Top 12 Best Horror Movies Of All Time

12. Halloween

Before slasher movies became a dime a dozen—with that dozen sometimes composing just one franchise – John Carpenter created the subgenre’s first benchmark with 1978’s Halloween, the night Michael Myers came home. Low-budget even for the time, Halloween puts every iota of its production process on the screen, from the elementary-and-now-iconic Michael Myers mask to John Carpenter’s no frills (but also iconic) piano score. The movie also set the bar for so many future tropes, such as the killer that escaped from the asylum, and a non-damsel final girl taking the lead. In this case, the latter was played with scream queen regality by Jamie Lee Curtis in her breakout role. Halloween can still make one scared of what might be standing behind the neighbor’s bushes, or what could be waiting upstairs in that corner always cloaked in shadows. It’s not only (easily) the best film of the franchise, including the remakes, but it’s also the apex of John Carpenter’s entire amazing career. 

11. The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

When it comes to mind-boggling cinematic experiences, it’s somewhat strange that one of the most impressive efforts is nearly a century old and contains no spoken dialogue. First assembled from the compacted and pulverized nightmares of the paranoid (assumedly), German director Robert Wiene’s 1920 classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari astounds in every way, boasting a progressively frightening narrative of the titular hypnotist using another man to commit murders, while also utilizing one of film’s earliest and greatest twist endings. (And don’t dare blame this movie for inferior filmmakers’ copycatting.) But what makes Dr. Caligari so singularly enduring is without a doubt the endlessly striking and distinct set design, which offered few elements of grounded consistency in frames filled with distorted angles, jagged edges and odd shapes. It’s a rainbow of madness for the eyes, despite being in black-and-white, and its relatively short runtime is just another reason to rewatch and find details you’d previously missed. 

10. Audition

"Kiri kiri kiri!" A modern masterpiece like no other, Audition is the apex of prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s career – though everyone should also check out his batshit crazy One Missed Call, among others. A slow burning thriller that gets more manic and strange on its way to an unforgettable climax, Audition at first appears to be about a widower (Ryo Ishibashi) using a rather chauvinistic method of finding a new girlfriend, and his attempt to win over the deceptively quiet "winner," Asami (Eihi Shiina). But as the story moves forward, you realize that this movie absolutely belongs to Asami and the disfigured puzzle pieces making up her twisted life. Like many, this film is one that’s best viewed knowing as little as possible, but with the understanding of how jarringly quick things turn from crazy to agonizing. More effective and lasting than the J-Horror hits that soon followed, Audition takes Ryu Murakami’s novel to great heights and earns every second of audience turmoil. 

9. The Silence Of The Lambs

Some people fall on the side of the argument that Jonathan Demme’s 1991 smash The Silence of the Lambs isn’t a horror movie, and those people should spend some time trapped inside of Buffalo Bill’s house before reaffirming their thoughts. That character’s actions feel unbridled and maniacal, but he predictably exhibits bad movie villain behavior in the end, while Anthony Hopkins’ legendary cannibal Hannibal Lecter gives off a calm and affable vibe that can instantaneously give way to the most sadistic and malicious atrocities that humans can do to one another. That well-balanced wave of antagonism worked perfectly against Jodie Foster’s career-high performance as Clarice Starling, and the film’s cat and monster-mouse game doesn’t let up until its harrowing climax in the dark. Saying nothing of the rest of the Hannibal Lecter films, Silence of the Lambs is an absolutely perfect mix of horrors both psychological and visceral, and it remains the only film in the genre to take home the Best Picture Oscar (as well as many others). 

8. Psycho

You don’t get a nickname like "The Master of Suspense" for just any old reason. Alfred Hitchcock earned that moniker many times over though the course of his career, but nowhere was he as pitch perfect and on point as with 1960’s Psycho. At this point the saga of Norman Bates has been endlessly spoofed, parodied, emulated, prequelled, and even shot-for-shot remade, but none of that takes away or diminishes the eerie power of Psycho. When Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals thousands of dollars from her boss and hits the road, she winds up at the worst possible motel. Using this noir-ish set up, Hitchcock slyly subverts expectations and meticulously crafts a deeply psychoanalytical thriller that deconstructs fear, desire, sexuality, and the human psyche. Beyond all of these themes and the subtext, Psycho is also creepy, taut, and horrifying—the shower scene still stands as one of the most terrifying moments in all of movie history. 

7. Night Of The Living Dead

When you think of zombies, it probably calls to mind a wave of undead corpses in varying stages of decomposition shuffling at you like an inevitable wave, and if one happens to bite you, game over, you become of these brain-hungry bastards. This is largely thanks to George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead, which changed the game as far as zombie movies go—before his interpretation of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend they were primarily voodoo-related creatures. Not only did Night permanently alter the landscape and create the modern zombie, an independent production, it’s also a terrifying horror tale, and a sharp critique of everything from racial politics in America to Cold War paranoia to the Vietnam war. Not too shabby for a film about flesh-starved cannibals. 

