It’s become something of a cliché in recent times for almost every horror film that’s released to be instantly labelled one of the scariest ever made. Particularly in the two years since the hugely successful viral campaign for Osgood Perkins’s Longlegs made that film a (deserved) hit, it seems as if studio marketing departments have gone into overdrive to amp up the fear factor of any slightly horror-adjacent movie in their slate. This often involves slapping ridiculously hyperbolic pull quotes on the posters and online promotional material that warn of true terror and sleepless nights to come. I’ve lost count of how many films have been declared absolutely terrifying ahead of release since then – with Undertone (scary!) and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (visceral but not especially scary!) two of the most recent examples. And while we’re undoubtedly living though an exciting era for horror, exemplified by the huge success of Sinners and Weapons this past awards season, there’s perhaps a suggestion that the horror hype machine is doing a little too much. Must everything …