The best horror films ever made: the top 41, ranked

41. Speak No Evil

2024, buy/rent

James McAvoy is terrifying as a demented sociopath in this remake of a 2022 Danish thriller. After meeting and bonding during a lazy, boozy holiday in Tuscany, the rowdy English couple Paddy (McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) invite the Americans Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) for a weekend in their sprawling farmhouse in Devon. Once there, disturbing secrets are revealed.

40. Raw

2016, Apple TV/Sky Store
A vegetarian student gains an appetite for human flesh in Julia Ducournau’s Franco-Belgian film, a movie you probably shouldn’t watch on a full stomach. It’s a compassionate study of its heroine and her traumas, but its gory dining scenes need a strong constitution.

39. Paranormal Activity

2007, Prime Video
Shot in seven days and with a budget of about £9,000, this film from the writer-director Oren Peli follows the increasingly disturbed nights of two San Diego yuppies. The execution is sublime, with everything from a creaking door to a bedsheet becoming nightmarish.

38. It Follows

2014, Plex
David Robert Mitchell’s suspenseful film invents a supernatural torment for a young student (Maika Monroe) heinously treated by her new boyfriend.

37. Us

2019, buy/rent
Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out is brilliantly ambitious, following creepy zombie doppelgangers terrorising a family on their holiday. A sharp, sometimes funny, often terrifying look at the US, with an excellent turn from Lupita Nyong’o.

36. Hereditary

2018, buy/rent
The harassed-mother theme is taken to extremes by Toni Collette in the performance of a lifetime. Ari Aster pulled out all the stops in the horror department, inspired by Don’t Look Now and Rosemary’s Baby. The music oozes fear, darkness comes out of nowhere and there are doll’s house sets to make every hair on your body stand up.

35. The Babadook

2014, Netflix
The director Jennifer Kent preys on the vulnerabilities of the widowed single mother, with an unnerving Freudian twist. Supernatural elements percolate the narrative as the film creeps to its climax, unceasingly mining the paranoia of a woman on the edge.

34. Dracula

1958, Prime Video
Vibrantly coloured blood meets Victorian petticoats in Hammer Studios’ adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic, with Christopher Lee taking on the feral, bloodsucking monster with originality and alarming smoothness.

33. Scanners

1980, Prime Video
The Canadian director David Cronenberg scored one of his earliest hits with this paranormal thriller and its extraordinarily horrifying scene in which one telepath causes another’s head to explode.

32. Nosferatu

1922, buy/rent
FW Murnau’s silent film was the first Dracula movie, an unofficial reworking of Bram Stoker’s tale. Its bald, claw-fingered ghoul (Max Schreck) is wonderfully creepy; its visual style is full of bold shadows; and its antiquated feel only adds to its eeriness.

31. Shaun of the Dead

2004, ITVX
A cult favourite from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg with endlessly good gags, which captures the essence of ironic English comedy. Where to go when zillions of zombies take over the world? The Winchester, “because it’s a pub. It’s safe. It’s secure.”

30. Audition

1999, buy/rent
Takashi Miike reverses the rules here as a female evil-demon figure avenges the arrogance of an ageing male widower with extreme violence and surgical precision.

29. The Birds

1963, Now
strikes back in Alfred Hitchcock’s loose adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s short story as birds start misbehaving. It’s a masterpiece with an untethered soul — no music grounds the film, no explanation is offered; the world just descends into a chaos only the greatest imagination could have thought up.

28. Night of the Living Dead

1968, Mubi
All the zombies that have lumbered — and occasionally run — through subsequent horror films can trace their lineage back to the walking, flesh-eating corpses of this indie movie by George A Romero. The blood and guts are gruesome, and the film does sharp racial and social commentary too.

27. 28 Days Later

2002, buy on DVD
Danny Boyle, the brains behind Trainspotting and The Beach, turns his artful hand to horror. The nightmare of waking up in an apparently deserted London is brought alive by a star-studded cast, including Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson.

26. A Quiet Place

2018, Paramount+
Directed by John Krasinski and starring his wife, Emily Blunt, this post-apocalyptic thriller hinges on silence as a family teeters around, desperate not to wake the demons of this wasteland. It’s a simple but genius premise.

25. Train to Busan

2016, ITVX
The South Korean action-packed zombie thriller doesn’t hold back on blood, guts and cannibalism. When an unfortunate infected culprit boards a train heading to Busan, all hell breaks loose. Unexpected glimpses of humanity elevate it from the standard zombie fare.

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24. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

1956, Prime Video
In this dark, eerie film, brilliantly directed by Don Siegel, a small Californian town is invaded by sinister faceless “pod people” who replace the original inhabitants. Born of the tensions in Cold War America, it asks the question: do you ever really know who anyone is?

23. Repulsion

1964, Plex
TV Hands come out of walls and ceilings crack as Catherine Deneuve plays a woman suffering a breakdown while living alone in a London flat. It’s not the most tactful of Roman Polanski’s movies, but it leaves you reeling.

22. Get Out

2017, Netflix
Jordan Peele achieves the perfect balance of social commentary and scares with this chilling satire of liberal racism in the US. It stars the British actor Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a photographer accompanying his white girlfriend for a weekend with her parents that turns sour, and the film’s terror comes from the mirror it holds up to society. It won Peele an Oscar for best original screenplay.

21. Dawn of the Dead

1978, Prime Video
George A Romero topped the glories of Night of the Living Dead with this sequel. Set mainly in a shopping mall, it stocks up on lively action scenes while enjoying itself as a satire on consumerism and mindless shoppers.

