WATCH THESE FILMS! - The Mist / [REC] / There Will Be Blood

Most movies you watch, however dark or grisly or frightening the subject matter, the audience are left with some kind of hope by the end, something to reassure them the world isn't a Godless equation where nothing happens for a reason.

Not so The Mist. It'll leave you so depressed you might just want to place your head in a boiling deep fat fryer and end it all right there.

It's actually a very good film, in many places. Based on Stephen King's novella and directed by the supremely underrated Frank Darabont (he who, y'know, wrote a ten times better script for Indy 4 which George Lucas knicked EVERYTHING from - but that's another story). It's horror but not your usual stock type - less about the horrific creatures inside strange mist that covers a small American town trapping much of it's community inside the supermarket, more about how these trapped characters survive as they face up to seemingly inevitable death. There's little incidental music, plenty of character beats, but when the action takes off it's thrilling. A nice ensemble cast help too - Thomas Jane is pretty bland as the everyman lead, but Marcia Gay Harden is indomnitable as a religious zealot first denounced crazy for believing this the End of Days, but who's words gradually gather steam.

And the ending. Man, the ending. I won't ruin it but... suffice to say, it's one of the darkest - and bravest - conclusions to a Hollywood film I have ever in my life seen. Just make sure you have something funny, like a midget doing the Time Warp, on standby to cheer you up afterwards.

Onto now much more of a conventional horror with [REC] - possibly the best Spanish import since Fernando Torres.

It's a simple idea wonderfully executed - a film reporter recording a normal night on the job of a fire crew joins them on a routine rescue operation that goes VERY wrong. They become trapped in an old apartment building as the government seal off the inside and people start dying... horribly. There's something evil in the building... something that wants them all... imagine me saying this with gravelly movie guy voice for full effect.

Anyway, the key here is that it's shot, guerilla-style, through a solitary hand-held camera. You're thinking Blair Witch, right? Good, because it's in that vein. No stars, improvisation - there is a fair amount of blood and gore but it's not directly in your face for schlock value. When these guys see people ripping chunks out of each other, they do what we would do. They fucking run and leave the screams behind. It's a blisteringly short piece - 75 minutes - but it does as all good suspense tales do: starts calmly and steadily builds to a truly nerve-jangling climax and a final shot you really won't forget in a hurry. Along the way, I guarantee you will have jumped out of your seat/off your bed/through your protective plastic bubble more than once.

And don't be put off by the subtitles, either. Just because it's Spanish, doesn't mean it ain't good. Don't believe me? Look at this.

Finally in this odyssey of films wot I just wotched (misspelling intentional for the less mentally flexible out there), There Will Be Blood - which I can't help but say with a cackling accent it's so ominous.

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of those filmmakers you don't get anymore. He's Robert Altman by way of Martin Scorsese, yet has his own distinctive original voice and never seems to do the same thing twice. This is nothing like Boogie Nights. Or Magnolia. Or Punch-Drunk Love. Infact, it's nothing like I've really seen before. You might think it a western given the setting. It ain't. You might think it a drama about business given it's about oil prospecting. Not really. So what is it? Basically, it's about madness. About how a man gets rich from finding oil in arid land, makes his fortune, and goes totally and utterly bonkers as time passes.

Daniel Day-Lewis is probably the only man who could play Daniel Plainview, the lead who's on screen for 2 1/2 hours almost solidly. Let's face it, DL is a bit bonkers himself, ain't he? You have to be to undertake 'method' acting. At the same time, such devotion to a piece leads to a staggering performance of ego, power, strength, fear and even comedy (especially in the darkly funny climax - you'll be shouting 'DRAAAAAAAAAINAGE!' for a while afterward, trust me). Equally good is Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, a young preacher who's devotion to his church gets in the way of Plainview's plans, and their conflict charges through the spine of the film - as does Plainview's relationship with his young son HW. All the rest is incidental - Anderson shooting the whole thing with an epic yet eerie feel, backed up by Jonny Greenwood's marvellously offbeat score. It's a slow-burn piece yet moments such as an oil spill are shot with such tension, blockbuster actioners could learn a thing or two.

It's powerful stuff, won't be easy to grasp or digest on first viewing, but it's hard to deny this is a modern masterpiece. Movies like this don't happen often anymore. I'm not sure they ever really did.