Top 10 Horror Films Filmmakers Should Study
The best horror movies are the kind that balance bone-chilling terror with a theme that tugs at inherent fears and anxieties in the human condition. Some horror movies, like the Friday the 13th series, convey self-indulgent nihilism, particularly with youth in Reagan-era America. Others like Don’t Look Now, explore the horror of grief like in the case of John (Donald Sutherland) who struggles with the tragic loss of his daughter.
In the name of Halloween, we compiled our Top 10 Horror films that we think every filmmaker should not only watch but study! We highlight why each movie stands out in the horror genre and how filmmakers explore the themes we fear.
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10. RAW
“A young woman, studying to be a vet, develops a craving for human flesh.”
Written and directed by Julia Ducournau, Raw explores the desire to conform that quickly escalates to obsessive blood lust. The protagonist Justine (Garance Marillier) is a lifelong vegetarian who consumes a rabbit’s liver as part of her initiation while attending veterinary school. What follows is a cannibalistic desire that reflects toxic societal pressures.
Like most great horror films, Raw also integrates other themes like self-discovery. The way in which Ducournau conveys humanity and our troubling social dynamics through intense body horror will make your skin itch.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 76%
- Genre: Horror, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 98 minutes
- Year of release: 2016
- Director: Julia Ducournau
- DP: Ruben Impens
9. THE DESCENT
“A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.”
After the tragic death of Sarah’s (Shauna Macdonald) family, she reconnects with six of her friends to go spelunking in the fictional Chattooga National Park, organized by Juno (Natalie Mendoza). Marshall is a master of subtlety, allowing his film to gasp in startling anxiety without the fear of obvious dialogue context. While the women descend into the caves, they also descend figuratively to their doom, one that seemingly manifests in the protagonist’s psyche.
No damsels here! The film stands out with a complete cast of female characters who contend against an underground civilization of cannibalistic cave dwellers.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 76%
- Genre: Horror, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 99 minutes
- Year of release: 2005
- Director: Neil Marshall
- DP: Sam McCurdy
8. THE THING
“A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.”
The Thing by John Carpenter places a team in the middle of Antarctica against an extraterrestrial alien that digests and replicates its victims. With themes like paranoia, survival, and identity, by the end of the film, we are left wondering who left is actually human. This suspicion sows tension which in turn heightens fear.
The film stands out in a few ways. For one, it doesn’t hurt having Kurt Russell as protagonist MacReady. The score was also composed by the late-great Ennio Morricone. It’s even got Wilford Brimley.
However, it’s through the wonder of makeup, puppetry, and practical effects that truly brings the Thing to life, making it a memorable piece of cinema.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 92%
- Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
- Length: 108 minutes
- Year of release: 1982
- Director: John Carpenter
- DP: Dean Cundey
7. ROSEMARY’S BABY
“A young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.”
Rosemary’s Baby takes the creep factor and turns it all the way up! Anytime you’re dealing with the devil or producing an antichrist, the horror is inherent to the rest of the plot. The film falls on the shoulders of the titular Rosemary (Mia Farrow) who sells the anxiety of having a baby in addition to a dreadful discovery that she doesn’t realize until it’s too late.
A brooding, macabre film, Roger Ebert makes the argument that the characters and story transcend the plot as opposed to most horror films that “are at the mercy of the plot.”
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 87%
- Genre: Horror
- Length: 136 minutes
- Year of release: 1968
- Director: Roman Polanski
- DP: William A. Fraker
6. GREEN ROOM
“A punk rock band is forced to fight for survival after witnessing a murder at a neo-Nazi skinhead bar.”
Green Room by Jeremy Saulnier takes the punk band, a scene with a history of attracting supremacist culture, and places them directly in the belly of the beast. The punk group The Ain’t Rights perform in a neo-nazi bar owned by a warlord and drug trafficker (Patrick Stewart). When they witness a murder, they must fight in order to have a chance at survival.
Green Room explores the theme of the other, particularly with Amber (Imogen Poots), a white supremacist. If she were not inside the green room with the band, she would most likely be on the side of the other skinheads. Perhaps more akin to reality, there is no strong moral compass other than a bunch of punk kids who are cornered and must fight against the cartoonish villains for survival. And yet, the craftsmanship and three-dimensional characters build the suspense in Green Room.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 75%
- Genre: Horror, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 94 minutes
- Year of release: 2015
- Director: Jeremy Saulnier
- DP: Sean Porter
5. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
“Oskar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl.”
Let The Right One In is far from your typical vampire film – in fact, it’s even beyond your atypical vampire film (i.e. Twilight). A bullied kid with parents who don’t want him befriends a vampire girl (Lina Leandersson), who herself has a dark secret.
What the film really does is reinvigorate the vampire subgenre where it explores themes of the outcast and loneliness that are utilized to make an even greater statement about adolescence and what it means to “fit in.”
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 90%
- Genre: Horror
- Length: 114 minutes
- Year of release: 2008
- Director: Tomas Alfredson
- DP: Hoyte Van Hoytema
4. A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
“In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.”
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour is a piece of Iranian cinema that not only shows the brilliance of Iranian storytelling but makes a feminist statement in a patriarchal culture. The Iranian horror film follows The Girl (Sheila Vand), a lonely vampire who preys upon men at night.
What sets this film apart from others is how it sparks a discussion about the objectification of women by men. While this is a problem that spans the world, very much including the West, the film centers in Iran.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 75%
- Genre: Horror, Drama, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 105 minutes
- Year of release: 2014
- Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
- DP: Lyle Vincent
3. IT FOLLOWS
“A young woman is followed by an unknown supernatural force after a sexual encounter.”
It Follows is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell and follows protagonist Jay Height (Maika Monroe) after a sexual dalliance leads her to keep a step away from an invisible monster that is more persistent than venereal disease.
While the STD allegory may be the most obvious part of this modern take on a slasher film, it’s really the certainty of death that follows its victims. Death, after all, is invisible. But the film also explores the concepts of sex and sexuality as well as coming-of-age themes in a more thoughtful way than its ‘80s horror genre predecessors.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 66%
- Genre: Horror, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 101 minutes
- Year of release: 2015
- Director: David Robert Mitchell
- DP: Mike Gioulakis
2. HOUSE
“A schoolgirl and six of her classmates travel to her aunt’s country home, which turns out to be haunted.”
House by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi is said to be “too absurd to be genuinely terrifying” by the Philadelphia Inquirer and a “baffling trip into postmodern nonsense” by CineVue. We’ll just call it fun as Ôbayashi turns the entire horror genre on its head.
Now that horror spoof movies have all but run the gamut since the ‘90s, House is a fresh perspective – even though its release was over 40 years ago. What sets this film apart is how it conjoins oddball comedy and architectural horror into a memorable movie that you just have to see for yourself.
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 79%
- Genre: Horror, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 87 minutes
- Year of release: 1977
- Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi
- DP: Yoshitaka Sakamoto
1. THE SHINING
“A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.”
The Shining by Stanley Kubrick stands as an example of what horror could and should be – and by some metrics, critics consider it the great American horror film. It has everything from a deep historical mystery, insane attention to detail, a story adapted from one of the great American horror writers, and a closet full of conspiracies that keep viewers guessing to this very day.
What can we say, it’s Stanley Kubrick after all. If you haven’t watched The Shining, what are you waiting for?
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%
- Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 93%
- Genre: Horror, Mystery & Thriller
- Length: 142 minutes
- Year of release: 1980
- Director: Stanley Kubrick
- DP: John Alcott