By Chris Luckett
With Halloween here, you might just be in
the mood for a scary movie. The nice thing is that horror movies can be found
littering video store racks or on pretty much any TV channel this time of year.
Finding scary movies isn’t hard; finding good
scary movies, though, is a challenge. To save yourself a slog through bloody
gore or the chance of an unfrightening dud, here are 25 of the best scary
movies.
Half remake and half sequel, Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn took the haunted-cabin
concept that the original Evil Dead
helped refine and found room for comedy alongside the horror. A precursor for
funny horror movies like Shaun of the
Dead and Drag Me to Hell.
Insidious is proof that a great horror movie needs not be very original so
long as it scares the pants off of audiences with timing and stylistic aplomb.
Borrowing from modern benchmarks like Poltergeist,
Insidious is a
haunted-house-in-the-suburbs movie, but manages to evoke genuine scares and
moment that will haunt you long after – which is all the more impressive
considering its PG-13 rating.
23. Nosferatu (1922)
The very first vampire movie remains one of
the best. An unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu is an exercise in how to
create terror through such simple elements as lighting and makeup. Max Schreck
gives a chilling performance as the vampire Count Orlok.
22. Carrie (1976)
The concept of a child with supernatural
powers exacting revenge on those around them had been done before. Carrie found a way to not only make the
victim/monster sympathetic but employed the story as a metaphor for the terror
of puberty.
21. The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Like a post-modern Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, The
Cabin in the Woods seems at first glance to be a standard
kids-terrorized-by-a-haunted-cabin story before upending the entire concept.
The twists pile up so fast amidst the scares, it may even take a second viewing
to appreciate the satirical tongue subtly planted in the movie’s cheek.
20. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead set an incredibly
high bar for every undead movie that followed. His own sequel Dawn of the Dead managed to surpass the
original by maintaining the same height of scares while ramping of the technicolour
gore and daring to incorporate social commentary in this story of a mall beset
by brain-eaters.
19. Saw (2004)
Forget about the myriad sequels and the
parody of itself that the series became, and you’ll be impressed to find a
truly gripping serial killer/detective story. It’s easy to forget just how
revolutionary Saw was before “torture
porn” became a sub-genre unto itself. Saw
is a wonderfully structured piece of film about two people who awaken
imprisoned in a public bathroom and whose only chances of survival depend on
brutally difficult choices.
18. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Another wonderful melange of horror and
comedy, director John Landis followed up Animal
House and The Blues Brothers with
this darkly comic tale of two American teenagers who get attacked while hiking
across the moors of rural England. The fate of the young man who survives to
become a werewolf is still a better one than his deceased companion, who comically
reappears at progressing states of decomposition to harangue his lupine best
friend. Not to be confused with the dreadful An American Werewolf in Paris.
17. Scream (1996)
Wes Craven flirted with reinventing the
horror genre with his Freddy Krueger-featuring New Nightmare, but he saved his ace ideas for this pinnacle of
self-aware horror. Starring characters from, and aimed at audiences of, the
first generation to grow up with slashers and modern scare fests, Scream circumvented the clichés of
horror movies by having the characters aware of what to do or not do if faced
with horror scenarios (only to still have many of the characters fall victim to
stupidity and hubris).
16. Halloween (1978)
The pioneer of the modern slasher, John
Carpenter’s Halloween took the concept
of the faceless killer from The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre and made it all the more personal by setting it in a
suburban neighbourhood. A well-paced ride of tension and scares, Halloween also wrote the book on that
moment when you expect the killer to be dead, only to see them slowly sit back
up in the background behind the unsuspecting protagonist.
15. Poltergeist (1982)
Many audiences today couldn’t envision an
effective horror movie with a PG rating, yet Poltergeist stands as proof that some of the scariest things in a
movie can unnerve without gore or blood. The kind of movie that The Amityville Horror wanted to be, Poltergeist is an eerily disturbing look
at a perfectly normal family driven apart and to stages of terror and madness
by the haunted house they’ve moved into in the cookie-cutter suburbs. PG or
not, Poltergeist is scarier than more
R-rated gore fests.
14. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Sometimes, less is more. The 2003 remake
was drubbed by critics and audiences alike due mostly to the fact modern
producers completely missed what made the original so terrifying: its grit, its
brutality, and its sheer unpredictability. No horror movie before 1974 dared to
look as purposely unpolished or shied away less from sudden, graphic violence.
The most frightening scenes may be full of shock horror, but the whole movie’s
executed precisely and with an bold audacity, for a first-of-its-kind flick. The
brutally graphic nature of many scenes hits you so suddenly that you’re too
busy reeling to be disgusted.
13. Jaws (1975)
Not all horror movies take place in
secluded places or in darkness. Sometimes, all you need is open water and the
unknown. Jaws is another case of a
PG-rated horror movie causing more fear than many R-rated terrors could hope
to. Many adults still have trouble going in the ocean because of this
terrifying story of a great white shark hunting swimmers off of an island
resort. The shark is rarely seen in clear shots, which is the film’s masterstroke.
By only showing brief glimpses, often shaped by dim lighting, cloudy water, and
an unnerving score, Steven Spielberg makes you afraid not by showing the shark
but by letting you imagine it in greater terrifying detail than the movie could
ever visually accomplish.
12. Misery (1990)
Many criticize Stephen King’s books (and their
subsequent adaptations) for preposterous concepts, but one of his masterpieces
was all the more terrifying for its plausibility. Misery tells the tale of an author who crashes his car in a
snowstorm, only to be rescued at the brink of death by a woman who identifies
herself as his number-one fan. When she discovers a manuscript in his bag in
which the author plans to kill her favourite character, she holds him hostage
and forces him to write a new book. Scenes of suspense build in Hitchcockian
dread reminiscent of Rear Window,
while one scene in particular will linger in your memory long after learning
the meaning of “hobbling.”
11. The Omen (1976)
A sibling of sorts to Rosemary’s Baby and The
Exorcist, The Omen follows a
married couple raising a son who, unbeknownst to either of them, is actually the
Antichrist. Marrying old-school eeriness with shocking death scenes (for their
time), the film is a wonderful blend of styles. As a whole, The Omen is a disturbingly gripping
horror film that ranks among the best involving pure evil.
10. Paranormal Activity (2009)
Few recent horror films made this list, in
large part because so many horror movies today are more concerned with gore
than scares and don’t understand that true terror stems from dread. Paranormal Activity makes expert use of
dread and frightened anticipation, establishing a pattern for audiences and
then changing the variable each time. In the movie, a couple is worried their
house in haunted and sets up cameras at night to find out; while they sleep,
audiences witness the terrors they remain perilously ignorant of. For a
post-millennial horror movie, Paranormal
Activity is refreshingly old-fashioned in how skilfully crafted its scares
are.
9. The Ring (2002)
While The
Ring may have begat the trend of remaking Asian horror flicks for North
American audiences – see: The Grudge,
The Ring Two, Dark Water, Pulse, Shutter, One Missed Call, The
Uninvited, The Eye, the upcoming Oldboy, etc. – it planted its flag proudly
and with style. The Ring is one of
the best-looking horror movies, in no small part because of its colour scheme
of washed-out grays and steel blues. The concept is ridiculous (anyone who
watches this certain video receives a phone call warning of their death in
seven days), but it is told so hypnotically and with such visual flair that it
dazzles you whenever you aren’t jumping.
8. Eraserhead (1977)
David Lynch once famously described Eraserhead as “a dream of dark and
troubling things,” although it could just as easily be described as a lucid
nightmare. While Eraserhead is not a
horror film in the sense of being scary, it’s so downright disturbing and
unnerving to sit through that it can leave you terrified without even
understanding what you truly just saw. Avant garde cinema at its most haunting,
Eraserhead proves creepier than most
studio horror movies could ever dream of being.
