2020s

As the chilly mist clears across Scott Cooper’s frozen landscapes in The Pale Blue Eye, an intriguing murder mystery of occult horror and dark family secrets emerges, conceiving what Gothic evils and melancholy regrets might have given birth to the morbid imagination of Edgar Allen Poe.

Living’s cultural transplant of Akira Kurosawa’s deeply contemplative Ikiru may struggle with originality at times, but in shifting this mid-century tale of one dying man’s enlightenment from Japan to London, Olivier Hermanus still summons a revitalised freshness, imbuing it with a whole new context of soul-sucking social customs and spiritual inspiration.

Ti West’s horror prequel Pearl is just as much a warped product of the classical Hollywood dream machine as the aspiring actress, murderess, and housewife at its centre, relishing the superficial splendour of lush Technicolor stylings that only barely conceals an uglier, malevolent truth.

Across three Kafkaesque fables set in the past, present, and apocalyptic future of a single residence, The House unfurls an allegory of whimsical existentialism, unnervingly studying humanity’s descent into material consumption, and delicately infusing its absurdism with the childlike innocence of stop-motion animation.

Ti West doesn’t quite tread new ground in his grindhouse horror pastiche X, and yet he considers the religious puritanism and rebellious counterculture of 70s America with pulpy retrospection, examining the exploitation that runs deep in both and leaves older generations to wither away in violent, vengeful resentment.

There is a tragic, hidden beauty affectingly mirrored between Hilary’s passionless life and her once-glorious cinema in Empire of Light, and with Roger Deakins’ radiant photography at Sam Mendes’ disposal, both are united under a rose-tinted conviction of film’s raw, inspiring power.