For Halloween, Guardian writers have picked the most efficiently terrifying films outside of the horror genre from How to Have Sex to The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Minor spoilers ahead

Hiding in plain sight throughout Lee Chang-dong’s deliciously enigmatic Burning, in which a spirited young woman (Jeon Jong-seo) disappears, and a wealthy playboy (Steven Yeun) gives serial killer vibes, is a disaffected male rage. That’s perhaps the most commonplace horror of our times, whether on the internet or politics, and you feel the tremors of it steadily breaking the surface in Yoo Ah-in’s performance. He plays Jong-su, an aspiring writer, quietly frustrated with his lot in life. Jong-su works odd jobs and tends to his incarcerated father’s dilapidated farm, growing more desperate to grasp some sense of control over the world around him, which is where the scary part comes in. Lee is the master dramatist who with Burning tilts violently into thriller territory, navigating elements from Taxi Driver, The Vanishing and Michael Haneke’s Caché, using the language of horror movies to conjure up a creeping anxiety and dread that erupts into pure existential fear. Radheyan Simonpillai

The Berlin-born performer had a gift for languages that took her to Hollywood, landing roles alongside Peter Sellers, Dick Van Dyke and Paul Newman

Elke Sommer, the prolific German star of the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, early 70s Agatha Christie adaptation And Then there Were None, and British sex comedy Carry on Behind, has died aged 85. Bild magazine reported that Sommer died in Los Angeles of heart failure.

German-born Sommer, whose best-known film roles were in the 1960s and 70s, was one of the wave of European performers who crossed over to Hollywood and English-language cinema with considerable success, following the postwar emergence of European new wave cinema. Sommer was one of the few German actors to make waves at the time, as Hollywood made much of her bombshell image.

The Berlin-born performer had a gift for languages that took her to Hollywood, landing roles alongside Peter Sellers, Dick Van Dyke and Paul Newman

Elke Sommer, the prolific German star of the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, early 70s Agatha Christie adaptation And Then there Were None, and British sex comedy Carry on Behind, has died aged 85. Bild magazine reported that Sommer died in Los Angeles of heart failure.

German-born Sommer, whose best-known film roles were in the 1960s and 70s, was one of the wave of European performers who crossed over to Hollywood and English-language cinema with considerable success, following the postwar emergence of European new wave cinema. Sommer was one of the few German actors to make waves at the time, as Hollywood made much of her bombshell image.

Backstory of modest industry veteran who started out as one half of pop duo Peter and Gordon, and went on to produce acts such as James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt

Rock’n’roll is notorious for its tales of bad behaviour: throwing TVs out of the window, mountains of cocaine, parades of groupies … but you won’t find any of that here. Peter Asher, brother of Jane, one half of Peter and Gordon, and super-successful producer of acts such as James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, appears to be about as nerdish and clean-living as a 60s/70s music industry veteran could be. Although that might just be what he wants us to think; what are the chances Asher is a complete reprobate away from the camera, and is just brilliant at hiding it? That glasses and ruffled shirt front combo definitely reminds you of someone a tad more sleazy, even before Asher himself reminds you about it in the final credits.

Whatever the truth, Asher by any standards carved an amazing path, making the absolute most of being in the right place at the right time. Smartly structured around Asher’s anecdotes-and-music live show, the film stitches together a collection of clips, audio and musical performances that gallops through his personal backstory. His luckiest break, of course, was that his early partnership with schoolfriend Gordon Waller (modelled, it turned out, on the Everly Brothers) benefited from cast-off songs handed over by his sister’s boyfriend, one Paul McCartney; there’s an amusing moment where we hear John Lennon’s sneer at the lyric of what would become Peter and Gordon’s first and biggest hit, A World Without Love: “Please lock me away …” “Yes”. While the film clearly acknowledges the debt to McCartney’s songwriting (which presumably Lennon vetoed for the Beatles), it’s perhaps not quite ready to admit that without this connection, none of what followed would have happened at all.