best horror movies
by the_vannas | created - 03 Nov 2011 | updated - 7 months ago | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Insidious (I) (2010)
PG-13 | 103 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further.
Director: James Wan | Stars: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Lin Shaye
Votes: 339,164 | Gross: $54.01M
2. The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
R | 107 min | Horror, Thriller
A traveling family falls victim to a group of mutated cannibals in a desert far away from civilization.
Director: Alexandre Aja | Stars: Ted Levine, Kathleen Quinlan, Dan Byrd, Emilie de Ravin
Votes: 183,325 | Gross: $41.78M
3. Drag Me to Hell (2009)
PG-13 | 99 min | Horror
A loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point.
Director: Sam Raimi | Stars: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Ruth Livier, Lorna Raver
Votes: 217,570 | Gross: $42.10M
4. Dagon (2001)
R | 98 min | Fantasy, Horror, Mystery
A boating accident runs a young man and woman ashore in a decrepit Spanish fishing town which they discover is in the grips of an ancient sea god and its monstrous half human offspring.
Director: Stuart Gordon | Stars: Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, Raquel Meroño, Macarena Gómez
Votes: 21,054
5. The Fly (1986)
R | 96 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel
Votes: 202,026 | Gross: $40.46M
6. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
R | 147 min | Crime, Drama, Fantasy
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born with a superior olfactory sense, creates the world's finest perfume. His work, however, takes a dark turn as he searches for the ultimate scent.
Director: Tom Tykwer | Stars: Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, Francesc Albiol
Votes: 265,873 | Gross: $2.22M
7. Paranormal Activity (2007)
R | 86 min | Horror, Mystery
After moving into a suburban home, a couple becomes increasingly disturbed by a nightly demonic presence.
Director: Oren Peli | Stars: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Amber Armstrong
Votes: 256,298 | Gross: $107.92M
8. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
R | 101 min | Action, Horror
A nurse, a policeman, a young married couple, a salesman and other survivors of a worldwide plague that is producing aggressive, flesh-eating zombies, take refuge in a mega Midwestern shopping mall.
Director: Zack Snyder | Stars: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer, Jake Weber
Votes: 272,585 | Gross: $59.02M
9. The Orphanage (2007)
R | 105 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, which used to be an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.
Director: J.A. Bayona | Stars: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep, Mabel Rivera
Votes: 163,655 | Gross: $7.16M
10. Halloween (1978)
R | 91 min | Horror, Thriller
Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tony Moran, Nancy Kyes
Votes: 306,927 | Gross: $47.00M
11. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
R | 91 min | Horror
Teenager Nancy Thompson must uncover the dark truth concealed by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer with a bladed glove in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life.
Director: Wes Craven | Stars: Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund, John Saxon
Votes: 262,641 | Gross: $25.50M
12. Pandorum (2009)
R | 108 min | Action, Horror, Mystery
Two crew members of a spaceship wake up from hypersleep to discover that all their colleagues are missing. Despite this, it appears that they are not alone.
Director: Christian Alvart | Stars: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue
Votes: 159,587 | Gross: $10.33M
13. The Descent (2005)
R | 99 min | Adventure, Horror, Thriller
A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.
Director: Neil Marshall | Stars: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder
Votes: 247,075 | Gross: $26.02M
14. House of Wax (2005)
R | 113 min | Horror, Thriller
A group of teens are unwittingly stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to survive and keep from becoming the next exhibit.
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra | Stars: Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert, Brian Van Holt
Votes: 134,049 | Gross: $32.06M
15. The Ruins (2008)
R | 90 min | Adventure, Horror, Thriller
A leisurely Mexican holiday takes a turn for the worse when a group of friends and a fellow tourist embark on a remote archaeological dig in the jungle, where something evil lives among the ruins.
Director: Carter Smith | Stars: Shawn Ashmore, Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, Laura Ramsey
Votes: 84,335 | Gross: $17.43M
16. The Shining (1980)
R | 146 min | Drama, Horror
A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
Votes: 1,107,381 | Gross: $44.02M
17. Jaws (1975)
PG | 124 min | Adventure, Mystery, Thriller
When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
Votes: 659,803 | Gross: $260.00M
18. The Thing (1982)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Richard Masur
Votes: 466,963 | Gross: $13.78M
19. Darkman (1990)
R | 96 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A brilliant scientist left for dead returns to exact revenge on the people who burned him alive.
