The 50 Scariest Movies of All Time

Prepare for Halloween with our countdown of history's creepiest horror movies. Read on at your own peril!

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Drag Me To Hell

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Raimi came down from an eight-year Spider-Man high with this masterful return to his campy horror roots. It's refreshingly playful in its pared down, old-school approach to terror—a nasty curse, animal sacrifice, and the scariest old gypsy lady since Mrs. Kardashian hit the airwaves.

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Children of the Corn

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What's scarier than weird little kids? Not a damn thing. The film version of Stephen King's horrifyingly eerie short story finds a young couple passing through a town overrun by a murderous cult of children—led by some guy who's nothing if not a real-life Stewie Griffin.

Cabin Fever

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Eli Roth's directorial debut centers on five college friends who rent a cabin in the woods for a week of sex, partying, and squirrel shooting—then fall prey to a flesh-eating virus and the craziest backwoods locals this side of Deliverance. Not totally unlike that weekend you got snowed in with your hot distant cousin when you both had chicken pox, 'cept with a little less incest guilt and a lot more death.

The Strangers

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A vulnerable couple, a dark house, and three mask-wearing killers—it’s the horror equivalent of the eager student/empty classroom/hot teacher setup in porn. But knowing what’s about to unfold doesn’t make it any less effective. A good money shot is a good money shot, you dig?

Dog Soldiers

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Dropped in the middle of the remote Scottish highlands for a routine training mission, a small squad of British soldiers soon discovers they are up against a pack of freakishly intelligent warewolves. When the full moon comes out, they have no choice but to barricade themselves inside an isolated house in a fight to the death. It's either an allegory for the parasitic nature of fame or just a scary-ass fucking movie. And we're going with the latter.

God Told Me To

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Murder, suicides, snipers, Andy Kaufman shooting up the St. Patty's Day parade...it's kinda like the nightly news, but better. Director Larry Cohen's realistic take on mass hysteria, and a Christlike cult figure that puts New York in a panic, is so successful at creating a huge disaster on a small budget you wish that such practicality existed in today's studio snoozefests. That means you, Michael Bay.

Re-Animator

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A med student's weirdo roommate from Switzerland (in a memorably manic performance from Combs) turns their basement into a laboratory, where he tries to re-animate the dead. A rollicking balance of horror and comedy—no wonder the director went on to write Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. Fully deserving of its cult status.

Haxan

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Satanic imagery so surreal, creative, and damned beautiful you'll be burning the Christmas tree and rejecting the Eucharist in no time. This silent "documentary" about the history of witchcraft also has an alternate, heavily re-edited version narrated by notorious author, addict, and murderer, William S. Burroughs. Should be on permanent loop at Halloween parties, as we're sure it was at Anton LaVey's orgies.

Wicker Man

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Silence of the Lambs

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When an unknown psychopath starts kidnapping girls and turning them into skin donors for his home cabaret act, an FBI agent has to team up with another psychopath to get inside the killer's head. Grisly, atmospheric, and way fucking better than the sequels that got pooped out down the road.

Open Water

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Imagine you and the lady go on a scuba diving trip and get stranded in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Being stuck with wifey for that long sounds like a horror movie in itself, but we're not even factoring in the sharks on the prowl for fresh meat. You'll never want to scuba dive after watching this one, word to Peter Benchley.

Basket Case

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A seemingly naive small town boy named Naive arrives in super-sleazy old-school Times Square with a mysterious basket in hand. Turns out it contains his mutated former conjoined twin—a bloodthirsty, walking head-creature named Belial—and they're on a mission to kill the doctors who separated them. From R.A. the Rugged Man's Files of Classic Disgustya Cinema.

Audition

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After the death of his wife, a middle-aged father decides to hold fake auditions to find a new boo. But the mysterious PYT he picks proves to be more trouble than expected when her disturbed past comes to light. Never, ever trust a nice butt and a smile. No, not a big butt—this is Japan!

Amityville Horror

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Newlyweds move into a house where the previous family was murdered in their sleep, and unfortunately, the bad vibes are there to stay. This was supposedly based on a true story-yet another reason not to move to Long Island! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LONG ISLAND SUXORZ

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

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28 Days Later

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Cannibal Holocaust

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Forever vilified for its real scenes of animal murder and horrifically realized scenes of cannibal torture, interest in this faux documentary was revitalized when it was cited as the inspiration for The Blair Witch Project. Nothing in the latter film, though, could compare to the Nat-Geo feel that makes viewers gassy with discomfort. Banned in many countries, as the poster luridly pointed out—in fact, courts actually brought the footage in to determine if the killings were real.

