Correct: D. Sissy Spacek

Sissy Spacek plays Carrie White in Carrie (1976), directed by Brian De Palma and based on Stephen King's first published novel. Spacek's performance - combining vulnerability, religious fervour, and ultimately apocalyptic rage - is one of horror cinema's greatest. The film's prom scene climax, with Spacek drenched in blood, is one of cinema's most iconic images.

Correct: A. Orca

The Orca is the boat belonging to shark hunter Quint, played by Robert Shaw, in Jaws (1975). The boat was named after the killer whale - natural predator of great white sharks - in a darkly ironic touch. The Orca is destroyed by the shark during the film's climax, leaving Chief Brody to defeat the shark alone using a compressed air tank and a rifle.

Correct: D. Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968) directed by George A. Romero established the modern concept of the flesh-eating zombie - previously zombies in cinema were Haitian voodoo creatures controlled by a human master. Romero's zombies were reanimated corpses with no consciousness.

Correct: D. A horror film set during a Swedish midsummer festival in perpetual daylight - subverting horror's conventional darkness-as-danger with bright pastoral terror

Midsommar (2019) directed by Ari Aster follows a grieving American woman who travels with her boyfriend to a Swedish village's 90-year midsummer celebration. The film's horror occurs entirely in bright daylight - the perpetual Swedish summer sun subverts horror's conventional reliance on darkness.

Correct: A. A New England Puritan family in 1630 is torn apart by suspicion of witchcraft after their infant disappears - a film exploring religious hysteria and the genuine terror of Puritan belief

The Witch (2015, stylised as The VVitch) directed by Robert Eggers in his feature film debut is set in 1630s New England. A Puritan family exiled from their plantation community encounters supernatural evil after their baby disappears. The film was developed from Eggers' graduate school thesis.

Correct: A. It draws from slow-burn folk horror and trauma horror - about a family destroyed by grief and a secret Satanic cult - in the tradition of Rosemary's Baby

Hereditary (2018) draws from the slow-burn supernatural horror tradition of Rosemary's Baby and The Omen - where horror is slow, psychological, and connected to family corruption. Ari Aster has cited Roman Polanski and Robert Altman as key influences on his filmmaking style.

Correct: A. A meta-horror film that deconstructs and simultaneously employs the tropes of horror cinema - revealing that horror movie scenarios are manufactured by a secret organisation

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) directed by Drew Goddard and written with Joss Whedon reveals that horror movie scenarios are orchestrated by a secret government organisation conducting ritualistic sacrifices. The film is both a love letter to and critique of horror genre conventions.

Correct: A. Loosely based on the Scottish legend of Alexander Sawney Bean - a 16th century cave-dwelling cannibal who preyed on travellers

The Hills Have Eyes (1977) directed by Wes Craven is loosely inspired by the legend of Alexander Sawney Bean - a Scottish cannibal who supposedly lived in caves with his family and preyed on travellers for 25 years in the 16th century.

Correct: C. An Australian horror film about a widowed mother and her disturbed son haunted by a creature from a picture book - widely interpreted as a metaphor for grief and depression

The Babadook (2014) directed by Jennifer Kent is an Australian horror film in which a widow and her troubled young son are terrorised by a creature from a children's book. The film is widely interpreted as a metaphor for repressed grief and depression - the Babadook represents the mother's unprocessed mourning for her husband.

Correct: C. Based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries book series - set in a Louisiana where vampires have come out of the coffin after the invention of synthetic blood

True Blood (2008-2014) was an HBO series developed by Alan Ball from Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries (Sookie Stackhouse) novels. Set in a Louisiana where synthetic blood has allowed vampires to exist openly, it used vampirism as an allegory for LGBT rights.

Correct: A. A horror film where a supernatural entity can only be passed sexually - it follows you slowly wherever you are unless you pass it to someone else

It Follows (2014) directed by David Robert Mitchell follows a young woman who discovers after a sexual encounter that a slow-moving supernatural entity now follows only her - appearing as different people - until it reaches and kills her unless she passes it to someone else.

Correct: D. King famously disliked Kubrick's adaptation - feeling it removed the psychological depth of his novel and miscast Jack Nicholson - and later produced a television miniseries closer to his vision

The Shining (1980) directed by Stanley Kubrick is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel. King publicly and repeatedly criticised Kubrick's version - particularly the casting of Jack Nicholson as already unstable rather than gradually deteriorating - and produced his own 1997 television adaptation.

