It’s Halloween season, so that means it’s time for all things spooky and scaryー which also means horror movies! It’s often said that horror movies reflect the fears of the time, aka the fears of the audience for which they are made in the first place. I think, because of that, their rankings are very subjective. This is also the reason why I think that The Shining made no lasting impression on me when I watched it years ago, yet I still get nightmares because of The Babadook, which I started but wasn’t able to finish for three consecutive times before I forced myself to get through the whole thing. This article is a sort of experiment into this concept, as well as an excuse to watch horror movies. I compiled a list of the top ten scariest horror movies and chose them based on how many times each of these movies appeared on all the lists I combed through, trying to keep the years of release as varied as possible, too. I will be watching each movie and write about my reactions and genuine thoughts on it. Hopefully, by the end of this article we’ll know if I just don’t get scared or if it takes a specific kind of horror theme to scare me. Of course, spoiler warnings for all of the movies I talk about. I have ordered the movies by year of release, so feel free to join me on this journey, if you dare…
1. The Exorcist – 1973
The Exorcist was one of the most mentioned movies in all the lists I combed through, and I was so ready to watch it. Let me start by saying I laughed so many times while watching the movie… I don’t know if it was the film’s plot and theme or its special effects, but I found it more fun than scaryー as in, I didn’t feel scared at all. Maybe I did feel a bit grossed out at certain special effects because they looked pretty disgusting, but I could snack through it with no problem. This movie pretty much set the tone for the whole experience, which I will go into detail about at the end.
The societal fear that I identified, and then confirmed through some research afterwards, was the loss of Christianity and the dismantling of the “nuclear family.” Through Reagan, a possessed child, who has a single mother and an absent father, we can identify the age-old adage of “this is what happens when a child isn’t raised in a ‘normal, Christian household.’” Her lack of a “stable” or “normal” family dynamic and their lack of faith causes her impurity and subsequent possession. The ending reinforces this by having her regain faith, symbolizing that the only way to protect yourself is to become a Christian. Having Reagan be the one possessed also sends the message that they feared the loss of these Christian morals and values would lead the next generation, i.e., children and teenagers, to impurity and sin; as seen through Reagan’s rebellion, cussing, and loss of virginity during her possession.
I was raised very loosely catholic and graduated from a Christian high school. I consider myself as agnostic; and while I believe something is out there for sure, I don’t strictly believe in Christian mythology. This movie and its themes did not significantly affect me because they target a very specific demographic of which I am not a part. I’d be very interested to see what a remake of this movie would look like, with our current access to special effects.
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – 1974
If The Exorcist was slightly underwhelming, I think I was downright disappointed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The chase scenes dragged on, the plot as a whole was rather simple, the ending was a bit underwhelming, and the pacing was downright weird. It was a bit entertaining, but not by much… There was a very heavy reliance on gore and the shock value of it, but that aspect did not redeem the movie. What I did find incredibly interesting was the fear it seemed to represent. While The Exorcist featured themes of religion, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre features the fear of an economic crisis. Hidden behind the gore and simple lore, lie references of an impending economic crisis. Through the hitchhiker, the lack of gas, and the story about cattle killing methods, the movie plants the themes of poverty, of a lack of resources to live; quite literally. Had the main characters had gas, they never would have encountered the Sawyers. Because the Sawyer family was left jobless because of the change in cattle-killing methods, they had to resort to cannibalism and murder to survive and even furnish their home.
Although this theme does scare me, the movie didn’t do the best job of scaring meー TikToks have done more to scare me on cannibalism-related content than this movie ever could have. I haven’t watched the remake or the sequels, and I don’t think I will anytime soon. However, I will say that the closing scene of the movie, where Sally is in the back of the pickup, was my favorite shot of the movie. The juxtaposition of her physical appearance, the events which just transpired, and her exhilarated laughter make for a hauntingly beautiful final shot that speaks to the trauma this character will carry with her for the rest of her life.
