A touchstone of the early days of horror films, The Cat and the Canary is an expressionist and dreamlike vision of a woman trying to survive a night in a terrifying (and possibly poltergeisted) mansion in order to claim the property a distant relative has willed her — what’s sometimes called an “old dark house” movie. It was originally a stage play, and early cinema became a venue for many of these stories in the early twentieth century, as the popular spooky genre migrated over to the silver screen. A definitive example of the form and one of the first true haunted house movies, The Cat and the Canary is a masterpiece of light and shadow. German director Paul Leni brings a full toolbox of expressionist effects to the movie: ominous angles and superimposition, visual distortion, unusual shot composition. Its use of groundbreaking cinema technique in exploring both fright and slapstick has inspired filmmakers for almost a hundred years.