Top 10 Scariest Movies

Recently watching Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In and its American remake Let Me In and thoroughly enjoying both, I was curious what my favorite horror movies were.  Going off of my IMDb ratings for the myriad of scary movies I’ve seen in years past, I was able to narrow things down to a list of the best ten movies to get your blood pumping.
While most of these films would sit solely in the horror genre, some cross over into other fields like science fiction or suspense.  However, the entries below are my favorite examples of movies that get viewers holding tight to one another, covering their eyes in order to not see the pain and gore coming next, or even leaving a bathroom light on or double-checking a closet for monsters after the final credits have rolled.  Some of the movies are the best in producing screams during the film and others have lasting effects from childhood that still haunt our dreams.
It should be noted that the title is a little misleading.  While most of these movies received high marks because of the literal fright experienced from the footage onscreen, a few were simply well-made, landmark movies that replaces cheap thrills and bloodcurdling violence with quote-worthy dialogue, iconic villains, unforgettable scenes, and award-worthy performances.  They aren’t on the list because they will have you crawling to your parents’ bed at night for comfort, but they are superbly done films that will have you on the edge of your seat.
Next to each title I have listed the IMDb rating for the film from myself first and then the general consensus rating.

Honorable Mention:
Some great horror movies that just didn’t quite make the list were The Innocents (8/8), Friday the 13th (8/6.3), and Misery (8/7.8).
Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw was superbly formatted for cinemas in 1961 as The Innocents with Deborah Kerr as governess Miss Giddens, who watches over two small children at a country estate in England.  It is a splendid psychological thriller as you never are sure whether the events in the movie are actually happening or if Giddens is mad.
Although the series is a punchline now and has spawned countless copycats that have made a farce of the horror genre, the original Friday the 13th is quite chilling for a first-time viewer.
What makes Misery so great is Kathy Bates’s performance.  As psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes, Bates alone is worth watching over and over again, making the rest of the film futile as all the viewer wants is more scenes with Wilkes in it.

10. Halloween (9/7.9)
Like Friday the 13th, the Halloween series, including the Rob Zombie revamp, is not worth the material it’s filmed on, minus the first in each group.  After more than three decades and 10 films, the sight of an immortal, knife-wielding maniac wearing a painted William Shatner mask doesn’t get the thrills like it did in 1978.  Popularizing the slasher film, John Carpenter made a “scream queen” out of then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of a famous actress who stars in another movie on this list.  The characteristics of this film that made it so unsettling were the lack of motive for the killer, Michael Myers never uttering a word of dialogue, the first-person camera shots to represent the killer’s point of view, and the moody soundtrack. Halloween started a new trend of moviemaking that was followed by popular hits like the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Child’s Play series, and not so great slasher movies such as Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, Sleepaway Camp, and countless others.

9. The Birds (9/7.9)
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 suspense movie The Birds is loosely based on the book by the same name from Daphne du Maurier.  Certainly not loaded with heart-stopping thrills and gore, The Birds is more of a thriller that has the viewer questioning the “what ifs?”  What if birds decided to turn on us and attack?  What if a town was suddenly turned upside down by the natural inhabitants that humans tend to so easily forget they coexist with?  What if there was no foreseeable end to the madness our former feathered friends would bring down upon us?  It is not the movie itself that is horrifying, but the impression it leaves behind that has us curious as to whether the animals we take for granted as friendly really are as safe to domesticate as we think they are.

8. Se7en (9/8.7)
Psychological manhunt films that have police detectives chasing after a themed serial killer are normally cheesy and the payoff is a bit of a letdown.  However, the Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey starring, David Fincher directing film is outstanding.  The seven the title is making reference to is the deadly sins: lust, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, pride, and gluttony.  Despite some overacting at the end of the film, each bizarre crime scene trumps the previous one in terms of the horrors and pain each victim must have suffered at the hands of his or her killer.  As the aftermath of each sin is realized and police learn more about the man they are chasing, we start to realize this John Doe character is the greatest psychopath movie audiences have seen since Norman Bates with possibly the most twisted criminal mind ever.

7. 28 Days Later (9/7.6)
Combining the two elements of zombies running fast and a virus infecting its host, which had been used before in zombie movies but never together, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later is a frightening tale of life in a lifeless world.  By 2003, zombie movies were played out and unoriginal in every way.  But Boyle put the focus back on what George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead had done so well, and that was the relationship between people during a living-dead catastrophe.  Instead of trying to come up with interesting zombie deaths and mutilations that hadn’t been seen before, Boyle’s story centered around three survivors who link up with a military unit and the broken system an apocalyptic world creates.