Hellraiser

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Clive Barker brings his twisted tale of S&M body-snatching demons to the big screen in his directorial debut. Painful to watch at times, the story has a man trying to reclaim his earthly body by feasting on the bodies of others. And there's some guy with pins in his head. It's cool, though, he's on point. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Poltergeist

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Usually when your child disappears into the television set, it's your lack of parenting skills or the result of a slutty babysitter. For little Carol Anne, it's the fault of shady real estate developers and irate Native American ghosts come to poop Jell-o, screw with your interior decorating, animate scary clown dolls, and rip your fucking face off. Oddly enough, writer/producer Steven Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper's ultimate family terror tale hasn't dated a bit (except for that ancient TV and the cool parents who enjoy having sex with each other).

Black Christmas

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The culmination of all those heavy breathing phone calls you got back in the day (minus the ones you dialed yourself for $1.99 a minute), it's the ultimate "someone's in the house" shocker. The killer's voice is so disturbing you'll be hearing it in your sleep long after the credits roll.

The Evil Dead

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Highly controversial at the time of its release for excessive gore, Raimi's first movie is a masterpiece of over-the-top low-budget horror. Five college kids visit a spooky cabin in the woods and, one by one, get possessed by an ancient book. Listen up, kids: reading kills!

Misery

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The Beyond

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Fulci's most beautiful film is also his most horrific. What other film can compel you to continue on through another hour AFTER acid melts a little girl's face off? Ripping open Pandora's box of horrors with a non-linear approach that defies all your expectations of what could possibly happen next, Fulci achieved something in cinema that may be the closest thing possible to pure madness.

The Ring

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The Orphanage

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A former orphan grows up and buys the orphanage she was raised in with the intention of reopening it. Turns out it's haunted (who saw that one coming?), but instead of believing her son when he says they're not alone in the house, she consults some parapsychologists…who tell her the same thing. Sometimes kids know best.

Saw

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A serial killer uses horrific deathtraps and elaborate puzzles to teach his victims to cherish life—or DIE! Clever low-budget scares, but why we gotta be made to feel like self-entitled apathetic assholes for taking midday bong rips on a "sick day"?

A Nightmare on Elm Street

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Friday the 13th

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The first slasher film to be distributed by a major US studio introduces the story that spawned 10 sequels, one remake, and 157,000 ripoffs. While at Camp Crystal Lake, serial-killer-to-be Jason Voorhees drowns while his counselors are off somwhere carousing, leaving his outraged mother with a very simple vendetta: Kill 'em all.

Serpent and the Rainbow

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Based on the true story of a Harvard anthropologist who, seeking out the reality behind the myth of the zombie, travels down to Haiti and starts acting all Ivy League. Hey dumbass, it's HAITI! Two drops of poison later and dude is hallucinating, fucking a voodoo priestess, getting his nuts nailed to a chair, and escaping dirt naps left and right. Now THAT'S a vacation!

Inside/À l'intérieur

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When a movie is called Inside, you have to wonder how long it will be until you're "inside" something. The answer is: 15 minutes, at which point everyone's innards start coming out in this sick, claustrophobic body trauma. Let's just say the film involves a pregnant woman and an intruder. From there you should be able to judge if you can make it through this one. Don't be a hero, Johnny.

High Tension (Haute Tension)

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Two French college chicks visiting relatives in the countryside encounter a sadistic serial killer in this nerve-jangling pursuit film. The gore’s gruesome (watch the unrated original version) and the tension is indeed high. And we’re not even talking about the edge-of-your-seat “will they/won’t they experiment with lesbian sex?” tension, we're talking about the tensile strength of bone. Pause.

Candyman

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An urbanization of the old "Bloody Mary" tale has Chicago's North Side terrorized by the ghost of a slave who was tortured and slathered with honey before being killed. This flick had us so shook, we didn't buy Starburst for a good 10 months. And now we won't even buy Starburys—but that's not because it sounds like Starburst, it's because they're shitty shoes.

Funny Games (US)

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Night of the Living Dead

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It’s black-and-white (strike one) and the undead move like molasses (strike two), but if you sleep on Romero’s subversive classic about zombie apocalypse survivors hiding out in a farmhouse (and the Vietnam War, racism, modern media, government, etc.), we’ll have to strike you from planet Earth.

Shivers/They Came From Within

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David Cronenberg's visceral first film, it's shocking even by today's standards, kicking off in grand fashion his fascination for body politics and sexualized skin trauma. The rich, young tenants of a high-rise fall victim to a plethora of penis-like parasites turning them into sex addicts. Fun fact: this is where the idea for Second Life came from!

