The moment is loaded with potential. You’ve seen glimpses in its trailer. A saw—one that is presumably family—rattles against a chain-link fence. It gives way, and a barrier between Leatherface’s homestead rampages and the public has been knocked down. He’s out in the world—in, of all places, a town carnival. Could TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D aim to match the hysterical lunacy of the original?

From the moment we hear the first strains of the Scott Walker-esque English version of the original DJANGO theme song, lifted wholesale from Sergio Corbucci’s cult 1966 oater, set to images of a battered chain gang of soul-broken slaves, we know we are in the hands of a master. And make no mistake, Quentin Tarantino is a master.

Set in the mysterious Pine Gap, Australia—think Area 51 with a neater accent—CRAWLSPACE (coming to theaters and on demand January 4 from IFC Films) opens as an underground research facility has put out a distress call. Chaos has broken out all around; scientists scream for help, patients do their best to escape and bodies begin to pile up.

Just imagine if Ernest Hemingway hooked up with the Brothers Grimm to write a screenplay based on the story of Snow White, and they got Francisco Goya to shoot and Tod Browning to direct. If that sounds cool, there’s even better news: Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger has channeled all those energies through his own artistic sensibility and made one of the year’s most memorable, haunting films.

The horror genre has a great history of Christmas films. There is just something about spending time with your extended family, preparing complicated meals and opening ill-thought-out gifts, that makes people want to take solace in murder and mayhem.

At heart, great zombie films are never really about zombies. The mythos of the living dead always works best when the creatures are ciphers for bigger ideas about society and mankind. Director Ryan M. Andrews understands this well and as a result, SICK: SURVIVE THE NIGHT (World premiering at the Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival) is less about staggering undead hordes and more about the human drama of life in a world decimated.

By now it’s probably way too late to suggest that serious horror fans venture out to see a TWILIGHT movie, but it must be said that the latest and last installment, BREAKING DAWN, PART TWO, offers a climactic smorgasbord of vampire/werewolf violence that makes the preceding 80 minutes almost—but not quite—worth sitting through.