The best Halloween movies of all time
From hardcore horrors to squeamish giggles, these Halloween movies will set the mood for the season
Halloween comes but once a year, but if you know what you’re doing, it’s possible to stretch the festivities out for a full month. As soon as the clock strikes midnight on September 30, true spooky season professionals grab in with a piping hot cup of candy corn-spiced cocoa, settle in under their 12-foot-tall plastic Home Depot skeleton, flip on the television and slip into a 31 days of horror movie binge-watching.
There is, however, a fine distinction between horror movies and Halloween movies. Sure, something good and artsy like Don’t Look Now might unsettle you, but it also might make you think too hard. But zombie attacks? Rampaging monsters? Chainsaw murders? All manner of things going bump in the night? That’s the stuff Octobers were made for. So to help you put together your queue, we’ve assembled the ultimate Halloween movie watchlist to scare the crap out of you this season.
Recommended:
Best Halloween movies
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Film
Horror
Let this be the year—if you haven’t already done so—to finally work up the courage to see Tobe Hooper’s criminally underrated classic, a top-rank satire of American class warfare (survival of the hungriest), teenage misadventure in the backwoods and one of the darkest masterpieces of the ’70s. Though shrouded in a gruesome reputation generated by that title, Texas isn’t particularly gory. It is, however, the scariest movie ever made.
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- Suspiria (1977)
Film
Fantasy
Dario Argento’s grim fairy tale doesn’t sound like much on paper: a timid American dancer enrols at a spooky European ballet academy and soon discovers strange phenomena are afoot. But that simple premise allows the giallo master plenty of room to stretch out, splattering the screen with unreal colours, staging some gnarly death scenes and blowing out eardrums via the truly hair-raising score from spooky Italian prog rockers Goblin.
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- Poltergeist (1982)
Film
Horror
Ghost stories got a high-tech makeover in this punishing suburban smash, now seen as a secret critique of American materialism: Your TV set will eat you. (It’s all the more surprising that it was “ghost-directed” by family-friendly producer Steven Spielberg.) Production values were lavish, including some early blue-screen work and stunning lighting, but a possessed toy clown remains the unforgettable scare.
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- The Thing (1982)
Film
Horror
It’s time to realize that John Carpenter eventually outdid Halloween: The 1951 version of The Thing is generally considered superior, but we prefer Carpenter’s brilliantly paranoid remake, which is both more faithful to its source (the John W. Campbell yarn “Who Goes There?”) and less clumsily expository. It also features the grossest special effects ever committed to film, courtesy of genius Rob Bottin.
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- Hereditary (2018)
Film
Horror
You know you’re watching a modern horror classic when the sudden decapitation of a child is only, like, the fourth most shocking thing to happen in a movie. Another good indicator: the movie is directed by Ari Aster. The New York horror wunderkind established himself as a master of the genre right out of the gate with this deeply unsettling debut feature about a family collapsing under the weight of its own buried secrets. You’ll be thinking about it far longer than is good for your mental wellbeing.
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- Creepshow (1982)
Film
Horror
Potentially traumatizing if seen at the right age, George Romero’s lurid homage to the histrionic horror of EC Comics is also his most enjoyable film. Filled with broadly funny appearances from up-and-comers like Ted Danson and Ed Harris, the movie also wrangles thousands of cockroaches for its final, notorious segment. Stephen King, writing in his peak period, penned the original script.
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- Alien (1979)
Film
Fantasy
People remember the film’s look: motes of dust hanging in the air, Jerry Goldsmith’s shivery orchestral score, an atmosphere thick with dread. But Ridley Scott’s chest-bursting horror landmark has a lot more going for it under the hood. It’s a sexually radical sci-fi film that turns men into pregnant hosts—and a woman, Sigourney Weaver, into the most iconic hero in genre filmmaking.
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- The Shining (1980)
Film
Horror
From a certain perspective, all of Stanley Kubrick’s movies are horror films: 2001’s terrifying cosmic loneliness, Dr. Strangelove’s cheery annihilation, the death duels from Barry Lyndon. Which is all a way of saying that when the director finally got around to making a proper thriller, he paradoxically produced the ultimate comic satire on the American family. With blood in elevators.
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- 28 Days Later (2002)
Film
Horror
Proof that digital video and zombie apocalypses go together like moldy peaches and rancid cream (we mean that as a compliment), Danny Boyle’s epic portrait of a post-traumatic stress disordered Britain is near perfect. Here’s where all those fast-running zombies come from—the flip side to Trainspotting’s euphoric running. But there’s also real poetry in the movie’s empty London.
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- Get Out (2017)
Film
Horror
A zeitgeisty sensation, an Oscar winner and (most importantly) a timely culture changer that brought us all to the "sunken place," Jordan Peele's enormously confident directorial debut did more for the reputation of horror—as a vessel for sociopolitical commentary—than any movie since Night of the Living Dead.
