The majority of horror films stay under two hours in runtime, because it’s difficult to maintain tension throughout an entire feature-length movie, so the shorter, the better. In fact, the most critically acclaimed scary movies are usually nice and short, like Halloween (91 minutes), The Evil Dead (85 minutes), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (83 minutes).
But that doesn’t mean that longer horror films can’t work at all, and some of the best horror movies made in recent years have exceeded this typical runtime, including Ari Aster’s terrifying two-and-a-half-hour folk horror epic, Midsommar.
Midsommar (2019) - 141 Minutes / 171-Minute Director's Cut
Just one year after establishing himself as one of the most distinctive and chilling voices in horror cinema with his astounding directorial debut, Hereditary, Ari Aster’s folk horror opus Midsommar proved he wasn’t a one-trick pony. The movie draws heavy influence from The Wicker Man, as a strange, isolated commune gradually reveals itself to be a sadistic death cult, but Aster tells the story through the lens of a crumbling relationship.
The movie is certainly not short, clocking in at 141 minutes – or 171 minutes if you’re watching the director’s cut – but Florence Pugh’s compelling lead performance as Dani and a healthy dose of disturbing imagery make the time pass quickly. It’s easy to make audiences scared of the dark, but in Midsommar, Aster manages to sustain a feeling of terror in broad daylight.
Aliens (1986) - 137 Minutes
James Cameron’s Aliens is primarily an action movie, but it retains the horror roots of Ridley Scott’s timeless original Alien movie from 1979, which also still holds up today for many reasons. From the xenomorph rising up behind Newt in the sewer to a light illuminating a vent full of swarming aliens, this 1986 classic has a ton of iconic scares.
The sequel has a lot of story to get through, as Ripley is found floating through space and sent to a xenomorph colony, where she becomes a maternal figure to an orphaned scavenger. Cameron takes his time with the pacing, following in Scott’s footsteps. Aliens is 137 minutes long, but its riveting plot and unforgettable character moments are more than enough to overcome that hurdle.
It (2017) - 135 Minutes
At 135 minutes, 2017’s It isn’t quite as long as its 2019 sequel. The sequel, It: Chapter Two, is even longer at 170 minutes, but it was nowhere near as well-received by critics as the first one. The first It movie is a terrifying gem from start to finish, despite passing the two-hour mark.
With a monster that manifests itself as its victims’ worst fears, It has the quintessential horror premise. Chronicling various kids’ twisted encounters with the titular paranormal entity, It captures the very real terror of high school bullies and abusive parents as well as the made-up terror of supernatural clowns.
Kwaidan (1965) - 182 Minutes
The 1965 Japanese horror gem Kwaidan clocks in at a whopping 182 minutes. The fact that it’s over three hours long may be pretty daunting, because it’s an anthology movie, so it’s technically four shorter horror films rolled into one. The title translates as “Ghost Stories,” and the film’s segments are all linked by their supernatural themes.
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi and written by Yoko Mizuki, Kwaidan was adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Its lengthy runtime is filled with haunting imagery that’s impossible to unsee.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968) - 136 Minutes
Roman Polanski’s paranoid masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby stars Mia Farrow as a pregnant woman who begins to suspect that her husband and her neighbors are in a satanic cult intent on bringing the antichrist to Earth via her unborn offspring.
136 minutes might seem like a long runtime for a horror movie, but since Polanski waits until the haunting final scene to confirm or deny Rosemary’s theories, the audience is on the edge of their seat the whole time.
The Wailing (2016) - 156 Minutes
At 156 minutes, the 2016 South Korean horror hit The Wailing is a long-haul movie. Starring Kwak Do-Won, Hwang Jung-Min, and Chun Woo-Hee, the movie revolves around a detective investigating a string of gruesome murders in an isolated village in a bid to save his daughter. This relatable motivation makes the protagonist easy to root for.
The runtime might seem excessive, but the plot is so captivating and the atmosphere is so consistently tense that it flies by. It doesn’t feel like a two-and-a-half-hour movie at all, and once the story gets going, it’s impossible to stop paying attention.
The Shining (1980) - 144 Minutes
Stephen King famously hates Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation of his terrifying bestseller The Shining, preferring the '90s miniseries instead, but the author is in the minority, as Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece is widely regarded to be one of the greatest horror films ever made and he manages to sustain a sense of dread throughout the film’s entire 144-minute runtime.
Kubrick’s on-screen telling of King’s story is much more chilling than the book itself. In the book, Jack Torrance is a good man who’s corrupted by the ghosts in the Overlook Hotel after becoming its winter caretaker. In the movie, he seems unhinged and ready to murder his family from the very beginning. This suggests that the isolation alone is what drives Jack to kill his family and that the hotel isn’t haunted at all, which is much spookier than made-up apparitions turning the good guy into a bad guy.