Psycho
1960 · Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock's shower of shrieking strings rewrote the rules and never let you feel safe again.
Find it on Amazon →The Exorcist
1973 · William Friedkin
Still the gold standard of demonic terror, a crisis of faith screamed through a child's body.
Find it on Amazon →Jaws
1975 · Steven Spielberg
Two ominous notes and a broken shark taught the world to fear the water forever.
Find it on Amazon →Halloween
1978 · John Carpenter
The Shape steps out of suburbia's shadows and invents the slasher with one relentless piano riff.
Find it on Amazon →The Shining
1980 · Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick's Overlook Hotel is a maze of dread where every symmetrical hallway hides madness.
Find it on Amazon →The Thing
1982 · John Carpenter
Carpenter's Antarctic paranoia and gooey practical effects still leave you distrusting everyone.
Find it on Amazon →The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
1920 · Robert Wiene
Wiene's jagged painted sets warped cinema itself into a delirious expressionist fever.
Find it on Amazon →Nosferatu
1922 · F.W. Murnau
Murnau's rat-clawed vampire remains the eeriest silhouette ever to darken a doorway.
Find it on Amazon →The Bride of Frankenstein
1935 · James Whale
Whale's electrifying sequel is a tender, witty, lightning-scarred masterpiece of the monstrous.
Find it on Amazon →Rosemary's Baby
1968 · Roman Polanski
Polanski turns a Manhattan pregnancy into slow-burning dread stitched from smiling neighbors.
Find it on Amazon →Night of the Living Dead
1968 · George A. Romero
Romero's grainy zombie siege birthed the modern undead and drew blood from a divided America.
Find it on Amazon →Don't Look Now
1973 · Nicolas Roeg
Roeg's Venice of grief and red raincoats builds to one of horror's most gutting reveals.
Find it on Amazon →The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
1974 · Tobe Hooper
Hooper's sun-baked slaughterhouse nightmare feels less like a movie than a crime you witnessed.
Find it on Amazon →Dawn of the Dead
1978 · George A. Romero
Romero locks survivors in a mall and turns consumer America into a feast for the dead.
Find it on Amazon →The Evil Dead
1981 · Sam Raimi
Raimi's cabin-in-the-woods riot is a berserk, blood-drenched calling card of pure invention.
Find it on Amazon →A Nightmare on Elm Street
1984 · Wes Craven
Craven's dream-stalking Freddy made sleep itself the last place you could ever hide.
Find it on Amazon →The Babadook
2014 · Jennifer Kent
Kent's pop-up book of grief proves the scariest monster is the one you can never quite bury.
Find it on Amazon →The Witch
2015 · Robert Eggers
Eggers conjures Puritan dread so authentic you can smell the rot creeping through the woods.
Find it on Amazon →Get Out
2017 · Jordan Peele
Peele's razor-sharp social nightmare made the sunken place an instant piece of the lexicon.
Find it on Amazon →Hereditary
2018 · Ari Aster
Aster's grief-soaked family nightmare tightens like a noose until the very ceiling betrays you.
Find it on Amazon →