Best Horror Movies of All Time

[Dannyalcatraz]

But compared to all the other Wicker Man remakes, it is a pretty darn good one.

I knew the Nic Cage remake would be wrong just from the ads. I did not go to see it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Funny Games (original).

That’s not even a good movie, much less a good horror film.

 

[Guest 85555]

So many great films mentioned. This is really hard. I am struggling to put together a top ten and haven't even been able to fit in a hammer movie. I am just going to go with films that shaped how I think about horror and had the most impact, but that leaves out a number that could easily be swapped out for some of the entries

1. Halloween
2. Rosemary's Baby
3. A Nightmare on Elm Street
4. Candyman
5. Bride of Frankenstein
6. Jacob's Ladder
7. Nosferatu
8. The Exorcist
9. The Howling
10. Life Force

I would also love to put in Alien, Black Christmas, The Descent, Hellraiser, The Fly, Black Sabbath and so many more. But these are the ones I like watching the most. Of all of them, Nosferatu still scares me the most. Halloween is just the perfect horror movie. The Howling is my favorite werewolf film.

 

[Guest 85555]

My Top 3 Horror Picks:

Black Christmas (1974): A wonderful cast, expertly directed, in one of the most terror-inducing slashers I've ever seen. It still scares the bejeesus out of me all these years later and although there have been two attempts to remake it, neither comes close to capturing the absolute genius of the original.

Agree 100%. My wife couldn't get through this one it scared her so much. I think Black Christmas really holds up in that respect (some of those 70s movies are still very scary). I loved how terrifying The Moaner is (I think some people call him Billy now). He is the kind of incomprehensible evil you see in characters like Scorpio from Dirty Harry. Just this jibbing enigma. It just makes the movie that much more frightening. Plus Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder are excellent in it and it has John Saxon

 

[Guest 85555]

FWIW, I have no doubts about my 3 favorite werewolf movies:

The Howling
American Werewolf in London
Dog Soldiers

Howling is my favorite of the three but those are all top tier werewolf movies. The original wolf man is up there as well for me. I have also come around on Wolf with Jack Nicholson (which I hated when it first came out in theaters because it felt like a milk toast werewolf film, but seeing it again recently I really enjoyed it).

 

[Imaro]

Haven't seen it mentioned in the thread once (and that does make me sad since it's a personal favorite)...

No love for In the Mouth of Madness??

 

[Guest 85555]

Haven't seen it mentioned in the thread once (and that does make me sad since it's a personal favorite)...

No love for In the Mouth of Madness??

That is an incredible horror movie. Carpenter is like Craven. Think John Carpenter could fill up half a top ten list for horror easily. I left a lot of both of their movies off the list. I just went with one of Carpenter's but there was an urge to include others like In the Mouth of Madness, The Thing, or Prince of Darkness. Christine too is another really entertaining horror movie.

 

[Older Beholder]

Here's one I'll debate. I was highly disappointed with Nope as a horror movie. I felt it worked OK as a sci-fi story (very old school vibes). But the pacing and mystery was all wrong for horror. Much too slow, and overall just too complex (confusing?) to be scary. I defintely spent much more time puzzled trying to figure out what was going on than I did worried. And (I don't think this is a spoiler because it happens in the opening scene), even after watching it all the way through, I still have no idea what the heck was going on with that shoe in the beginning.

Wasn't the shoe something that had been vomited up - an early bit of foreshadowing? Not to give anything away? It's been awhile. Nope was a bit of a disappointment for me because his previous two films were so good, with Get Out being an all-timer. So that's a high bar. Nope was more like an ambitious Twilight Zone episode...though the scenes with the chimp certainly qualify it for this discussion all by themselves.

Spoiler: Shoe theory

My understanding of the shoe is based on a quote later in the film where someone says there isn't a word for a terrible miracle. That's what the shoe was, a terrible miracle. It attracted the kids attention so that he didn't make eye contact with the chimp, which saved his life, but created a false sense in him that he had a connection to animals, which leads him to thinking he can control the alien.

This is in contrast to OJ who does understand and respect animals.

Personally I've found Peele has gotten better with each film, (I know I'm in the minority on that one)
'Us' to me felt the most like an episode of Twilight Zone, but to me that's not really a criticism.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The Keep

The Keep is trippy and weird and never lets up from its tone… but is it actually horrifying, or even scary?

(BTW, as a joke I once showed The Keep and Castle Keep back to back. No, they have nothing to do with each other.)

 

[gban007]

I don't think I can do a top 10, and doesn't look like I've watched as wide a range as others, plus I'm quite aware at this point that for most part for movies / books I'm not a good judge on overall quality, vs whether I just plain enjoy it, but he ones that tend to stick in my mind as good horror movies that I enjoy watching repeatedly are below, in no particular order:

• Alien
• Event Horizon
• The Thing
• Colour Out of Space
• Dagon
• Hellraiser
• In The Mouth of Madness
• Omen / Omen 2 (if they count as horror)
• Pontypool

I haven't really had much opportunity to watch more recent horror (Colour out of Space a bit of an outlier here) , tending to get my horror fill more through comics (main favourite Junji Ito at the moment) and novels, but what I've found through those is I do tend to prefer supernatural / sci-fi / cosmic horror, and don't enjoy so much horror that is a bit closer to home in terms of showcasing how horrible people can be to each other.