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Actually Scary Movies

CW: Spooky stuff ahead. If spooky movies are an escape for you, cool. If not, I wouldn't recommend them. Stay safe out there.

Before the list, some tips on scary movies. Your mileage may vary on all of this.

  1. If you don't like scary movies, don't watch them. If you're just spooked out by the idea of horror movies, don't even read the list.

  2. Don't make other people watch them if they don't like them.

  3. If you watch a scary movie with someone hard of hearing, and the sound has to be up higher, the movie is scarier.

  4. Same deal with watching in a movie theater. It's louder and that's scarier.

  5. If you do something to engage your mind (something "left-brain-y" especially), you won't be as scared (or laugh as much). You can use this as a strategy to go a little beyond your spooky tolerance, or avoid it if you want to engage fully. Having a laptop in front of you with something like Duo Lingo up and the mute button not too far away is a safe strategy.

  6. A lot of movies are particularly brutal against women. I can't summarize any better than Siskel & Ebert did here. This accompanying article introducing the videos also provides good context there. This list includes those those movies, because those themes are scary to me. I'm in no way endorsing the attitudes of the characters or creators of these movies.

  7. Watching a movie with a person who jumps and screams makes a movie scarier (again, don't make people watch scary movies if they don't like them). So if you want to be scared, find a friend who gets scared too.

  8. Watching movies that aren't that scary one after another can still have a cumulative effect... at least, I've noticed this in myself. Maybe it applies to you as well.

Note: This list doesn't make exceptions for any particular type of brutality or other content.

These aren't necessarily my "favorite" movies. Plenty of these are irredeemably dumb, violent, or problematic in a billion different ways. If you're in the mood to be grossed out, freaked out, disturbed or scared, it's not a bad list.

They're like spicy food. Some have "jump scares," that wasabi that hits the your mouth and fades. Others are ghost pepper extract that'll fuck up your digestion for days. A lot have both. Jump-scare-only movies didn't make this list. These are ones that genuinely left me unsettled or scared.

The List

  1. Hostel
  2. The Last House on the Left
  3. Videodrome
  4. The Babadook
  5. The Strangers
  6. The Woman
  7. Irreversible
  8. It Follows
  9. Antichrist
  10. Compliance
  11. The Cell
  12. 1408
  13. They Look Like People
  14. Requiem For a Dream
  15. Lights Out
  16. The Body
  17. The Grey
  18. The Witch
  19. Karla
  20. Green Inferno
  21. Human Centipede 1–3*
  22. Get Out
  23. The Road
  24. Jacob's Ladder
  25. The Purge series
  26. The Other Side of the Door
  27. Silent Hill
  28. Ravenous
  29. Dumplings (Chinese)
  30. Old Boy (Korean)
  31. Hellraiser
  32. The Wicker Man (Original)
  33. Europa Report
  34. Upstream Color
  35. Toad Road
  36. Enter the Void
  37. Cannibal Holocaust
  38. Ichi the Killer
  39. A Serbian Film
  40. Naked Lunch
  41. Sleeping Beauty (2011)
  42. Cube
  43. Pontypool
  44. A Dark Song

* I know, but seriously, the progression of evil executor progresses through the series as 1st, an evil mastermind, to 2nd, an inept but inspired copycat, to 3rd, a government attack against the prison population. This is a major arc that more episodic series lack. Another notable exception is the Purge series, which frames each movie through the struggle of: a family, then along class/racial lines, and finally with politics.

If you want to watch movies that aren't super scary, but still have a horror vibe, I'd go with these:

Mostly Fun/Not that Scary

(Again, these still might be scary for you. When in doubt, don't watch!)

  1. Housebound
  2. Shaun of the Dead
  3. Cabin in the Woods
  4. Evil Dead 1, 2, and Army of Darkness
  5. Death Proof (part of Grindhouse)
  6. The Girl with All the Gifts
  7. Gravy
  8. Ghost Cat
  9. Tusk
  10. What We Do in the Shadows
  11. The S from Hell
  12. Gothic
  13. Tim & Eric's Bedtime Stories
  14. Parents

Brutal Documentaries

  1. Interview With a Cannibal
  2. The Cannibal who Walked Free
  3. Keep the River on Your Right
  4. The Act of Killing
  5. The Look of Silence
  6. World's Scariest Drug (Vice Doc)