Films
Every film in the index, 61 in total, each scored on six axes of fear against a published rubric and cross-referenced against everything else we hold.
Looking for somewhere to start rather than the whole shelf? The best horror movies, grouped by what frightens you groups 31 of them by what you actually want from one, with the measured score behind every choice.
Or come at it from the other direction: eleven ranked lists sort these 61 by one axis at a time — the bleakest, the least explicit, the goriest and the most patient.
Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock · 1960 · Film
The most famous murder in cinema and the knife never once touches skin.
Rosemary's Baby
Roman Polanski · 1968 · Film
Nobody believes her, and everybody is in on it. Paranoia as pregnancy.
Night of the Living Dead
George A. Romero · 1968 · Film
The dead are the least of it. The living argue the house down.
The Exorcist
William Friedkin · 1973 · Film
Faith tested to destruction in a child's bedroom. Still nasty.
The Wicker Man
Robin Hardy · 1973 · Film
Sunlit, folky, and cheerful right up until it isn't.
Don't Look Now
Nicolas Roeg · 1973 · Film
Grief edited like a premonition. The ending is a knife.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Tobe Hooper · 1974 · Film
16mm heat and grime. Feels found rather than filmed, which is the trick.
Jaws
Steven Spielberg · 1975 · Film
Attacks you on a clock and shows you almost nothing, because the shark did not work.
Carrie
Brian De Palma · 1976 · Film
Cruelty at school compounding until physics gives up.
The Omen
Richard Donner · 1976 · Film
Stately, humourless, and it kills people in ways you remember for thirty years.
Suspiria
Dario Argento · 1977 · Film
Colour used as violence. A ballet school run by witches, scored by Goblin.
Halloween
John Carpenter · 1978 · Film
The blueprint. Widescreen suburbia, a white mask, and enormous patience.
Dawn of the Dead
George A. Romero · 1978 · Film
Consumer satire with the entrails left in.
Alien
Ridley Scott · 1979 · Film
Working people in a haunted house that happens to be a spaceship.
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick · 1980 · Film
A hotel doing slow arithmetic on a family. The dread is architectural.
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski · 1981 · Film
A divorce film that becomes something unspeakable in a Berlin stairwell.
The Thing
John Carpenter · 1982 · Film
Practical-effects body horror and total paranoia. Nobody is who they say they are.
Poltergeist
Tobe Hooper · 1982 · Film
A warm suburban comedy for forty minutes, then the house starts eating people.
Videodrome
David Cronenberg · 1983 · Film
Long live the new flesh. Analog horror's founding document.
Re-Animator
Stuart Gordon · 1985 · Film
Splatter comedy, gleeful and disgusting. Herbert West simply does not stop.
The Fly
David Cronenberg · 1986 · Film
A love story documented as a decline. Practical effects as grief.
Hellraiser
Clive Barker · 1987 · Film
Desire and agony filed under the same heading.
Jacob's Ladder
Adrian Lyne · 1990 · Film
Grief refusing to resolve. Every corridor is the same corridor.
Candyman
Bernard Rose · 1992 · Film
Legend as infrastructure. The city built the monster on purpose.
Scream
Wes Craven · 1996 · Film
The slasher explains itself while committing itself. Still the sharpest of them.
Ringu
Hideo Nakata · 1998 · Film
A curse that spreads like media, because it is media.
The Blair Witch Project
D. Myrick & E. Sánchez · 1999 · Film
Three people get lost and the woods do the rest. Almost nothing is shown.
Audition
Takashi Miike · 1999 · Film
A romance for ninety minutes. Then a very long ten.
Final Destination
James Wong · 2000 · Film
Death as a Rube Goldberg machine. Cheerfully, elaborately explicit.
Session 9
Brad Anderson · 2001 · Film
An asbestos crew in an empty asylum. The building wins on patience.
28 Days Later
Danny Boyle · 2002 · Film
Shot on video, running flat out. The soldiers are the third act.
The Ring
Gore Verbinski · 2002 · Film
The American one, and better than it is given credit for.
Saw
James Wan · 2004 · Film
A bathroom, two men and a hacksaw. The franchise it spawned shows everything.
The Descent
Neil Marshall · 2005 · Film
Claustrophobia first, creatures second. The cave was already enough.
Paranormal Activity
Oren Peli · 2007 · Film
A fixed camera and a bedroom door. Shows less than almost anything in the index.
Martyrs
Pascal Laugier · 2008 · Film
New French Extremity at its most punishing. There is no relief anywhere in it.
Lake Mungo
Joel Anderson · 2008 · Film
A mock-documentary about grief that hides its worst image in plain sight.
Let the Right One In
Tomas Alfredson · 2008 · Film
A vampire film about being twelve and alone in the snow.
Insidious
James Wan · 2010 · Film
Barely a drop of blood in it. The Further is where the restraint goes strange.
Kill List
Ben Wheatley · 2011 · Film
A hitman film that walks into the wrong field and never walks out.
Sinister
Scott Derrickson · 2012 · Film
The found super-8 reels are the whole film. Bleaker than its box office suggests.
The Conjuring
James Wan · 2013 · Film
A jump-scare machine built with real craft. Shows you almost nothing and still lands.
Oculus
Mike Flanagan · 2013 · Film
Two timelines braided until neither is trustworthy. Cleverer than its poster.
Evil Dead
Fede Alvarez · 2013 · Film
A remake that answered the original's slapstick with sincerity and blood.
The Babadook
Jennifer Kent · 2014 · Film
Grief with a pop-up book. The monster is not subtle and doesn't need to be.
It Follows
David Robert Mitchell · 2014 · Film
A rule you can't argue with, walking toward you at a constant speed.
Annabelle
John R. Leonetti · 2014 · Film
A doll that does not move, in a film that keeps insisting it might.
The Witch
Robert Eggers · 2015 · Film
Period-accurate misery and a goat. The family destroys itself first.
A Dark Song
Liam Gavin · 2016 · Film
Ritual magic as tedious, exhausting labour. That is what makes it work.
Lights Out
David F. Sandberg · 2016 · Film
One idea, executed relentlessly. On and off, on and off.
Get Out
Jordan Peele · 2017 · Film
The most frightening thing in it is a polite conversation.
It
Andy Muschietti · 2017 · Film
The highest-grossing horror film ever made, and it does not hold back.
Hereditary
Ari Aster · 2018 · Film
Grief that curdles into something much older. Slow, then unsurvivable.
A Quiet Place
John Krasinski · 2018 · Film
Silence as the rule and the threat. A creature feature that behaves like a thriller.
The Nun
Corin Hardy · 2018 · Film
Atmosphere and corridors, punctuated on a schedule. Franchise horror doing its job.
Midsommar
Ari Aster · 2019 · Film
Broad daylight, no shadows, nowhere to look away.
The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers · 2019 · Film
Two men, one rock, and a slow collapse of the difference between them.
Skinamarink
Kyle Edward Ball · 2022 · Film
Ninety minutes of a dark house and a child’s logic. Divisive entirely on purpose.
Talk to Me
Danny & Michael Philippou · 2022 · Film
Possession as a party trick, then as a consequence.
Smile
Parker Finn · 2022 · Film
A curse that spreads by witness. Meaner than the marketing let on.
Terrifier 2
Damien Leone · 2022 · Film
The most explicit thing in the index. People walked out and told everyone.