It's almost Halloween! We've got a selection of 31 scary movies .
And we have impeccable taste. You can trust us....
The Awakening
For anyone who thinks paranormal phenomena only exist in movies, The Awakening could turn even the most skeptical “there are no such things as ghosts” cynics into hardcore believers. They will be after seeing an investigator hired to debunk a haunting in the post-World War II era ends up more terrified than anyone who swore they could see shimmering visions of the dead. Watching Catherine’s psyche (and painfully curled 40s hair) unravel as the thing she denies the most comes to life right before her disbelieving eyes is strangely satisfying—that is, if you’re not completely horrified from the unnerving revelations about her past that bubble to the surface.
Irony aside, Catherine’s harrowing experience investigating the spirit she so desperately doesn’t want to believe in mutates with the monsters that haunt the back of her mind. If you’re a fan of The Others, leave the lights on for this one.
The Babadook
When Stephen King once discussed his inspiration for writing The Shining, he recalled the time he discovered his young son had destroyed storynotes in his office. “I could kill him,” King mused of his mindset in that moment. Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook likewise finds the darker side of parenting with the scariest film of 2014.
A horror movie that is ostensibly about what happens when a single, low-income mother discovers that her child’s nightmare boogeyman is real, there is genuinely realterror here that comes beating from the darker side of her “Babadook” heart. While a loving son, there is no denying that the film’s young Samuel is a “problem child,” and through supernatural possession his mama has found a grim solution of sorts. When William Friedkin calls it the most terrifying horror movie he’s seen, you’re doing something right.
Children of the Corn
Stephen King would have probably never guessed that what started as a short story about a teenage death cult’s horrific sacrifices to a shadowy figure (referred to only as He Who Walks Behind the Rows) would harvest its own cult of horror fans. When an unsuspecting couple driving through town is sidetracked by by something gruesome on the edge of a cornfield, they get entangled with a group of brainwashed adolescents whose temple for all things unholy is the local church. There is blood, and corn leaves, and more blood. Then someone gets crucified.
Children of the Corn has that element of primal fear—like your heart beating so loud you can hear the blood roaring in your ears among the ominous rustle of the corn stalks as you run frantically through the never-ending fields. Whoever’s foreboding voice called it “an adult nightmare” in the original 1984 trailer was dead on.
The Crow
While we wouldn't call this one a horror film per se, The Crow is definitely a twisted revenge tale with some very dark moments. Based on a celebrated comic book, the movie's premise is a bit out there: a dead musician named Eric Draven is brought back from the dead by a supernatural crow so that he can avenge the rape and murder of his fiance. Draven sinks deeper into the seedy underworld of Detroit on Devil's Night, taking out the thugs that ended his life in gruesome ways.
It is a real artistic gem, too, full of gothic spirit and an awesome soundtrack to boot. Brandon Lee, who tragically died in an accident during filming, gives an inspired performance as Draven.
Cujo
Some movies are horrific solely due to their premise. And some premises are nothing but terror. This is the case with Stephen King’s Cujo, a 1981 novel of canine suspense that was turned into a pretty solid white-knuckled slice of tension.
Made expressly for that first tense, on-the-edge-of-your-seat viewing, the 1983 adaptation starring Dee Wallace competently transfers King’s prose of a woman and child trapped inside their car while being pursued by a ravenous dog. Not the strongest film on this list, it is still one that makes for a gnarly thrill if you’ve never seen it before.
Dead Silence
While hardly the definitive “killer doll” movie, Dead Silence is an interesting flick because of how it marks a transition for director James Wan. The shrewd filmmaking director of the three biggest hit horror movies in the last 12 years—Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring—had this one little anomaly in between the first two. Perhaps because he was not quite ready to be considered a “horror director” (he would go on to direct Furious 7and is now slated to helm Aquaman), this is an enjoyably odd duck of film with elements of comedy, police procedural, and the occasionally pitch perfect horror set piece that he would begin cranking out in his sleep by the time The Conjuring and Insidious: Chapter 2 opened in the same summer.