3. Halloween – 1978
Now we move into slasher territory. Although this wasn’t the first slasher film, it certainly was the one to launch this genre into popularity. Watching this movie was more fun than the previous two. At this point, I’m starting to sense I enjoy suspense and anticipation more than gore or subtle messaging. I think it’s around this time that people start becoming more distrustful of their neighbors and communities, and the installation of fences becomes a more common occurrence. Halloween reflects the same fears of loss of religion and the “impurity leads to bad things” pipeline as The Exorcist. It’s through Annie and Lindsey’s deaths and Laurie’s escape that this message becomes clear. Annie was having premarital sex and Lindsey was shirking her responsibilities for the same thing–doing unholy or rebellious thingsー therefore, they deserved punishment. Meanwhile, Laurie is being the model citizen and behaves “appropriately,” and thus she gets to escape. I don’t know in what world it’s better to be hunted down every few years for about twenty or so years than just dying, but that’s on the filmmakers for making sequels; not on the characters for being vehicles for a story. I think that the fact that the events of the movie take place on Halloween night serve as further proof of the message “accept God in order to be protected from evil,” considering the connotations of the holiday.
All in all, it was a fun movie to watch! I think at some point I saw all of the movies in the franchise, but I don’t remember if I actually did it, or just wanted to.
4. The Shining – 1980
I mentioned The Shining in my introduction and said it left no lasting impression on me, and that remains true. Although I didn’t remember anything about this movie from the first time I watched it years ago, watching it again for this little experiment allowed me to appreciate the finer details of the movie. It is a great film, complete with good cinematography and incredible acting, but it just wasn’t scary to me. Stephen King, the author of the book the movie is based on, has said he didn’t love the decisions the director took when adapting his book into a film. One decision, in particular, stood out because it was the one thing I was irritated about. People like to say “Jack’s descent into madness” when describing this movie, but to that I’d respond that a descent implies a slow decline over time, like walking down the stairs, one step at a time. Jack spends barely a month and a half in that hotel. According to the movie timeline, it spans one month and one and a half weeks, so this man literally falls into madness. Its sudden and irreversibleー one day he was a stressed-out douche, the next a murdering psychopath. There was nothing slow about his journey.
I read this article after watching the stylistic decisions taken by the director to portray the horror of this movie: inevitability. From the beginning, we’re given the impression that we know exactly how this is going to end; mainly from the interview where Jack is told the story of the previous caretaker. As audience members, we know that this is a blatant foreshadowing of how Jack’s story as the next caretaker will end. The article also brought up the point of the history of violence associated with the hotel and, throughout the movie, we continue to get the impression of the inevitability and the warping of time to produce that violence. The history of the hotel is a violent one, and Jack was not going to break the cycle. Time is a flat circle in the hotel: everything that has happened will happen, and is happening all of the time, and interacting with each otherー which of course makes for a confusing and rather trippy movie-watching experience.
I truly did enjoy this movie more than I did last time, but I don’t understand why so many people think it’s that scary.
5. The Blair Witch Project – 1999
I need to start off by saying that I hated the characters of this movie… Halfway through the movie, I was impatiently waiting for them to die and hoped none of them escaped. However, my absolute favorite part of the movie, the lore, was enough to redeem it in my eyes. Everything the locals said in the beginning interviews was so important to understanding the ending and general sequence of events we get glimpses of as the story progresses. I saw a lot of “ending explained” articles and videos while doing a bit of research and reading afterward, and I found it hard to believe so many people didn’t actually get it. All the answers are told in the beginning, and I think what made this movie so enjoyable to me was getting to the end and realizing that it had been set up from the very beginning.
