20 Best Horror Movies Of All Time

The best horror movies of all time are the films that–either by intent or pure accident–helped to shape the time period’s understanding of what the genre could offer to audiences. These groundbreaking films often achieved this by pushing the boundaries of what could be shown outright or even just implied. Many of them were poorly received on release as a result but endured as indelible nightmares that struck a very particular collective nerve. Even if their most shocking visuals no longer hold water with thrill seekers today, the core insights of their journeys into the darkest recesses of the human soul still have the ability to send chills down the spine.

Luckily, modern horror fans have to worry about censorship and brief theatrical windows less these days and can stream many of the scariest horror movies of all time from the comfort of their own homes on some of the biggest streaming services. Ghost stories, supernatural chillers, serial killer mysteries, and some of the earliest slashers make up an irresistible list of the best horror movies of all time, and every kind of horror fan can find something to love within it.

20 The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Directed By Daniel Myrick And Eduardo Sánchez

One of the more recent horror movies to be considered one of the best of all time is the 1999 found footage movie The Blair Witch Project. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez bring to life the story of three friends who travel to the woods in order to film a documentary about the Blair Witch murders, with things soon taking a horrific turn. The film was critically acclaimed upon its release and it is still critically acclaimed now, with it containing visuals that have become staples of the horror ethos.

The Blair Witch Project‘s legacy is cemented by how influential the film has been. The found footage horror movie went on to inspire all kinds of other entries in the genre, with it being likely that movies like Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield wouldn’t exist without The Blair Witch Project. On top of that, The Blair Witch Project was one of the early viral marketing campaigns, with its attempts to portray the film as a true story adding to the horror of the movie.

19 The Evil Dead (1981)

Directed By Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi became a horror movie pioneer with his bold and inventive low-budget masterpiece The Evil Dead. The movie takes a very simple premise that has since been copied endlessly in the genre as it follows a group of young friends who venture into the woods for a getaway at a secluded cabin only to awaken a deadly spirit. The movie inspired countless aspiring filmmakers by showing what can be done with an independent movie Raimi’s manic filmmaking style created a wild and terrifying journey into darkness with gore and bile that helped earn it a place as one of the best X-rated movies of all time.

18 Possession (1981)

Directed By Andrzej Żuławski

Although not as well-known as some of the other movies on this list, 1981’s Possession is one of the best horror films and one of the best movies of all time. The French-German psychological horror film from director Andrzej Żuławski follows married couple Anna and Mark as a series of supernatural events begin surrounding them after Anna reveals that she has been having an affair. Isabelle Adjani’s performance as Anna is one of the best performances in horror history, with her stealing every scene from other great Possession actors like Sam Neill.

Possession is a perfect example of using horror to explore social themes, with even the title perfectly tying in to the dissolution of Anna and Mark’s marriage. Possession is much more personal than many other horror films, but the scale and subtelties are what make the movie great, with it being in the top 20 horror movies of all time.

17 Alien (1979)

Directed By Ridley Scott

Sci-fi horror movies have created some true masterpieces over the years, but it still feels as if they are all chasing the brilliance of Ridley Scott’s Alien. The movie takes place in the distant future and follows the crew of an industrial spaceship that responds to a distress signal and leads to them accidentally bringing a deadly alien on board. While the Alien franchise expanded in some thrilling ways from here, the claustrophobic monster movie feel of the original is hard to top. Sigourney Weaver is a great horror hero as Ellen Ripley but the alien itself steals the show as one of the greatest movie monster designs ever created.

16 Get Out (2017)

Directed By Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele went from a celebrated comedian to one of the most exciting new filmmaking voices around with Get Out. The astoundingly original story follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young black man visiting his white girlfriend’s family for the first time and finds that his troubles go far beyond the social awkwardness of the situation. The movie is a gripping ride from the opening scene and maintains its eerie tone as Chris and the audience grow increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. The reveal further turns Get Out into a smart and insightful social commentary while never losing grasp of being an entertaining horror movie.