Correct: C. A woman enters a quarantined zone called the Shimmer where the laws of biology no longer apply - a cerebral horror film exploring self-destruction and transformation

Annihilation (2018) directed by Alex Garland is based on Jeff VanderMeer's novel about a biologist who enters Area X - a mysterious quarantined zone where the environment is mutating all biological life. The film explores themes of self-destruction, cancer, and transformation.

Correct: D. A supernatural horror film where summoning the spirit of a lynched Black man five times in a mirror brings death - with Virginia Madsen investigating the legend in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects

Candyman (1992) directed by Bernard Rose is based on Clive Barker's story. Tony Todd plays Daniel Robitaille/Candyman - a 19th century artist lynched for a relationship with a white woman whose spirit returns when summoned. The film uses horror to examine racism, urban poverty, and the mythology created around violence in marginalised communities.

Correct: C. It featured an African American man (Duane Jones) as the competent, rational protagonist at a time of significan't racial tension in the USA - his casting and the film's ending were radical for 1968

Night of the Living Dead (1968) cast Duane Jones as Ben - the competent, rational, natural leader of the group - at a time of intense racial tension in America during the civil rights movement. Jones was cast entirely on merit. The film's ending, where Ben is shot by a white posse, was devastating in its racial implications in 1968.

Correct: C. A gleefully over-the-top horror film about a loan officer cursed by a gypsy woman after denying her mortgage extension - combining shock horror with dark comedy in Raimi's signature Evil Dead style

Drag Me to Hell (2009) directed by Sam Raimi is a gleeful return to Evil Dead-style horror mixing gross-out gags, genuine jump scares, and black comedy. A bank loan officer is cursed after denying an old woman a mortgage extension and has three days before demons drag her to hell.

Correct: D. A psychedelic horror film starring Nicolas Cage as a man seeking revenge after a cult murders his partner - featuring extraordinary visual excess and a career-redefining Cage performance

Mandy (2018) directed by Panos Cosmatos is set in 1983 and stars Nicolas Cage as Red Miller whose partner is kidnapped and murdered by a Manson-like cult. The film's psychedelic colour palette, extreme violence, and Cage's unhinged performance created an instant cult classic.

Correct: C. A British folk horror film about a devout Christian policeman investigating a missing child on a Scottish island where the population practise ancient pagan religion

The Wicker Man (1973) directed by Robin Hardy stars Edward Woodward as a pious Scottish policeman investigating a missing child on a Hebridean island - discovering a thriving pagan community. The film ends with one of horror cinema's most disturbing conclusions.

Correct: C. The British studio Hammer Film Productions' series of Gothic horror films from the late 1950s through 1970s - starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in Dracula and Frankenstein cycles

Hammer Horror refers to the output of British studio Hammer Film Productions which revitalised Universal's monster characters in colour from the late 1950s - featuring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and Doctor Frankenstein. The films made both actors international stars.

Correct: A. Two siblings on a California horse ranch discover a mysterious entity in the clouds above their property - a film exploring spectacle, exploitation, and the cost of being witnessed

Nope (2022) directed by Jordan Peele stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as siblings on a horse ranch who discover a huge UFO-like creature living above their property. The film explores themes of spectacle, Hollywood exploitation, and the desire to capture and monetise extraordinary events.

Correct: D. Freddy Krueger's arm stretching across the alley walls and the bed-drowning sequence - nightmare physics that broke the rules of reality in ways that had never been shown so effectively

A Nightmare on Elm Street's nightmare sequences used practical effects to achieve physically impossible visuals - the famous bed drowning (a rotating bedroom set with a pool of false blood) and Freddy's arms stretching to fill an alley were achieved through clever engineering.

Correct: B. A protagonist whose perception of reality we gradually realise is wrong - in The Others Nicole Kidman's character does not know she and her children are dead

The Others (2001) directed by Alejandro Amenbar features Nicole Kidman as a woman protecting her photosensitive children in a fog-bound mansion - gradually revealed to be the ghost herself, unaware of her death. The unreliable narrator structure creates a retroactively recontextualised narrative.

Correct: D. It demonstrated that found footage horror could be commercially successful on a major scale after Blair Witch Project - reviving the format and launching numerous imitators

Paranormal Activity revived found footage horror (dormant since Blair Witch) and demonstrated to studios that low-budget intimate home horror could outperform expensive productions at the box office. It spawned six sequels and numerous imitators.

Correct: C. A horror subgenre focusing on the violation and transformation of the physical body - Cronenberg's films explore biological mutation as metaphor for sexuality, disease, and identity

Body horror focuses on the disturbing transformation, violation, or destruction of the human body. David Cronenberg's films - The Fly, Videodrome, Naked Lunch - are its most celebrated examples. The Fly (1986) uses Seth Brundle's transformation into a fly-human hybrid as a metaphor for terminal illness.

