It's dark outside, and teenager Casey Becker is home alone, making popcorn on the stove and preparing to pop a scary movie into the VCR while she waits for the arrival of her boyfriend, Steve. The teen, portrayed by actress Drew Barrymore, picks up the phone and hears a deep, ominous voice on the other end. It's one of the most chilling moments in horror cinema, and one that journalist and author Ashley Cullins has never forgotten.
If you're programming your own little horror film festival in the run-up to Halloween, and Tobe Hooper's stone-cold classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 1974 is part of the lineup, then this would make a handy follow-up for a night's viewing. It's not a making-of movie, although there are snippets of insight into the production's process; nor is it a meta-commentary at the rather sprawling level of Room 237, the delirious doc about The Shining.
has impressively outperformed previous years (a 22% year-on-year increase for the UK and Irish box office: 83,766,086 in 2025, compared with 68,612,395 in 2024). Last year, no horror film reached 10m at the UK or Irish box office. This year, five films have, says Charles Gant, box office editor of Screen International. The big hits of the year Weapons (11.4m), Sinners (16.2m), The Conjuring Last Rites (14.98m) and 28 Years Later (15.54m) have all hung about the multiplexes and in the public consciousness.
One technique powerfully employed in the film has the incongruous name of "Mickey Mousing." Named after the manner in which classic cartoons were scored in tight synchrony with the movements of their characters, it had fallen into disuse by the nineteen-seventies, when a subtler cinematic style prevailed.