Are these the best horror films ever made?

The Exorcist (1973)

“It was like nothing they had seen before”: so said Quentin Tarantino of audiences’ initial reaction to William Friedkin’s definitive account of possession and the struggle between light and dark. More than half a century later, the spectacle of 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) transformed into a hideous, demonic monster is still shocking. No less brilliant is the little-known Jason Miller as Father Damien Karras, who must save the girl – and his own faith.

Dead of Night (1945)

The granddaddy of all horror anthology movies. Architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) visits a large country house where the guests take turns telling spooky tales: from ghostly golfers (no, really) via a haunted mirror to Michael Redgrave as the ultimate crazy ventriloquist.

Let the Right One In (2008) 

A bracingly fresh and chilling take on vampire legends, directed by Tomas Alfredson, set in suburban Stockholm. Twelve-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) meets the strange Eli (Lina Leandersson), who tells him that they cannot be friends. Why? 

The Wicker Man (1973)

Dismissed by distributors on release – it ended up as the supporting movie to Nicolas Roeg’s wonderful Don’t Look Now – Robin Hardy’s tale of paganism and human sacrifice on a remote Scottish island has become one of the all-time great cult movies. Christopher Lee is brilliant as Lord Summerisle, whose ancestors have given the islanders back their “old religion”. Edward Woodward is the pious Sergeant Neil Howie, sent from the mainland to investigate the case of a missing girl. But what lingers in the memory is his horror as he sees what lies in store for him on the hill: “Oh, God! Oh, Jesus Christ!”

Get Out (2017)

Jordan Peele’s directorial debut is both a gripping horror movie and a sharp commentary on race relations in contemporary America. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) heads upstate with his girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), for a weekend trip to her very white family’s estate. “By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could!” says her neurosurgeon father Dean (Bradley Whitford). And that’s only the start of the weirdness.

28 Days Later (2002)

Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic classic is not technically a zombie movie – the monsters are not the undead but victims of a “rage” virus – but is still recognised as the film that reinvigorated the genre. Worth watching just to see Cillian Murphy as Jim waking from a coma in St Thomas’ Hospital to discover the streets of London utterly deserted. The movie was given a second wind during the pandemic by the weirdness of lockdown.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

There have been many spawn-of-Satan movies but none better than Roman Polanski’s original. Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into the Bramford in New York City – a fictionalised version of the Dakota, outside which John Lennon was murdered. They befriend their older neighbours Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) – after which, Guy’s career as an actor flourishes and Rosemary becomes pregnant. Then, in every sense, darkness falls.

Ring (1998)

What if watching a video recording and receiving a weird phone call meant that you only had seven days to live? Hideo Nakata took a simple premise and turned it into one of the scariest movies ever made.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

This definitive “found-footage” pseudo-documentary follows three students in the Appalachians on the trail of the local “Blair Witch” legend. Rarely has the power of suggestion – the evil that may be lurking just out of frame – been more terrifying.