The 50 Least Scary Horror Movies

Want to be frightened? Whatever you do, don't watch these faulty films ruined by cheesy monsters, improbable serial killers, and endless horror clichés!

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This may come as a startling revelation to some filmmakers, but we go to horror movies because we want to be horrified. Well, that and we want to terrify a chick so she's on edge and ready for the portion of our date where we lock her in the basement with our one-eyed monster. Unfortunately, a lot of the "scary movies" that Hollywood's sphincter squeezes out for us fail to deliver a good scare on every level. We're not talking about the tongue-in-cheek, genre-mocking films that play for laughs, mind you, but the ones that claim to be frightening and then fall short by using cheesy CGI monsters and actors who clearly couldn't overpower anyone as serial killers, spelling out death scenes in advance, and generally sticking to a script of nothing but horror clichés. For genuine chills, check out our countdown of the 50 scariest movies of all time. For the 50 least scary horror movies, keep reading...if you dare...to not be frightened!

House of Wax

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Why in the holy hell are these kids going inside a spooky wax house to call for help? The only reason people went to see this is to watch Paris Hilton take it in the face. Why does it feel like we've seen that before?

Children of the Corn

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Nothing takes us out of a scene quicker than bad child acting, so you can imagine how difficult it is to get into a movie with a cast full of underwhelming kids. Add to that a lot of religious sermonizing and it's impossible to keep your eyes from rolling. We wish we could send this one back up the cornhole from which it came.

The Amityville Horror

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Unseen terror can be effective, but here it comes off as a melodrama about a jerk who drags his family to Long Island and broods over the fireplace while becoming an abusive drunk. Jay Anson's novel is actually well written, but the horror is missing in this boring adaptation. For better results, try the superior Amityville II: The Possession.

Resident Evil

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Hollywood takes one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, cuts out the atmosphere, suspense, and anything else that made it cool, then adds a bunch of action that's flatter than Milla's chest.

Sorority House Massacre

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Have you ever seen Halloween? So have these guys. Nice production values, but too late to the party of slasher knock-offs. Seriously, John Carpenter could sue.

Hellraiser 3: Hell On Earth

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We imagine the pitch meeting went something like this: "C'mon dudes, it's a guy with pins in his head! It's funny! And it'll be even funnier if he comes to L.A.! What if we had him kill some bros by possessing a stack of CDs? That'd be dope, right?" You can see the despair in Pinhead actor Doug Bradley's face as he must have known this was the end of any serious Hellraiser attempts.

Hostel

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Not only did we not care if the annoying, underdeveloped protagonists lived, we actually hoped they'd die. No matter how many successful shoulders he stands on, director Eli Roth seems more concerned with sculpting his chest hair then directing a good film. Hostel opened the doors to a sub-genre of "torture porn" clones that now fill clearance shelves across the country.

Fear dot com

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It's hard to tell what's going on here as the filmmakers throw a lot of overlapping images at the screen to terrify and/or confuse the audience, but anyone familiar with this new thing called "the Internet" will see through Hollywood's opportunistic attempt to cash in on new technology for another lame movie. We can't wait for death via iPad!

Saw 5

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The franchise's fifth installment is more of a CSI police procedural drama than the twisted morality play that made Saw so good in the first place. The basic premise that a copycat (who happens to be a cop!) could mimic the puzzle-making mastery of Jigsaw is laughable, but so then are the innumerable convoluted callbacks and twists. A lame attempt at enriching the legend of Jigsaw, V only makes it more frustrating that he's dead—'cause we'd like to strangle him ourselves.

Warlock

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Any movie forcing the audience to sit through a Lori Singer performance has made a torture film, not a horror film. While there are a lot of nice touches in both the script and direction, the film as a whole fails to terrorize—unless you're afraid of British fops with ponytails.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

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When your villain is dressed like the Gorton's fisherman, we could give a fuck what you did last summer. That's about as scary as Jennifer Love Hewitt's acting reel...oh wait, that WOULD be scary!

Urban Legend

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A friend of a friend insists that this Scream-inspired movie is scary, but when a brooding figure in a fuzzy parka recreates a bunch of urban legends to kill some co-eds, logic is the first victim. (How scary is death via Pop Rocks anyway?) Without spoiling the ending outright, let's just say that the person improbably playing the overpowering killer went on to successfully kill a child in real life a few years later.

Exorcist: The Beginning

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Merrin's origin story was already covered in Exorcist 2: The Heretic, and it wasn't chilling then either. Originally this fourth film was a thoughtful study of faith by Paul Schrader, the kind that is so scary because it feels real, but the studio wanted more action, so the director of Cutthroat Island was brought in. Confounding reshoots and craaaazy CGI jackals turn this into a movie that should have been exorcized from the get go.

The Boogeyman

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Director Ulli Lommel is a hack who rips off the best elements of Halloween, The Exorcist, and The Amityville Horror, and still fails to generate more scares than snores. The man who made this haunted broken mirror tale deserves seven years bad luck. And he got it, becoming one of the most hated direct-to-DVD directors the horror community has ever turned on.

