50 Unmissable Horror Movies
Iconic film director and horror pioneer John Carpenter once said that “We’re all afraid of the same things – that’s why horror is such a powerful genre.” Indeed, the Master of Horror should know, and who are we to argue about whether there’s a universal relatability to suffering? Cinema has proven time and time again that monsters lurking in the dark, killers hiding in plain sight, creatures from far-flung lands, and manifestations of our mental anguish, are terrible and shocking and horrifying in equal measure. For more than a century, these are the concepts and the tales that we as a global populous have returned to time and time again to experience the thrill of a ghost ride and the catharsis of safely confronting conscious and subconscious fears. We are all united in our dread and excited by crimson red.
In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, our staff of Bachelor’s and Master’s graduates have come together to establish the most significant horror film releases in history. Combining quality and artistic merit with influence, importance and social relevance, we have whittled down a longlist of more than 200 exciting, form-shaping, and genre-evolving films to what we believe to be the definitive list of 50 Unmissable Horror Movies.
All films listed here are presented in order of year, with each selection being numbered from 1 to 50. These selections are unique in their continued appeal, their influence on other films in their genre, and on wider cinema or culture; they cross eras, movements, and languages. We recommend that you bookmark this article and use it as a watchlist you can return to any time you’d like to experience the very best of horror cinema.
1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
All the way back in 1920, horror films were yet to be invented. George Méliès, father of the fantastical trick film, kicked it all off in 1896 with The Haunted Castle (which certainly has its fair share of bats and demons and cauldrons in its 4 minute runtime), and later films would have tension without being scary, but then Robert Weise entered the scene with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and birthed the horror genre as we know it, developing wider cinema’s German Expressionist movement for good measure.
Weise takes us to a German town and presents us with Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his somnambulist, Cesare (Conrad Veidt). Cesare can tell anyone anything, seeing all things in his trance-like state. When everyone goes home, however, Cesare stalks the streets, looking for murder.
With distorted set designs, exaggerated props, unusual lighting, and a pervading feeling of a world out of joint, Caligari presents a landscape of a fractured psyche and a distorted reality. The imagery is spooky and interesting, Cesare is a wonderfully eerie character, and you’ll remember the set designs and crooked landscapes for life; the story (that, to its credit, twists and turns,) is almost irrelevant to the film’s legacy. The general expression of an idea is the key, and that expression is the scary thing.
The manner of portraying the inner torment of a character through the mise-en-scene would come to define the German Expressionist movement. When Siegfried Kracauer published one of the first book-length analyses of a film movement ever in 1947, he titled it “From Caligari to Hitler”, and suggested that the Expressionist films, starting with Caligari, presented the psyche of the German people following the First World War. Agree with the idea or not, the film had an influence on the genre, on cinema, on film academia, and on wider popular culture. Its influence is almost impossible to measure. KJ
2. Nosferatu (1922)
Go back to 1922 and you’ll find very few vampires on film. Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” had come out only a few decades before (1897), and though it had been popular on stage, nobody had yet made a feature-length adaptation. Certainly nobody had gone to the written works “Carmilla”, “Varney The Vampyre”, or the original “The Vampyre” (from 1818), for their inspiration. In Germany, however, with the Expressionist movement getting into full swing, someone took a crack at “Dracula”… unofficially. Nosferatu (aka Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) breached copyright laws and got itself removed from screens by Bram Stoker’s estate. Only through people illegally hiding copied prints are we still able to watch the original vampire masterpiece.
The story roughly follows the plot of “Dracula”, with an Eastern European Aristocrat making his way to London, only to be discovered to be something far more than human. Max Shreck’s vampire is a far cry from the dapper, aristocratic, well-groomed seducer of modern times, and even of those gone before. He is rat-like, with long claws and stark eyes; a monstrous figure even before you come to understand his true nature. We’d had strange and bizarre creatures before Nosferatu, but Schreck’s Nosferatu is one of the first true movie monsters.