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- The Omen (1976)
Film
Horror
Every expectant mother, deep down, worries about the relationship they’ll have with their child, but none expects to raise the literal son of Satan – at least, they didn’t, until the release of Richard Donner’s blockbuster, which forever has parents checking their new babies for the mark of the beast. It’s not as artful as Rosemary’s Baby, but it’s much easier to watch, and still chills to the bone.
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- The House Of The Devil (2010)
Film
Horror
An unabashed exercise in retro horror, director Ti West’s excellent throwback to the Satanic panic slashers of the 1980s gets so many period details right that halfway through you’re liable to think you’re watching a video nasty grabbed from a rental store shelf during the Reagan years. A financially desperate college student (Jocelin Donahue) takes a babysitting job at a creepy house in the country, and it’s all pizza and solo Walkman dance sessions…until she gets a bit too curious about what’s behind the locked door upstairs.
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- Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
Michael Dougherty’s franchise non-starter had a inglorious rollout, but has since accrued a cult following thanks to its status as a Halloween movie that actually ties into the sugar-powered holiday. LIke most anthology films, Trick ‘r Treat moves in fits and starts, but when it hits – especially in a segment featuring the great Dylan Baker as a school principal moonlighting as an inept serial killer – it’s a bloody great time. Meanwhile, the film’s mascot, a burlap sack-masked moppet named Sam (as in ‘Samhain’), is an all-time great Halloween ghoul who does incredibly nasty things with lollipops, making for a deliriously offbeat horror confection.
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- The Exorcist (1973)
Film
Horror
What is up with these hippies, swearing at their parents, laughing at authority and vomiting up their dinner? They sure could use some talking to by a priest. (Never let anyone tell you that horror doesn’t express the anxieties of the moment.) The pea-soup industry still hasn’t recovered from its product’s memorable “cameo” in this film. The power of Christ compels you to see it again.
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- The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Film
Horror
The film that forever changed zombie cinema by introducing the undead’s hunger for braaaaains, Alien scribe Dan O’Bannon’s punk-rock zom-com is the rare hybrid that nails both the scares and the laughs. The former come courtesy of some of the goopiest reanimated cannibals ever put to film; the latter is courtesy of a game cast that knows to go full ham before themselves becoming dinner.
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- Halloween (1978)
Film
It wasn’t the first slasher movie per se, but John Carpenter’s ingenious minimalist nugget about suburban teens and an unstoppable killer is easily one of the most influential horror films ever—especially for its percolating synth score, echoed as recently as It Follows. Jamie Lee Curtis is the last word in “final girls,” and that faded white mask still gives us the cold sweats.
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- Candyman (1992)
Film
Horror
Bernard Rose’s baroque Clive Barker adaptation has grown in status over the years thanks to its thoughtfully gruesome themes of gentrification and violence against the Black community (Nia DaCosta’s recent reboot tugged at the same threads and became a bona fide hit). But the real reason for Candyman’s staying power is simple: It’s scary as hell. In riffing on the old Bloody Mary urban legend – say his name five times and you’ll be hooked! – the film takes on its own mythological status as both a dare-to-watch sleepover staple and an eerie mood-setter for the season.
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- The Conjuring (2013)
Film
Horror
Old-school horror fans rejoiced and forgave director James Wan for Saw: His summer sensation proved that certain tricks and devices won’t ever go out of style when deployed this stylishly. Conceived like a forgotten Nixon-era classic and set in the autumn of 1971, Wan’s possession shocker reminds us that if the creaky house ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
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- The Changeling (1980)
Film
Horror
A classic vengeful-ghost story with Shining vibes, Peter Medak’s supernatural chiller about a grieving composer holed up in a creaky old house raises goosebumps with the barest of elements – at least until the fiery finale. Medak gets more out of a rubber ball bouncing down a set of dark stairs than other directors manage with a whole swimming pool full of stage blood.
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- The Guest (2014)
Film
Thrillers
Who knew Dan Stevens, aka Downton Abbey’s urbane Matthew Crawley, would make such a chillingly charismatic psycho killer? Adam Wingard, evidently. The Guest director gives him the bad-guy role of a lifetime as the ex-soldier who returns from Afghanistan and inveigles his way into the lives – and homes – of his KIA (supposed) bestie. The outcome surfs the line between horror, action flick and thriller in glorious, wantonly bullet-strewn style. Treat yourself.
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- An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Film
Comedy
This near-perfect blend of Jewish humor and horror from John Landis (Animal House) was a seminal movie for burgeoning cinegeeks and Fangoria subscribers in the ’80s; thankfully, it’s also one of the few scary comedies from the era that doesn’t seem dated. The transformation scene, ingeniously set to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising,” remains a highlight.