Maximum Overdrive

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This is the first and (mercifully) only attempt Stephen King made to direct a feature. That's good because, unlike writing, making a movie is not something you want to give your first shot while your nose is buried in a pile of China White. Maybe the car that ran over Stephen King in 1999 was someone exacting revenge for making them sit through this junk.

Anaconda

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The killer snake is a comical mix of crappy CGI and giant-dong-looking rubber hose. Ice Cube and J-Lo's acting? Now that was horrific.

Bad Moon

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By the time you get to the scene where the werewolf is driving the car, the only howling going on is the laughter choking you to death. (Note: We're laughing at you, not with you.)

Amusement

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In this anthology, what starts out strong as a story of an intruder dressed as a scary clown quickly becomes one disappointing short story bumping into another until the survivors are all reunited in one far-fetched finale. Jake Wade Wall wrote the equally forgettable remakes of The Hitcher and When A Stranger Calls, and this film will hopefully prevent him from writing anything else.

The Final Destination

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Honestly, if every death sequence is going to be precisely telegraphed minutes in advance via x-ray, how scary can this movie get? The 3D gimmick kept theatre-goers distracted, but home viewing leaves this ugly film exposed for the dull experience that it really is. Death, go blow your shit loose.

The Ring 2

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Nakata, the man behind the original Japanese films, helms this one, but something is lost in translation. Let's sum it up with the line: "Mommy, the drain is clogged and the water smells like dead girl."

Diary of the Dead

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Romero has made some fine films over the years, but zombies will always pay his rent. His career was dusted off with Land of the Dead, yet while he wallows in biting social commentary that was harsh before Nixon was President (see, the problem with young folks is they live life through a filter of technology...), younger filmmakers are making undead films that kick him in his old balls.

Deadly Friend

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Two years after A Nightmare on Elm Street and this is what Craven is reduced to. Although he would sink further with Cursed and Vampire in Brooklyn, this derailment marks a start to a pattern where horror seems more like a novelty. While the idea of keeping a pet robot around in hopes of scoring with the girl next door is taken to a creepy extremes, Kristy Swanson acting like a homicidal robot made us want to power down.

Phantom of the Opera

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Gone are the fantastic visual styles of the giallo that catapulted director Dario Argento to worldwide fame. The English dubbing is scarier than anything else you'll find on screen, except maybe for Julian Sands' beautiful coiffure. The Phantom is as pretty as Christine, but he occasionally romps naked with rats. Weird? Yes. Scary? Not really. Sorry, Dario.

Wolf

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Mike Nichols directed The Graduate and seduced audiences across several generations. Here, he slaps some pubic hair on Jack Nicholson's face and sticks him in this tepid romantic monster movie that's all huff and puff—no matter how good Michelle Pfeiffer looks, nobody's blowing anything.

Thirteen Ghosts

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This film can't bother even making one ghost scary, so imagine sitting through 13 CGI fails that make William Castle's campy, kid-friendly 1960 original look like the scariest movie of all time.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

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How scary can a movie be when it's merely prologue and you know who will and won't survive? Furthermore, an icon should not be born from casual opportunity, as is the case when Leatherface just happens to grab a chainsaw after bashing in his first skull. Good thing he wasn't braining someone in a porn shop or his iconic implement might have been a giant rubber schlong.

Phantoms

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The frightening book had creatures, apparitions, murders, rape, and enough horror for a whole franchise but the film version has Ben Affleck in a cowboy hat and Peter O'Toole longing for the days when he was anywhere but here.

Train

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This was supposed to be a remake of the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis joint Terror Train, but tragically "terror" was removed both from the title and this uninventive piece of torture porn trash. The best we can say is that Thora Birch as a wrestler scares the interest right out of our flaccid members.

The Wicker Man

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Acclaimed screen and stage director Neil LaBute clearly lost his mind while remaking one of England's most beloved cult films, since he seemingly closed his eyes and let loose a drooling Nic Cage, who turns up the bat shit switch and screams his way to a finale where he dons a bear suit and starts punching women in the face.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

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So, a lot of people have been waiting for this film to be released. Stop waiting. Even the luscious curves of Amber Heard can't hump this corpse to life. A middling narrative doesn't help this film ever reach the dramatic heights it aspires to, and though the boys may love Mandy Lane, no one will love this movie.

Friday the 13th

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Audiences followed Jason from Crystal Lake to New York, to hell and into outer space, but this remake will send them running for the shitter. Despite being granted a full pass by the MPAA ratings board, the filmmakers have taken one of the most iconic film villains and removed his rotted balls.

Offspring

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Jack Ketchum can write one hell of a disturbing novel, but these tales make for some tepid horror films. The title villains look like Troll dolls, and by the time the movie's over you just want to hang them on your ceiling fan, turn it on high and watch them suffer.

