What are the scariest horror movies?

It Follows. It isn’t the best horror movie, but the premise is one of the scariest for me. An entity that is inevitable, and you cannot get away from no matter what you do or where you go. It’s always there, walking towards you.

There is a particular type of emotion which "The VVitch" and "Hereditary" get absolutely perfect. It's actually not really my favorite type of movie; it's not particular scary, per se, but it is just some stuff that is really awful that you don't want to see. If you don't want that, they may not be good, but if you vibe with that particular emotion they are hard to beat for it.

The HBO "Chernobyl" miniseries is absolutely straight-up horror. It has pretty much all the elements of a perfect horror movie, except it's (with tiny exceptions and artistic licenses) all 100% true.

"As Above, So Below" is fairly good "normal" horror of a fairly unspicy flavor.

That's honestly all I can think of that really does it well. Horror books in my experience are far better. "The Shining," "Pet Semetary," "Night Shift," and "Skeleton Crew." Also lots and lots of HP Lovecraft; the "Dunwich Horror" collection is wonderful.

Hope this helps.

Not a horror film per se, but definitely leaning that way:

The original 'ALIEN'.

The building of tension throughout the entire movie is brilliant.

Drag Me To Hell was surprisingly scary and also just a good movie.

I don’t consider many horror movies genuinely scary. The ones I have, at various times in my life, been actually in some way frightened (or at least shook) by, in no particular order:

• The Exorcist (The Version You’ve Never Seen)
• Hereditary (a masterpiece in my opinion. Free upvote literally every time I see someone recommend it)
• Blair Witch Project
• Paranormal Activity
• Ouija: Origin of Evil
• It (miniseries got me as a kid but Chapter 1 is good too)
• Lights Out (not the entire movie but it has its moments and overall a good style)
• Candyman (original)
• Poltergeist (original)
• Autopsy of Jane Doe (another poster reminded me of this one!)
• The Taking of Deborah Logan (for like one scene but IYKYK)
• The Dark and the Wicked
• The Orphanage
• Terrified and When Evil Lurks were both solidly unsettling at least
• Event Horizon (though I know you didn’t like this one)
• Conjuring 1-2 and Sinister too, all at least solid spookies.

Note that this does not mean these are the only GOOD horror movies. There are LOTS that I consider masterpieces that just aren’t strictly all that scary.

Horror movies don't scare me, but Hereditary was the one movie that made me come close to experiencing genuine fear from watching a movie.

The original Candyman.

Everything about it is excellent and holds up even now. The musical score is exceptional.

Don't bother with the reboot. It has a message it's trying to send, which I get, but they've done it to the detriment of the horror. Something could've been done with the premise but they fell short.

OG all the way.

I’m pretty dead inside so not a ton can get through in the horror department, but I always thought 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later did a fantastic job making zombies a bit scary again.

Annihilation is great cosmic horror.

If you want something a bit different, seek out Threads. It's on the Internet Archive (here, in fact)

Not a traditional horror film at all, it's set in the north of England in the early 80s (depending what n where you're from, the accents might prove a challenge!) and shows the ordinary people of a small city gradually coming to terms with escalating tensions between East and West, which result in all out nuclear war.

And then we get to see the actual on the ground nightmare that that would be. Not in a showy Hollywood way but in a grim, horrifyingly real feeling gritty British drama way. Bleak isn't the word.

It's something that's never quite left me since I saw it for the first and so far only time some years ago. Truly disturbing, and not fun at any point after things start getting serious. Brilliant though.

For me The Shining is one of the scariest movies and The VVITCH also comes really close to that feeling. For different types of horror I'd also recommend La Piel que Habito, Shutter and The Haunting of Hill House (the show).

And if you get the chance try the book version of Let the Right One In. It's much better than the movie and more of a horror imo.

Not sure how great it holds up today since it was a while ago I watched it last, but The Thing is for me still one of the best ones.

Cloverfield - not sure if thats horror

Frailty

Insidious

As a kid i loved the early Jason and Freddy movies.

Perfect Blue

I absolutely love and hate how they mess with your perception of not only time but what's real because I could see myself in situations where I couldn't tell you how long has passed and/or having to question if what I'm seeing is real or not.

I enjoyed High Tension.

Some suggestions from my side - in addition to many already posted suggestions I would add to my list as well:

• The series Twin Peaks (all three seasons plus the feature 'Fire Walk With Me') is not 100 % horror but it has it's tense of mystery and some scary scenes as well

• Don't Look Now from 1974 - a classic mystery drama with great Donald Sutherland in the leading role - also more mystery/suspense than horror

• IT (reboot) - still scarier than the Terrifier movies which are more slasher / fun-splatter

• Quarantine - until I saw the original 'REC'

• Schock - Italian horror movie classic

• Barbarian - I expected different but I was surprised in a positive way

I liked Noroi: The Curse.