In many ways the prototype for the “Annabelle” prologue in Conjuring, Dead Silence tracks the curse of Mary Shaw a ventriloquist who made up for what she lacked in skill with murder. After killing a boy who dared to notice her lips moved while working with her dummy Billy, she herself was killed by vigilantes who removed her tongue—and generations henceforth of their descendants have shared the same mysterious fate when confronted with dummy Bill (hint: whatever you do, don’t scream).
The movie has a nifty twist ending and is just silly enough to make for a pleasant collection of jump scares and faux urban legend mythmaking, if not exactly a memorable classic.
Dead Snow
There are plenty of zombie movies, TV shows, video games, and even comics out there. But if you haven’t seen Dead Snow yet, rest assured that there is one walking dead realm not yet traversed for your viewing pleasure: Nazi zombies, of course!
In Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian calling card, the filmmaker reimagines the zombie genre to be one of snow, sleds, and swastikas. That’s what happens when a handful of friends decide that they want to go camping and skiing while in a cabin in the woods. Little did they realize that this mountain holds a terrible secret about a band of rogue Nazis who froze to death there in the winter of ’44. It turns out they died protecting their stolen Nazi gold, and they are so greedy that even in the Great Beyond, they will rise to protect the treasure. Thus it’s likely unwise to disturb any gold pieces that you find there. Too late.
Okay, the plot is an excuse to see smarter-than-average zombies goose-steeping their way into elaborately graphic kills at the hands of snowmobiles, chainsaws, and all manner of skiing equipment. The gore is nasty and so is the fun.
Dream House
Watch how a fantasy life in suburbia can go from little girls twirling in pink leotards and fairy wings to glass shattering and phantom hands writing cryptic messages on the walls. Dream House becomes a slaughterhouse when blood-spattered scenes involving creepy mannequins and too many candles start appearing out of nowhere, and that’s before the neighbors admit they know something about a string of murders that the real estate agent didn’t dare mention.
Part ghost story, part whodunit and part insane asylum, this movie messes with your head in ways that will keep you up at night long after the closing credits. Mistaken identity blurs the line between homicide and what could be called a heightened state of sleepwalking. You might actually start second-guessing who you are.
Extraordinary Tales
Some of Edgar Allan Poe’s most terror-inducing tales creep and crawl off the page in this animated horrorshow that isn’t just for kids. The aesthetic of each tale illustrates its particular terror. His Victorian nightmares materialize onscreen in different forms of animation ranging from eerie silhouettes to comic-book graphics to a 3-D effect that makes phantoms pop like digital origami. Poe himself (as—what else—a raven) converses with Death between tales, giving you enough time to catch your breath and calm the beating of your hideous heart before the next freakout.
The Tell-Tale Heart pounds beneath the floorboards in a series of black and white silhouettes, a stark visual of innocence and murder, set to a vintage narration by Bela Lugosi. The torture chamber in the Pit and the Pendulum is so lifelike you think you’re the one about to be razored open. Poe must be grinning from beyond the grave.
The Fly
Before there was Jeff Goldblum, there was Vincent Price—and a bug mask. While hardly scary, seeing is still believing…
From Dusk Till Dawn
And here we have what is quite possibly the most quotable film on this list, although certainly not the best. The pairing of Robert Rodriguez (director) and Quentin Tarantino (writer) made for an insane, two-pronged Grindhouse-style extravaganza. It's a low-rent heist aftermath movie for its first half and then it shifts gears into insane survival horror for the second.
From Dusk Till Dawn is the only movie you're going to watch this month that features Tom Savini wielding a gun on his crotch, and Fred Williamson killing vampires alongside George Clooney and Harvey Keitel. It's unlikely you haven't seen this one, but even if you have, there's always a good time to be had at the Titty Twister.
