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Beetlejuice is one of the most inventive haunted house movies of all time. The Uninvited has a lot of fun with being one of the first movies in history to take ghosts seriously. That tone strongly influences this story of two well-meaning nitwits (the other being Ruth Massey, another great) who fall in love with a house that couldn’t possibly look more haunted.
The Amityville Horror (
A horror anthology movie, V/H/S, follows a group of criminals who break into a house, only to find a dead man and a video tape. As they watch the tape, they see various horrifying tales...only to realize the dead man has now disappeared from his previous spot. This 1979 film (not to be confused with the 2005 remake), centers on a young couple who purchase a home which turns out to be haunted. It's based on the real-life alleged story of a New York family who moved into a home where a mass murder was committed the year before. Haunted Mansion stars Eddie Murphy as a workaholic who becomes trapped with his family when a rainstorm keeps them from leaving the house. During their stay, they get to know the haunted residents of the mansion and manage to discover their own hidden connection to the place.
The 20 best haunted house films of all time, ranked
It sounds terrifying, but since it was produced by Steven Spielberg, it’s actually pretty tame. If you fancy something spooky that won’t give you nightmares, this might be the one. It wouldn’t be a disaster if you accidentally picked up the 2015 remake, either; it’s faithful enough to the original without being slavish about it, and it’s got some decently funny moments thrown in for good measure. Despite being a brand new home in a shiny new development, something’s moving the furniture around, causing people to have violent hallucinations, and even talking to the kids through the TV. Not only that, but the characters’ overall lack of moral principles makes this story even more disturbing, with the main antagonist being the closest thing to a decent person among the main cast despite also being a brutal vigilante.
The Best Haunted House Movies and TV Shows of All Time
Every appearance of the ghosts in this movie is chilling, but probably the scariest thing about it is Martin Stephens, the child actor who plays Miles. He also played the leader of the creepy kids in Village Of The Damned, and there’s something really eerie about him. It’s a smart inversion of the usual haunted house story where the living are trying to kick out the dead, and Michael Keaton’s “bio-exorcist” Betelgeuse, while not your usual chain-rattler, is a creation of nightmarish energy.
They don’t know each other, they both have secrets, and they’re stuck together until the storm passes. You’ll Never Find Me is a tense and claustrophobic psychological thriller that progresses at a deliberate pace. The finale might not be worth the buildup for some viewers, but it is engrossing the way the film handles the back-and-forth batting of suspicions between the two characters.
88 Best Horror Movies of All Time - Scariest Horror Films Ever Made - Esquire
88 Best Horror Movies of All Time - Scariest Horror Films Ever Made.
Posted: Tue, 17 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
In 2019, Martin Scorsese named The Uninvited one of the scariest movies of all time; “the tone is very delicate, and the sense of fear is woven into the setting [and] the gentility of the characters,“ he wrote for The Daily Beast. One of the greatest films ever made, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel uses its source material as the foundation for a terrifying exercise in psychological horror. Jack Nicholson plays a troubled writer who moves his family into the Overlook Hotel for the off-season, but he soon descends into madness as the resort's longterm supernatural guests play games with his mind. While firmly on the fun ghost train end of the spooky spectrum with its perfectly timed jump scares, James Wan’s The Conjuring is an almost perfect haunted house movie. Sure, it might have spawned a whole MCU-style horror-verse, but don’t let that distract from the fact that the first film is a self-contained creepy journey into family hell. The idea of your supposed safe haven turning against you is certainly nightmare fodder so it makes sense that the trope has been a mainstay of horror movies for decades.
Darkness (
To this day, it is one of the most visually flawless (not to mention flat-out terrifying) black-and-white movies you will ever see. Every frame truly is a painting in this master stroke that’s waiting, begging to be recognized. The second appearance on this list by gimmick master William Castle, House On Haunted Hill is seemingly as barebones B-horror as you can get. It stars Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart as a couple who invite guests to a seemingly haunted house, with the promise of $10,000 each once they stay (and survive) the night. However, in theaters, Castle accompanied certain scares by flying a skeleton over the audience.
BEST Los Angeles Haunted Houses [2024 Halloween Guide]
The story follows a widowed lawyer investigating the malevolent ghost of a young woman, who appears to be seeking vengeance in the small village where she once lived. Ford plays a successful college professor, skeptical of his cellist wife’s belief that there is a spirit haunting their Vermont home. But Anne insists on hanging around, calling in spiritualist friends to see if she really can connect with her son across the divide. Samuel L. Jackson plays a supporting role as Gerald Olin, the hotel manager who tries to warn Mike about the dozens of deaths that have occurred in that haunted room. Notably, Academy Award-nominated actress (and with an expansive career), Vera Farmiga, plays paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in all of the Conjuring films.
13 Ghosts (
The Evolutionary Reasons We Are Drawn to Horror Movies and Haunted Houses - Scientific American
The Evolutionary Reasons We Are Drawn to Horror Movies and Haunted Houses.
Posted: Wed, 01 Nov 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise) is an unnamed journalist who starts a podcast after her career is derailed by a scandal concerning one of her articles. Her podcast is about strange mysteries, and her dismissive attitude about the stories changes when she starts following the trail of a story about odd artifacts described as black bricks. The mystery might be a little underwhelming or unsatisfying for viewers looking for simple answers, but the questions Monolith raises, and the acting of Lily Sullivan, carry the film very well. It’s a Tubi Original that, judging by the trailer, appears to be a somewhat typical backwoods cannibal movie.
Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Jeffrey Jones as the yuppie family who buys the home are three more. That can be partially attributed to its depiction of the afterlife as just one long, joy-suffocating waiting room after another. You should also look to the film’s style and tone, which would come to define the filmography of director Tim Burton (from a screenplay by Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren). There aren’t many films like The Changeling, which goes about its business with what can only be described as sorrowful brutality. At the same time, you must do this with the understanding that at any moment, the low hum will suddenly swell to screeching, delirious heights, and then explode. Despite being very, very clearly a ripoff of both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, there is something about The Sentinel that makes it impossible to dislike.
Get our newsletter and join our community powered by horror fans like you. Chris has a degree in film studies at Temple University’s campus in Tokyo, Japan. Each movie is ranked and briefly reviewed, with links to extended reviews included when available. I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections.
They rely on atmosphere, performances, a certain degree of effects, and pacing. The best haunted house movies of all time will have those qualities, and perhaps something else to distinguish it even further. Everything that I every needed to know about house hunting, I learned from horror movies. October is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “31 days of horror.” Don’t bother looking it up; it’s true.
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