Ahead of the new Mummy film, we round up some of the best scary movies, and their defining characters.

They come from the deep. They come from the skies. They come from the distant past and the dark recesses of the imagination. Monsters have been a staple of the movies since movies began, and now Mr Tom Cruise is resurrecting the most ancient of them all: The Mummy (out on 9 June). Universal Studios is turning its old monster properties into a Marvel-style shared universe (Univesal Monsters), hence Mr Russell Crowe co-stars with Mr Cruise as Dr Henry Jekyll (AKA Mr Hyde), while Mr Javier Bardem and Mr Johnny Depp are slated to play Frankenstein’s Monster and The Invisible Man in future instalments. The first monster classics were made when movies were still in black and white, but here are five of the best from the 21st Century.

Mr Guillermo Del Toro’s 2006 masterpiece is not just a great monster movie; it’s one of the great movies, period. Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Pan’s Labyrinth depicts the world as seen by Ofelia, a young girl who finds herself halfway between the realms of reality and fantasy. Drawn into a mystical woodland labyrinth, she encounters a friendly-seeming faun, the horrifying Pale Man and a host of other monstrous creatures. As with most of the best monster movies, however, the true monsters are human: in this case, Ofelia’s stepfather, a vicious Falangist officer, hunting the rebels who still oppose Franco’s regime.

In 2014, Mr Gareth Edwards directed the best Godzilla movie ever made outside Japan, which, along with the recent Kong: Skull Island, forms part of Warner Bros’ own MonsterVerse. But the Englishman’s finest monster movie was his first: 2010’s Monsters. Made for just $500,000 (compared to Godzilla’s $160m), Monsters turned a global disaster into a simple road trip, as a photojournalist and his boss’s daughter pick their way through the ruins of an alien invasion, on their way to safety and, just maybe, romance. The film’s masterstroke is to have its monsters – created by Mr Edwards in his bedroom, using off-the-shelf visual effects software – loom only in the background, putting the emphasis on the human story.

This Norwegian found-footage mockumentary became a cult international hit, and it’s not hard to see why. Pacy, funny and at times genuinely frightening, Trollhunter follows a group of film students who travel north to make a documentary about a bear poacher, only to learn that the man’s real prey are the hairy giants of the title. Shot through with the darkest of Scandinavian humour, it takes on board the lessons of its better forebears: at first the trolls appear barely at all, and then only fleetingly before the final big reveal.

One of the highest-grossing films in South Korean history, The Host plonked a slimy, toothy sea monster into the heart of Seoul and set it on a rampage. By turns gruesome and grimly hilarious, the 2006 hit – not to be confused with the American teen sci-fi movie of the same name – follows the dim-witted Park Gang-du, his family and friends as they try to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a monster spawned in the Han River as the result of a US military experiment gone wrong. The Host brought its director, Mr Bong Joon-Ho, to international attention ahead of his similarly acclaimed English-language debut, 2013’s Snowpiercer.

Only Mr Guillermo del Toro could have two films in this list. The Mexican director’s filmography features an unparalleled menagerie of monsters and mythical creatures, and his personal collection of memorabilia is currently the basis for a touring gallery exhibition, Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters. Pacific Rim earned lukewarm reviews and a modest domestic box office haul when it was released in 2013, but it already looks rosier in hindsight. Its “Kaiju” monsters, which spring forth from inter-dimensional cracks beneath the ocean – and the giant, manmade robots with whom they clash – are fabulously realised by the most imaginative filmmaker at work today. A sequel is in the offing, though without Mr Del Toro at the helm.

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