Correct: A. Horror films set in rural communities with ancient pagan or folk traditions - The Wicker Man (1973), Midsommar (2019), and The Witch (2015) are defining examples

Folk horror is a subgenre set in rural or isolated communities where ancient folk practices, pagan religion, or archaic social structures are the source of horror. The 1973 British folk horror trio - The Wicker Man, The Blood on Satan's Claw, and Witchfinder General - established the genre.

Correct: D. A supernatural horror film about a haunted mirror that distorts reality and has killed numerous previous owners - the only modern director to tackle the possession of an object as the horror source

Oculus (2013) directed by Mike Flanagan follows two siblings - one recently released from a psychiatric hospital - who investigate a haunted mirror that distorts reality and may have caused their parents' deaths years earlier. The film intercuts past and present throughout.

Correct: C. A family on holiday is confronted by their exact doppelgngers who proceed to terrorise them - a social horror allegory about America's relationship with its underclass

Us (2019) directed by Jordan Peele stars Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson whose family is attacked by doppelgngers called the Tethered - shadowy counterparts who have lived their lives underground. The film explores American society's relationship with those it has forced underground and ignored.

Correct: A. It violated all horror conventions - killing the apparent protagonist in the first act, featuring a villain with split personality rather than supernatural powers, and building to a climax in a police station rather than haunted location

Psycho violated every established horror convention - it killed the protagonist audiences had followed for 45 minutes (an unprecedented shock), featured psychological rather than supernatural horror, and centred the horror in a real domestic location (a motel) rather than a gothic or supernatural setting.

Correct: D. A landmark Giallo featuring an extraordinary Goblin score and elaborate murder set-pieces - considered Argento's masterpiece

Deep Red (Profondo Rosso, 1975) directed by Dario Argento is considered his finest film - a Jazz musician witnesses a murder and investigates with a journalist. The film features extraordinarily elaborate murder sequences and Goblin's progressive rock score.

Correct: A. An independently produced film shot in Pittsburgh for approximately $114,000 that became one of cinema's most profitable films proportionally and established the independent horror film model

Night of the Living Dead was independently produced in Pittsburgh by George Romero and friends for approximately $114,000. Its enormous commercial success demonstrated that low-budget independent horror could compete with major studio productions - establishing the model followed by every subsequent independent horror film.

Correct: A. A father-son coroner team performing an autopsy on an unidentified woman whose body presents increasingly impossible physical evidence - directed by Andr vredal

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) directed by Andr vredal stars Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch as a father-son team of coroners who discover increasingly disturbing and impossible physical evidence on the body of an unidentified woman. The film takes place almost entirely in a single basement morgue.

Correct: A. A South Korean zombie film set on a bullet train that elevated the genre with emotional intelligence, social commentary, and extraordinary practical effects

Train to Busan (2016) directed by Yeon Sang-ho was praised for bringing genuine emotional depth and social commentary to the zombie genre - examining class distinctions in how different passengers prioritise survival. The film became one of the most internationally successful South Korean films before Parasite.

Correct: B. 1980 - Jason's mother Pamela Voorhees

Friday the 13th (1980) was directed by Sean S. Cunningham. The killer in the original film is Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother - seeking revenge against the camp counsellors she holds responsible for her son's drowning. Jason himself only becomes the killer from Friday the 13th Part 2 onward.

Correct: D. An extreme tonal shift film that begins as a contemporary anxiety about a double-booked Airbnb rental and descends into something completely unexpected - praised for its structural unpredictability

Barbarian (2022) directed by Zach Cregger begins as a straightforward thriller about a woman discovering a stranger in her double-booked Detroit rental property - then structurally dismantles audience expectations with a radical tonal shift that cannot be described without spoiling.

Correct: B. Her novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and short story We Have Always Lived in the Castle are foundational horror texts that have influenced films, TV series, and the entire haunted house subgenre

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is the foundational text of the haunted house genre - its opening paragraph is studied in writing programmes as one of the finest in American literature. The novel has been adapted twice (1963, 1999) and loosely for Netflix's 2018 series.

Correct: D. The female protagonist who survives the film's events - typically virginal, resourceful, and eventually turning the tables on the killer - the term was coined by film scholar Carol Clover

The final girl is a term coined by academic Carol Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chain Saws describing the pattern in slasher films where one female protagonist survives - typically resourceful, less sexually active than other female characters, and often discovering and naming the killer.