6. Night of the Living Dead (9/8)
Let’s just get this out of the way right now: Night of the Living Dead is a terrible movie.  There.  I said it.  If you’ve actually seen the 1968 independently made movie from George Romero and you objectively reviewed it you would have the same outlook as I do.  The acting is beyond lame.  The zombies are dumb, slow-moving, and generally not that scary.  The makeup is poorly done.  It is a B-movie like so many bad science fiction films before it, but the thing that made this B-movie stand out among the others was the characterization.  It is hard to use that word characterization in a zombie movie, but if you can get past the stiff performances and shoddy dialogue and take a look at the subtext of what is taking place in the film between zombie attacks then the viewer will see that this film is an allegory for the fears and bigotry that was going on at the time.  Since the original became such a hit, every director, including Romero himself, has used the allegory excuse to try and make their zombie movie stand out, but nothing has ever beat the original.

5. The Shining (9/8.5)
Jack Nicholson’s axe-wielding chase through a hedge maze.  A downpour of blood emptying out of an elevator.  Jack’s “Here’s Johnny” introduction in the broken door.  Ghost twins eerily standing in the middle of a hotel hallway.  All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.  Redrum!  This movie is chock-full of great moments.  Slowly watching Jack’s descent into madness and the supernatural occurrences throughout the hotel hypnotically entrances the viewer.  The film is open to a number of interpretations as to what is actually the cause and outcome of the film, but one shouldn’t worry too much about this and instead enjoy what is in front of them, that being some of the most bizarre happenings ever captured onscreen and a batty performance from Nicholson.

4. Psycho (10/8.7)
Another Hitchcock entry, this movie starts out as a standard dramatic film about a woman, played by Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother Janet Leigh, who steals money from her place of employment and hits the road for her boyfriend’s place.  It isn’t until midway through the movie that we realize what is being viewed is a horror thriller film about a motel-running nutcase with unresolved mommy issues.  The shower scene alone is worthy of getting Psycho on any top ten list when talking about suspense and horror.  The soundtrack also is quite famous today, even among listeners who have not ever seen the film.  Psycho also benefits from being one of the first movies to be made after the lifting of the Production Code, popularly known as the Hays Code, which allowed for scenes like the opening one with unmarried people sharing a bed giving the movie an authentic feel about it.  Tame by today’s standards of horror moviemaking where gore and mutilation is substituted for substance and suspense, Psycho is considered one of Hitchcock’s best films he ever made.

3. Jaws (10/8.3)
Like Hitchcock’s The Birds, this film is terrifying because of the what if factor.  I never once thought about what was out in the ocean when swimming at the beach as a kid until after seeing Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.  Like so many other great horror and suspense movies, the music is what sets the chilling mood whenever the shark comes around for a bite to eat.  One of the great benefits to this movie, which was unintended on Spielberg’s part, was not seeing what the antagonist looked like for most of the movie.  Robert Shaw delivered one of the greatest characters ever for cinema and Spielberg crafted a sensational picture that left audience members afraid to go into the water.

2. Alien (10/8.5)
So effective was Jaws in 1975 that Ridley Scott pitched his 1979 science fiction horror film as “Jaws in space.”  Trapped in the confines of a space craft as a monstrous extraterrestrial life form terrorizes the crew, Alien delivered on every level as a great science fiction, horror, suspense, and/or action movie.  Like nothing audiences had ever seen before, the alien that the film’s title is speaking of is a lizard-like creature with a blade-tipped tail and elongated, cylindrical skull with secondary jaw that acts as a tongue.  As if the appearance of the alien weren’t terrifying enough, the beast also has acidic blood running through its veins that eats through metal and nearly all other substances.  Alien appeals to all types of audiences, ranging from the slow-paced thriller types to gore-fest enthusiasts.

1. The Exorcist (10/8.1)
Maybe it’s my religious beliefs, maybe it’s that I’m a big weenie when it comes to the horror genre, but The Exorcist is by far the most unsettling movie I’ve ever seen.  The dreadful acts a demon does while possessing a 12-year-old girl have upset me so much I’ve only been able to watch the movie once.  In conjunction with the disturbing premise and tremendous execution of the film itself, urban legends of mishaps on the set, some of which are claimed to be true and others were surely popularized to help promote the film, make this movie seem as if it is in fact cursed by the devil himself.  An appalling shocker that should be viewed, even if once is the only number of times you can take it, The Exorcist is the greatest horror movie to ever be seen in theaters.