Last Updated on October 6, 2021 by
Still, it is reasonable to credit Steven Spielberg as if not a father, at least as a pioneer in the horror genre subdued over the last few years (but frankly there has been a good while, as the list below soon reveals).
The classic Jaws (1975) premiered over four decades ago, but even today many horror filmmakers have elements of that film to thank. The fact that Spielberg chose not to show the shark himself in the picture during much of the film was not because it was a conscious, artistic approach. It was simply because the shark in most angles looked so obviously fake and cringed so much that people tore their hair and doomed the movie. It turned out, on the other hand, to be a kind of unconscious genocide on the part of Spielberg, which gave rise to a genre in horror where uncertainty has become a keyword.
The subtle horror movie, the psychological thriller or the lo-fi horror – whatever you want to call it, that kind of horror movie where ignorance of what scares the viewer acts as fuel is here to stop.
There are a plethora of horror movies of immensely mixed quality every year, where the usual recipe with cheap jump scares replaces each other and is followed by a lousy makeup actor who is supposed to portray some sort of being that terrorizes the protagonists. Nonsense. It is purely objective so incredibly unpleasant not to know exactly what it is you are afraid of. To always sit like on needles but never get to see what is clearly frightening one. It’s just something. Sometimes we get a glimpse, but for the most part – uncertainty.
In this post, we have listed our top picks of really scary movies that will terrify you.
Top Horror movies
Let the Right one In (2008)
Just as It follows, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One Come in just about everything: drop-chin-good-looking photo (signed Hoyte van Hoytema, who shot small films like Dunkirk, Interstellar and Specter), extremely good script. We should not forget the brilliant legend Per Ragnar as the vampire’s good man and brutal blood collector.
The vampire genre has basically died out by this time, but when Let the Right come in, the 2008 premiere burned the world with a passion for everything spelled vampire, and the movie about the vampire arriving at Blackeberg stepped in and did something completely unique with a pretty slim and by that, frankly hospitable genre.
The Shining (1980)
When we look back at the history of film, we can think of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining. Although the author of the film’s publisher, Stephen King, is widely known to have abhorred what Kubrick did with his book – King must have said, among other things, “there is a lot to like about the film.
It’s like a really nice Cadillac without an engine inside. You can sit in it and enjoy the leather scent, but not go anywhere ”- The Shining is a giant masterpiece. A massive, abandoned hotel located in equally deserted mountains, a father slowly losing his mind and sick amounts of blood seeping out of elevators. Everything directed by one of the greatest ever, and the photo is of course flawless. Should you also mention that Kubrick fried lots of footage filmed from a helicopter, which was later used by Ridley Scott for one of the fifty versions of Blade Runner?
The Witch (2015)
Director Robert Egger’s debut film The Witch is about a family in New England in the 1630s. Deep believers, they live a quiet peasant life after being banished from a Puritan colony due to religious differences. One day, their newborn son disappears, and it soon becomes apparent to the family that a witch has kidnapped and murdered their baby.
The rest of the film is a cavalcade of incredibly fine photos, unpleasant moods and many twists and turns that make the viewer sit like a needle. Just as a psychological horror movie should do. Much of the scary in The Witch comes from pure speculation, even though it has its moments of classic graphic gore. One does not immediately feel the top mentally after watching The Witch.
The Neon Demon (2016)
Initially, it should be noted that the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn makes extremely special films that in no way fall within the commercial spectrum. It gave him a key to the international film scene. He has since squeezed out arthouse projects such as Drive (successful) and Only God Forgives (less successful).
The first one looks like a thousand with a fantastic soundtrack and, despite a fairly thin storyline, is still a good fucking role with Ryan Gosling starring as the oldest Hollywood stuntman and getaway driver by night. Only God Forgives is full of ultra-violence and has a pseudo-intellectual agenda that unfortunately does not work at all. The Neon Demon then? Just as with Drive, there are two sides to the story – some love, some love to hate. Jesse (Elle Fanning) moves to LA to become a model and meets a group of women who live by the motto that a beautiful surface is everything. From there everything becomes really uncomfortable, and together with the aesthetically perfect photo, The Neon Demon still becomes something for the history books.
It Comes at Night (2017)
In a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, where a deadly infection has erupted into the world, Paul and Sarah live with their son Travis and their dog Stanley in a remote cabin far out in the woods. We viewers have no idea where they are located geographically, which impedes a kind of claustrophobic feeling.
They will soon be visited by a family who eventually also move into their cabin. Just as in The Witch, much of their fear is speculation, though the deadly infection is highly real. Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot (Girls) play the lead roles as heads of families. It Comes at Night makes a lot of money on just speculating on the increasingly paranoid protagonists, and the growing feeling of discomfort is the film’s large inventory.
A Quiet Place (2018)
The premise of A Quiet Place can sound like the worst nightmare to all of us parents. Actress John Krasinski, probably best known from American The Office, has directed and starred as the father of a family of four people trying to survive in a strange post-apocalyptic world, where mysterious creatures reacting to sounds ravage.
This means that the family needs to be completely silent during all hours of the day. In other words, a nightmare for anyone who has children and understands the challenge of trying to get a child to hold the snatch when they absolutely cannot be whipped.
Like smothering a gaping laugh in an urgent classroom. Extra bad luck for this particular family is that only one of two children has functioning hearing – the non-hearing roars loudly in the trailer, invoking the monsters on at least one occasion. The fact that John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, who play the female lead in the film, are a kind of Hollywood dream couple who had just had their second child when A Quiet Place landed on Krasinski’s lap really only makes it more interesting. It is all about personal chemistry, which you can assume that the real spouses have. A Quiet Place is great horror movie and a continuing nightmare scenario for all parents out there.
Halloween (1978)
Teenage angst, middle-class suburban angst, sex, and death are not so shy, power-seeking cues when describing John Carpenter’s revolutionary slasher movie Halloween. The film not only meant Jamie Lee Curti’s big breakthrough as a scream queen but was also the starting point for the modern horror movie. Simple synopsis: A six-year-old Michael Myers murders his own sister during the Halloween night of 1963. 15 years later, he will be brought to trial and picked up at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. Myers flees from there in a stolen car and returns to his hometown.
Things happen and Myers is on his killing again. Lee Curtis, by the way, plays Myer’s second acid, which he is looking for a lot more. John Carpenter succeeded with Halloween in creating a very peculiar feeling and has since been the crowned champion of the genre. Had it not been for Carpenter we might never have had directors like Quentin Tarantino, Adam Wingard or David Robert Mitchell. Carpenter’s long, lingering shots, exquisite aesthetic sense and ability not to bet all bullets on blood, splatter and pronounced violence make him a wonderful guy who makes a movie because he loves shit, passionately.
In Halloween, it’s not so much about the killer Myers being unpleasant in itself, it’s the fact that the bastard seems to be able to show up from anywhere, anytime, that makes it completely masterful. See also Carpenter’s monster reel The Thing for a typical example of the director’s skill when it comes to creating a completely paranoid feeling, by letting his characters thrust into a claustrophobic space. Everything orchestrated by electronic, suggestive music barring paranoia.