Summary

  • Groundbreaking horror movies shape the genre and push boundaries, enduring as nightmares that tap into the darkest parts of the human soul.
  • Modern horror fans have the convenience of streaming services to access the scariest movies, offering a wide range of horror subgenres to cater to every fan.
  • The best horror movies of all time include classics like The Evil Dead, Alien, Get Out, Halloween, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Thing, The Haunting, and Nosferatu, which continue to influence and terrify audiences.

The best horror movies of all time are the films that–either by intent or pure accident–helped to shape the time period's understanding of what the genre could offer to audiences. These groundbreaking films often achieved this by pushing the boundaries of what could be shown outright or even just implied. Many of them were poorly received on release as a result but endured as indelible nightmares that struck a very particular collective nerve. Even if their most shocking visuals no longer hold water with thrill seekers today, the core insights of their journeys into the darkest recesses of the human soul still have the ability to send chills down the spine.

Luckily, modern horror fans have to worry about censorship and brief theatrical windows less these days and can stream many of the scariest horror movies of all time from the comfort of their own homes on some of the biggest streaming services. Ghost stories, supernatural chillers, serial killer mysteries, and some of the earliest slashers make up an irresistible list of the best horror movies of all time, and every kind of horror fan can find something to love within it.

Horror fans can also check out 20 Best Jump Scare Movies (& Where To Stream Them), Every Prime Video Original Horror Movie, Ranked, and 10 Best Horror Movies On Netflix Right Now.

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15 The Evil Dead (1981)

Ash looking scared in The Evil Dead
The Evil Dead (1981)

Release Date
October 15, 1981
Director
Sam Raimi
Cast
Bruce Campbell , Ellen Sandweiss , Richard DeManincor , Betsy Baker , Theresa Tilly , Ted Raimi , Ivan Raimi
Runtime
85 Minutes

Sam Raimi became a horror movie pioneer with his bold and inventive low-budget masterpiece The Evil Dead. The movie takes a very simple premise that has since been copied endlessly in the genre as it follows a group of young friends who venture into the woods for a getaway at a secluded cabin only to awaken a deadly spirit. The movie inspired countless aspiring filmmakers by showing what can be done with an independent movie Raimi's manic filmmaking style created a wild and terrifying journey into darkness with gore and bile that helped earn it a place as one of the best X-rated movies of all time.

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14 Alien (1979)

Xenomorph reaching for Ripley in a spacesuit in Alien 1979
Alien (1979)

Release Date
June 22, 1979
Director
Ridley Scott
Cast
Sigourney Weaver , Ian Holm , John Hurt , Veronica Cartwright , Harry Dean Stanton , Tom Skerritt , Yaphet Kotto
Runtime
117 minutes

Sci-fi horror movies have created some true masterpieces over the years, but it still feels as if they are all chasing the brilliance of Ridley Scott's Alien. The movie takes place in the distant future and follows the crew of an industrial spaceship that responds to a distress signal and leads to them accidentally bringing a deadly alien on board. While the Alien franchise expanded in some thrilling ways from here, the claustrophobic monster movie feel of the original is hard to top. Sigourney Weaver is a great horror hero as Ellen Ripley but the alien itself steals the show as one of the greatest movie monster designs ever created.

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13 Get Out (2017)

Chris crying in Get Out.
Get Out

Release Date
February 24, 2017
Director
Jordan Peele
Cast
Lyle Brocato , LaKeith Stanfield , Caleb Landry Jones , Betty Gabriel , Allison Williams , Marcus Henderson , erika alexander , Bradley Whitford , Jeronimo Spinx , Catherine Keener , Daniel Kaluuya
Runtime
1 hour, 44 minutes

Jordan Peele went from a celebrated comedian to one of the most exciting new filmmaking voices around with Get Out. The astoundingly original story follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young Black man visiting his white girlfriend's family for the first time and finds that his troubles go far beyond the social awkwardness of the situation. The movie is a gripping ride from the opening scene and maintains its eerie tone as Chris and the audience grow increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. The reveal further turn Get Out into a smart and insightful social commentary while never losing grasp of being an entertaining horror movie.

