20 Terrifying Horror Movies

Last Updated on October 6, 2021 by Sean Donlevy

Horror movies. Either you love them or hate them.
If you love them, you have come to the right place. To help you find the best horror movies that will terrify you, we have compiled a list of what we think are some of the best horror movies ever made.

Hereditary

When Graham’s head Ellen dies, her daughter Annie and her family discover some cryptic and scary secrets about their family. The more the family finds out, the more they are assured that something evil is about to happen.

Rosemary’s Baby

If you want to see an old and classic horror movie, this is it. We get to follow a young couple who move into an old apartment building in New York – a house that previously housed devil worshipers. When Rosemary gets pregnant, she starts dreaming strange dreams and her neighbors seem all too friendly and caring.

The Shining

Jack Torrance is a sober alcoholic who wants to get away for a while to have time to write his book. He chooses to take a job as janitor at the remote and isolated hotel Overlook over the winter season. With him, he has both wife and son Danny – who also has a special ability to see the visions and events of the past. It turns out that something is different … with room 237. But what?

Exorcist

In this horror classic based on William Peter Blatty’s novel we take off in a quiet metropolitan area. In an elegant home, a young girl suffers from an inexplicable and mysterious ailment. Neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist understands what is happening. The mother, who is also a big movie star, asks a Catholic priest in desperation for help.

Orphan

The orphaned nine-year-old girl Esther’s foster family tragically dies in a fire and she escapes with distress and scarcity. Everything brightens when she comes to the Cole family. But then a classmate dies after a fall from a climbing position, then a nun is killed in the childhood home. Then do the new foster parents begin to doubt whether all these deaths really could have just been a coincidence?

Psycho

Secretary Marion Crane has led his gray life. She knocks the company’s cash and flies with it to meet her lover. On the way there she takes in a desolate motel but the nice motel owner Norman Bates.

Paranormal Activity

In true Blairwitch project spirit, we get to follow Katie and Micah who recently moved into a house. When the couple suspects it is haunted, they install surveillance cameras in the house, just to be able to prove that things happen when they sleep. A classic indie success that has received several sequels.

It Follows

After 19-year-old Jay and her guy take the step in their relationship and have had sex, nothing will be the same. She gets the feeling that someone – or something – is pursuing her. Something that is only a few steps behind her, and never seems to give up.

The Conjuring

Ed and Lorraine Warren are the world’s leading investigators of supernatural forces, which also means that the couple has seen both one and the other. But when called in to help a family plagued by dark forces, they are met by demonic forces no one has ever seen.

Get Out

The young, dark-skinned Chris is going to meet his white girlfriend’s parents out on their farm for the first time. He initially believes that the parents’ attentive and nervous ways most seem to be a result of not knowing how to handle their daughter’s dark-skinned boyfriend. But soon he discovers several things that transform the weekend from a rigid meeting with the parents into a complete nightmare.

Sinister

Ellison feeds on writing novels based on real crimes. To live up to his latest success, he seeks a true blood-drenching story and moves into a house where a family of four is hung.

Pet Sematary

Here, too, we find a family who are convinced that the move to the new house will mean a fresh start in life and a step right into their dreams. However, they do not know that they have just moved in next to a place built by children’s shattered dreams. A piece of land that hides a Native American burial ground. Their lives quickly take a shocking turn.

It

Several children suddenly disappear without a trace in the small American town of Derry. Then a bunch of kids decide to take the matter into their own hands and investigate what may have happened to their friends. The group is then forced to face its inner demons and the evil clown Pennywise.

Poltergeist

In this cult horror directed by Steven Spielberg, we get to follow a family that begins to communicate with spirits through their TV set. At first, the spirits seem friendly, but everything changes when the daughter suddenly disappears. Paranormal investigators are called in to help, and it turns out that they are dark and unimaginable forces they are dealing with.

The Babadook

The single mother is forced to provide for her six-year-old son alone after the father passed away in a violent car crash. As the son’s behavior becomes more and more strange: outbursts, insomnia, and fantasies about a monster in the house, the mother becomes worried. But it won’t be long before she realizes that there are evil forces in the house.

The Skeleton Key

Young woman Caroline Ellis resigns from her job as a nurse at a hospital in the city. Instead, she takes a job as a caretaker at home with an old couple, in a gigantic house, in the middle of Louisiana’s marshlands. Once there, she quickly begins to suspect that something is not right in the old house.

Fly

Scientist Seth Brundle has created a teleporter and will now do an experiment. By mistake, a fly happens to come into the machine and merge with Brundle. Slowly but surely, Seth begins to turn into a person he does not recognize.

The Ring

When four young people die seven days after watching a videotape, a reporter tracks up the tape and watches it. Now she has seven days to solve the mystery.

Alien

When Ellen Ripley and the rest of the crew of the Nostromo cargo ship are on their way home to Earth, they snatch an emergency signal from an unknown, alien planet. They decide to go there to help those in need. But it turns out to be a fatal mistake.