50 Unmissable Horror Movies
46. Let the Right One In (2008)
By the time the 21st century rolled around, vampire stories were all the same; then Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote “Let the Right One In”, giving vampires a bleak white landscape to the gothic grim. Tomas Alfredson would direct the film adaptation in 2008, presenting the story of bullied 12-year-old Oskar and his friendship with Eli, whose guardian may or may not be sourcing her with fresh blood in the Stockholm snow.
Alfredson’s decision to focus on the two outsider leads gives Let the Right One In an intimacy that it might have lacked had it been a more straightforward adaptation, and the glorious lead performances from the child actors give genuine weight and emotion to their narratives. The combination of Alfredson and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (who would go on to work with Jordan Peele and win the Oscar for best cinematography for Oppenheimer, 2023) gives the film a haunting, gothic quality, despite the lack of castles and cobwebs. It is simple and serene, and is punctuated by moments of unforgettable violence.
The film’s most famous sequence in the swimming pool sums this up. Never has a massacre looked and felt so poetic; we see both everything and nothing. Two years later, Hammer Films would produce a Matt Reeves-led remake, as one of the first first ventures since their 2005 revival. Despite Let Me In being fairly close to the original, it never quite matches the heartfelt truthfulness of Tomas Alfredson’s work. KJ
Recommended for you: Original vs Remake: Let the Right One In vs Let Me In
47. Paranormal Activity (2009)
In 2007, there were a trilogy of films being made that would truly send the tentative found-footage genre into the stratospheric mainstream. JJ Abrams produced the Matt Reeves-directed Cloverfield, putting a handheld camera in the midst of a monstrous alien apocalypse. In Spain, Rec gave a claustrophobic first-hand look at a zombie outbreak in an apartment building. Both films would create their own franchises and, in the case of Rec, a franchise of American remakes. The third film, Paranormal Activity, was made for just $15,000. It would be picked up and given a boost of $200,000 for reshoots and changes. Eventually released in 2009, the story of a couple documenting the supernatural occurrences in their home, would become one of the most profitable films of all time, grossing just shy of $200million at the worldwide box office.
An exercise in extreme minimalism, Oren Peli shot the film in seven days with almost no script, allowing the actors to improvise over rough situations and suggestions. As the little moments add up, the excruciating tension in the moments of static cameras becomes worse. We know that something will happen, but just not when or where. As a result, Paranormal Activity actively turns our expectations against us, dragging its scenes out longer than expected in order to throw us off the track. Jumps are there, but without the routine build-up. The final scenes chill the bones admirably, capping off a well-made, low-budget debut.
Held by Paramount for two years due to issues dealing with DreamWorks who had bought the film, the film slowly expanded across the USA, starting in 20 theatres, then expanding to 40, and later the whole country a month later, as a result of fan pressure and advertising online. Much as Friday the 13th had created instant demand for slasher films, the found-footage film exploded overnight. The Last Exorcism (2010), Apollo 18 (2011), The Devil Inside (2012), V/H/S (2012), and a plethora of others, appeared in its wake, along with several sequels. Off the back of just $15,000 of original film, nothing quite like the Paranormal Activity fever had happened before, nor has it in the decade-plus since.
48. The Conjuring (2013)
In 2011, James Wan directed Insidious for Blumhouse, proving that he could do more than just manage his Saw franchise. Catching the attention of New Line and Warner Bros, Wan was hired to direct an updated telling of The Amityville Horror (1977), drawing inspiration from the paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their investigations of the Perron family, who experience terrifying disturbances in their house in 1971, set the template for paranormal films that is still being used today.
Thanks to the fluid direction of James Wan, a presentation that have been a very standard haunted house film becomes something far more terrifying. It has its fair share of creaky doors and jump scares, but they’re so brilliantly constructed that the conventions are seemingly joyful once again. It’s like seeing a long-lost friend for the first time in years. Yet the film looks also to the future. The Conjuring, as Insidious had done before, blends the demonic possession film with the traditional ghost story, the Warrens facing evil with a crucifix in hand. This mixing of the two subgenres, whilst not previously unheard of, has very much become the norm for the studio horror film in the past decade. Night Swim (2024) and Imaginary (2024) are recent examples of just such a trend.
