50 best HORROR MOVIES of all time
Be sure to let us know what you think about this ranking.
3. The Exorcist (1973)
No other horror film has scared me as much. None have caused me as many sleepless nights. It doesn’t matter that before watching this film, I had seen scenes of Regan levitating, urinating, or contorting in convulsions from hundreds of memes, GIFs, and Scary Movie parodies – not even the best parody can diminish their power. The Exorcist is above all an excellent screenplay based on the original book and a mastery of tension-building. It’s also about Father Merrin in the light from the window and a grim, nihilistic undertone. Friedkin’s work depicts – through imagery, words, symbolism – a world where values no longer exist. Everyone is immersed in sin, even priests have lost their faith. In this shallow and metaphysically devoid world, Evil expands its influence, filling defenseless and empty human souls. The battle for Regan ends in victory, but the war for humanity is doomed to failure – and that’s almost as terrifying as the fact that it’s based on a true story.
2. Alien (1979)
Director Ridley Scott, inspired by George Lucas’s Star Wars, decided to create a space-set film himself. However, the similarities end there, as Scott had no intention of making cheerful adventure cinema. He turned the cosmic void into a source of human fears and the setting for a classic horror tale. As the iconic poster slogan claimed, “In space, no one can hear you scream,” and the titular alien designed by Swiss artist Hans Rudolf Giger was certainly capable of inducing screams – it was strange, different, unconventional, repulsive. It made every step of the Nostromo crew nerve-wracking for the viewer. An excellent horror film and one of the outstanding classics of science fiction cinema.
1. The Thing (1982)
Alright, let it be, the story about a group of people isolated in a hostile environment encountering THE THING isn’t overly original (especially since it’s a remake of the 1951 horror film). The special effects today, forty years later, aren’t as fresh as they were on the day of release. And yet, The Thing has hardly aged at all, transitioning with remarkable ease from being a film that seemed like just another horror title on the shelf at the neighborhood video rental store to an absolute genre classic. In 1982, Carpenter achieved something that many creators today fail to do, despite having incomparably greater technical capabilities and budgets – he made a simple story, in which evil picks off members of the crew one by one while the remaining ones gradually succumb to paranoia, incredibly atmospheric, engaging, and even after years, it evokes emotions nearly as strong as on the day of release. And the debates about who was human and who was infected, and what it signifies, will continue for a long time.
EDITORIAL team