The Thing

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Scientists in the Antarctic have a close encounter of the crap-yourself kind when they discover a shape-shifting killer alien has infiltrated their camp. Extra points for super-freaky special effects that make a shape shift...in our pants!

The Hills Have Eyes

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A nuclear family—nuclear as in "mutant," not as in "traditional"—terrorizes another family on a road trip to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Horror film rule #4080: short cuts are invariably shady.

The Haunting

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When a team of "paranormal investigators" stay the night in a haunted house, they become a cautionary tale. In other words, STOP THINKING YOU GONNA STAY IN A HAUNTED HOUSE, THAT SHIT AIN'T SWEET. The creepiest black-and-white outing ever, with the Judgment Night soundtrack a distant second.

The Fog

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Inspired by a visit to Stonehenge where he saw an eerie mist on the horizon, John Carpenter (hot off his classic Halloween) developed this horror movie stew: Add three top-of-their-game scream queens, endless clouds of fog, and hundreds of dead pirate lepers coming to kill your grandma. The result? Another classic.

The Blair Witch Project

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Three college students troop off into the Maryland wilderness to film a documentary about a mysterious witch, only to disappear, leaving behind the footage that becomes the movie itself. At the time, the "is it real?" buzz overshadowed some pretty damn good acting (Donahue deserved an award for her apology alone) and a very inventive screenplay. It's still the reason we only pitch tents within city limits.

Rosemary's Baby

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It starts off happy—a pretty young woman moves into a killer apartment with her husband and gets knocked up. Only...something is wrong. Very wrong. The deteriorating health, the creepy old neighbors, the food poisoning, the nocturnal rape by a hairy demonic beast (and we don't mean Polanski). Not necessarily in that order.

Suspiria

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This is the only film where you'll push aside the all-girls'-school lesbian subtext so you can be hit face-first with intensely operatic and surreal violence, all set to a pulsing soundtrack that may peel back your hairline. Add extra style points for dripping visuals and unhurried takes of mayhem, and you have an all-out assault on the senses.

The Omen

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre

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Leatherface—severed hands down the scariest human-skin-wearing, chainsaw-wielding cannibal retard ever—and his flesh-eating family terrorize tasty young people in this stomach-turner inspired by sick 1950s grave robber and murderer Ed Gein. This is why we don't mess with Texas, where white people are the *other* other white meat.

[REC]

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After responding to a call, firefighters, police, and a film crew are quarantined in a building where a virus is infecting people with murderous rage. Keep your eyes open during this Spanish flyness and we guarantee the documentary-style camera work won't be the only thing shaking.

The Exorcist

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A 12-year-old girl named Regan becomes possessed by the devil and begins levitating, spider-walking, and masturbating with crosses before killing a couple of priests. Considered to be an eerie harbinger of the 1980s, when an 80-year-old man named Reagan became possessed by supply-side economics and did all sorts of evil shit to American society.

Halloween

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Escaped nutjob Michael Myers stabs up horny, doped-up teens in Carpenter's seminal slasher flick, which shows just how terrifying a cheap rubber mask, a big knife, a chilling piano score, and a leading lady who may have dude bits can be.

Ju-on: The Grudge

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Spooky-ass Asian kids have never been creepier than in this J-Horror classic about undead spirits in a haunted house. Just think: Without the heart-pounding Japanese original, Buffy and Joan of Arcadia could never have starred in its two American adaptations. And what a loss that would have been.

Paranormal Activity

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A couple sets up a video camera to discover what is making all that racket when they go to bed at night. That's really all you need to know. On a shoestring budget, director Oren Peli takes a simple premise and crafts one of the most effective films in the history of horror cinema purely by tweaking your expectations of what is lurking in the dark frame and letting viewers victimize themselves. You keep looking for something out of the ordinary—and when it finally comes, your pants will have been shat. Promise.

The Shining

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Stephen King must have been too drunk or coked up to fully appreciate this frightfest, as he denounced it for being too different from his book. Boo fucking hoo. Kubrick's vision is as cold as the winter storm barricading a family in a giant hotel in the mountains of Colorado. Tiny psychic Danny, in the midst of realizing his developing powers, hops on his Big Wheel and lets his fiendish finger lead him into bad situations, while Daddy gets drunk and yells at Mommy. Pile this on top of the only twins you wouldn't want to play with, Jack Nicholson's unforgettably gonzo performance, and Shelly Duvall's bulging eyes, and your nightmares are here to stay. Keep the lights on.

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