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Revolutionary for its time both in concept
and execution, Wes Craven’s introduction to Freddy Krueger created not just a
fascinating character but an original story idea in a genre mostly worn out by
the time of the ‘80s. A pedophile who is burned alive in an act of vigilante
justice begins to kill the vigilantes’ children in the one place they can’t be
protected: their dreams. Featuring a 21-year-old Johnny Depp in his screen
debut, A Nightmare on Elm Street
holds up amazingly well and remains the stuff of bad dreams.
6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Generally speaking, remakes stink – and
horror remakes downright suck. Perhaps the trick, as demonstrated both by Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John
Carpenter’s The Thing, is to remake a
sci-fi movie as a horror film instead of redoing a pre-existing horror flick.
As brilliant as the 1956 original is, director Philip Kaufman’s take on pod
people imbues the story with late-‘70s paranoia and post-Nixon distrust,
creating a wholly more grim and dangerous tone that’s much more suited to the
terrifying concept.
5. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Maligned by many for its use (or debatable
overuse) of shaky, handheld cameras, The
Blair Witch Project managed a spectacular feat nonetheless. Without showing
so much as an antagonist, the movie managed to create a sense of pure terror in
audiences, solely by making the viewers feel they were stuck in the haunted
woods right alongside the three doomed filmmakers. By the studios very publicly
promoting the movie as found footage, audiences went in aware that the lead
characters were ill-fated yet were forced alongside them, almost as if dragged
by the hand. For many people, The Blair
Witch Project did for camping what Jaws
did for swimming.
4. The Exorcist (1973)
The Citizen
Kane of horror movies, in both quality and hype, remains one of the
scariest films made. Many exorcism movies have followed, but none have matched
the sheer horror of watching the sweet, 12-year-old Regan become possessed by
the Devil and turned into a projectile-vomiting, head-rotating monster. An
expertly made movie that explores deep philosophical and spiritual issues while
making you shriek at a moment’s notice, The
Exorcist remains the best of its kind.
3. The Thing (1982)
One of the greatest remakes of all time,
John Carpenter’s The Thing plays like
a twisted Agatha Christie novel, set in a remote research station on
Antarctica. A parasitic alien is dug out of the ice and infects one of the crew
members. The hitch is that it’s almost impossible to tell who’s been infected, and
the parasite can jump to a different host, leading to characters all turning on
each other as paranoia and cabin fever sets in. Sudden shocks permeate the
film, while cutting-edge effects that still impress today keep your eyes riveted.
2. Alien (1979)
Alien isn’t truly a horror film, but it skirts into scary territory often
enough to leave deep traumas among most who watch it. Much like The Thing, it’s ostensibly an Agatha
Christie concept, this time with a crew aboard a spaceship being hunted down
one by one by an unseen malevolent hitchhiker. The famous tagline advertised,
“In space, no one can hear you scream.” Usually, such an inference would be
hyperbole; with Alien, the odds are
pretty good you’ll end up screaming by the end.
1. The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick never dabbled in the same
genre twice, yet attempted and nearly mastered each one. Following his period
piece Barry Lyndon, Kubrick set his
sights on making the horror equivalent of what his 2001: A Space Odyssey had been to science-fiction. His adaptation
of Stephen King’s literary titan is a masterpiece of terror, creating a sense
of creeping dread that rebuilds upon every viewing. While most other horror
films suffer from the audience knowing what will happen on repeat viewings, The Shining somehow is enhanced, as you’ll
know what’s coming and still be afraid to see it again. Even better, as a
first-time experience, it manages to grip you from the opening helicopter shot
right to the final close-up, hypnotizing you and frightening you to your core.
Definitive proof that true horror never fades, The Shining is the perfect horror movie.
