Top 10 Horror Movies | Scariest Horror Movies

Scariest Horror Movies

1.The Exorcist

The Exorcist was directed by William Friedkin and released in 1973. Despite its age, this movie remains a relatively scary and well done classic horror film. Based on William Peter Blatty's novel of the same name, the film follows a possessed child, and the dual priest team sent to exorcise her. The film received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, marking it as the first (and still one of the few) horror films to be nominated for Best Picture. The intense acting and terrifying special effects created such an effective film that the production itself was rumoured to be cursed. Nearly everyone associated with the film was injured, fell ill, or suffered a death in the family - and the whole set almost burned to the ground.

2. Get Out

After it's first released in 2017, this American horror film has quickly become one of the most popular films in the genre. Get Out was written and directed by Jordan Peele and follows the story of a black photographer, Chris Washington, and as he meets the parents of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage in Armitage, a rural community in Upstate New York. While Armitage seems like a quiet community, Chris soon begins to notice strange behaviour from the residents, and even his girlfriend, Rose. As Chris struggles to figure out what exactly it is about the community that seems so strange, it soon becomes clear things are much more twisted and abnormal than anyone could have imagined. As things escalate, it soon becomes clear that people in Armitage are not what, and who, they seem.

Get Out first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2017, and hit theatres about a month later via Universal Pictures and soon received acclaim as the best horror movie. Get Out was nominated for multiple awards and earned the People’s Choice Award due to the themes in the movie.

The movie is scary and draws on several popular horror themes and keeps you guessing until the end.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street

When it comes to choosing the best horror movie, it’s pretty tough to ignore the classics. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in 1984, nearly forty years ago, and directed by Wes Craven. The film was enjoyed incredible success with several sequels including A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Revenge and New Nightmare, and even spawned a franchise featuring a television series novels and even cross over films like Freddy vs. Jason. If you ask most adults today, and even many kids, they’ve definitely heard of Freddy Kruger. Though, this may only be due to his popularity as a Halloween costume. The original story is based on a monster, Freddy Kruger, who after being burned alive for murdering a child, becomes some mix of a vengeful spirit and demonic entity. Determined to continue killing, Freddy targets a group of teenagers. Perhaps the scariest thing about Freddy Kruger is his tendency to strike in dreams. For most people, dreaming tends to be a mysterious experience at best, regardless of whether or not they involve the potential for murder, which makes Freddy’s ability to kill in the dreamscape pretty terrifying. Perhaps it was this fact that gained Freddy notoriety as a classical horror figure.

4. Halloween

A classic scare film, the original Halloween is far less bloody and graphic than its endless sequels and reboots. The story follows Michael Myers, who was killed and institutionalized as a child. He escapes into adulthood and continues his murder spree. What makes the original Halloween even more frightening than its contemporaries is its blend of originality and supernatural. Myers is undoubtedly human, yet there is no such thing as humanity. He seems unstoppable, yet his only "superpower" is sociopathy. The expressionless mask and creepy, straightforward score by director John Carpenter is already a horror villain really out of this world.

5.Night of the Living Dead

When it comes to horror movies, you simply can’t ignore a classic like Night of the Living Dead, the original 1968 horror film that was directed, written, and filmed by George A. Romero. The movie was turned into a franchise, which was later given five subsequent releases, including a 1990 remake that was directed by another horror icon Tom Savini. The story follows a couple who become trapped in a rural household as their quiet neighbourhood becomes a breeding ground for cannibalistic corpses. While Night of the Living Dead may seem a little too old school for younger audiences, it is definitely a horror classic and, in many ways, the great-grandparent of zombie movies. As one of the first zombie flicks, Night of the Living Dead brought the idea of flesh-eating zombies to the big screen. Most of our favourite zombie may not be here today if Night of the Living Dead had not been successful. While the special effects are pretty rudimentary, as per its 1960s release, the movie is still fairly spooky and definitely a must-see for zombie-movie fans. If you can’t deal with the black and white and want something a little bit more advanced, check out the 1990s remake.

6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

The 1970s changed the horror genre forever, and Tobey Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" was the catalyst. A group of friends stumbled upon a spooky house in Texas, surrounded by a family of cannibals led by Leatherface, one of the most horrific villains, wearing a mask sewn together from human skin. By escaping the clutches of Leatherface, she became the first final girl of horror, a survivor who emerged from a Chrysalis of Terror and became a blood-soaked angel of revenge. While Final Girls has undergone many powerful transformations over the years, this trope remains one of the greatest feminist triumphs of horror. J. R. R.. Tolkien's Oven defied "I'm not a man" before killing Najgal's indestructible lord, and the final girls destroyed the horrifying boogiemen thanks to Hooper's Sally-designed path.

7. Scream

Scream redefined the slasher film. Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson's meta script brought both comedies and scare to the subgenre by having its self-aware victims understand the "rules" of horror movies when a killer stalks their small California town, turning their murder into a game. They know who the first to die is, what to do and what not to do. It's fun, it's scary, and it has one of the best early twists of any horror film: killing off the biggest name in the cast, Drew Barrymore, in the first few minutes of the film. 

8. Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock's classic was highly controversial at its debut. The story, about a lonely motel owner who had a tendency to kill his customers, dealt with gender dysmorphia, dissociative identity disorder, and the first toilet on American screens. The twists and turns are some of the best and most famous in the film, which led to Hitchcock insisting that theatres not let in anyone in after the movie started. Psycho isn't just one of the greatest pieces of horror ever made, it's the film that defined the modern conception of showtimes in the U.S.

9. Suspiria

Suspiria was not Dario Argento's first film, but it's certainly his best known - and one of his most beautiful. An American travels to Germany to attend a prestigious ballet academy but soon discovers the school is run by witches. Murders, maggots, and mayhem follow. Drenched in gorgeous, vibrant colours (most significantly red), the film has one of the most magnificent death scenes in modern cinema, where a woman is attacked multiple times before finally being hung from a noose and thrown through a stained-glass skylight. The huge shards of glass impale her friend on the floor below. Visually stunning gore. With a score by Italian band Goblin, Suspiria is a pulsating, haunting, insane piece of filmmaking.

10. The Shining

Stanley Kubrick’s smorgasbord of horror is perhaps the only non-franchise film that has inspired enough imitators, documentaries, recuts, and homage episodes to populate a multi-day viewing marathon and an awesome horror film festival set at two of its iconic hotels to boot. The story, based on one of Stephen King’s earliest novels, is creepy in itself, overstuffed with silent twins, waterfalls of blood, a sweet-but-spooky psychic kid, and much more. But with Kubrick’s deliberate pacing, John Alcott’s vivid cinematography, and Jack Nicholson’s frenzied performance, the surreal, claustrophobic experience builds to a perfect fever pitch. Every moment of this movie, from “Here’s Johnny!” to “REDRUM” to “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” have been co-opted as pop-cultural signifiers that seem unlikely to ever die, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.