15 Frankenstein (1931)

Directed By James Whale

Although it is difficult to find these films scary, it would be a sin to discuss the greatest horror movies of all time without discussing the Universal Monsters movies. While movies like Dracula and The Mummy are iconic, 1931’s Frankenstein is in an entirely different league, with it being the most critically acclaimed of these classic movies. Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster is one of the most iconic monsters in movie history, with it defining the look, behavior, and tone of the beloved creature.

On top of that, Universal’s Frankenstein was one of the first films to use the horror genre to ask the question of who the real monster is. Examining the humanity of monsters is a theme that has been ever present in the genre, with this elevating Frankenstein over other Universal Monsters like Dracula, The Mummy, or the Wolf Man. It is impossible to overstate the influence of these Universal Monsters movies, with Frankenstein being the most impactful of them all.

14 Halloween (1978)

Directed By John Carpenter

John Carpenter is regarded as one of the greatest horror movie filmmakers of all time and that reputation largely began when he introduced one of the greatest horror icons with Michael Myers. Halloween takes place in the small town of Haddonfield on Halloween night when escaped killed Michael Myers dons a mask and returns to his old neighborhood to terrorize young teens. While the slasher movie genre had already begun, Halloween helped bring it to the mainstream with this grindhouse movie’s surprising box office success. Compared to modern horror movies and the rest of the Halloween franchise, the scares may seem somewhat tame, but it remains a hugely influential 70s horror masterpiece.

13 The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Directed By Robert Wiene

The German Expressionist movement remains an incredibly influential era of cinema in the horror genre and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the standout examples from it. The silent movie tells the story of a hypnotist who uses a sleepwalking man to commit murders. The twisted and dark visual style of the movie is instantly recognizable as well as the unusual sets. This approach feels as though the audience is watching a nightmare come to life. Even without dialogue, the movie is an entirely engrossing and unforgettable experience that is a testament to how creepy visual storytelling can be.

12 The Thing (1982)

Directed By John Carpenter

John Carpenter turned the slasher film into a cottage industry with Halloween, and he turned a combination of classic Hollywood, Chinese, and Italian filmmaking techniques and storytelling into something bold and new by running it through his tense, economical framing, and cutting. The Thing, his remake of Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World, is a nasty little number, pitting a dozen men, led by a never-better Kurt Russell, against a shape-shifting extraterrestrial that’s woken up from its icy tomb after a thousand years or more.

It takes the form of these men one at a time, pitting them against each other before they can get around to neutralizing the external threat. The Thing remains a potent political film, as well as a model of genius practical effects by masters Stan Winston and Rob Bottin. What is even more impressive about this is that it wasn’t seen as one of the best horror movies of all time when it was released, flopping at the box office. However, years later, VHS made this a monster hit and reappraisals cemented its status as one of the best of the best.

11 The Haunting (1963)

Directed By Robert Wise

Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, has been adapted a number of times with each of its retellings taking distinct approaches to the story. As is the case with many successful horror titles, however, the original remains the best. Robert Wise’s The Haunting sees two women who had experiences with the paranormal arrive at an old country house with an unfortunate history at the behest of a doctor seeking to study the claims of haunting, bringing with him only the young heir to the house. Together, the four suffer through uneasy conversation, even more awkward flirtations, and the terrorizing presence of a completely unseen force.

It’s the disorientating angles and deceptively tight spaces of production designer Elliot Scott’s sets that give Hill House its chillingly uncanny personality, and it’s the perfect backdrop for a gothic tale of psychoanalytical terror. Julie Harris’ lead, Eleanor, is played sympathetically, but she’s clearly unwell and the oppressiveness of the Rococo style of the house that looms in on the characters at all times becomes a reflection of this woman’s own inner turmoil that comes from her own unfortunate history. Considered one of the greatest haunted house movies, it has been praised for holding back when showing the ghosts, leaving the horror in the viewers’ minds.

10 Nosferatu (1922)

Directed By F.W. Murnau

Director F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, which is among the first vampire movies, is a testament to the unknowable force of nature, of all things wild and ancient. Still the best telling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula story, Nosferatu is about a man named Thomas (Gustav von Wangenheim) sent to sell an English estate to a Transylvanian count (Max Schreck), who instead infects the man with a plague-like disease just before heading to claim his property, leaving a trail of bodies along the way. The only hope of containing the spread of the count’s vampirism is the wiles of Thomas’ fiancé (Greta Schroeder).