The theme of lack of religion comes back in this movie; however, the focus is on the added elements of technology, the occult, and respecting nature. Because it’s a found-footage style movie, the directors were able to add references to the reliance on technology, mainly through Heather’s desire to keep filming despite the deteriorating state of their health and circumstance. I believe that whatever was happening could have been avoided if Heather had just stopped filming. There is a whisper of “Stop now” during one of the scenes that, to me, implies the witch wanted them to stop filming and disrupting the environment, but they continued and were led to the house and their untimely deaths. They weren’t very respectful of nature while they traveled either, disrupting resting places, leaving behind cigarette butts and trash, and filming. Considering I didn’t like them, I’m allowing myself to say they deserved what they got…
All in all, although I didn’t adore it, I enjoyed watching it and would love to discuss theories about it with someone because this film’s lore is fascinating and deserves to be discussed in depth. I wasn’t particularly scared, but I felt a little more creeped out than normal. At times, I had to will myself to remember it was fake because of its found footage format.
6. The Ring – 2002
“F*CK YES. F*CK. YES.” This was the actually the first thing I wrote about this movie once I had finished it. I think my reaction speaks for itself, but I will elaborate anyways. I can’t tell you whether I felt scared or not, but I was definitely appreciative of the special effects and the plot, though. I think the fact that it leaned so much into the mystery-unraveling-on-a-deadline trope made the whole experience very much enjoyable. The false happy ending was truly my favorite part; and the inevitability of “this will happen again because Samara wants to keep doing it” vibe was the cherry on top of a very enjoyable film.
The Ring reflects a very poignant fear of technology, but also features a theme of selfishness. Richard Morgan was selfish and sent his daughter away; Anna Morgan wanted a child so bad, but when she got one and realized she was different, killed her; and Rachel leaves Noah’s new partner to discover his body and chooses to save her son and leave other people to the fate of Samara. The Ring also reintroduces that the belief in the inherent goodness of others could be dangerous to you. Rachel thought that releasing Samara was what saved her; that Samara was a misunderstood, little girl who just wanted to be found and loved, but was proved wrong when Samara killed Noah and showed her that she enjoys causing others torment.
I absolutely loved this movie experience. The plot and lore were giving urban legend, and every single clue they found along the way led them to a disturbing conclusion. I’m going to leave you with the first and last notes I took when watching this movie because they’re gold: “has the twilight blue tint” and “creepy mystery but happy ending…? I’m sus.”
7. The Conjuring – 2013
Let me begin by saying this was the first movie on this list where a jump scare made me jump! I got it on video by accident and when I sent it to my best friend, she said, “why do you look so happy?!?!”, and of course I was happy because it was the first time I had fallen for a jump scare in seven movies! I enjoyed this movie very muchー not so much the storyline; but because it’s based on a true story, there’s not much I can do about that. Oddly enough, I was less scared while watching this movie than I was while I did The Blair Witch Project. I think that, because of the overbearing “THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN TO CHRISTIANS/CATHOLICS, ANTI-WITCHCRAFT, CONVERT TO GOD” subtexts of the entire movie, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the scary and creepy factor. The movie ends with this quote “The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges on which one we elect to follow,” and, like I mentioned when discussing The Exorcist, I’m agnostic, so this quote made me roll my eyes. It felt too much like pro-Christian/Catholicism propaganda for me to be able to fully enjoy the entirety of the movie.
With similar themes to The Exorcist, it feels wrong to not compare them a bit. They have similar themes, although The Conjuring tackles them through a more modern, time-appropriate lens. I think the fact it relied less on special effects and more on the camera work elevated the whole movie. It was at this point that I really began to appreciate the cinematography and camerawork of these movies because there were sometimes when I went back just to follow the camera and see details in the background. So, while I understand why people would feel scared watching this movie, I didn’t feel that much fear.
8. It – 2017
Well… I think I need to be transparent about this movie. I’ve read the book, seen this movie several times, and even got a tattoo inspired by the book/movie… I can’t say it’s my favorite, but I must admit It was very impactful. Everything from the plot to the characters to the special effects combines perfectly to create an enjoyable movie-watching experience for me.