The Fury
Brian De Palma is the filmmaker responsible for possibly the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel (Carrie), but he followed that up with this equally perverse, but sadly less remembered, cult classic. The Fury is essentially a grim, nihilist's version of what would happen if Charles Xavier and Jean Grey were not so nice.
In this horror film, twin siblings have the ability to enter anyone's mind--and kill them in the most De Palma way possible. This is used to negative effect by the U.S. government and features fun performances by Kirk Douglas and John Cassavettes. It also includes Carrie's Amy Irving.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
In the Iranian ghost town of Bad City, there is a girl who walks alone at night. But if you should venture to speak with her, you might regret finding out why.
This wonderfully surreal film from Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour should bridge differences with its implicitly lascivious nature. A young man who is forced to walk a depressing and desolate street because his father is a heroin addict finds himself enamored with a young woman whose black cape might be a shroud for all the corpses she leaves in her wake. It’s clever, occasionally romantic, and completely subversive of both real-life cultures and their vampiric alternatives. Celebrate the year’s good news by sinking your teeth into this holiday treat.
Haunter
Be careful when you wish for something to wake up your numb suburban existence. Disembodied spirits will start whispering about murders behind the walls of your stereotypical house on video. You’ll soon find yourself in a basement dungeon hiding much more sinister things than just cobwebs and ancient furniture. Your fingers will push back the curtains between past and future, dead and not-yet-living. You will unleash a bloodless specter with homicidal tendencies. Somewhere in the middle of all this you’ll also realize something else about yourself...
What’s especially terrifying about Haunter is how normal everything seems. It unravels like a 90s-flashback teenage murder mystery until the invisible walls of time between what was and what will be start to shatter, and the pale man can kill you all over again.
Hellraiser
Of the first of three theatrical films that Clive Barker would direct himself, Hellraiser would go on to warrant eight sequels and create one of the most notorious horror franchises of all time. That said, this isn't about the sequels. Part of the beauty of Hellraiser is how little we actually know about what is going on. While later tales would explain the origins of Pinhead and his Cenobites, the first film leaves this up to interpretation.
Hellraiser focuses on the relationship between Julia and Frank, not on the Cenobites' interference (well, not until the end anyway). The first film is not the broad battle against evil the later installments would be, but an incredibly unique haunted house story. A corrupt romance growing ever more so. Sex and violence mixed with blood and guts. With a budget of roughly $1 million, Barker is able to craft a tale far more interesting and disturbing than better funded projects, the sequels included. Pain and pleasure, indivisible.
Honeymoon
You probably have had that moment: the one where you’re not sure if you can truly understand what your partner is thinking. Well, the greatly underappreciated Honeymoon takes that sensation and amplifies it a thousand-fold for incredibly icky, body horror results.
Even if you have a rough idea where Honeymoon is going from that point on, the slow burn will still eventually get under your skin. As the husband realizes he has no idea what’s going on in his wife’s pretty head, you start to second guess even your best theories. And then things enter the realm of the truly fucked up for the finale.Essentially flipping the script from Rosemary’s Baby, Harry Treadaway and Rose Leslie (of Penny Dreadful and Game of Thrones fame, respectively) are visiting the bride’s family lake house as a honeymoon retreat. They weren’t planning on going outside much anyway. However, perhaps they should, as things get a bit tense once Treadaway’s Paul finds Bea (Leslie) walking naked in the woods at night, completely catatonic at first. After that things get weird.
The Host
One of the greatest horror movies of the past decade is on Netflix, and it is a beautiful monster to behold. As what was once the most popular South Korean film ever upon its release, The Host was the third horror movie from genre master Bong Joon-ho and starred the country’s biggest star, Song Kang-ho. However, more important than all the glitz, is that at its core there was a truly special chiller that acts just as much as a modern Grimm fairy tale as it does a delightfully twisted creature feature.