Murnau and Schreck came up with a legendary design for their vampire, more rat than man, and he colors the fearsome landscape just by walking on it. The world is a menacing, dark place in Nosferatu and that vision secured the film’s place as one of the best horror movies of all time over a century ago. Before Universal Horror brought monsters to the big screen, German Expressionist films did it first. Along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu remains a highlight of this era of silent horror cinema.

9 The Night Of The Hunter (1955)

Directed By Charles Laughton

Robert Mitchum frequently played unshakable tough guys, but he was never more frightening and enthralling than when he played the desperate killer preacher Harry Powell. While in jail, Powell’s cellmate died without telling him where he buried his stolen loot, so he does what any villain would do – marries the widow (Shelley Winters) so he can get his hands on all that money. However, he doesn’t foresee reckoning with her meddling children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce), and that is where the horrors begin.

Night of the Hunter was the lone directorial credit of director Charles Laughton and is full of fairy tale symbolism. It’s endured as one of the best horror movies of all time because it creates a beautifully artificial southern pastoral landscape haunted by Mitchum’s boogieman. The film delivers, in breathtaking style, an eerie testament to the terrifying nature of religion. Having this “preacher” terrorize the children, and seeing how he changed them even as he fell in defeat shows how some of the best horror movies of all time have all-too-human monsters.

8 Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Directed By Roman Polanski

Cults and satanism have been the subject of all kinds of horror movies, but none have pulled this off better than Rosemary’s Baby. The 1968 film follows a pregnant woman named Rosemary Woodhouse who begins to suspect that something is going on in her apartment building, with her eventually uncovering a satanic conspiracy that centers around her yet to be born child.

The film contains some of the best performances of the 1960s, with it being the defining performances of Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. On top of that, Rosemary’s Baby manages to create a horrific environment without a true movie monster, with it instead pulling its scares from the paranoia and gaslighting that Rosemary is the subject of. Despite the controversies surrounding director Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby is a masterpiece of the horror genre, one that is still having an impact today with the release of 2024’s Apartment 7A.

7 Eyes Without A Face (1960)

Directed By Georges Franju

New wave outlier Georges Franju was a man in love with early cinema, but he broke new ground with his masterful Eyes Without A Face, a baroque chiller that is well-established as one of the best horror movies of all time for paving the way for gore films, Italian giallos, and black-gloved killer movies all over the world. A little while before the action begins, French surgeon Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) horribly injured his daughter (Edith Scob) in an accident. He’s now made it his mission to repair her scarred face by any means necessary, even if it means kidnapping young women and stealing their faces until he finds a match.

Franju’s film is a carousel of masks, surgery, and deceit, and is a timeless, strange work of art, a film that cuts deeply into the viewer’s memory. The horror movie has influenced everyone from Jesus Franco and John Carpenter to John Woo and more. It received an exemplary Criterion release and remains a seminal horror movie to this day.

6 Jaws (1975)

Directed By Steven Spielberg

Although it is not frequently thought of as a horror movie, Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Jaws is one of the best horror movies ever made. The film manages to bring a sense of dread to an environment as cheery as Amity Island, highlighting how effective the film’s horrific tone is. Alongside movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Jaws is one of the horror movies that perfectly utilizes implication. The shark is barely shown throughout Jaws, with this creating a mysterious sense of dreak that can be felt anytime water is in frame.

On top of that, Jaws completely changed the reputation of sharks in the real world, with it being almost impossible to think about the animals without thinking about Spielberg’s film. Despite Steven Spielberg having made all kind of popular films, Jaws is possibly his most influential, earning the film its spot on the list of the greatest horror movies of all time.

5 Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

Directed By George A. Romero

In 1968, George A. Romero looked around at a nation in turmoil from the war in Vietnam, racial tension, and high-profile assassinations, so he let the ugliness seep into his first film, Night of the Living Dead, a righteously angry, aggressive deconstruction of suburban passive aggression. Giving an ancient monster, the zombie, new life that has yet to be drained from it, he found the creature that best reflected a nation in crisis. Trauma survivor Barbara (Judith O’Dea) meets Ben (Duane Jones), a charismatic Black man, in a remote farmhouse after they’re both attacked by zombies.

