For Halloween, Guardian writers have picked the most efficiently terrifying films outside of the horror genre from How to Have Sex to The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Minor spoilers ahead

Hiding in plain sight throughout Lee Chang-dong’s deliciously enigmatic Burning, in which a spirited young woman (Jeon Jong-seo) disappears, and a wealthy playboy (Steven Yeun) gives serial killer vibes, is a disaffected male rage. That’s perhaps the most commonplace horror of our times, whether on the internet or politics, and you feel the tremors of it steadily breaking the surface in Yoo Ah-in’s performance. He plays Jong-su, an aspiring writer, quietly frustrated with his lot in life. Jong-su works odd jobs and tends to his incarcerated father’s dilapidated farm, growing more desperate to grasp some sense of control over the world around him, which is where the scary part comes in. Lee is the master dramatist who with Burning tilts violently into thriller territory, navigating elements from Taxi Driver, The Vanishing and Michael Haneke’s Caché, using the language of horror movies to conjure up a creeping anxiety and dread that erupts into pure existential fear. Radheyan Simonpillai

Another familiar concoction fails to make use of its sunny location and chooses cheap melodrama over romantic charm

A titular sunrise, a summer fling fantasy, exorbitant wealth, impossibly sculpted bodies: such are the profitable story ingredients that make up The Last Sunrise, the latest offering in Amazon’s endless catalogue of “romance content”. I wouldn’t ordinarily use that term to describe a film, but it fits The Last Sunrise (indifferently directed by Carlson Young) like a glove. The movie is an adaptation of the 2025 novel of the same title by Anna Todd, whose After series – itself adapted from Todd’s phenomenally popular One Direction fan fiction – was wrung dry between 2019 and 2024.

In recent years, a particular romance category has yielded high returns for Amazon: from this summer’s Every Year After to The Summer I Turned Pretty’s memorable run, these stories are easily palatable, set in idyllic locations, and orbit attractive, heterosexual, wealthy couples. Nothing new there – one need look no further than any run-of-the-mill 2000s romcom to find the same tropes. But the narrative simplicity that once made room for electric chemistry between leads, perfectly tailored wardrobes and irresistibly depicted locales has given way to cheap melodrama. With its improbable plot twists, family secrets and at least one across-the-face slap, The Last Sunrise is more soap opera than Under the Tuscan Sun.

From One Night Only to The Invite, a wave of new movies are a raunchy antidote to gen Z celibacy

The first alarm bells sounded nearly 10 years ago, and since then, a deluge of books, podcasts and roundtables has tried to get at the bottom of the problem: why is gen Z not having sex?

Recently it’s as though culture has been recalibrated to make up for the youth’s apparent frigidity. “Smut” literature is on the rise, prestige TV is now depicting OnlyFans models, and indie films have taken a turn towards kink. This summer, through confused young protagonists and their sexual misadventures, the movies are zeroing in on generational attitudes about sex.

The latest in our series of writers calling attention to their go-to mood-lifting films is a celebration of Cameron Crowe’s unconventional romantic comedy

The first time I encountered Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire, I was home from film school for the summer, trying to refine my taste and figure out what I was “into”. One afternoon, I pressed play on Jerry Maguire, thinking I’d while away some lazy hours with a silly Hollywood picture. But the movie was a jolt to my numbed senses. It was obvious: Jerry Maguire was what I was into. It was a thrilling epiphany, if also a little disappointing. I wanted to be sophisticated, and yet the truth was that I liked … schmaltzy romcoms.

Even as my taste matured and expanded, I kept returning to Jerry Maguire. Its feelgood nature is baked into the premise: Jerry (an electrifying Tom Cruise) is an indefatigable sports agent who overcomes both personal and professional challenges in the path to fulfillment. But the real reason why it makes you feel good is that Jerry’s arduous path transforms him. He doesn’t fall in love with Renee Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd until they’ve already married and separated; there is no honeymoon-phase montage. The film’s romcom reputation can probably be attributed to its emotional climax: Jerry’s tear-jerking, glorious win-her-back speech, which introduced the phrases “you complete me” and “you had me at hello” to the cultural lexicon. In a traditional romcom, in which marriage is often the coveted conclusion, this moment would precede the wedding.