Final Exam

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Slasher movies wore out their welcome by the late '80s, but you'd figure that, in 1981, this film could have coaxed up some new ideas and scares. Nope. As far as terror goes, Final Exam gets a failing grade.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

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Have you seen the original Silent Night, Deadly Night? Well, Part 2 contains 45 minutes of footage from the original in flashbacks, so you don't have to. The hero of the film, Eric Freeman, is a man who acts with his eyebrows and is incapable of subtlety. Instead of watching this whole movie, just type in "GARBAGE DAY!" on You Tube for some unintentional comedy gold.

Village of the Damned

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Muddling the original 1960 film's socio-political context and replacing it with a hungry, hungry Kirstie Alley mistaking little blonde children for Twinkies would have been an inspired move, but one just as lifeless as this dull outing with bizarre Aryan, er, alien children doing dirty deeds.

Halloween

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Jamie Lee Curtis is rolling in her grave—and that bitch ain't even dead yet! This ugly remake full of horror convention sad sacks and hillbilly drama should have ended with Myers' escape from the mental hospital, but Zombie insists on cramming the entirety of Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece into the final act, forcing you to sit through the far inferior version of events you know all too well. The only thing worse than Rob Zombie's Halloween...is Rob Zombie's Halloween 2.

Penny Dreadful

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Are you afraid of cars? Yeah, we didn't think so. Fuck fumes, this one is trying to run on a bone-dry tank.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

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Despite an amazing performance by Yaphet Kotto's hair, the infamous Freddy Krueger is reduced to a punch line in rubbery makeup that makes you feel bad for Robert Englund as he cashes his last steady check. It's really sad to see this franchise reduced to slapstick comedy and a dismal 3D finale.

The Hills Have Eyes Part 2

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Producers yanked the film away from director Wes Craven before it was complete in order to cash in on the success of Elm Street. Which is probably why you're left with a mishmash of a movie whose idea of story development is to give every returning cast member a flashback to pad the running time. Even the family dog. Woof.

Wishmaster

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Drowning yourself in djinn and juice couldn't combat the memories of this putrid film! Zing! The producers were so concerned with creating a new horror icon based on the puns of Freddy Krueger that they forgot Freddy was a scary pedophile to begin with, while the Wishmaster just looks like something children would laugh at in the dark.

The Mangler

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Creator of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper x awesome Stephen King story about a possessed folding machine in a dank factory should have been amazing. Instead we get the cinematic equivalent of watching two horror greats trying to wash out the stink of failure.

Leprechaun

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Comedy comes in little packages as this runt of a franchise takes the title villain on a quest for gold that became more embarrassing with each of the six installments. Jennifer Aniston somehow escaped this laugher with a career, but it's hard to believe she had any "friends" after this.

Don't Go in the Woods

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A cool poster and trailer couldn't save this weird flick with a poor audio track that was dubbed entirely in a studio. It's about as frightening as Ashlee Simpson lip synching.

Prom Night

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Jamie Lee Curtis' 1980 film had the same title, but that's where the similarities end. This time around, a group of made-for-TV kids party in a hotel and die. You'll scream when you see how much of this film doesn't take place at the prom! You'll hide in terror when a girl goes into her hotel room and backs into a lamp! You'll gasp in horror when you realize you wasted a couple hours of your life to see this garbage!

Jaws: The Revenge

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In the original Jaws, when the shark didn't work, they didn't show it. Now, you don't even need to look closely to see the tracks it slides on. The idea of a shark chasing a family down the coast is bad enough, but why the widow Brody doesn't move to a high rise in Kansas is just confusing. The scariest part of this movie is Mario Van Peebles' Jamaican accent, mon!

Dead Silence

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This is a film for people who are afraid of dolls, but the dolls never actually do anything, despite the poster's promise that they will. Like ventriloquism, Dead Silence is just screwing around with a hand up your backside.

Open Water

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Eighty minutes of "Something touched my foot!" and a whole lot of bickering and crying. There are more thrills and chills at Sea World.

Halloween: Resurrection

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This is the film that killed the franchise (it literally killed off Jamie Lee Curtis!) and left the cadaver vulnerable for Rob Zombie to resurrect and sodomize. Mr. Myers, are you really America's most feared cinematic slasher when Busta Rhymes can go "Dangertainment!" on your ass and survive to tell the tale?

The Haunting

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The original Robert Wise production used atmosphere and sound design to ramp up the tension in his psychological thriller. Jan de Bont and Steven Spielberg figured that CGI overkill and laughable performances would be much scarier, so they cheated the audience out of a subtle creep-out and instead treated them to an FX demo reel.

House of the Dead

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This noisy crap-fest introduced America to hack director Uwe Boll, a man more hated than Al-Qaeda and as subtle as an autopsy performed by a rhinoceros horn. Devoid of scary moments, the film relies on janky footage from the Sega video games to supply its shocks. Low point of the movie: When the villain is asked why he seeks immortality, he responds: "To live forever." Thankfully his decapitated (yet still living) head is crushed and our scare-less misery does finally end.

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