All of the Hellraiser movies (some are great, some are not so great, but it’s worth it to work through all of them in order). The newest was kind of a re-imagining and you can start there if you want).
The Thing - the 1982 film is a classic, but the newest one is a prequel that came decades after the original movie- I’d recommend watching both, starting with the original.
All the alien movies. Some don’t consider Sci-Fi horror to be true horror, but these are essential watching. I consider it to be the best complete horror series of movies ever made.
Vampire’s Kiss (Nicholas Cage) - this is truly bizarre and if you are a Nick Cage fan it should be considered required watching.
Barbarian (2022) - simultaneously mind blowing and absolutely terrifying. Probably the best horror of the past 5 years.
The Mist - and mainly just for the ending which was a total mindfuck.
Train to Busan - This is a Korean made film (with subtitles) in the zombie genre, and is absolutely riveting.
World War Z - an outstanding zombie genre movie - one of the first zombie movies to feature fast moving parkour capable zombies as opposed to the slow moving classic zombies.
American Psycho - scary because this could (and does) happen and you could be standing right next to the next American Psycho right now and not even know it.
Maximum Overdrive - doesn’t get recommended a lot, but it holds up and is a great machine-uprising type of horror.
Event Horizon - propped up as SciFi Horror but this is a classic true horror just with a scifi backdrop.
I WISH there would be a modern remake of “Scanners”. Scanners is great horror from decades past but it just doesn’t hold up well to modern standards-it desperately needs a modern remake.
A little older, but Braindead (aka Dead/Alive) is a really great early 1990’s horror. It is one of Peter Jackson’s earlier films. It is a really good body horror that has a good sense of humor.
I got in trouble with my mom when she found out I went to Midnight Meat Train. She thought it was a porno. Not sure why she thought the local theater would be playing a porno or why they would let a bunch of high schoolers in 🤷
Midsommar is one of my favorites, or you could try It Follows if you haven't seen either of those. Midsommar is a slow burn intrigue sort of thing, but quite realistic, most of the most horrifying things about it could happen to you for real.
It Follows is a very creative movie, very much about the fear of being chased by an entity that never stops, extremely interesting premise
Same director, probably what you're feeling there is a sum of little touches. I liked the first half of Hereditary quite a bit, didn't really like where it ended up, got too fantastical for my tastes, I like pulp horror too, but I really really like horror that's plausible
If you haven’t seen any of the classic late 60s/early 70s horror movies, they are worth checking out. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, 'The Exorcist, ‘Don’t Look Now’, or ‘The Omen’ are all fantastic.
Creepshow (the 80s one) scared the bejesus out of me as a kid. I had an irrational fear of going to get anything out of our car at night for longer than I want to admit.
I’m a fan of slasher flicks! I love the Scream franchise the most. Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween are all classic slasher franchises, though because there’s so many there’s some real terrible movies in there (Jason X…omg). But the crummy camp is part of the charm.
Jason X is an absolute gem and blows the roof off anything that came after Part V. Also worth mentioning that Friday the 13th (2009) is an amazing movie in its own right and one of the best slashers of the 2000s imo
I occasionally do Halloween film marathons in October (haven’t gotten around to it this year, unfortunately), but if you want some good recommendations, check out the archives of my review blog.
If you’re on mobile, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “View web version.” On the right is a Blog Archive category with dates. Expand each year and click on October. You’ll see a list of all my scary movie reviews.
Be aware, some reviews have spoilers. I’m pretty good about mentioning it in advance in the review, but you can check at the end of the review, in the Labels section. If it says spoiler, avoid that review unless you want that film spoiled for you.
Hmm… maybe I should make a Halloween movie marathon label so people can quickly browse scary movie reviews. I’ll work on that later today.
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