Halloween comes with a few certainties. Costume parties happen, girls dress like prostitutes, haunted houses go up, and another wretched Saw movie will (inevitably) hit the Century in Evanston. What’s not certain? Finding a scary movie that doesn’t completely blow (unless you’re into that, in which case, Saw V is for you). If you’re looking for a cinematic scare this Halloween, it’s best not to be picky about genre. Scary comes in all shapes and sizes, so you can (and should) hit the horror, suspense, thriller and maybe even romantic comedy sections when picking the perfect scary flick. To help you in your quest, here are ten of the best films across all genres to scare you this All Hallow’s Eve.
10. The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
The token “modern creepy film” on this list wasn’t a mega-success when it first hit America, so people often overlook it when the haunting season rolls around. When it was released around the time of 9/11, scary films weren’t doing all too well at the box office, and the story of a boy living in a haunted orphanage in 1939 Spain wasn’t exactly uplifting. Del Toro is a master of dark suspense, and creates unmatched tension in Backbone. In his better-known 2006 venture Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro mixed the fanciful with the violent; Backbone ditches the fanciful for gloom and despair.
9. Halloween – 1978
This was the first of the three extremely popular, genre-defining horror series (the others being Friday the 13th in 1980 and A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984). While Friday had a great twist of a villain in Jason, Nightmare, with villain Freddie Krueger, felt lackluster, and neither could touch the eerie feel of Halloween. With Michael Myers, a simple psychopathic killer, as its antagonist and Jamie Lee Curtis playing a helpless babysitter, the kills get delivered in effortless style. Films with serial murderers who gorily kill victim after victim have become tired and cliché, but with Halloween, you actually get the worthy original.
8. The Blair Witch Project – 1999
This movie has been pummeled so badly since its release that it’s often forgotten how achingly refreshing it was upon its first release. This is a horror film that screened at Cannes in 1999, with its nauseating camera work and exploitation-level marketing scheme. The filmmakers employed the age-old idea that what’s scariest isn’t what’s on the screen, but what’s lurking unseen just out of frame. The movie showed us the direction that horror could have gone — in if Japanese remakes didn’t make so much goddamn money.
7. The Exorcist – 1973
Filmmakers spoof it more than possibly any other horror film, but as the old adage goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. While it doesn’t hold up as well as some of the other demon child films of the time (Rosemary’s Baby is perhaps made better, but hey, it’s Polanski), it has more moments that beg you to close your eyes. There are gross-out scares, sound scares and quick-cut scares. Toss in Linda Blair’s overwhelming performance as a demon-possessed little girl, and you have one hell of a horror film.
6. Jaws – 1975
The father of the modern blockbuster film sent beach attendance plummeting during the summer of its release. That’s how scary the hydraulic shark was in Spielberg’s breakout film. The opening scene with the skinny-dippers puts the audience in a relaxed mood… until the shark strikes. It takes so long for Spielberg to finally show the shark that when he finally tips his hand while the late Roy Scheider is scooping chum into the water, we’re knocked flat.
5. Alien – 1979
A monster movie in space — that’s essentially all Ridley Scott’s best film is. The simplicity of the film is executed with such terrifying precision that it’s astounding. A mining ship picks up a distress signal and investigates on the ground, only to later discover that they’ve picked up a stowaway creature that attaches itself to the face of a crew member. The ensuing hatching of the alien is pure horror classic, and Sigourney Weaver’s stardom was made on the back of this single, powerful female performance. There’s no damsel in distress here, Ripley straight-up kicks alien ass.
4. Audition – 1999
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: This is the only film that has ever scared Rob Zombie, director of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, both lurid gross-out horror cult classics. The most horrifying element of Audition is that, for the first half, it’s a romantic comedy depicting a widower who works for an entertainment company, staging an audition to look for a possible girlfriend. The girl he finds seems nice, only something about her is a little off. In a single shot, director Takashi Miike takes the odd love story into disturbing territory that leads to torture, a dream sequence you can see coming from a mile away (but that can’t make it stop), a severed foot and a horror classic.
3. The Silence of the Lambs – 1991
Only three films have ever won Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay in one year. Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs is the most recent (the other’s being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). Anthony Hopkins is only on screen for a small portion of the film as Hannibal Lecter. Scenes with Lecter and FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) are tense, but they are contrasted with the lecherous serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). While Starling remains an innocent center to the story, everything that revolves around her is frightening and intense, building to a climax that proves Starling’s mettle as an agent. Hopkins also delivers some of the most famous lines in a thriller, especially the penultimate “I’m having an old friend for dinner.”
2. Psycho – 1960
Hitchcock is the undisputed heavyweight champion of suspense. There never was and never will be a director that can match Hitchcock’s intuition for what makes an audience squirm and duck under a seat. He did the unthinkable in 1960 by killing his top-billed star (Janet Leigh) in the first act, but the shocks didn’t end there. Anthony Perkins gave the performance of a lifetime as Norman Bates, getting typecast forever after as a psychopath obsessed with his mother. There’s a reason Psycho holds such a respected place in horror despite its tame-by-modern-standards content: It’s simply an arresting thriller with terrifying writing and perfect performances.
1. The Shining – 1980
Stephen King hated the liberties Stanley Kubrick took in this film so much that he made his own TV miniseries to get everything his way. That version couldn’t even come close to Kubrick’s hauntingly long takes down the hallways of the Overlook Hotel and Jack Nicholson’s incredible performance of a man spiraling downward into insanity. The Amityville Horror did the patriarch-goes-insane idea just a year earlier, but The Shining busted in with auteur style, classic one-liners from Nicholson, and some of the creepiest sounds ever in a film. Kubrick may have pissed off Stephen King, but he crafted a masterpiece of terror.