We caught Exorcist randomly on the tele the other day and I’ve caught a horror movie bug because of it …

The still above is from the British film The Descent, which, in all honesty, scared the living shit out of me. While I can view most horror movies now critically and dispassionately, The Descent contains a premise which still exerts a visceral andrenal effect on me — the idea of being stuck in a dark, airless, cramped, potentially inescapable underground tunnel (of being buried alive, basically, which is probably my freakout button #1); and this is all before you realize that there are legions of feral, bloodthirsty mutant creatures down in the dark with you, picking your friends off one by one in horrifically brutal ways. Good times. The spelunking industry will probably be raging at this film’s release.

Appropriately timed enough, The Sunday Times Magazine published a highly enjoyable piece this weekend about the emerging international renaissance of horror moviemaking, written by John Hodgman (the mightily intelligent cultural correspondent for The Daily Show, and oh yes, he – in the role of the PC – of the recent obnoxious Apple ads).