couple of examples so far when compiling this list, but not many). So I suspect neither is so serious to make a mockery of the numbers, as is a big enough sample that a few films won't make any difference (famous last words, I'm sure). One factor I do think might have an impact on the current year peak is that I've already seen some unreleased films shifted back to the following year or just whenever. So I expect the patter of each year is the peak will grow, as the full slate of films in production becomes clear, and then it will drop a bit as some get rescheduled or disappear into development hell, never to be seen again. Which means the current year is always going to be provisional until we reach the end and perhaps do a little tidy up too, so there might be a drop off of a dozen or so, but that might be compensated for after the inclusion of some films that might not get listed here until they're released.

Other films: There are some adult films that I'm wary of listing as they seem to cause problems for the list: Cathula 2: Vampires of Sex.

Length: Sorry it is a long list and this might be a little off-putting but you can use the filters to break it down if you don't want to browse through all the pages (even if I recommend you do it at least once). So you can, for example, rank only the feature films by quality if you were perhaps looking some of the better movies on the list to watch (even then you should do your homework, because some obscure films don't have many votes which can lead to people gaming the system).

Videos: I've tried to provide links to online videos of films where they appear to be official, if you want me to add a video or remove/swap a link then leave a note in the comments.

Comments: As I don't have a Facebook account I cannot interact with the new comments system, so have switched it off and replaced it with a thread on the message board.