Inspired by real events in 2000 when a Korean mortician contracted by the U.S. military stationed in Seoul dumped large amounts of formaldehyde down the drain and into the Han river, leading to a small eco-crisis, a political disaster for the U.S. government, and deformed fish, The Host imagines a scenario where ambivalent U.S. officials dump even more of the stuff into the waterway, causing the birth of a giant amphibious monster. Soon, it attacks the mainland and kidnaps Park Gang-du’s (Kang-ho) daughter, Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung).
What follows is a surprisingly moving and transcendent account of a man chasing a giant monster (designed in the WETA workshop, no less!) to bring his child home.
The Invitation
Seeing your ex is always uncomfortable, but imagine if your ex-wife invited you to a dinner party with her new husband? That is just about the least creepy thing in this new, taut thriller nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Indeed, in The Invitation Logan Marshall-Green's Will is invited by his estranged wife (Tammy Blanchard) for dinner with her new hubby David (Michael Huisman of Game of Thrones ). David apparently wanted to extend the bread-breaking offer personally since he has something he wants to invite both Will and all his other guests into joining. And it isn't a game of Scrabble...
Intense, strange, and not what you expect, this is one of the more inventivethrillers of 2016.
The Legend of Hell House
One of the quintessential, campy British haunted house movies of the 1970s, The Legend of Hell House is a deliberate but amusing trip back into old school mysticism. Structured around the classic scenario of academic rationalists trying to prove (or discredit) the supernatural, the film is about a skeptical husband and his wife spending a number of nights in the “Mount Everest of Haunted Houses.” The Belasco Home was the sight of more than a few grisly murders when its wealthy owner Emeric vanished following a dinner party that ended in a slaughter. Emeric is also said to be a tall pervert who enjoyed many twisted desires in this estate, which is now haunted by the spirits of his victims.
Be warned this is a slow burn product of the ‘70s that mostly relies on atmosphere and two winsome performances from the film’s unrelated mediums, played by Pamela Franklin and Roddy McDowall.
Monsters
Before Gareth Edwards directed Godzilla or Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the filmmaker showcased his mastery of scale with this low budgeted, but hugely thrilling, creature feature. Monsters glimpses the promise that Warner Bros. and then Lucasfilm saw in the filmmaker who on a shoestring budget made an invasion of creepy crawlies shockingly visceral and genuinely fun.
Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy
For some unfathomable reason, Netflix chose to remove the original Nightmare on Elm Street, by far the most atmospheric of the series, from its rolls on October 1st, the very day that kicks off horror movie season. While you could content yourself with the spectacularly homoerotic (but vastly inferior) Nightmare on Elm Street 2, you're better off reflecting on the entire franchise with this documentary.
Never Sleep Again isn't just a title. Make sure not to start this one too late in the evening, because it's a whopping four hours long, which is to be expected since it has eight movies to cover (the 2010 remake is thankfully ignored). While we might be cheating just a little bit by including this, four hours detailing the genesis of horror's most genuine supervillain is just too good to pass up in October.
Re-Animator
A loose adaptation of HP Lovecraft's short story “Herbert West-Reanimator,” this 1985 gem is responsible for some of the weirdest scenes ever committed to film. Horror and sci-fi icon Jeffery Combs gives his most memorable performance as Herbert West, a mad genius able to resurrect the dead...sort of. Mostly funny, sometimes scary and always weird, Re-Animator is a true classic. Wait until you get to the part where the severed head...never mind, you'll see.
Writer-director Stuart Gordon would go on from Re-Animator to craft many other cult favorites such as From Beyond, Robot Jox, and Castle Freak. In short, Re-Animator is horror royalty. If you're a horror fan, watch it again. If you're new to the genre, here is one of the most enjoyable places to start.