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- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Film
Horror
Pay your respects to the late Wes Craven by returning to his most enduring creation, a dream killer with razors for fingernails. You know his name. And yes, that is indeed Johnny Depp getting wasted in the water bed, one of the movie’s bloodiest kills. This film has a deeper level (expressed by mom Ronee Blakley), about the sins of the parents being returned upon their children.
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- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Film
Horror
Flesh-eating “ghouls” (“Yeah, they’re dead—they’re all messed up”) terrorize a farmhouse in a movie that invented an entire subgenre: Today we know these creatures as zombies. George Romero’s budgetary limitations, far from being a hindrance, actually contribute to his film’s nightmarish atmosphere. There’s a racial allegory here, too, for those who want it.
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- Scream (1996)
Film
Horror
Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson’s winkingly gruesome send-up of the slasher genre completely changed ‘90s horror cinema, but no film of the era matches Scream in its barrage of scares and meta asides. The opening is a bait-and-switch that would make Hitch proud, while the brisk, brutal film that follows manages to fully dissect horror history while paving the way for its future. In a real-world meta twist, Scream has become a generation’s answer to the famous question posed by Ghostface: ‘What’s your favorite scary movie?’
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- The Babadook (2014)
Film
Horror
Aussie Jennifer Kent’s supremely confident first feature already feels like a horror classic, restoring the genre to its psychological prestige while turning the monstrous-mommy gimmick on its head. Inventive, recognizably real and scary as fuck, the film staked out a shadowy domestic terrain last dominated by Roman Polanski—Kent may have actually outdone him.
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- Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Film
Comedy
A magnificent exercise in escalating unease, Polanski’s poker-faced adaptation of Ira Levin’s neogothic best-seller follows the harrowing gestation of Manhattan mom-to-be Mia Farrow as she unwittingly carries the devil’s offspring. We’re not quite in a documentary—Roman Polanski is too careful with his camera—but it might as well be one, set on the same wing as the Draper residence.
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- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Film
Horror
George Romero’s belated sequel to his first masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead (it’s coming), gives the zombie material a satirical spin, frequently undercutting the tension in order to poke fun at consumer culture: The heroes have barricaded themselves in a banal shopping mall where they live out their lives like birds in a gilded cage. Show this one to anyone who thinks horror is dumb.
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- The Ring (2002)
Film
Horror
J-horror, a millennial revolution in Japanese cinema, can be traced back to Hideo Nakata’s 1998 supernatural thriller about a cursed VHS tape that imposes a lot more than late fees on its unlucky viewers. When Hollywood decided to do a remake, an unusual amount of thought went into it, beginning with the casting of spooked Naomi Watts. Director Gore Verbinski actually improves on the original.
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- Jaws (1975)
Film
Or, as we like to call it, Three Men and a Carcharodon Carcharias. The original blockbuster and still one of the most immaculately constructed, Steven Spielberg’s scary AF sea movie lingers in the mind longer than most straight-up horror movies: anyone with an enduring phobia of sharks can probably trace it to Jaws. Robert Shaw’s account of the USS Indianapolis could be the spookiest campfire tale in the movies too.
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- Sleepaway Camp (1983)
In most respects, Sleepaway Camp is a standard post-Friday the 13th slasher flick about a killer running loose at a summer camp. But its psychosexual undertones build up to one of the most bizarre twist endings (and final images) in the entire horror canon – one that’d probably get thinkpieced to death if it came out now, but will still hit modern audiences with a visceral shock.
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- Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Film
Horribly disfigured and isolated in her rural mansion, a young woman aches for an identity that never formed. Her brilliant surgeon father, still guilty over the accident that caused her deformity, grafts the faces of unsuspecting victims onto his daughter. Beyond icky, this morose French masterpiece sneaks up on you. It may be greatest psychodrama not made by a Swede.
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- The Fly (1986)
Film
Horror
Jeff Goldblum’s queasily eloquent performance as a genetically modified scientist, along with that of Geena Davis as a charmed journalist who becomes worried about him, elevate this remake well above its hokey ’50s predecessor. It’s arguably David Cronenberg’s finest film: Who knew he could do romantic tragedy as confidently as he could gross us out with his signature body horror?
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- Psycho (1960)
Film
Horror
Working with his unfussy TV crew from Alfred Hitchcock Presents and shooting in black and white, Hitch ended up producing one of his more adventurous thrillers, brutal for its day and boldly perverse. This director runs circles around most of the filmmakers on our list; we’re only placing Psycho near the bottom because its horror comes in just a handful of scenes (one of which all but invented the slasher).
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- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Film
Science fiction
While not as faithful to Jack Finney’s novel as the 1956 adaptation, director Philip Kaufman’s Me Decade take on creepy conformity works sensationally well on its own terms, thanks to sharp, semisatirical work from Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Brooke Adams and Leonard Nimoy. The true star of the movie may be its ominously modern San Francisco, a place where the counterculture is dying.