6. Nosferatu

Dracula has a long, storied history on the silver screen, and that got started in 1922, with F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, which is still, more than 90 years later, one of the spookiest, scariest movies of all time, and still perhaps the greatest rendering of the world’s most famous vampire. With names and details changed because the studio couldn’t secure the rights to Bram Stoker’s novel, Nosferatu follows the mysterious Count Orlock, his real estate agent, and the real estate agent’s wife. This is Dracula before he became a mainstay of popular culture, free from the baggage of decade’s worth of appearances. Max Schreck, who plays Orlock and has his own shadowy mythology, is one of the eeriest screen presences of all time, sending shivers up your spine. One of the defining entries the early 20th Century German Expressionism, Murnau’s stark contrasts, artistic flourishes, and symbolic imagery have been felt for decades, through horror, film noir, and more, and continue to be influential to this very day. 

5. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

How can you not love a chainsaw wielding Texas madman wearing a mask made out of human skin, one who also happens to be part of the most dysfunctionally psychotic cannibal family you’ve ever seen? I guess if you happen to be one of the teens who happen upon Leatherface and his clan in Tobe Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, you might not be a fan, but as for the rest of us who adore horror, we have relatively few complaints. Dismissed upon its release as "despicable," Chain Saw went on to become a cult favorite for gore hounds that evolved into a legitimate horror classic. Brutal and bloody, shocking, and deeply unsettling and transgressive on so, so many levels, the film uses the exploitation trappings to explore themes of violence, capitalism, gender politics, and more, not to mention that it’s one of the greatest slasher films ever put on celluloid. 

4. Alien

It’s easy enough to scare the crap out of people with an eight-foot-tall, armor-plated alien killing machine with razor-sharp teeth, an extra mouth, and acid for blood, but Ridley Scott’s 1979 thriller Alien brings so much more than incredible creature design to the table. There’s been an endless debate about whether this is truly sci-fi or horror, but any way you look at it, Alien is straight up terrifying. Scott manages to squeeze every last bit of claustrophobia and terror out of relatively few moving parts, building the surprise and suspense throughout what remains, decades after its release, one of the creepiest, scariest movies ever made. And all of this is capped off with one of the best protagonists of all time, Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, who is tough and badass, but also fragile and relatable as a woman driven to extremes by an extreme situation. 

3. Jaws

When a movie scares the hell out of an entire generation to the extent that they wanted to stay out of the ocean, and gave water sports a seriously sinister, terrifying edge, you know it’s something special. Steven Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws not only ushered in the era of the modern blockbuster, it remains, to this day, one of the most taut, terrifying movies ever put on film. You don’t even need to see the shark to feel the tension and horror—this was partially strategic, partially due to rampant technical issues with the mechanical creature—but the shot of the monster great white popping out of the water as Roy Scheider’s Sheriff Brody chums behind the Orca is one of the most enduring images not just in horror, but in cinema history. 

2. The Exorcist

In William Friedken’s The Exorcist, when 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair’s career defining performance) begins to exhibit strange, terrifying behavior, her actress mother (Ellen Burstyn) tries everything she can think of. Torn between science and religion, knowledge and superstition, and pushed to her limits, she turns to her last hope, the short-on-faith priest Damien Karras, to cast out the demon that has taken up residence in her formerly sweet little girl. The Exorcist pits old time religion against more modern beliefs, explores the nature of faith, themes of good versus, and the intrinsic fears of parenthood. Additionally, it’s full of masterful tension building, blasphemous and profane imagery, a deep spirituality, and fantastic performances that only enhance the scares and frights. It’s impossible to hear that haunting, nerve-jangling theme and not shiver with dread. 

1. The Shining

For all the spine-chilling tales that horror-meister Stephen King put to the page, so very few share a similar impact in live-action, and such an achievement is a small fraction of what suspends Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining high above all other horror films. Upping the supernatural ante of King’s alcoholism-fueled descent into madness, Kubrick meticulously took each maddening piece of this claustrophobic story, which sees a writer and his family caretaking a very special hotel, and jammed it into another until it resembled the iconic Overlook carpet. And from that vision came Jack Nicholson’s maniacally uninhibited Jack Torrance, Shelly DuVall’s tortured Wendy, dream-stealing twins, blood-spewing elevators, never-ending hallways, one royally mind-fucked visit to Room 237, a garden maze, and backwards words that turn mirrors into hazards. To say nothing of Scatman Crothers’ heroism. Bypassing any snap decisions on how to inspire nightmares, Kubrick famously ran his cast and crew through the wringer of muck until perfection happened, and that perfection is The Shining, which ends on a bizarre photograph more paralyzing than an ax to the spinal cord.