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12 Halloween (1978)

Michael Myers looking over a balcony holding a knife in Halloween 1978
  • Release Date: October 25, 1978
  • Director: John Carpenter
  • Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles, Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Nick Castle
  • Runtime: 1h 31m

John Carpenter is regarded as one of the greatest horror movie filmmakers of all time and that reputation largely began when he introduced one of the greatest horror icons with Michael Myers. Halloween takes place in the small town of Haddonfield on Halloween night when escaped killed Michael Myers dons a mask and returns to his old neighborhood to terrorize young teens. While the slasher movie genre had already begun, Halloween helped bring it to the mainstream with this grindhouse movie's surprising box office success. Compared to modern horror movies and the rest of the Halloween franchise, the scares may seem somewhat tame, but it remains a hugely influential 70s horror masterpiece.

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11 The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Expressionist set design in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
  • Release Date: February 26, 1920
  • Director: Robert Wiene
  • Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Fehér, Lil Dagover, Hans Heinz v. Twardowski, Rudolf Lettinger
  • Runtime: 1h 14m

The German Expressionist movement remains an incredibly influential era of cinema in the horror genre and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the standout examples from it. The silent movie tells the story of a hypnotist who uses a sleepwalking man to commit murders. The twisted and dark visual style of the movie is instantly recognizable as well as the unusual sets. This approach feels as though the audience is watching a nightmare come to life. Even without dialogue, the movie is an entirely engrossing and unforgettable experience that is a testament to how creepy visual storytelling can be.

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10 The Thing (1982)

MacReady exploring the Norwegian base in The Thing
The Thing (1982)

Release Date
June 25, 1982
Director
John Carpenter
Cast
T.K. Carter , David Clennon , Keith David , Kurt Russell , wilford brimley
Runtime
109 minutes

John Carpenter turned the slasher film into a cottage industry with Halloween, and he turned a combination of classic Hollywood, Chinese, and Italian filmmaking techniques and storytelling into something bold and new by running it through his tense, economical framing, and cutting. The Thing, his remake of Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby's The Thing From Another World, is a nasty little number, pitting a dozen men, led by a never-better Kurt Russell, against a shape-shifting extraterrestrial that's woken up from its icy tomb after a thousand years or more.

It takes the form of these men one at a time, pitting them against each other before they can get around to neutralizing the external threat. The Thing remains a potent political film, as well as a model of genius practical effects by masters Stan Winston and Rob Bottin. What is even more impressive about this is that it wasn't seen as one of the best horror movies of all time when it was released, flopping at the box office. However, years later, VHS made this a monster hit and reappraisals cemented its status as one of the best of the best.

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9 The Haunting (1963)

Eleanor looking at her hand in horror in The Haunting (1963)

  • Release Date: August 21, 1963
  • Director: Robert Wise
  • Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn
  • Run-Time: 1h 54m

Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, has been adapted a number of times with each of its retellings taking distinct approaches to the story. As is the case with many successful horror titles, however, the original remains the best. Robert Wise's The Haunting sees two women who had experiences with the paranormal arrive at an old country house with an unfortunate history at the behest of a doctor seeking to study the claims of haunting, bringing with him only the young heir to the house. Together, the four suffer through uneasy conversation, even more awkward flirtations, and the terrorizing presence of a completely unseen force.

It's the disorientating angles and deceptively tight spaces of production designer Elliot Scott's sets that give Hill House its chillingly uncanny personality, and it's the perfect backdrop for a gothic tale of psychoanalytical terror. Julie Harris' lead, Eleanor, is played sympathetically, but she's clearly unwell and the oppressiveness of the Rococo style of the house that looms in on the characters at all times becomes a reflection of this woman's own inner turmoil that comes from her own unfortunate history. Considered one of the greatest haunted house movies, it has been praised for holding back when showing the ghosts, leaving the horror in the viewers' minds.

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8 Nosferatu (1922)

Count Orlock on a ship in Nosferatu

  • Release Date: March 4, 1922
  • Director: F. W. Murnau
  • Cast: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach
  • Run-Time: 1h 34m

Director F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, which is among the first vampire movies, is a testament to the unknowable force of nature, of all things wild and ancient. Still the best telling of Bram Stoker's Dracula story, Nosferatu is about a man named Thomas (Gustav von Wangenheim) sent to sell an English estate to a Transylvanian count (Max Schreck), who instead infects the man with a plague-like disease just before heading to claim his property, leaving a trail of bodies along the way. The only hope of containing the spread of the count's vampirism is the wiles of Thomas' fiancé (Greta Schroeder).