The film earned more than $300million at the global box office, becoming one of Warner Bros’ highest earners of the year. Bringing about numerous sequels and spinoffs, including three Anabelle films and two The Nun movies, the now-titled The Conjuring Universe has overtaken Saw, Halloween, and all of the others, to become the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time, with an estimated intake of over $2billion. Every ghost film now, if it’s going for straight scares, has to check itself against The Conjuring and its offspring. KJ
49. The Witch (2015)
Horror comes in cycles and waves. The Universal Monsters, the Hammer Horror films, the slasher flicks, the splatter films. In the 2010s, a new breed was on the rise. The so-called ‘Elevated Horror’ film was making its stance, eschewing blood and jump scares for the surreal, the metaphorical, the slow-burn dread. The Babadook (2014) is often cited as one of the earliest examples in this modern pantheon, but when you think of a film that really set it going, it is Robert Eggers’ feature directorial debut The Witch (2015) that comes to mind.
A puritan family of settlers in the new world are outcast from society but try to make their living in the dusty soil with poor yield. Centring around Anya Taylor-Joy in her feature debut, the family come up against evil forces in the nearby forest after baby Samuel is snatched. In a dizzying display of paranoia and desperation, the family struggle to hold themselves together as their situation becomes more dire. The witches in the forest present a seductive alternative to the scant living Thomasin (Taylor-Joy) maintains, and the struggle between loyalty and escape at any cost grows throughout the film.
With exorcisms and evil goats and levitating fire-dancers aplenty, the film nevertheless uses its surroundings and ambience to pack its biggest punch. It is the isolation of the film, as is the case with The Thing, that scares. There is no help. There is nothing else around. If you try to make a run for it, something will snatch you. It is a story of the conflict between agricultural civilisation and the gothic, hunting rural. Gathering a glut of awards and a box office return of tenfold its budget, it has helped bring a series of slower-paced, atmospheric horror films to the fore. In its wake would come Hereditary (2018), The Lighthouse (2019), Saint Maud (2019), and Relic (2020). It set up Anya Taylor-Joy for A-list celebrity stardom, got Eggers the trust of the studios and production companies to become the modern historical-horror king, and made sure that Elevated Horror was to be one of cinema’s biggest talking points of the 2010s and 2020s. KJ
50. Get Out (2017)
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a black man, agrees to spend the weekend with his girlfriend’s upper middle-class white family. He’s nervous, but Rose (Allison Williams) reassures him that it will all be fine. It isn’t fine. The family have some extremely concerning attitudes towards race and some even more disturbing secrets. As Chris delves a little deeper, it becomes increasingly obvious he is in grave danger.
Get Out is a whip-smart psychological horror with a formidable cast that includes Bradley Whitford, LaKeith Stanfield and Catherine Keener. And it is built around a brilliant script.
Unbelievably, Get Out was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut. Known predominantly for his comic acting, this film seemed to come out of nowhere. It is so cleverly handled, as common horror tropes are used to show the perniciousness of racism, while classic horror direction ensures an atmospheric and memorable visual feast. The film was revered for how it encapsulated the USA’s ongoing race conflicts and structural racism through allegory and metaphor during a period of great discomfort, making it not only incredibly powerful in its time, but a film that continues to hold power for as long as those structural prejudices are in place. ML
Recommended for you: Jordan Peele Movies Ranked
The reach of the horror genre is vast and inclusive of so many cultures, nationalities, languages, and allegories. Listing just fifty, from the pantheon of influential and important filmmakers the world over, was a monumental task. Were there any major films we missed out? Share the love by letting everyone know about it in the comments below.
The selections in this article were the combined efforts of The Film Magazine staff, with entries written by Kieran Judge (KJ), Martha Lane (ML), Margaret Roarty (MR) and George Taylor (GT). The introduction and conclusion have been contributed by editor and producer Joseph Wade (JW).
For more insightful movie lists from experts on cinema, follow @thefilmagazine on social media, including Facebook and X (Twitter).
Nice work everyone. Next year: 50 MORE unmissable horror films.
What a list, truly something for every horror movie lovers’ taste!