The international horror film sensation of the year hails from…Russia?! Indeed. This ultra-spooky ghost story of three vengeful female spirits has already developed a huge fan following.

When the scariest film in Danger After Dark is Russian, the goriest is Pakistani and the most shocking are Danish and Hungarian, perhaps it's time to reevaluate Southeast Asia's perceived dominance of international genre cinema. Dead Daughters, which is being termed the first contemporary Russian horror film, is the feature debut of young director Pavel Ruminov, and it has already become a major international fan favorite. A visually stunning work, Daughters does Asian horror better than most Asian horror films today (Ruminov is a great admirer of the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and it shows), and it's an ideal chair-grabbing scarefest for fans of fare like Tale of Two Sisters and The Ring. The simple storyline centers on five young Moscow professionals as they cope with the curse of three girls who have returned from the afterlife. The trio of young women were murdered by their mother, and they have come back to take revenge -- first on their mother, but then on anyone who encounters them and commits any sins within three days of meeting the ghostly trio. As they realize the gravity of their predicament, the quintet of friends scramble to remain without sin…while also learning that sometimes inaction can be the greatest sin of all. Ruminov uses the barren Moscow landscape as a character in the film, creating a truly eerie, spine-tingling ghost story in a contemporary urban environment. Mastering the genre with only his first film, Ruminov is clearly an international talent to watch -- and catch Dead Daughters in its original Russian version while you can. You guessed it -- it's slated for an American remake.