Home/ Every product is carefully selected by our editors and experts. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more. For more information on how we test products, click here. There are few things better than finding a good scary movie to watch on a dark and stormy night. But let’s be honest, there’s a lot of pretty bad ‘scary’ movies out there. Between an overuse of jump scares, boosted sounds that’ll blow out your TV’s speakers, or unnecessary violence for the sake of shock value, there are plenty of reasons people have for not engaging with the horror genre: despite the fact it is one of the best mediums to explore the extreme ends of human experience. Well, with Halloween fast approaching we wanted to provide a list of the best horror films of all time. We’ve taken a bunch of the greatest horror films ever made, recorded their ratings across a number of well-respected film databases, and averaged out the scores to come up with a ‘ranked’ list detailing the best of the best. Keep in mind that everyone’s experience of horror is subjective, and what is considered the best horror films isn’t necessarily the scariest—for that, you should probably check out our list of the 20 Scariest Films, According to Science. With that out of the way, let’s jump into the list of the 25 best horror films of all time! Total Scroll horizontally to view full table Based on Stephen King’s first published novel, Carrie tells the tale of a shy girl trying to survive her adolescence while dominated by a religious and abusive mother and bullied by her fellow high school students. As if that isn’t horrific enough, the abuse begins activating Carrie’s latent telekinetic abilities (a recurring theme in King’s work, often called ‘the Shine’), giving her the means to take back control of her oppressors and, when things get pushed too far, get even. While Carrie was written in 1974, with the film released two years later in 1976, the themes of an adolescent being pushed to the edge by domineering and incessant bullying has remained, unfortunately, relevant for the past 50 years. While the film was remade in 2016, Brian De Palma’s original remains the best way to experience this harrowing tale of childhood fear. Total One of the most shocking films of its time, The Exorcist depicts—you guessed it—an exorcism. However, where most modern films depicting exorcisms lean heavily into the supernatural aspect of demonic possession, Friedkin’s adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel instead puts much more focus on the human cost: spending much of the film exploring the mounting despair felt by mother Chris MacNeil at the prospect of modern medicine’s inability to soothe her ailing daughter, as well as the crisis of faith felt by local priest Father Dyer who comes face to face with what he always believed was nothing more than a story. The result is a surprisingly cerebral film punctuated with scenes of explicit and harrowing trauma. It may feel slow by modern standards, but The Exorcist is undoubtedly one of the scariest, and most important, films ever made.
<p> Total A quasi-reimagining-sequel of Raimi’s 1987 original, Evil Dead IIdials up the dark comedy while still presenting a pretty horrific circumstance for our hero, Ash Williams (played masterfully by Bruce Campbell), to overcome. Following on exactly from the ending of the original, Evil Dead II follows Ash’s efforts to contain the Deadite threat accidentally unleashed by him and his friends. While a terrifying concept, the sequel delivers a number of downright funny and slapstick moments, and dials up the absurdity to deliver one of the grooviest moments in horror—a heroic protagonist with a chainsaw for a hand. While you could probably skip the original in lieu of just watching Evil Dead II, it does technically deliver a better experience to watch all three (including the final film in the original trilogy, 1992’s Army of Darkness)back-to-back.
<img src=” https: alt=”Kwak Do-wan in ‘The Wailing'”> Total Despite being pretty well-known in horror circles, it’s possible The Wailing is the first film on this list a broader movie fan hasn’t heard of. A South Korean film, The Wailing follows a policeman investigating a series of strange and brutal deaths in a remote village linked to a mysterious illness—not only to understand what is happening, but also to help his own daughter who has become infected with the strange sickness. Led by a series of haunting dreams, as well as the guidance of a local shaman, the detective finds himself in the middle of a dangerous ritual seemingly conducted by something old and evil. It’s tense, slow-burn horror at its finest.
