#38. 10 best horror movies of all time

in my opinion.

It was the October we first moved to Victoria. I was still unemployed, and had all the time in the world to watch movies. We tried to watch as many horrors / psychological thrillers as we could during that month, and it’s become somewhat of a tradition ever since. I thought I’d compile a list of my top ten favourites. I’m no movie critic, and I haven’t watched a few of these in some time, so the reviews below are mostly from memory. But the only one I’m truly iffy on is The Fourth Kind. I remember watching it in grade 11, with my then boyfriend, and being straight up terrified. I definitely thought I was going to get abducted on my drive home from his (parents) house. I remember liking the film, but the reviews online are all horrible… which makes me question my 18 year old taste. I think we should all watch and and discuss our thoughts in the comments below. Will I be embarrassed that it was added to my top-ten list? We shall find out.

Do you have any other movies you’d add to the list? Let me know. I’ll be binging all month long. Welcome to… spooky season!

1. Antichrist, Lars von Trier (2009)

   Antichrist is a film about a husband and wife who go to a remote cabin in the wake of a devastating tragedy— their infant son falls out of a window to his death, while the couple is having sex in the room next door. The husband is a psychologist, and the wife an academic researching medieval witchcraft. Disturbing things unfold as the couple unpacks their trauma. As explicit as films get. Viewer be warned.

   

2. The Witch, Robert Eggers (2015)
   Speaking of medieval witchcraft… this movie, starring Anya Taylor Joy, was an excellent horror. A pilgrim family in 1600 New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic and possession.

   

3. The Invitation, Karen Kusama (2016)
   A mans ex-wife invites him to a dinner party at their former home, which she now lives in with her new husband. Things get incredibly tense and weird and he starts to believe that the hosts have sinister plans for their guests. Watch if you like movies that create a slow-burning paranoia.

   

4. Hereditary, Ari Aster (2018)
   I don’t remember too much about this movie, apart from it being creepy AF. One scene in particular sticks out to me (someone gets decapitated) which happens at the beginning of the movie and sets the tone. I know it’s about a family that is grieving the loss of the grandmother, the matriarch. Disturbing and tragic events ensue after her death. I remember not loving the end of this film; it didn’t entirely make sense and felt over the top, but the rest of the movie was fantastic, as far as horrors go.

   

5. Midsommar, Ari Aster (2019)
   A couple and their group of friends travel to Sweden to participate in a rural town's mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly turns into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult. The cinematography is brilliant, with its very bright and overexposed shots - perhaps one of the only horrors out there that is creepy and scary without being dark. The aesthetics, costumes, hair and make up were gorgeous and worth the watch alone. Florence Pugh puts on a killer performance.

   

6. The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathon Demme (1991)
   Jodie Foster is an F.B.I. trainee, who is trying to catch a serial killer by the name of Buffalo Bill. In order to do so, she seeks the help and advice of Hannibal Lecter, a highly intelligent and manipulative psychiatrist… and an incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer. This movie stands the test of time.

   

7. The Blair Witch Project, Daniel Myrick (1999)
   This was touted to be the ‘scariest movie of all time’ when it was first released in ‘99. It’s shot as though it’s the actual footage of the three film students that go into a forest to film a documentary of the local Blair Witch legend. They vanish, are never to be seen again, but their footage, aka this movie, is found.

   

8. The Fourth Kind, Olatunde, (2009)
   This movie is about alien abduction. That alone is terrifying enough. Basically, there seems to be an extraordinary number of unexplained disappearances in this one town in Alaska, and a psychologist is on the verge of figuring out the truth during the course of treating her patients.

9. The Shining, Stanley Kubrick (1980)
   This movie stars Jack Nicholson, and that is about all I remember, besides the fact that it was awesome, a true horror classic. Here is the synopsis from IMDb, “A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.” I will definitely be rewatching this one again this month.

   

10. The Ring, Gore Verbenski (2002)
    The Ring is probably the horror movie of my generation. I was 9 when it came out. I still have a distinct memory of me trying to watch it, alone in my childhood room, and feeling so intensely scared and disturbed that I had to turn it off within minutes. It’s about a mysterious video tape that kills anyone who watches it in… 7 daaaaaays.

Honourable mentions: The Rental, The House of the Devil, The Others, Carrie, Rosemary’s Baby, Psycho, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original).