I’ve lost track of whether I’ve seen Lynn Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999) or Morvern Callar (2002), but I was disappointed by We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) – suckered in by Tilda Swinton, ignoring the Lionel Shriver klaxon.

I knew nothing about Die My Love (2025), aside from postpartum depression and it took me a ridiculously long time to recognise Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, the mother, and Robert Pattison as Jackson. Grace is increasingly isolated in their inherited rural home, left to bring up the child as Jackson does whatever job it is he does. It’s the sort of film you’d hope was obsolete – the growing stresses, the walls closing in, the is-it-gaslighting. And the sort of horror for mother from the era of Rosemary’s Baby – Grace’s body language also suggests she is some kind of Stepford wife, her batteries liable to run down.

But this feels – despite the traumatic ending – like the sort of horror film made by someone who doesn’t like horror films. Like, say, Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018). Maybe directors can subvert the law of Chekhov’s gun, but there’s a bloody great knife abandoned in the meadow that ought to do some nasty damage. There’s some interesting camera work – many static, fixed shots, but it felt too much like too many opportunities were missed. And the minor characters (notably those played by Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte) steal the screen.

You Were Never Really Here (2017) is on firmer generic ground – a thriller that updates the trafficking narrative of Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971) with the editorial strategy of a Nicolas Roeg or Point Blank (1967) era John Boorman and a dose of Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). Oh, and Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) even hums Bernard Herrmann’s score to Psycho (1960), if not the one for Taxi Driver.

Hired hand Joe is sent to retrieve the abducted daughter Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov) of Senator Votto (Alex Manette) and this goes remarkably smoothly – discounting the multiple body count and the traumatic flashbacks. But things start going wrong and those behind the sex ring want their revenge. Joe kills numerous people, but Ramsay undercuts the gothic spectacle by choosing to use CCTV footage to distance us from the worst. She hints at an ending Taxi Driver could never have given us – even as we can never be quite sure what is real within the film or Joe’s memory and imagination.