Murnau and Schreck came up with a legendary design for their vampire, more rat than man, and he colors the fearsome landscape just by walking on it. The world is a menacing, dark place in Nosferatu and that vision secured the film's place as one of the best horror movies of all time over a century ago. Before Universal Horror brought monsters to the big screen, German Expressionist films did it first. Along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu remains a highlight of this era of silent horror cinema.

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7 The Night Of The Hunter (1955)

Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter

  • Release Date: July 26, 1955
  • Director: Charles Laughton
  • Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelly Winters, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce
  • Run-Time: 1h 32m

Robert Mitchum frequently played unshakable tough guys, but he was never more frightening and enthralling than when he played the desperate killer preacher Harry Powell. While in jail, Powell's cellmate died without telling him where he buried his stolen loot, so he does what any villain would do – marries the widow (Shelley Winters) so he can get his hands on all that money. However, he doesn't foresee reckoning with her meddling children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce), and that is where the horrors begin.

Night of the Hunter was the lone directorial credit of director Charles Laughton and is full of fairy tale symbolism. It's endured as one of the best horror movies of all time because it creates a beautifully artificial southern pastoral landscape haunted by Mitchum's boogieman. The film delivers, in breathtaking style, an eerie testament to the terrifying nature of religion. Having this "preacher" terrorize the children, and seeing how he changed them even as he fell in defeat shows how some of the best horror movies of all time have all-too-human monsters.

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6 Eyes Without A Face (1960)

Edith Scob in the kennel in Eyes Without a Face

  • Release Date: January 11, 1960
  • Director: Georges Franju
  • Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Alexandre Rignault, Béatrice Altariba, François Guérin, Édith Scob
  • Run-Time: 1h 30m

New wave outlier Georges Franju was a man in love with early cinema, but he broke new ground with his masterful Eyes Without A Face, a baroque chiller that is well-established as one of the best horror movies of all time for paving the way for gore films, Italian giallos, and black-gloved killer movies all over the world. A little while before the action begins, French surgeon Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) horribly injured his daughter (Edith Scob) in an accident. He's now made it his mission to repair her scarred face by any means necessary, even if it means kidnapping young women and stealing their faces until he finds a match.

Franju's film is a carousel of masks, surgery, and deceit, and is a timeless, strange work of art, a film that cuts deeply into the viewer's memory. The horror movie has influenced everyone from Jesus Franco and John Carpenter to John Woo and more. It received an exemplary Criterion release and remains a seminal horror movie to this day.

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5 Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

Ben and Barbra hiding out in a house in Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead

Release Date
October 4, 1968
Director
George A. Romero
Cast
Judith O'Dea , Kyra Schon , Duane Jones , Marilyn Eastman , Karl Hardman
Runtime
96 minutes

In 1968, George Romero looked around at a nation in turmoil from the war in Vietnam, racial tension, and high-profile assassinations, so he let the ugliness seep into his first film, Night of the Living Dead, a righteously angry, aggressive deconstruction of suburban passive aggression. Giving an ancient monster, the zombie, new life that has yet to be drained from it, he found the creature that best reflected a nation in crisis. Trauma survivor Barbara (Judith O'Dea) meets Ben (Duane Jones), a charismatic Black man, in a remote farmhouse after they're both attacked by zombies.

They barricade themselves inside without realizing there's a family already inside, led by hot-headed Harry (Karl Hardman). The issue of Ben's race is never stated outright as Romero allows the images to speak for themselves, and Harry's mistrust of the tough and helpful Ben can't be chalked up to much else. The zombies never stop pounding on the doors and windows, but the real monsters are already in the house. There have been many remakes and sequels, but the original is still an effective horror tale, as this is the movie that created and introduced the modern-day zombie.