No jumpscares, but really quite unsettling

As Above, So below is reasonably solid

There's a bit of a Mary Sue issue but otherwise good.

Many other good ones have already been mentioned, so I won't repeat those titles. But "Suspiria" (2018 edition) definitely deserves a mention. The ending is just ... well, clearly somebody amongst the original writers had some issues regarding reproductive systems ... but the other 98% of the movie feature brilliant suspense & eiriness at all times. And Tilda Swinton is simply to-die-for in it. ;)

The latest one that got to me, was "When evil lurks" (Cuando acecha la maldad). A pretty fast-paced horror from Argentina.

Rec (2007) and Climax (2018) are some of my personal favourites that have scared me to some degree

can recommend Coherence

I absolutely love horror movies and have a long list of fantastic ones but not very many of them actually scared me. Most of them have been named already but two I didn't see were The Babadook (2014) and surprisingly a Netflix movie called His House (2020) was actually awesome. One of my favorites in the last few years.

I don't get scared easily, but Kothanodi had me watching through my fingers. It has four vaguely connected stories, and two of them are very fucked up. There's a decent amount of infanticide and other atrocities inflicted on minors, so be warned if you have any childhood trauma.

Also by the same director, the movie Aamis is about cannibalism acting as a replacement for sex. It's pretty fucked up as well.

If you are a muslim then dabbe 3. It is the most terrifying movie i have ever seen.

so many recommendations already said and im sure many more to go.

Three that i didnt see mentioned that i enjoyed were:

Martyrs- French Version The Visit Session 9

Scenes from martyrs have been memed out of context so i think its fairly familiar. i hadnt watched it until recently and i think one time through was good enough for me. i’m not into a lot of torture style suspense.

The visit was particularly scary for me because If you’ve ever been in that scenario of being dropped off with familial strangers those initial reservations you have running through your head do make you uncomfortable and blossom into horrific thoughts. in the case of this movie a bit more so ;)

Session 9 i watched during the golden age of netflix. it isnt amazing but it was enjoyable.

What I've learned from this thread as someone getting into horror again is that I really need to watch Hereditary and the original Candyman. Might just bookmark this for all the great recommendations. Only hard part is that my partner isn't into horror so it's hard to watch them.

A Tale of Two Sisters is one of the only movies that has genuinely scared me, some great scenes in it.

The Ring remake (not the original Japanese one) takes the cake for me. I couldn't sleep the first nor second nights I saw it.

The Borderlands (2013) is a great found footage horror film with a unique twist on the genre. The ending was particularly horrifying to watch, and I don't normally find horror films scary.

May be Apostle? It's one of the memorable ones among recent horror.

“Host” fucked me up and is the reason I don’t watch horror movies anymore. I’m a huge baby though.

I really enjoyed Pandorum and The Babadook.

Talk To Me. I would also say Sinister and The Conjuring are my favorites, and I also struggle to find scary movies that genuinely scare me. Watch this alone in the dark the first time. It is now my all-time favorite scary movie, and it's fairly recent.

I'm noticing a distinct lack of Terrifier and Terrifier 2 in these comments. Art the Clown is perhaps the best antagonist I've ever seen in the horror genre and true originality is rare in the modern horror filmscape.

The Ring is also good for originality as far as modern classics, though it's a whole book series in Japan.

Edit: I also liked The Shrine, forgot to mention that one. Again, originality.

I just recently watched Saltburn. Truly and genuinely disturbing. It's a psychological thriller. If you're not into that, well..

Megan is Missing (2011) is one of the most horrifying films I've ever seen. Fair warning though, the last ten minutes are excruciatingly painful to watch. It is not for the faint of heart.

In the gore porn genre Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and Hostel (2005) are vile, but so pointlessly gorey the actual horror (the brutality of men) is almost entirely lost.

Funny Games (1997), or the 2007 American remake for those who don't love subtitles, is another unnerving portrayal of ultra violence. It's not gore porn, but is graphic. The original version's pacing will make you squirm in your seat.

Hush (2016) and Creep (2014) are two of my movie-night-with-friends films. Still very much about the human monster, but not overly graphic and prefers to build by making the viewer a partial participant. You have to be a certain level of broken to enjoy some of the others on my list, but these two are disney movies compared to Cannibal Holocaust.

Soft & quiet.

Humans are a terrible thing

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14557188/

My vote goes to The Vanishing (1988).

• The Descent
• The VVitch
• The Shining
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
• Audition

"Ju-On: The Grudge" from 2002 was probably one of the scariest movies I've seen (if you don't mind reading subtitles). The US remake did not do it justice IMO. I don't know how well it holds up nowadays since it's so old and I was a lot younger when it came out.

Blood Quantum, for the humour and great cast. Outback, for being based in a true story.