Forget the tired franchises, a new wave of horror movies will make us jump out of our seats

Longlegs, released last week, is a beautiful and complex film that highlights how far the genre has evolved

There's nothing I find so cheering, these days, as the rise of the horror movie. Take its intrusion into this year's summer blockbusters. We have the usual soulless franchises and deadly repeats - Despicable Me 4, Deadpool3, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Bad Boys: Ride or Die - and then we have a flicker of light in the dark. Turns out that audiences do want new stories, they do want new characters, and they do want inventive film-making after all. Because a genuinely imaginative - arthouse, even - movie is predicted to draw in big audiences and make a great deal of money. It has come in the form of a horror film: Longlegs.

Just released on Friday and starring Nicolas Cage as a serial killer, Longlegs has been reviewed, variously, as the scariest film of the decade", and a film in which every frame is a nightmare". But it is also starkly beautiful - starting from the opening shot, as we follow a small girl's progress through a snowy landscape. We move through claustrophobic basements and misty woods, our eyes flicking to layers of shadow in the background, to wherever the characters have last omitted to look. The film is thick with references for film buffs; flashbacks are indicated through texture and ratio changes; there are arty bursts of absurdity.