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- The Exorcist (1973) The Exorcist isn't scary. A cat unexpectedly jumping from off-camera is scary. The Exorcist is so unsettling it will mess you up for weeks.
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Truth is stranger than fiction…and a hell of a lot scarier, too. Based (like much of Psycho) on the horrific ritual murders committed by Ed Gein, Chain Saw looks, feels, and smells so much like a grainy, low-budget documentary that it borders on snuff.
- The Shining (1980) Forget all the conspiracy theories swirling around what The Shining's really about. Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel about the Torrance family's descent into madness is a hypnotically artful chiller that works on the most primal of levels.
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991) As Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Anthony Hopkins is a waking nightmare of seductive depravity — the sick, twisted serial killer America hates to love.
- The Exorcist
- Hereditary
- The Conjuring
- The Shining
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- The Ring
- Halloween
- Sinister
- Insidious
- It
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
You may not agree that The Exorcistis the scariest movie ever, but it probably also isn’t much of a surprise to see it at the top of our list — with a whopping 19% of all the votes cast. William Friedkin’s adaptation of the eponymous novel about a demon-possessed child and the attempts to banish said demon became the highest-grossing R-rated horror...
Writer-director Ari Aster made a huge splash with his feature directorial debut, a dark family drama about the nature of grief couched within a supernatural horror film. Toni Collette earned a spot in the pantheon of great Oscar snubs with her slowly-ratcheted-up-to-11 performance as bedeviled mother Annie, but the movie’s biggest shock came courte...
James Wan has staked out a place among the modern masters of horror, directing films like Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious, and this inspired-by-true-events chiller based on the experiences of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens, best known for their work on the strange case that inspired the Amityville Horror movies ...
Literally dozens of Stephen King’s novels and stories have been adapted for the big screen, and several of those films are considered classics today, like Carrie, Misery, and Pet Sematary (and that doesn’t even account for non-horror stuff like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me). But the mother of them all is easily Stanley Kubrick’s adaptat...
While the top four movies on this list collectively garnered 42% of the total votes counted, they were followed by six films that all earned around 3% of the vote each. In other words, these last six films were separated by no more than 60 votes. The first of them is this low-budget slasher directed and co-written by Tobe Hooper, very loosely inspi...
It’s always a tricky proposition to take something that works well for one culture and try to translate that formula successfully for another, but Gore Verbinski managed that with The Ring. A remake of Japanese director Hideo Nakata’s acclaimed thriller about a cursed videotape, Verbinski’s take kept the original film’s striking visual imagery — th...
Coming in at the seventh spot on our list is the film that introduced the world to all-time scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis and put John Carpenter on the map. Halloweenis frequently cited as one of the earliest examples of the slasher genre as we know it today, and while it may not feature the same kind of realistic gore we’ve come to expect of films...
For those who didn’t read the “scientific study” mentioned at the top, we’ve finally come to the film it crowned the scariest. Before he joined the MCU with 2016’s Doctor Strange, director Scott Derrickson had racked up a few horror films, a couple of which earned cult followings. One of them was this small-scale haunted house/possession story abou...
James Wan has already appeared higher on this list, but before he and Patrick Wilson made The Conjuring, they worked together on this supernatural thriller about a young boy who falls into a coma and begins to channel a malevolent spirit. The bare bones of the story weren’t the most groundbreaking, but frequent Wan collaborator Leigh Whannell infus...
The fear of clowns is a very real thing, even if it’s become so commonplace to announce it that it feels disingenuous. If you needed any further evidence, we direct you to the box office haul of 2017’s IT, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, which went on to beat The Exorcist’s 44-year record as the highest-grossing horror film ever. ...
Based on a poll of RT users, this list ranks the most terrifying horror films of all time, from The Exorcist to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Find out which movies made the cut and why they scared audiences so much.
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- Ringu (1998) Some people prefer the U.S. remake, but Hideo Nakata’s original version of The Ring is an eerie and terrifying exercise in J-horror filmmaking that would influence copycats for years to come.
- Deliverance (1972) Few thrillers from the 1970s, or any other epoch, have left viewers as shocked as director John Boorman’s Southern canoeing trip into the depths of hell.
- Paranormal Activity (2007) Oren Peli’s micro-budgeted box office smash wasn’t the first-found footage film to try and scare the living daylights out of viewers, but it cleverly updated that conceit to the digital age.
- The Vanishing (1988) George Sluizer’s highly original kidnapping film is as disturbing for the questions it keeps asking and never answers as it is for a finale where the truth is shockingly told.
4 days ago · Day of the Dead (1985)87%. #159. Critics Consensus: Day of the Dead may arguably be the least haunting entry in George A. Romero's undead trilogy, but it will give audiences' plenty to chew on with its shocking gore and scathing view of society.
- 'Videodrome' (1983) When Max (James Woods), a television producer, discovers a strange broadcast signal that displays snuff films, he sets out to reveal its origins.
- 'Jacob's Ladder' (1990) Still haunted by his experience in the Vietnam War, postal worker Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) finds his terrifying nightmares becoming a reality.
- 'Candyman' (1992) A grad student searching for a gripping topic for her thesis, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) believes she has found it in Cabrini-Green, where the legend of a hook-handed man reigns over the locals.
- 'Evil Dead II' (1987) Brace yourself, those who have never tangled with Evil Dead II before! If you’ve already seen The Evil Dead…well, some of this might come off as familiar.
Hereditary. A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences. 3. The Witch. A family in 1630s New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic and possession. 4. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Five friends head out to rural Texas to visit the grave of a grandfather.
Nov 15, 2023 · The 25 Best Horror Movies. 26 Images. 25. Scream (1996) Director: Wes Craven. Stars: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette. Runtime: 111 mins. Both director Wes Craven and writer Kevin ...
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