Midsommar (18) - CINEWORLD

A BEGINNING, a middle and an end. Great storytelling demands mastery of all three elements.

Writer-director Ari Aster came close with his debut feature, Hereditary, a silent scream of sustained tension starring Toni Collette, which only faltered in a hoary and preposterous final act.

The same fate befalls his eagerly awaited follow-up, Midsommar, which sends chills and beads of sweat down our spines for two tantalising hours, then takes its final, choking gasps with a hypnotic and psychedelic fever dream that is in equal parts silly and shocking.

There are similarities between the two pictures: both are gore-slathered meditations on bereavement and pent-up rage, anchored by an emotionally raw central performance.

Aster repeats directorial flourishes (shooting the world upside down) and elemental motifs, and he delights in close-ups of the human body in states of hellish disrepair, exposing shattered bones and glistening entrails with the clinical detachment of a surgeon.

There are moments of nailbiting perfection as the writer/director conjures terror in broad daylight in a similar vein to The Wicker Man, intimating that we should all be wary of the kindness of strangers - especially those with freshly picked wildflowers braided in their flaxen hair.

Before the gorgeous sunshine and butchery, though, there are blankets of snow over American suburbia.

Christian (Jack Reynor) is poised to break up with his girlfriend Dani (Florence Pugh) when she suffers a devastating loss.

Rather than twist the knife, Christian invites grief-stricken Dani to join him and pals Josh (William Jackson Harper), Mark (Will Poulter) and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) on a summertime trip to a commune in Halsingland where Pelle grew up.

After a long flight and a fourhour drive into the Swedish countryside, the friends emerge into a forest clearing dotted with large wooden structures and white-robed figures tending the land. “We’re stopping in Waco before we go to Pelle’s village?” quips one of the gang.

Soon after, matriarch elder Siv (Gunnel Fred) opens the great feast, which takes place every 90 years, heralding nine days of painful self-reflection that the outsiders will never forget.

Midsommar is a relentlessly creepy journey of self-discovery, which plays mind games as characters fail to heed warnings: a bright yellow pyramidic temple (“Nobody’s allowed in there”), a disfigured soothsayer (“All of our oracles are direct products of inbreeding”), a Shakespearean bear and lurid frescoes depicting ritualistic practices.

Aster steadily frays nerves with directorial brio and an immersive soundscape of ambient effects and choral chants, underpinned by a discordant electronic score composed by The Haxan Cloak.

Oxford-born actor Pugh tethers our unwavering sympathy to her grief-scarred heroine and her fearless performance papers over some of the tiny cracks in the script.

After almost two-and-a-half hours of wide eyes, wincing and whitened knuckles, we certainly don’t wish we were here.

Annabelle Comes Home (15) - PLAZA

THE POSSESSED doll Annabelle from The Conjuring franchise is back for a new instalment and is wreaking more havoc than ever before. Laura Harding meets the cast to find out what it's like to work with the scariest toy in showbiz.

Just when you thought it was safe to open the toy chest again, Annabelle is back.

The most sinister doll in cinema, who first appeared on screen in The Conjuring, returns to wreak havoc in Annabelle Comes Home.

The terrifying film reunites viewers with demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who bring the possessed doll back to the locked artefacts room in their home after she tormented nurses in the most recent instalment.

They put her behind sacred glass and enlist a priest's holy blessing in an attempt to stop her wreaking more havoc but that isn't enough to protect their 10-year-old daughter Judy when she and her friends pay a visit to the room and reawaken Annabelle and all the other evil spirits residing in there.

Mckenna Grace, 13, who plays Judy, is no stranger to scary stuff after starring in the Netflix hit The Haunting Of Hill House, but she was still unnerved by working with the creepy doll, who looks more battered and bruised than ever before.

"Even if you're not in the same room as her, it's still scary knowing that she's somewhere around the set," she says, "knowing that she's just sitting in the dark and she's probably just waiting for the perfect moment to come and attack you."

Katie Sarife, who plays her friend Daniela, adds: "She just stares. She just sits there and stares. It's terrifying."

It did not help matters that sinister things kept occurring on the set of the movie.

During pre-production, a piano bench in the locked artefacts room moved overnight on several occasions, even though no crew members were working.

A visitor's watch went haywire, changing time, speeding up, even jumping hours ahead at a time. The next day, the time was accurate and the watch was operating normally.

"There were a few weird things that happened," says 22-year-old Madison Iseman, who plays Judy's babysitter Mary Ellen.

"Sometimes our dressing room lights wouldn't turn on and then when we were leaving they would flicker on all of a sudden, just unexplained."

Grace shudders. "I got a real life witch's bottle which is quite spooky. It has this melted wax over it - it's been melted for years and it's just dry wax.

"But I was walking around with it and it started getting really warm and I was like, 'OK, my hands are warm' and all of a sudden the wax burned me. And so I don't touch it that often anymore."

Also during filming, Grace brought a new instant camera to set to take pictures with cast and crew, but every time she snapped a photo with Annabelle in it, the picture came out black.

And in a photo with Wilson, a black mark appeared over the cross he was wearing.

Sarife, 26, nods in recognition. "The night before I found out I got the part, I went and got this thing called an intention candle, where you write down your intention then you light it.

"Looking at the candle, the top of it was on fire and the flames were dancing in a circle, it was really creepy.

"It meant you either didn't get what you asked for or it's already done. Weird."

Back on screen, all the relics in the room are still conduits for malevolent forces and exploring their powers was all part of the fun for 42-year-old James Wan, the creator of the Conjuring universe and producer of the latest outing.

Among the items are the familiar music box, toy monkey with an accordion and the large Samurai from previous films, as well as the new additions such as a piano, a ferryman corpse with coins and a pouch, a Victorian mourning bracelet, a cuckoo clock and a mariner's compass.

"We've always wanted to be able to tell the stories of the other haunted artefacts within that room and it was kind of hard to jump straight into it," he says.

"But it was great in this because we were able to use Annabelle as the trigger to activate all the other artefacts.

"And I think that was the light bulb going off moment that we can finally touch on all the different artefact stories by using Annabelle, making it happen through her.

"My fascination with the idea that an inanimate object - something that's supposed to be so innocent and meant as a child's plaything - could harbour a demonic entity has only grown exponentially."

Wan has been responsible for some of the scariest films of recent years, as well as last year's box office hit Aquaman, having directed The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, and produced The Nun, Lights Out and The Curse Of La Llorona.

As the horror genre surges in popularity, it's likely that if you have had a nightmare as a result of something you've seen in the cinema, Wan has had a hand in it.

"I always feel the horror genre, and the kind of movies that they are about, they don't die, they just go through waves," he says.

"It feels great that we're going through a wave right now where people are really liking a lot of these horror movies that are coming out and really embracing them on a big level - it's not just a niche thing anymore.

"It's not like the outcast that used to be pushed to the side. There's more respect for it now."

Annabelle Comes Home is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday July 10