The Rite
Pray that the “based on a true story” status of The Rite won’t infiltrate your dreams, or you may wake up to find yourself possessed. This is what happens when thousands of cases involving rogue body-snatching demons are brought to light in the confines of a secret Vatican meeting. If it’s not disturbing enough that Anthony Hopkins is now on the other side of evil as an exorcist, then the guttural (and definitely not human) voices echoing through your skull should be a valid argument that the devil not only exists but stalks the streets and invades people’s brains.
Keep your rosary close during this unholy thrill ride of hellish moans, unexplained bruises, things in black cloaks and eyes rolling in their sockets. These exorcisms are more than just passages from the Bible and a splash of holy water. Also, if you thought priests were immune from possession—think again.
Scream 2
While hardly the masterpiece of self-congratulatory ‘90s meta-humor thatScream tended to be, there is still much going for the first follow-up in this Wes Craven/Kevin Williamson series. Made one year later in time for Christmas of 1997, Scream 2 logically follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to the next stage: college.
There fellow survivors from the first film end up back in her orbit, like the encyclopedic Tarantino-esque movie fan, Randy (Jamie Kennedy), the abrasive tabloid journalist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and of course Deputy Dewey (David Arquette). But there is also another killer or two and a whole cast of suspects. The body count is increased, and the motive is deliciously post-modern and oh, so ‘90s. This is a great time capsule of an era where even our horror movies were happy right up until the bloody end.
Sleepy Hollow
As much a comedy as a horror film, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow should always be on the table when discussing October viewing options. Unlike the TV show of the same name, this demented reimagining of Washington Irving’s classic short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” never forgets the selling point is to have them rolling in the aisles. And more than a few heads do just that.
As a film with the most varied and imaginative uses of decapitation, Sleepy Hollow cuts a bloody path across Upstate New York. In fact, despite its American setting, we might as well confess what Sleepy Hollow really is: a modern day Hammer horror movie.
Burton incorporates all of his favorite tropes here. The intentionally stuffy faux-British acting (even though all the characters are of Dutch descent); the exaggerated and formal clothing; more than a few heaving bosoms; and lots and lots of gore.
This film is so perfectly macabre and gleefully grotesque that you might even be forgiven for not noticing at first glance how dryly funny and deadpan a place Sleepy Hollow tends to be.
Stage Fright
Worth seeing primarily for its novelty factor, Stage Fright is the most earnest clarion call for a musical-horror movie you’re ever see. And when it does work, it sings with pristine voice of blood curdling joy.
Admittedly, quite the campy experience, Stage Fright takes place in the kind of musical theatre camp that the kids on Glee always dreamed of attending. But it has its cool points too since it is run by Meat Loaf Aday (who is, you guessed it, Meat Loaf). But unfortunately, when he decides to put on at the camp the musical that his muse opened on Broadway (Minnie Driver) before her brutal, and gory slaughtering, the killings start up again at the camp. Now the daughter of the dead diva, Camilla (Allie MacDonald), will have to find the song in her heart—or else a knife will.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Yes, this is a musical. A bloody good one at that! It is also the last truly great Tim Burton movie and it plays just as much to his obsession with classic 1930s and ‘40s horror as it does to Stephen Sondheim melodies. Indeed, the film is intentionally evocative of the misty London soundstages from classic Universal horror movies like Dracula and the more psychologically hellish Val Lewton efforts of the ‘40s, such as The Body Snatcher. The movie has an almost black and white appearance until the bright red blood starts pouring by the bucket load.
More a tragedy in Burton’s hands than a comedy, this is the grimmest musical ever put to screen and its ending haunts the mind with as much intensity as the melancholic ballads.
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a fantastic little satire on the horror genre that, in a similar fashion to Scream, is packed with laughs, gore, and a bit of a message. When a group of preppy college students head out to the backwoods for a camping trip, they stumble upon two good-natured good ol’ boys that they mistake for homicidal hillbillies.
