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Who would have thought a two-hander cosmic horror all set in a Rest Stop bathroom could be so much fun? But with the amazing JK Simmons (unseen but driving the whole story) and a full-on lead performance from True Blood's Ryan Kwanten, it never stops surprising and entertaining in a gruesome - often very funny - battle of wits. Throw in body horror and some broad cosmic themes, and this is a memorable, punchy 80 minutes.

I think this take on the suburban vampire is a real find - it has that classic cult movie feel that horror fans love from some of the best-remembered 80s 'fun' horrors (Fright Night, Lost Boys) but with a cool domestic strife theme that is pretty universal and runs through the whole piece. It's nicely styled throughout, the two leads are great, and it's refreshing to see an older couple at the centre of a vampire movie (usually the domain of teen angst and the very young). And it subverts quite a few of the vampire tropes enough to offer a fresh spin.

So this is kind of Marriage Story with vampires and all held together by the charm of Crampton and Fessenden - the main reason it has legs, beyond most forgettable horrors released these days. There's some amusingly spewing gore, as the genre dictates, but it's not beyond the pale offensively, and I think the character work opens this up to a broader audience than much of the current horror fare.

This film sticks quite close the original "Turn of the Screw" tale, but is set in the present day, and makes the sexual themes of the Henry James story much more overt. It has good cinematography, and it's snowy location creates quite an atmosphere. You never know quite where it is going, which is good, but you also feel there is something very wrong with Leelee Sobieski's character - something you can't really put your finger on - it's revealed as the film progresses. The way she turns from victim to savior to abuser is really intriguing and by the end really quite disturbing.... The film has many of the conventions of the standard ghost story, but there is something more interesting going on under the surface. A different type of scariness...

Those who have posted here comparing Tobe Hooper's (one and only) masterpiece with the dreadful remake are presumably young children with no real understanding of cinema. The 1974 film is the antithesis of the slick, MTV-influenced, cynical cash-in mentality that informed the later remake. The fact that the remake's target teen audience (well, at least some of them) appeared to lap it up is just a sad reflection of how far standards have fallen since the heyday of the horror film in the 70's.

But Hooper's CHAINSAW is more than just a classic horror film. With its print in the permanent collection at the NY Museum of Modern Art, it truly is a classic of cinema. I've shown this to Bergman fans, Tarkovsky fans and, yes, horror fans too - none of them have been prepared for its power, its inventiveness, its willingness to push the envelope of what cinema can do. And, with its simple story and powerhouse, unstoppable delivery, it is as open to interpretation as any piece of "modern art" - whether it be from the "vegetarian treatise" angle, or the post-Vietnam traumatised America school of thought. But, as I was on my first (of several) viewings, those I have introduced to this movie have been bowled over by the quality of the film-making, and the filmic techniques (soundtrack, editing, startling images) used by Hooper to capture his "waking nightmare" on screen. It is something I really don't think any other film has quite achieved, though many have tried.

Now, of course, there is a fluke element at work here. Hooper never came close to achieving anything like this again, and many, though not all, of the film's fascinating resonances are a product of the era and the filmmaker's unconscious sensibilities. What he obviously had as a director was the kind of daring to take the visceral power that cinema can deliver so well to the limit, to the the edge of acceptability, skirting on exploitation. That the film is so unrelentingly dark and so unbelievably sadistic in its second half, and yet fascinates even as it traumatises, is a definite testimony to the skill of its director. What could have been sleaze is instead a horrible nightmare experience, sure enough, but one that borders on the transcendental. Should be seen by ALL students of cinema at least once in their lifetime.

This is one of the darkest, most intense, thrillers I think I've ever seen. The director Paul Sarossy brings a really dark visual tone to the film, which lifts it well out of the ordinary for a British movie. Andrew Howard gives a mesmerising performance as the tormented hitman of the title. The film also boasts one of the most shocking endings I can remember.

Mr In-Between really sticks in the memory. It has a strong intellectual side, a tender love story, as well as more visceral thrills. But most of all, it will leave you shaken in a way that few films even dare these days.