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4 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Leatherface holding his chainsaw aloft in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Release Date
October 1, 1974
Director
Tobe Hooper
Cast
Marilyn Burns , Allen Danziger , Paul A. Partain , William Vail , Teri McMinn , Edwin Neal
Runtime
83 minutes

Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is still undervalued as a work of precise craft and bountiful art. Everyone knows about the movie and its reputation as one of the most unsettling experiences in all film history, but many often fail to notice the incredible work it took to have audiences blindsided by the sweltering ghouls at the heart of the story. Five kids make an unfortunate pit stop at an abandoned house while on a road trip. When they walk to the nearest house to ask for gas, they meet Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a hulking mass of muscle with the mind of a child who doesn't take kindly to strangers.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a most disturbing film, but only because Hooper took such care in building a realistic world for his idealistic heroes to wander into. If the audience didn't believe these kids still expected kindness from strangers, it wouldn't hurt twice as bad when the illusion is shattered in an instant. Released before Halloween, this movie helped set the stage for the slasher genre but did it in a dirty and grimy way that made it more disturbing than Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers in many ways.

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3 The Shining (1980)

Jack breaks the door with an ax in The Shining.

The Shining

Release Date
June 13, 1980
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Cast
Danny Lloyd , Shelley Duvall , Jack Nicholson , Scatman Crothers
Runtime
146 minutes

Stanley Kubrick's productivity slowed to a crawl in the years following The Shining, and while in one sense it's tragic that audiences never got more films from him, it would have been tough for him to do better than his ultimate psychosexual daydream Eyes Wide Shut or The Shining, one of the best horror movies ever made. Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a writer looking for inspiration and a little peace and quiet to do something with it so he takes a job as the caretaker of the creepy Overlook Hotel and soon a creeping disquiet falls over him.

Creativity leaves him, replaced by a violent frenzy inherited by the hotel guests whose spirits linger in every corridor. The Shining is a brilliant, bizarre immersion into an artist's obsessions. Stephen King famously hated the movie because it made Jack more of a villain than the hotel itself and made Wendy much less sympathetic than his novel. However, with Kubrick's use of lighting and stage setting, he helped turn the Overlook Hotel into an iconic horror locale and the movie's tense horror makes it one of the best horror movies of all time, even if it doesn't stay as loyal to the source novel.

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2 The Exorcist (1973)

The priests try to save Regan as she floats in The Exorcist

The Exorcist

Release Date
December 26, 1973
Director
William Friedkin
Cast
Max Von Sydow , Linda Blair , Lee J. Cobb , Ellen Burstyn , Jason Miller , Kitty Winn , Jack MacGowran
Runtime
122 minutes

William Friedkin put to use his experience directing crime dramas, experimental theatrical adaptations, and documentaries when adapting William Peter Blatty's best-selling tale of a young woman possessed. Friedkin shreds the audience's nerves with one unexpected technique or image after another. Friedkin's trick is making the real-world treatment of an impossible disorder seem just as invasive and terrible as anything the devil could get up to.

Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) has begun behaving in ways that perplex doctors, psychiatrists, and hypnotherapists alike. She swears, harms herself, and has the strength of two men, and when pressed, she claims to be the devil himself. Two priests (Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow) are brought in to try their luck when treatment and tests fail. The Exorcist remains one of the best horror movies of all time because Friedkin spares no torment to his characters or his audience in imagining the worst sort of horror. This was also the first horror movie to ever receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

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1 Psycho (1960)

Janet Leigh screaming in the shower scene in Psycho.

Psycho

Release Date
September 8, 1960
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Cast
Janet Leigh , Martin Balsam , Anthony Perkins , John Gavin , Vera Miles
Runtime
109 minutes

Alfred Hitchcock experimented with the emotions and reactions of his audience, and images were the medium under his microscope. Psycho was the director's experiment in making a film with the budget of a TV production that could still break expectations. The film begins with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) stealing a briefcase full of money and staying the night at the homey-looking Bates Motel, run by nervous, awkward Norman (Anthony Perkins). After a strange dinner, Marion takes a shower and then, in one of the genre's most iconic scenes, meets Norman's mother, Mrs. Bates.

Psycho is undeniably one of the best horror movies of all time because it changed the way people approached horror films. Suddenly no one was safe, no space, no character, nor the audience's traditional concepts of good and evil. Anything was fair game, thanks to the way Hitchcock expanded even the confines of the horror movie. While this was well over a decade before the slasher genre started, this was the grandfather to all slasher movies and easily earned its spot as a masterwork of horror cinema.

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