Director: Sam Raimi | Stars: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Colin Friels, Larry Drake
Votes: 69,886 | Gross: $33.88M
20. 28 Days Later (2002)
R | 113 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Four weeks after a mysterious, incurable virus spreads throughout the UK, a handful of survivors try to find sanctuary.
Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Alex Palmer
Votes: 446,079 | Gross: $45.06M
21. The Crazies (2010)
R | 101 min | Horror
After a strange and insecure plane crash, an unusual toxic virus enters a quaint farming town. A young couple are quarantined, but they fight for survival along with help from a couple of people.
Director: Breck Eisner | Stars: Radha Mitchell, Timothy Olyphant, Danielle Panabaker, Joe Anderson
Votes: 128,979 | Gross: $39.12M
22. Poltergeist (1982)
PG | 114 min | Horror, Thriller
A family's home is haunted by a host of demonic ghosts.
Director: Tobe Hooper | Stars: JoBeth Williams, Heather O'Rourke, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight
Votes: 179,667 | Gross: $76.61M
23. 28 Weeks Later (2007)
R | 100 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
Six months after the rage virus was inflicted on the population of Great Britain, the US Army helps to secure a small area of London for the survivors to repopulate and start again. But not everything goes according to plan.
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo | Stars: Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne, Robert Carlyle, Harold Perrineau
Votes: 293,967 | Gross: $28.64M
24. Splice (2009)
R | 104 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast hope to achieve fame by successfully splicing together the DNA of different animals to create new hybrid animals for medical use.
Director: Vincenzo Natali | Stars: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac, Brandon McGibbon
Votes: 101,804 | Gross: $17.00M
25. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
R | 99 min | Fantasy, Horror, Thriller
A young girl sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend believes that she has released creatures from a sealed ash pit in the basement of her new home.
Director: Troy Nixey | Stars: Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Bailee Madison, Bruce Gleeson
Votes: 50,595 | Gross: $24.04M
26. Sinister (I) (2012)
R | 110 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A controversial true-crime writer finds a box of Super 8 home movies in his new home, revealing that the murder case he is currently researching could be the work of an unknown serial killer whose legacy dates back to the 1960s.
Director: Scott Derrickson | Stars: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, James Ransone, Fred Thompson
Votes: 280,400 | Gross: $48.09M
27. Mama (I) (2013)
PG-13 | 100 min | Fantasy, Horror, Thriller
After a young couple take in their two nieces, they suspect that a supernatural spirit named Mama has latched onto their family.
Director: Andy Muschietti | Stars: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse
Votes: 191,109 | Gross: $71.63M
28. Dark Skies (2013)
PG-13 | 97 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
As the Barrett family's peaceful suburban life is rocked by an escalating series of disturbing events, they come to learn that a terrifying and deadly force is after them, one which may have arrived from beyond the stars.
Director: Scott Stewart | Stars: Keri Russell, Jake Brennan, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo
Votes: 79,913 | Gross: $17.41M
29. World War Z (2013)
PG-13 | 116 min | Action, Adventure, Horror
Former United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatens to destroy humanity itself.
Director: Marc Forster | Stars: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale
Votes: 719,803 | Gross: $202.36M
30. The Conjuring (2013)
R | 112 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse.
Director: James Wan | Stars: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor
Votes: 555,184 | Gross: $137.40M
31. Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
PG-13 | 106 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
The Lamberts believe that they have defeated the spirits that have haunted their family, but they soon discover that evil is not beaten so easily.
Director: James Wan | Stars: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, Lin Shaye
Votes: 188,861 | Gross: $83.59M
32. Hellraiser (1987)
R | 94 min | Horror, Thriller
A woman discovers the newly resurrected, partially formed, body of her brother-in-law and lover. She starts killing for him to revitalize his body and escape the demonic beings that are pursuing him after he escaped their underworld.
Director: Clive Barker | Stars: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman
Votes: 140,610 | Gross: $14.56M
33. The Changeling (1980)
R | 107 min | Horror, Mystery
After the death of his wife and daughter in a car crash, a music professor staying at a long-vacant Seattle mansion is dragged into a decades-old mystery by an inexplicable presence in the mansion's attic.
