It is a truth universally acknowledged that a horror movie with a domestic gross amounting to a small fortune must be in line for a string of sequels of ever-diminishing quality. Almost all of them are terrible, being licenses to print money and all. But every now and then, by some strange alchemy, one of them.. isn’t. Here are five of our favorites, and one that we’re clearly over thinking.

In 1994 Wes Craven reclaimed the original slasher nightmare and helmed the final instalment in the franchised vision of terror – Nightmare on Elm Street. The outcome of Craven’s combined writing and directing efforts in this film – Wes Craven’s New Nightmare – was a vivid horrorscape of the unimaginable and an exercise in intelligent, disturbing inventiveness. 17 years later and My Soul To Take has summoned the cinematic corpse-monger back to the business of blood – but it’s a far cry from the slick-witted slice ‘n dicer – and this time the result may be more bed-time story than Nightmare…

Wes Craven: Two words that by their associative powers alone, can conjure inimitable phantasmagoric visions from which you cannot avert your eyes, but in the dead of sleepless night, so desperately wish you had. Whether it’s the snicker-snack of finger-knives or an Edvard Munchian bogeyman that threatens our dreams, it’s high-time that we got ourselves educated on the hand that wields them…