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- It Follows (2015)
Film
Horror
A catastrophically awful date movie – you will keep it in your pants after sitting through this – but a brilliant horror movie that’s perfect for a Halloween night in. Maika Monroe is Jay, a college student frazzled by the discovery that her one-night stand has invited some kind of relentless shapeshifting demon into her life. Director David Robert Mitchell riffs on ’80s horrors but his debut film is very much its own thing. It Follows’s stylish, chilly atmosphere is, as they say, a mood.
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- Audition (1999)
Film
Two Japanese men are getting drunk in a bar. They grouse about their industry (the movie biz), women, their country. “It’s like a game of torture,” one says. Suddenly, the other has an idea: auditioning hot chicks for a fake film. You know their scheme is bound to end badly, but just how badly places Takashi Miike’s comeuppance thriller in the pantheon of pure pain.
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- Final Destination 3 (2006)
Film
The third time’s the charm for this underrated franchise devoted to free-floating death: Roller coasters run off their tracks, fast-food drive-in lanes turn into demolition derbies, and a weight lifter gets crushed by some heavy metal. Anchoring it all with unusual dramatic commitment is Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane). Warning: This movie will make you afraid of everything.
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- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Film
Comedy
Shaun reads like a zombies-vs-slashers spoof, but Edgar Wright knew, even in his debut feature, that homage is much more effective than mockery. Shaun is a brilliantly kinetic and hysterically funny apocalypse comedy, but the true miracle is the balancing act pulled off by Wright, Simon Penn and Nick Frost: The movie is slathered in enough viscera to keep gorehounds happy, but it’s also funny enough that even the squeamish won’t be able to turn it off once the entrails start hitting the floor.
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- The Descent (2005)
Film
Horror
Female spelunkers encounter some cave-dwelling creepy-crawlies, while Freudian analysts in the audience have themselves a ball amid pools of sickening gore. The alternate U.K. ending is more cynical, but either version works beautifully as a tale of misadventure in the darkness—all of it, paradoxically, in the name of bonding with your frenemies.
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- Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Film
Fantasy
Tim Burton’s lushly realised, adaptation-in-name-only riff on Washington Irving might just be his last great film. It’s certainly the most Tim Burton-y. This is a film chock full of twisted trees and dense fog in which a bevy of British acting royalty – Michael Gambon, Ian McDiarmid and Michael Gough among them – get their powdered wigs split by a hulking Headless Horseman who looks like Christopher Walken and moves like Darth Maul. It’s gruesomely over the top, but cartoonish enough to keep squeamish viewers from fleeing across the nearest covered bridge.
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- In My Skin (2002)
Film
Esther is a high-powered businesswoman. She enjoys signing big deals, going out to swanky parties and picking at that nasty scab on her leg. Actually, forget about the deals and parties—this scab is way too interesting. Better call in sick. Written and directed by its toothy French star, Marina de Van, this obsession thriller will unnerve you for weeks, until you find your own scab to pick.
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- Black Christmas (1974)
Film
Join the cognoscenti and bow to Bob Clark’s atmospheric sorority-house stalker—a huge influence on John Carpenter’s Halloween and other “the call is coming from inside the house” thrillers, but nowhere near as well-known. Superman’s Margot Kidder is the lovable drunk of the sisterhood, but don’t go pegging your affections on anyone; survival isn’t based on fitness.
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- Phantasm (1979)
Film
Science fiction
The first film in Don Coscarelli’s sci-fi horror franchise displays a depth of imagination that far outstrips its meager budget. After the residents of their small town begin dying off under strange circumstances, two teenagers begin to suspect the creepy local mortician, leading them to discover an interdimensional plot to enslave the living dead. From the villain known only as the Tall Man to his signature weapon, a flying, spiked steel ball, Phantasm is one of the more idiosyncratic entries to the horror genre and probably deserves a bigger audience than its (admittedly devoted) cult following.
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- The Funhouse (1981)
Film
Horror
Tobe Hooper would make much, much scarier films during his scattershot career (look to the top of this list for a few), but The Funhouse more than makes good on the promise of its title. In trapping some horny teens in a carnival attraction stalked by a bloodthirsty freak show castoff, Hooper unleashes the scares with the goofy glee of a carnival barker with a butcher knife. It’s silly, yes, but so are the attractions that Hooper so ably evokes in crafting a slasher that makes you giggle even when you’re on edge for the entire ride.
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- The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Film
Horror
If this title ranks lowest on our list, you can tell we mean business. Even with the volume pumped up, it’s less terrifying than creepy, but on those limited grounds, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s low-budget hit is pure gold. The scariest part is how these kids can’t put their cameras down, regardless of how much supernatural danger they’re in. Don’t say this movie wasn’t prophetic.
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