The Babadook is a 2014 horror film directed by debutant Jennifer Kent. A sleeper hit from Australia, the film is widely considered to be one of the finest modern horror offerings. It deals with a recently widowed mother who is caught up between her job and parenting her unstable child, who's susceptible to extreme mood swings. As she reads him a spooky bedtime book one night, a supernatural force gets awakened, haunting everything from the family's house to their dreams.
Making good use of jump scares and sound effects and with top-notch performances from both its leads, The Babadook succeeds in providing a genuinely haunting, moving story based on grief, and these 10 tales of terror weave similar narratives.
His House (2020)
Netflix's Halloween release His House combines real-life trauma with the haunted house subcategory of horror. The Blumhouse production is centered on a refugee couple from South Sudan. They escape the conflict back home to start a new life in a London flat. However, ghosts of their homeland torment them as it's revealed the couple is grieving from the loss of their child.
Old curses and secrets are revealed, driving the possessors of the flat into a state of frenzy. His House is remarkable for combining the ancient with the modern, with a highly engaging story and beautifully grotesque frames.
Evil Dead II (1987)
In Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, spirits get awakened in a haunted cabin as a group of friends plays a series of strange audiotapes. The same tropes are repeated in Raimi's sequel Evil Dead II when protagonist Ash Williams' girlfriend plays an audio recitation of ancient texts that unleashes several demons that possess Williams.
The film improves upon its predecessor with innovative stop-motion animation being used for the demonic forces. The sequel also plays on familiar horror tropes with dark humor. Groovy.
It: Chapter Two (2019)
True to the Stephen King novel it's based on, It Chapter Two covers the trauma that a set of friends face after they encountered the cosmic evil entity Pennywise or 'It'. 27 years after their encounter with It, the friends reunite after one of them dies by suicide. They sense the evil force's presence and team-up to defeat the shapeshifting clown for once and for and all.
The scares seem to be lesser than its predecessor, but It Chapter Two still succeeds at showing the desperation of its protagonists to fight their worst fears and nightmares, down to a VFX-driven finale.
Ringu (1998)
Hideo Nakata sent waves in the horror world helming the direction of the Japanese classic Ringu, also known as Ring, which gained further popularity with a Hollywood remake. A reporter finds a cursed videotape that can kill viewers seven days after they watch it.
In its thrilling premise, the film touches upon terrifying scares and introspective themes. Anxieties around modern technology in Japan are elaborated, with ancient forces using the very same technology as the medium to carry out their evil deeds.
The Shining (1980)
Another adaptation of a classic Stephen King horror, The Shining is quite a slow-burn. It starts off with writer Jack Torrance serving as the caretaker for an abandoned hotel for one winter. He shifts with his wife and son, hoping that he gets time to finish writing his novel. The hotel has other plans for the Torrance family with a force called 'The Shining' taking over Jack.
The film is a disturbing family drama for the backstory it offers. Torrance is already a struggling alcoholic who had once physically assaulted his son, scarring the child for a long time. Combine that with a supernatural possession, and viewers get scary bouts of rage and insanity.
Sinister (2012)
Sinister examines several derivative elements like haunted houses, cults, pagan deities, and creepy videotapes. At the same time, with its intriguing premise and spine-chilling scares, Sinister reworks old formulae to create a highly original story.
Ethan Hawke brilliantly plays a down-on-luck author who chances upon a box of snuff films. He sets out to investigate their origin as the film detail a series of highly disturbing murders of entire families. Another reason to check out this modern classic is it being recently crowned as the objectively "scariest film" according to a scientific study.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
"I see dead people" is an iconic quote from M Night Shyamalan's film that sums up the film's themes. In The Sixth Sense, a child psychologist tries helping out a boy who claims to have the ability to communicate with the dead. The film builds up with psychological concepts and notions of the afterlife until a classic twist marks the third act.
While the so-called "Shyamalan twist" has become common knowledge for many a cinephile now, The Sixth Sense still functions as a well-written alternative-horror. Haley Joel Osment steals the show with his chilling performance as the clairvoyant boy Cole Sear.
Hereditary (2018)
Trauma can be contagious to a family. The same can be said for paranormal secrets. After the elderly matriarch of the Graham family dies, the family's ancestry is revealed to carry several unspoken terrors. These terrors start spreading among the family members as is evident from their erratic behavior. Toni Collette, along with the rest of the ensemble, are all in top form as they act out some pretty unsettling scenes.
There are no grotesque-looking beasts in this film. The heavily metaphorical horror is solely carried by the troubled humans in Hereditary.
The Changeling (1980)
George C Scott stars as a troubled composer coping with the loss of his child and wife in an accident. In a fit of despair, he shifts to an abandoned mansion. A supernatural presence haunts him, and he starts communicating with the spirit of a six-year-old boy who had died in the very same house.
Apart from functioning as a psychological thriller, The Changeling also works as a mystery as the aged protagonist tries his best to get the spirit his justice. What's interesting is that the film's co-writer Russell Hunter claimed that he actually encountered such incidents in a Denver mansion in the 1960s.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Written and directed by Jon Krasinski, A Quiet Place proved to be quite a surprise with the innovative horror formula it experimented with. As dysfunctional families are becoming a common trope in modern-day horror, the film, too, revolves around one such family surviving in a dystopian wasteland. They hardly exchange a word throughout the film, as staying silent is the only mode of survival in a world that's inhabited by noise-sensitive monsters. The cast including Emily Blunt, and Millicent Simmonds entirely communicated in sign language, as the film's sound design builds rising tension.