They barricade themselves inside without realizing there’s a family already inside, led by hot-headed Harry (Karl Hardman). The issue of Ben’s race is never stated outright as Romero allows the images to speak for themselves, and Harry’s mistrust of the tough and helpful Ben can’t be chalked up to much else. The zombies never stop pounding on the doors and windows, but the real monsters are already in the house. There have been many remakes and sequels, but the original is still an effective horror tale, as this is the movie that created and introduced the modern-day zombie.

4 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Directed By Tobe Hooper

Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is still undervalued as a work of precise craft and bountiful art. Everyone knows about the movie and its reputation as one of the most unsettling experiences in all film history, but many often fail to notice the incredible work it took to have audiences blindsided by the sweltering ghouls at the heart of the story. Five kids make an unfortunate pit stop at an abandoned house while on a road trip. When they walk to the nearest house to ask for gas, they meet Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a hulking mass of muscle with the mind of a child who doesn’t take kindly to strangers.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a most disturbing film, but only because Hooper took such care in building a realistic world for his idealistic heroes to wander into. If the audience didn’t believe these kids still expected kindness from strangers, it wouldn’t hurt twice as bad when the illusion is shattered in an instant. Released before Halloween, this movie helped set the stage for the slasher genre but did it in a dirty and grimy way that made it more disturbing than Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers in many ways.

3 The Shining (1980)

Directed By Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s productivity slowed to a crawl in the years following The Shining, and while in one sense it’s tragic that audiences never got more films from him, it would have been tough for him to do better than his ultimate psychosexual daydream Eyes Wide Shut or The Shining, one of the best horror movies ever made. Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a writer looking for inspiration and a little peace and quiet to do something with it so he takes a job as the caretaker of the creepy Overlook Hotel and soon a creeping disquiet falls over him.

Creativity leaves him, replaced by a violent frenzy inherited by the hotel guests whose spirits linger in every corridor. The Shining is a brilliant, bizarre immersion into an artist’s obsessions. Stephen King famously hated the movie because it made Jack more of a villain than the hotel itself and made Wendy much less sympathetic than his novel. However, with Kubrick’s use of lighting and stage setting, he helped turn the Overlook Hotel into an iconic horror locale and the movie’s tense horror makes it one of the best horror movies of all time, even if it doesn’t stay as loyal to the source novel.

2 The Exorcist (1973)

Directed By William Friedkin

William Friedkin put to use his experience directing crime dramas, experimental theatrical adaptations, and documentaries when adapting William Peter Blatty’s best-selling tale of a young woman possessed. Friedkin shreds the audience’s nerves with one unexpected technique or image after another. Friedkin’s trick is making the real-world treatment of an impossible disorder seem just as invasive and terrible as anything the devil could get up to.

Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) has begun behaving in ways that perplex doctors, psychiatrists, and hypnotherapists alike. She swears, harms herself, and has the strength of two men, and when pressed, she claims to be the devil himself. Two priests (Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow) are brought in to try their luck when treatment and tests fail. The Exorcist remains one of the best horror movies of all time because Friedkin spares no torment to his characters or his audience in imagining the worst sort of horror. This was also the first horror movie to ever receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

1 Psycho (1960)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock experimented with the emotions and reactions of his audience, and images were the medium under his microscope. Psycho was the director’s experiment in making a film with the budget of a TV production that could still break expectations. The film begins with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) stealing a briefcase full of money and staying the night at the homey-looking Bates Motel, run by nervous, awkward Norman (Anthony Perkins). After a strange dinner, Marion takes a shower and then, in one of the genre’s most iconic scenes, meets Norman’s mother, Mrs. Bates.

Psycho is undeniably one of the best horror movies of all time because it changed the way people approached horror films. Suddenly no one was safe, no space, no character, nor the audience’s traditional concepts of good and evil. Anything was fair game, thanks to the way Hitchcock expanded even the confines of the horror movie. While this was well over a decade before the slasher genre started, this was the grandfather to all slasher movies and easily earned its spot as a masterwork of horror cinema.