Sections may seem dated now, but that’s because we’ve seen countless films, scenes, and frames inspired by this film over the past century. The shadow on the wall creeping up the stairs is reflected in the shadow of the dinosaur on the bedroom wall in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, for example. Shreck’s Count Orlok rises from his coffin in a manor mirrored by Michael Myers sitting up in Halloween, too. Nosferatu is a film that remains strange and creepy, and perhaps more importantly was the template of the strange and fantastical elements of horror cinema for generations to come. KJ
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3. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Adapted from Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel of the same name, Universal’s The Phantom of the Opera follows the same plot as the book, with the mysterious Phantom (Lon Chaney) haunting the Paris Opera House in pursuit of one of its stars (Mary Philbin), with whom he is helplessly infatuated and willing to do anything to get his hands on.
Under the helm of Rupert Julian for most of the film (with reshoots overseen by several others), the Carl Laemmle production shows off lavish sets, a great story, and memorable moments, including the phantom creeping through the sewers underneath the opera house. The quality is such that when others come to adapt the novel, they still look to this film for inspiration.
The most influential moment of the film is without doubt the shocking reveal of the Phantom’s true face. Makeup was completed by actor Lon Chaney himself, and kept a secret by the studio until the film’s release (for maximum impact). The slow, creeping terror as Christine steps up to Erik whilst he plays, arms out to remove his mask, is one of the great suspense sequences in all of silent cinema. When the mask comes off, the revelation of the horrific face underneath is beyond all expectations. It’s a moment that changed film forever. KJ
4. Dracula (1931)
It took a while, but finally someone in the film industry got permission from Bram Stoker’s estate to make a feature film adaptation of “Dracula”… legitimately this time.
Despite having overseen The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Carl Laemmle was hesitant to go all in for gothic chillers. It would therefore be his son, Carl Laemmle Jr, who would oversee production on an adaptation of the stage version of “Dracula”, with a vastly different plot from the novel. Putting much of the action inside country houses, the 1931 version of Dracula nonetheless still follows Mina Harker (Helen Chandler), Lucy Westerna (Frances Dade), Abraham Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), and the regular crew of the novel, discovering that their new neighbour, Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), is in fact one of the bloodsucking undead.
Tod Browning’s film is a notoriously rushed job. At the beginning of the silent era, dubbing for different languages was not a technique yet crafted, so the alternative was to film two versions, one in English during the day, and one in Spanish during the afternoon. As a result, despite his great sets and moments of genius, there are some slips here and there, including a notorious piece of cardboard taped to a lamp for no reason. It’s also devoid of fangs or drops of blood on the neck, the kind of things you’d expect.
What made the biggest impact was Bela Lugosi. A Hungarian by birth, he learned his lines phonetically, leading to a steady, heavily-accented pronunciation of Dracula’s speech, instead of the fluent English the novel’s counterpart had attempted to learn. His creeping, almost balletic walk, mesmeric eyes, and incredible chemistry with Edward van Sloan as Van Helsing (both reprising their roles from the theatre) helped to create an immediate hit. As a result of this film, the true Universal Monster Movie boom was born. And, regardless of any other versions of the story (including the book), when you want to talk like Dracula, you mimic Lugosi. KJ
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5. Frankenstein (1931)
In an attempt to capitalise on the success of Dracula (1931), more gothic chillers and horror stories were produced. The Mummy and The Invisible Man would come in the next few years (1932 and 1933 respectively), but before those came James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). The birth of two icons of cinema in the same year from the same production company happens very rarely, but it happened in 1931.
Based on Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking 1818 novel of the same name, Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) heads up to his castle in the mountains to perform his experiments. Robbing graves for body parts, and a defective brain from a University, he sends his body up to get struck by lightning in a storm, bringing to life Boris Karloff’s iconic monster.
Known for taking liberties with the source material (making the monster mute, for example), Frankenstein nonetheless became the template for understanding the story. We have to consciously remember that the monster didn’t have electrodes in the neck, and that he isn’t meant to be green (the colour a result of Karloff’s makeup for the film). Yet Frankenstein is still astonishing even today. The final mob scene, gloriously shot, is chilling in its moral blurring; do we side with them or not? With a combination of Clive screaming ‘It’s alive!’, and Karloff’s dead-eyed, shambling, groaning creature, Frankenstein remains one of the all-time greats. KJ
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Nice work everyone. Next year: 50 MORE unmissable horror films.
What a list, truly something for every horror movie lovers’ taste!