Director: Peter Medak | Stars: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, Jean Marsh
Votes: 40,040
34. Wolf Creek (2005)
R | 99 min | Horror, Thriller
Three backpackers stranded in the Australian outback are plunged inside a hellish nightmare of insufferable torture by a sadistic psychopathic local.
Director: Greg McLean | Stars: Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, John Jarratt
Votes: 78,386 | Gross: $16.19M
35. Wolf Creek 2 (2013)
Not Rated | 106 min | Horror, Thriller
The outback once more becomes a place of horror as another unwitting tourist becomes the prey for crazed, serial-killing pig-hunter Mick Taylor.
Director: Greg McLean | Stars: John Jarratt, Ryan Corr, Shannon Ashlyn, Philippe Klaus
Votes: 22,713
36. Dark Waters (1993)
Not Rated | 94 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A girl travels to an island, after the death of her father, to find out why the father funded a monestary on the island.
Director: Mariano Baino | Stars: Louise Salter, Venera Simmons, Mariya Kapnist, Lubov Snegur
Votes: 3,047
37. The Babadook (2014)
Not Rated | 94 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A single mother and her child fall into a deep well of paranoia when an eerie children's book titled "Mister Babadook" manifests in their home.
Director: Jennifer Kent | Stars: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney
Votes: 247,411 | Gross: $0.92M
38. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Approved | 137 min | Drama, Horror
A young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer
Votes: 235,320
39. The Dead Zone (1983)
R | 103 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A man awakens from a coma to discover he has a psychic ability to foresee future events.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom
Votes: 77,354 | Gross: $20.77M
40. Lights Out (II) (2016)
PG-13 | 81 min | Horror, Mystery
Rebecca must unlock the terror behind her little brother's experiences that once tested her sanity, bringing her face to face with a supernatural spirit attached to their mother.
Director: David F. Sandberg | Stars: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Maria Bello, Billy Burke
Votes: 142,415 | Gross: $67.27M
41. Annabelle: Creation (2017)
R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Twelve years after the tragic death of their little girl, a doll-maker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, where they become the target of the doll-maker's possessed creation, Annabelle.
Director: David F. Sandberg | Stars: Anthony LaPaglia, Samara Lee, Miranda Otto, Brad Greenquist
Votes: 150,947 | Gross: $102.09M
42. It (I) (2017)
R | 135 min | Fantasy, Horror
In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town.
Director: Andy Muschietti | Stars: Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Martell, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis
Votes: 606,634 | Gross: $327.48M
43. Get Out (I) (2017)
R | 104 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.
Director: Jordan Peele | Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener
Votes: 697,492 | Gross: $176.04M
44. Hereditary (2018)
R | 127 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.
Director: Ari Aster | Stars: Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff
Votes: 378,519 | Gross: $44.07M
45. Midsommar (2019)
R | 148 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A couple travels to Northern Europe to visit a rural hometown's fabled Swedish mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.
Director: Ari Aster | Stars: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Vilhelm Blomgren, William Jackson Harper
Votes: 403,771 | Gross: $27.33M
46. Eden Lake (2008)
R | 91 min | Horror, Thriller
Refusing to let anything spoil their romantic weekend break, a young couple confront a gang of loutish youths with terrifyingly brutal consequences.
Director: James Watkins | Stars: Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender, Tara Ellis, Jack O'Connell
Votes: 94,910 | Gross: $0.01M
47. The Ritual (I) (2017)
TV-MA | 94 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A group of old college friends reunite for a trip to a most dangerous country in Europe - Sweden, encountering a menacing presence there stalking them.
Director: David Bruckner | Stars: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton
Votes: 119,845
48. Barbarian (2022)
R | 102 min | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.
Director: Zach Cregger | Stars: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis
Votes: 181,132
49. No One Will Save You (2023)
PG-13 | 93 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
An exiled anxiety-ridden homebody must battle an alien who's found its way into her home.
Director: Brian Duffield | Stars: Kaitlyn Dever, Elizabeth Kaluev, Zack Duhame, Lauren L. Murray
Votes: 65,379
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