<p> Total If 2002’s 28 Days Later reinvigorated zombie films for a modern audience, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead created the blueprint. Set in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse, the film follows a group of survivors as they stave off an onslaught of ‘ghouls’: dead people who have clawed their way out of graves to feast on the living. While the genre has come a long way from Night of the Living Dead, the film was groundbreaking at release—showcasing that not only could horror films tackle meaningful analysis of cultural norms, but that they could do it while also being incredibly entertaining and successful at the same time.Â
<img src=” https: alt=”Resident evil 2026 1″> Total No, not thatResident Evilmovie. Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Creggar managed to score the ability to make his own spin on the classic Resident Evil formula—putting us knee-deep in a city suddenly overrun with the living dead, following an everyday medical courier en route to Raccoon City Hospital on the worst night of his life. If you’ve seen Creggar’s other films you probably have a good idea of what you’re in for here (a dose of horror with a side of comedy), but Resident Evil manages to capture the feeling of playing a classic Resident Evil side-story in film form, which is a feat unto itself. Total While not technically the first slasher film, Halloween effectively created the foundations for most horror films released during the 1980s: a group of teens are systematically killed off by a lunatic-at-large—in this case the William Shatner-mask-wearing Michael Myers (also known as ‘The Shape’), an escaped sanitarium patient who seems to indiscriminately kill. Outside of creating a slasher script for further horror films to follow, Halloween was also among the first films to bring the horror of a murderous maniac into the brightly-lit world of American suburbia, proving a new generation of teens had plenty to keep them up at night.
<img src=” https: alt=”Gene Bervoets in ‘The Vanishing'”> Total A nightmarish descent into loss, grief, and an unending need to know, The Vanishing follows a man’s quest to solve the disappearance of his partner, detailing the bargain he must make in order to learn the truth. To be clear, this film probably has the most nihilistic ending on this list, ultimately satisfying the audience’s desire to know what happened at the cost of seeing the events play out. It’s not gory, but it is perhaps the most haunting film on this list.
<p> Total Considered one of the best movies of the 21st century, Get Out is more than just a fantastic psychological horror film—it’s the film that put comedian Jordan Peele on the map as a director, delivering a revitalised take on The Stepford Wives exploring the disempowerment of black Americans. While the concept of a group of wealthy white people using their wealth to inhabit the bodies of kidnapped black people is pretty farfetched, it is absolutely terrifying, with Peele’s rendition of ‘the sunken place’ being one of the most horrific fates imaginable. Total A classic psychological horror film, Rosemary’s Baby follows a newlywed woman (the titular Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow) who moves into a new apartment with her husband, only to grow suspicious of her new neighbours. Things get particularly bad once she falls pregnant, and it seems her neighbours may be communing with a demonic force in an effort to deliver the antichrist. While a bit dated by modern sensibilities, Rosemary’s Baby is nonetheless a lynchpin of the cult horror genre, and laid important groundwork for many films focusing on the horror of femininity that followed.
<img src=” https: alt=”Michael B. Jordan wearing a stained tank top and harness, holding weapons in a dimly lit room.”> Total How do you follow up one of the greatest horror films of all time? It’s not an easy question, though James Cameron somehow found the answer—you don’t try to beat it at its own game. Instead, Cameron took the basic concept of 1979’s Alien and asked what happened once Ellen Ripley, sole survivor of the Nostromo, was found drifting through space: simply put, she’d end up drawn back into a conflict with the xenomorph colony on LV-426, complete with backstabbing corporate executives, a lively group of space marines, and an alien queen. While it’s not as scary as the original film, Aliens makes for an incredibly satisfying sequel in that the stakes are well and truly raised. Total While Spielberg may not be the first name off the top of your head when you think of horror directors, he’s actually delivered a number of incredibly scary flicks—such as 1971’s Duel, or the classic Jurassic Park. His greatest contribution to horror, however, is his adaptation of the 1974 novel Jaws—a film that effectively created the modern blockbuster and scared an entire generation away from beaches. While Jaws is certainly a story of a man-hungry great white shark, the best part of the film is actually found in its absence. The fact that the shark can pop out of the sea at any moment makes every moment any character is in the water incredibly scary, leading to some of the most tense moments ever put to camera. Total The Silence of the Lambs goes beyond simply being one of the best horror films to be one of the best films, period. The film follows a young and inexperienced FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Foster) as she attempts to track down and capture an active serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who hunts female victims. In order to understand the killer, Starling works together25 Best Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked
25. Carrie
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
80.25
7.4
3.8
94
77
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
81
8.1
3.9
78
87
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
83.25
7.6
3.9
88
8918. The Wailing
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
83.50
7.4
4.0
99
8116. Night of the Living Dead
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
84.50
7.8
3.9
95
8715. Resident Evil
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
84.75
7.6
3.8
96
9114. Halloween
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
84.75
7.7
3.8
97
8913. The Vanishing
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
85
7.6
4.0
96
8811. Get Out
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
86
7.8
4.1
98
86
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
87
8.0
4.2
97
875. Aliens
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
88.25
8.4
4.1
93
94
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
88.50
8.1
3.9
97
982. Silence of the Lambs
IMDb
Letterboxd
Tomatometer
Popcornmeter
90.50
8.4
4.3
95
95
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