When horror audiences are being terrified by jump scares and gruesome on-screen kills, storytelling is usually the last thing on their minds. For the most part, the plotting of a horror movie serves to set up the central conflict before devolving into all-out terror. But in some horror classics, the plotting is one of their greatest assets.
There are a bunch of horror films from the 1980s – one of the most acclaimed decades for the genre – with sharp storytelling. Stanley Kubrick adapted The Shining as a gradual descent into a murderous rage. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead created the cabin-in-the-woods trope. Day of the Dead explored new corners of George A. Romero’s zombie-infested post-apocalyptic world.
Child’s Play (1988)
Directed by Tom Holland (but not that Tom Holland), Child’s Play has a glorious slasher premise involving the spirit of a serial killer possessing a little boy’s doll and indulging in his bloodlust through the doll’s actions.
Chucky has since become one of the most iconic horror villains of all time. It’s relatively easy to make a bloodthirsty alien or a horde of flesh-eating zombies scary; terrifying audiences with a toy is a unique filmmaking challenge.
Videodrome (1983)
There have been horror movies about possessed dolls, demonic cars, and murderous service monkeys, and in 1983, David Cronenberg made a horror movie about a sadistic TV channel.
James Woods stars in Videodrome as the head of a trashy TV network who stumbles across a depraved festival of snuff hiding in the airwaves. The movie is primarily noteworthy for Cronenberg’s eye-popping visual effects, but the plot is a sharp satirical takedown of the media.
Day Of The Dead (1985)
The third zombie-infested horror classic in George A. Romero’s Dead series, Day of the Dead, isn’t quite as masterfully crafted as the first two. But it’s still a solid horror movie with a unique premise revolving around the scientists trying to undo the zombie apocalypse.
They’re all holed up in a super-secure missile silo while the hordes of the undead gathering outside get bigger and bigger. Tensions are high and cabin fever sets in among the survivors. Throughout the movie, their research puts Romero’s zombies under a magnifying glass.
Society (1989)
Brian Yuzna’s Society is a quintessential cult horror classic. It revolves around a Beverly Hills teenager who comes to the realization that his family is a part of a horrifying orgy cult for the one percent.
The debauched antics of this cult offer a hysterical satire of the social elite. Yuzna reveals this cult in truly shocking fashion as the teen idly returns home and stumbles upon one of their sinister parties.
An American Werewolf In London (1981)
Decades before Edgar Wright made Shaun of the Dead, the go-to example of a horror-comedy that works beautifully as both a terrifying horror movie and a laugh-out-loud comedy was John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. The movie’s haunting opening scene sees two American tourists getting mauled by a werewolf in the English countryside.
The one who survives slowly transforms into a werewolf himself while suffering hallucinations of his dead friend begging him to spare others the same pain he had to face. Landis’ take on werewolf lore is fun, offbeat, and totally unique.
The Evil Dead (1981)
A cabin in the woods is one of the most frequently used settings for a spooky horror movie. This can be traced back to Sam Raimi’s devilishly inventive directorial debut The Evil Dead. An isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere provided a delightfully cheap shooting location for the budding young filmmaker.
The simplistic storytelling in The Evil Dead paves the way for Raimi to show off his surprisingly timeless low-budget special effects. When a group of friends heads out to the cabin, they unwittingly unleash a demonic spirit and, one by one, succumb to its possession.
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Six years after Halloween revolutionized the horror genre, slasher tropes had become well-worn and overdone, but Wes Craven managed to put a fresh spin on the familiar framework with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven added a supernatural element to the slasher as kids are stalked by a serial killer in their dreams.
Freddy Krueger is the ultimate boogeyman. After the first act sets up the threat he poses, the rest of the movie sees the protagonists desperately trying to stay awake.
The Fly (1986)
Another Cronenberg-directed “body horror” gem, The Fly stars Jeff Goldblum as a scientist experimenting with teleportation. When a fly makes it into the teleportation machine, the scientist slowly begins to transform into a human fly.
The most mind-blowing thing in The Fly is the Oscar-winning special effects by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis, but the briskly paced script follows the transformation storyline through the lens of a romantic tragedy.
The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick borrowed the basic premise of Stephen King’s The Shining in his film adaptation – a struggling writer takes a job as the winter caretaker at a haunted hotel – but his approach to the plot is very different.
In King’s novel, Jack Torrance is a good man who’s driven into a murderous rage by the ghosts in the Overlook. In Kubrick’s movie, he’s an angry, hateful man who’s driven into a murderous rage by isolation alone. Charting Jack’s slow descent into madness, Kubrick’s movie is a timeless masterpiece of cinematic horror.
The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s sci-fi horror masterpiece The Thing is as thought-provoking as it is terrifying. Kurt Russell leads an ensemble of scientists at an isolated Arctic outpost contending with a malicious shape-shifting alien that could be posing as any one of them.
While the shapeshifting E.T. provided ample opportunities for mind-blowing special effects, the story of The Thing is driven by mistrust and betrayal between the characters.