I think an aspect of this movie that got it into these lists is the fact that it takes advantage of all the classic childhood fears; the dark cellar, the creepy, haunted house on your block, clowns, bullies, etc. However, there’s another aspect that I feel adds to the scary factor: Pennywise itself. Pennywise represents so much within the context of the movieー it is fear, it is inevitable, it is innate, it is Derry. And the fact that the antagonists of this big presence, of fear itself, are children, makes it feel hopeless. This was the first movie on this list in which the heroes are the children. Most of the others don’t even have kids or they’re there as vehicles for added shock. The sense of hopelessness and the inevitability of their untimely death at the hands of It makes the movie very dark and bleak. However, you realize very soon that this assumption is wrong. The kids are stronger than you thought they were, and together they do it, they kill It. Then, there’s the scene where they promise to come back should it start happening again, and that hopelessness returns full force because how lucky could they be a second time?
That was a lot of fancy words; clearly, I’ve had time to think about this, haven’t I? With It, I wasn’t particularly scared, not this time or the first time I ever watched it. I don’t even remember feeling scared while reading the book, going so far as to read it at night and before falling asleep with no problems. I do, however, deeply enjoy watching this movie and seeing these characters interact with each other and their fears.
9. Hereditary – 2018
With Hereditary, we firmly move into movies I deeply loved watching. I didn’t just enjoy watching this oneー I loved watching it (same with the last on the list.) The attention to detail and use of color, stage, and props, made the story of this family absolutely haunting. The way we see grief and trauma break this family apart, but also the way we could tell the cracks were well established before anything happened, was incredible. The representations of mental health and family trauma were truly evocative, and, combined with the occult and supernatural elements, Hereditary makes for an incredibly entertaining film to watch. Watching it from the audience’s perspective, I think the cult and possession are a metaphor for the generational trauma Annie’s mother left her. Annie’s attempt to break the cycle ultimately failed and she passed it on to her children, Peter and Charlie, who never stood a chance at breaking it and succumbed to the plan left in place by their grandmother.
The representation of mental health in this family is something that deserves its own article, but I will try to be brief. From the beginning, I could tell that this family had its issues. Starting with Annie, she exhibited narcissistic behavior from the very beginning. One of her lines in the movie really brought this point home to me. In one scene, she says, “I’m the only one that can stop this.” Meanwhile, she doesn’t even know what “this” is and ends up making the whole situation worse. Joan validates Annie’s emotions and gives her the attention she has been craving, only to be led astray and doom her family to the plan Leigh had put in place years and years before. The miniatures we see her making throughout the film are recreations of some of her more traumatic experiences, and extensions of Annie herself. She doesn’t use them to process her emotions or grief, but it seems like she makes them to relive the traumatic events. I interpreted Annie as being addicted to being in a perpetual state of mental illness. She doesn’t want to feel better; but rather, she wants to stay wallowing in her grief and depression.
Annie’s relationship with Peter, her son, is another topic that could get its own article. Annie’s narcissism and desire to stay mentally ill restrict her from fully connecting to her son. During their fight at the dinner table, and before then, she does nothing but throw all the blame at Peter and talk about how it affects her, with little to no regard for what her son had been feeling. “Nobody admits anything they’ve done,” she said as if to validate her argument, but only incriminated herself since she wasn’t admitting to many, many of the things she’d done before.
At this point, this movie deserves its own article, but I will cut myself off here and simply add another appreciation to the director, Ari Aster, because it was simply an incredible film. If you’d like to read more analyses of the movie, I recommend this one!
