Here are the 12 scariest movies we’ve ever seen, ranked from least to most scary.
You’ll notice that many of these movies are at least a few years old. Why? A couple reasons. First, one of our criteria for scariest movies is that they really linger — which means giving them time to see if they stay in our heads.
There’s also something to be said for 1970s film stock, which has almost a Pavlovian capacity to scare. And, finally, a lot of modern movies copy older movies, and when you see something the second, third or 100th time, it’s just less scary.
So here are the 12 scariest movies we’ve ever seen.
12 — Jaws (1975)
Jaws is the one of best movies on this list, because as scary as it is, it isn’t just about scares.
It’s maybe the best film we’ve ever seen in terms of building tension, and getting us incredibly invested. From John Williams score to Steven Spielberg’s masterful hiding of the monster — what’s scarier than a shark fin? — it has held audiences rapt for half a century.
You can say Jaws isn’t that scary — but we bet you give it at least a passing thought every single time you go to the beach.
11 — The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
We know, you might expect this one to be higher on the list. Tobe Hooper masterfully uses atmosphere — buzzing flies, animal cries — to make us imagine ever more than we see. And what we see is pretty bad.
Maybe the scariest thing about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the realization that Leatherface and his family have been able to do their dirty work in near total isolation, forgotten and neglected by the outside world.
It really says something when the chainsaw isn’t the scariest part of the movie. We’re more unsettled by the meat hook.
10 — The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Like the No. 1 movie on this list, The Blair Witch Project does a masterful job of making audiences feel like everything on the screen is really happening. It created the found-footage boom that hasn’t slowed down since.
But this film is on this list because of body language. Almost nothing we’ve seen on film is as scary as the way Mike stands at the end, in the basement — his shame, his fear, his surrender.
It’s very reminiscent, actually, of a scene in the No. 1 movie on this list, which we’ll get to soon.
Being one of the scariest movies ever made doesn’t take a lot of money — it just takes great imagination and observation. The Blair Witch Project ended up being one of the most profitable films of all time.
9 — Carrie (1976)
The telekinesis isn’t the scary part of Carrie. Even the pig’s blood isn’t the scary part of Carrie, undeniably one of the scariest movies.
What’s scary is the completely casual, careless cruelty of Carrie’s high school tormentors. Consider how much premeditation goes into their prom night humiliation, and for what? To make an awkward girl feel worse?
The cruel swagger with which Billy (John Travolta) kills that pig may be the scariest thing in the whole movie. And it’s even worse that he attacks fellow humans with the same zeal.
8 — Alien (1979)
Alien pulls off the neat trick of making us think it’s going to be kind of mundane.
Ridley Scott’s second film masterfully lulls you in with extremely routine details of a blue-collar space mission. Then it suddenly wallops you with one of the most horrifying sequences in any movie — the Facehugger scene. Things only get worse from there.
The drooling Xenomorph is, for our money, the best movie monster. And Sigourney Weaver’s Ridley, who seems at first like a minor character, soon rises to become one of the greatest screen heroines of all time.
7 — The Human Centipede (2009)
This is a movie with a reputation for being absolutely disgusting, which it is. But what makes it one of the scariest movies we’ve seen is how convincingly it imagines a fate worse than death, and convinces us not only that its medically possible, but that there’s a madman out there with the skill to pull it off.
It’s easy to dismiss Human Centipede as just exploitive trash, but sorry: It’s very well made. Writer-director Tom Six skillfully, slowly escalates the terror, painstakingly setting up his very dark, very awful final sequence.
It’s stayed in our heads for years, despite our efforts to forget it.
6 — Terrifier 2 (2022)
The newest film on our list, Terrifier 2 walks a very unnerving line. It’s main character is too cartoonish and grotesque to be truly scary – you just don’t believe he could exist in the real world, like Buffalo Bill or a killer shark.
And yet. Terrifier 2 lingers because instead of making the kills look cheesy, it spends a horrific amount of time getting things right. You really feel at times like you’re seeing things you should never see.
The film by writer-director Damien Leone got lots of attention for making people get sick or pass out in theaters. Whether you think it’s scary or funny says a lot about you.
5 — The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
We know: The Silence of the Lambs has been referenced and parodied so many times that it’s easy to forget how incredibly disturbing it was the first time you saw it.
You know you’re in a scary world when the cannibal character (Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter) isn’t the scariest. Ted Levine is brilliant as Buffalo Bill, whose scariest trait is his total lack of empathy.
We’re especially troubled by his referring to the captured Catherine Martin as “it,” as in, “It places the lotion in the bucket or else it gets the hose again” and by the way he mistakenly thinks his offhand question to Clarice (Jodie Foster_ passes as normal: “Oh wait. Was she a great big fat person?”
It’s one of the scariest movies we’ve ever seen because Buffalo Bill isn’t pure invention — in researching the novel The Silence of the Lambs, author Thomas Harris based his character on real killers.
This is, for our money, the best movie on this list. and perhaps the best movie ever made. And we love how it tricks you from the very first scene.
4 — The Exorcist (1973)
There are many, many scares in The Exorcist, and they come in every variety. There’s the head-spinning, the ceiling crawl, the taunts about Father Karras’ mother.
Then there are the underlying, big picture scares about having a crisis of faith, and every parent’s fear of feeling helpless to protect their children.
But maybe the scariest part is wondering why the demon targets Linda Blair’s completely innocent Regan, who does nothing to deserve its attention.
3 — Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
We know, it’s not technically a horror movie. But this antiwar film written and directed by Dalton Trumbo, based on his own novel, envisions pretty much the scariest scenario we can imagine.
A young man bravely goes off to war, but is hit with an artillery shell that robs him of his eyes, ears, mouth, nose and limbs. But he’s still conscious, and trapped in his own mind.
The grim look of the film — and the plaintive voiceover by lead actor Timothy Bottoms — are completely haunting, as is the film’s resolution. Metallica brought new recognition to the film — and scared a new generation – by including its key scenes in the video for their song “One.”
2 — Funny Games (2008)
Writer-director Michael Haneke’s 1997 Austrian home-invasion movie — and his 2007 English-language remake — is another movie where almost everything that happens could happen in real life: A family led by Tim Roth and Naomi Watts is taken hostage by two boyish sadists.
In a normal movie, things happen realistically until some movie miracle occurs and the good guys win.
But when Funny Games breaks with reality, it breaks in favor of the villains — played by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett. The movie doesn’t even have the decency to allow us the usual catharsis we get from a horror film.
It more than earns its place on our list of movies we respect but don’t like.
1 — Last House on the Left (1972)
Last House on the Left feels at times like the most hideous documentary you’ve ever since, thanks to its naturalism, grit, and the aforementioned ’70s film stock.
Everything that happens in the movie could happen in real life — and too often has.
It’s about a gang of sadists who kidnap, humiliate and kill two young women played by Mari (Sandra Peabody) and Phyliss (Lucy Grantham).
Body language can be scarier than anything else. And the scariest, saddest thing we’ve ever seen in a movie is the moment in which Mari, knowing she’s doomed, and with no will to fight, just walks into the water to die. It’s strikingly close to the scene in The Virgin Spring, which inspired Last House on the Left, which is excellent, but less scary.
Mari’s parents get their revenge, but the movie still leaves us feeling empty and bereft.
If you like this list, you may also like this list of the 13 Funniest Movies We’ve Ever Seen.
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Main image: Last House on the Left. Hallmark Releasing Corporation