Their quick, off-the-mark judgment of Tucker and Dale lead to these snobs getting themselves into sticky, often bloody, and hilariously over-the-top situations. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil rides a one-joke premise to successful heights and teaches audiences to not judge a book by its cover.
V/H/S/2
We tried to keep found footage off this list as much as possible. However, Netflix continues rotating out the greatest horror, and sometimes a few bits of found footage are more than worth suffering through the gimmickry of an overall presentation. That is why we are not really recommending all ofV/H/S/2, but simply two terrific sequences in it.
The first is Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale’s pretty nifty reinvention of the zombie genre, “A Ride in the Park.” The perfect amount of screentime for the film to feel clever without overstaying its welcome, the short features a cyclist named Mike who is trying to make a Go Pro video with a camera mounted on his helmet. Yet, when he finds a hiker that appears to have bitten off more than he can chew, Mike tries to be a good guy and stops to help. Things get wickedly fun from there.
Yet, the real standout is “Safe Haven,” a bizarre and exhilarating nightmare from Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans (of The Raid films!). When a news crew infiltrates an Indonesian cult that babbles about prophecy and the end of the world, they are shocked to discover that there is something even more sinister going on here than is imaginable. Relying on long, seemingly sustained handheld camera shots, “Safe Haven” goes completely into the realm of madness and Lovecraftian levels of freakiness as the short film rushes through a pulsating third act that will not let up.
We Are What We Are
Tradition, it’s what separates us from the animals. We pass down the customs, knowledge, and practices of our ancestors, and thus keep their spirits alive. That’s a good thing, right?
… Well yes and no. Take the Parker family for instance. Their habit of practicing their family’s preferred hobby every evening is admirable in the sense that it brings the family closer together. However, it’s not so nice to all the neighboring families when this is achieved by cannibalism. And you thought one asking to borrow a cup of sugar was bad!
Yep, We Are What We Are was the little cannibalism film that could at both Sundance and Cannes in 2013. And while it is also technically a remake of a Mexican film of the same name, this do-over adds a very nice American flavor to accompany the juiciest sides of liver and spline that come with all the gut-wrenching tension inherent with backwoods disembowelment. Bon appetit.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
But as long as we’re reveling in Freddy goodness, we might suggest you top off your four hours of Never Sleep Again binging with a Wes Craven’s New Nightmare nightcap. Ostensibly the seventh film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, this knotty film is really so much more. As Craven’s first crack at meta post-modernism before Scream a year later, New Nightmare is high on ambition and also a little rough around the edges. But that doesn’t change the fact that it knows how to cut deep in its central premise.
With New Nightmare, Heather Langenkamp returns to the franchise as its star—but now she is playing version of herself, as opposed to Nancy Thompson (the original Nightmare survivor girl). In her world, the Freddy movies petered out like in our own with the lame Freddy’s Dead, but in the absence of New Line Cinema’s original mascot, Heather has been having bad dreams about a meaner, more demonic Freddy Krueger. Stranger still though is that her former co-star (and Freddy Krueger himself) Robert Englund is also having them. And not-so-coincidentally, this is around the same time that they learn Wes Craven is working on a script for a new Freddy film.
If this doesn’t already sound meta enough for you, keep in mind that Craven also incorporated into his story aspects of Langenkamp’s real personal life like a special effects expert husband, a young son, and even a stalker. It’s level of twisted self-awareness is bold, as is its determination to draw parallels with horror cinema and its fairy tale origins—and not to mention throw shade on the many mediocre Nightmare on Elm Street sequels (but we still have a soft spot for Dream Warriors!).
The film’s reach exceeds its grasp, but there is still enough here to fascinate, most especially with the focus again drifting on making Freddy Krueger scary, and making the object of his sickened and perverse desire sympathetic. It turns out orphaning children is much nastier business than cracking wise with co-eds. The result is a slasher movie unlike any other you have ever seen. Plus, it features Wes Craven onscreen explaining his nutty premise. Bizarre stuff, indeed.
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