10. Midsommar – 2019
Both Hereditary and Midsommar have the same director, which means I love this director because he has made two absolutely fascinating movies that quickly climbed my list of favorites. There’s so much I want to say and so much to appreciate about this film, I’m not sure where to begin. So, I’m starting with the foreshadowing that is rife throughout the whole film. From the very first shot of the film to the set in its entirety, the whole plot is painted on the wallsー if only you look closely enough. His use of mirrors to show the separations between characters, like the alienation between Dani and Christian and his friends, was mind-boggling. The use of light and colors to establish the ambiance of the film is incredible. Usually, horror movies might begin with brightly colored lighting and gradually shift into darkness as the plot unfolds, or maybe they’re dark from the very beginning. However, this movie begins with a lot of darkness and dark colors and then makes the shift towards brightness and light to establish a sense of otherness, of goodness. Harga is brightly colored and cheerful, and the outsiders all use darker colors as if to say they’re bringing the darkness of the outside into their bright paradise. All the outsiders remain in their dark clothes, except Dani. Before she’s asked to participate in the maypole dancing and changes into their clothes, she’s wearing one of the first brighter pieces of clothing she’s seen with in the whole film.
The director has stated that he wrote this to be a breakup film, and that is 100% what I saw it as. Midsommar isn’t about a cult indoctrinating a young college student, it’s about Dani’s journey of leaving behind a toxic relationship and her old self and finding a community and family that accepts and supports her. The director, Ari Aster, truly says it best when he said “Christian and his friends, they’re all walking into a folk horror movie and that’s what the movie is going to be for them. But for Dani, by the end it’ll be revealed that in fact the movie is a fairy tale only for her.” Midsommar is Dani’s fairy tale story; it’s her happily ever after. For the rest of the outsiders, and the audience, it’s a folk horror film. And there’s something to be said about the outsiders who end up dead. They all disrespect one aspect or several of this community. The British couple loudly proclaim their disgust over their traditions; John digs into their customs for personal gain, going so far as to disregard their wishes and photographing their scripture; Mark blatantly disrespects all of them with his focus being on all the wrong things (drugs, women) and desecrating a sacred area for the Harga with no remorse after finding out its significance, and Christian disrespects Dani by cheating on her. In my opinion, they deserved it. And good for Dani, getting her happily ever after and a cathartic experience.
Before my conclusion to this little experiment, I need to say my piece for Ari Aster because I truly fell in love with his directing. First, his use of transitions and camera placements and movements to show how depression or mental illness can affect your perception of time was absolutely incredible (right up there with the classic Bella’s depression months scene in Twilight New Moon). The sudden changes of setting or time, more so in Hereditary than in Midsommar, are very accurate depictions of depression because that’s exactly how it feels. He also uses these same techniques in Midsommar to depict the loss of time while using psychedelics. One second, you’re at the dinner table, then suddenly you’re at school as if no time has passed, and day turns to night in the blink of an eyeーone moment you’re running through the woods, and then suddenly you’re being woken up. Secondly, in Midsommar, his use of subtle special effects to show how it feels to be on psychedelics was immaculate. It’s just noticeable enough to make you perceive it and have it affect your perception, but not too obvious to make it distracting. Absolutely awesome. I have no more words.
Thank you for sticking around for this long! I hope you enjoyed all of my thoughts and ramblings about these movies. At the end of it all, I realized that the most recent the movie, the more I enjoyed them, which sort of shows that horror movies are more or less made for the audience they’re intended for at the time of release. After watching these films, I can honestly say that I have truly developed a deep appreciation for directors and camerawork. There’s one type of shot I noticed several times in the more recent movies where they go from right side up to upside down then back while following the movements of a character that I absolutely loved. To conclude, I was never really scared and loved the movies with more mystery wherein I felt more anticipation than anything, more than the others. The Exorcist really lowered my expectations quite a bit for the type of emotions I would have while watching these movies. I laughed more than I thought I would and definitely discovered some unlikely new favorite movies and tropes. I hope this motivates you to do the challenge too, but keep in mind I am not the standard, and have been told it’s not all that normal to watch movies like The Conjuring right before going to sleep and being unaffected. Having said that, watch these movies at your own risk…