20. Carrie

1976, buy/rent
Brian De Palma’s film marks John Travolta’s debut film performance and sparked an undying run of Stephen King adaptations. The stigmas of becoming a woman are at its heart and it doesn’t hold back on the worst nightmare of the lot — adolescence.

19. Psycho

1960, buy/rent
The biggest hit of Alfred Hitchcock’s career, this eerie spine-tingler moved the genre into intense psychological realms. Chilling and brutal, the infamous shower scene is a triumph — as is the rest of the film.

18. Ring

1998, Freevee
The popularity of Japanese horror films in Britain can be traced back to the release of this masterpiece from Hideo Nakata, which follows a journalist (Nanako Matsushima) investigating a rumour about a spooky VHS. Incredibly memorable, the film is the highest-grossing horror in Japanese film history.

17. Suspiria

1977, Prime Video
The best-known film by the Italian horror master Dario Argento is the story of an American dancer who finds danger behind the scenes at a German ballet school. It comes with a gloriously theatrical idea of what a scary movie should be like: colourful lighting, a heavy-breathing soundtrack and torrents of blood.

16. Rosemary’s Baby

1968, Now
Roman Polanski tackles satanism without resorting to the usual shlock horror as a pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) encounters some gruelling terrors while living with her husband (John Cassavetes) on New York’s Upper West Side. Spine-chilling to the end.

15. The Wicker Man

1973, buy/rent
Presents This British cult classic exploits the unease anyone might feel when visiting a remote rural spot and being surrounded by creepy locals. Edward Woodward is an innocent copper who explores a pagan Scottish island governed by Christopher Lee. The finale is sublime.

14. A Nightmare on Elm Street

1984, buy/rent
This film led to eight sequels, and holds the claim to Johnny Depp’s debut role — immediately rocketing him into the limelight. Wes Craven’s creation, Freddy Krueger, terrorises high-school children in their sleep, a plot that was originally shot down among parents and critics for its distressing ability to terrify small children.

13. An American Werewolf in London

1981, buy/rent
John Landis’s film about a tourist (David Naughton) on a hair-raising trip to England is big on special effects and has a strong blend of horror and black comedy. It still feels fresh.

12. The Silence of the Lambs

1990, Prime Video
This film is the only horror movie to win best picture at the Oscars — and it deserved it. There’s Jodie Foster as a young FBI agent and Anthony Hopkins’s unforgettable, technically perfect performance as the grisly Hannibal Lecter. Sparks fly every time the pair are on screen together.

11. Scream

1996, Paramount+
Five sequels have followed Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s slasher, but none have captured the flair and novelty of the original $170 million-grossing film. Wonderfully silly, daring and ruthless, this film has a group of teenagers discussing horror films as they get picked off one by one. And — spoiler alert — Drew Barrymore is boldly killed off in the first 15 minutes.

10. The Sixth Sense

1999, Disney+
M Night Shyamalan’s breakthrough movie about a boy (Haley Joel Osment) who tells a shrink (Bruce Willis) he can talk to ghosts is famous for its crafty plot and final twist, but it also has a strong atmosphere and lots of good scary scenes along the way. And it survives multiple viewings.

9. Let the Right One In

2008, buy/rent
Forget cheap thrills, this is a horror with a real heart. The Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s deliciously macabre story centres on a tentative romance between two 12-year-old misfits. The surprise hit of 2009, it proved that there’s still blood in the vampire genre.

8. The Thing

1982, buy/rent
“Foolish”, “depressing” and “instant junk” was just some of the criticism fired at John Carpenter’s horror on its release. It found a second life in home video — and too right, it’s terrific. A baby-faced Kurt Russell stars opposite a repulsive monster in this tale of an Antarctic research station infiltrated by an alien organism.

7. Midsommar

2019, buy/rent
Ari Aster’s film spooks audiences with what they know will happen but are powerless to stop. Set in a Swedish commune and starring Florence Pugh, this is for those who like to be disturbed.

6. Don’t Look Now

1973, ITVX
Presents Set in Venice, Nicolas Roeg’s tale of a bereaved couple (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) is a classic piece of intelligent and restrained spookiness with visions of a mysterious red-coated child.

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

1974, buy/rent
Tobe Hooper’s relentless shocker is deliciously grim. It follows a group of friends, a family of cannibals and a chainsaw-wielding madman named Leatherface. A year after it was released, the British Board of Film Classification banned it for 24 years.

4. Halloween

1978, Sky Store
John Carpenter’s slasher flick rewrote the horror rulebook and inspired countless imitators. It’s an impeccable piece of low-budget, high-shock cinema. The casting of the 19-year-old unknown Jamie Lee Curtis was inspired.

3. The Blair Witch Project

1999, buy/rent
soundtrack, no special effects, no onscreen violence and three unknown actors — yet this film made $240 million from a budget of about $60,000. That’s because it’s a bone-chilling return to basics, a tap into the depths of the viewer’s imagination.

2. The Shining

1980, buy/rent
Adapted from a Stephen King novel, Stanley Kubrick’s superb horror features Jack Nicholson — “heeeere’s Johnny!” — and a glut of indelible moments: REDRUM reflected in a mirror, the bloody elevator, Danny on his tricycle and the spooky twins.

1. The Exorcist

1973, Now
William Friedkin’s movie is the ultimate horror film. Inspired by a 1949 exorcism of a boy, the film stars Max von Sydow as a priest called in to cast out a devil possessing a 12-year-old girl. Cinemas offered “barf bags” and had St John Ambulance crew on standby.

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