The 50 Best Horror Movies Of The 21st Century

With the Happy Death Day movies, Blumhouse darling Christopher Landon proved masterful at treading the line between comedy, sentiment and violence in high-concept genre mash-ups – and if body-swap slasher movie Freaky, conceived under the genius title Freaky Friday The 13th, has that same combination of snarky laughs and cartoonish violence, it also lets rip with the gore. Vaughn is (for the opening scenes, at least) the Jason Voorhees-alike Blissfield Butcher – but after bloodily obtaining a shady-looking dagger with body-swapping powers, the Butcher inhabits introverted teen Millie (Blockers' Kathryn Newton) and embarks upon a merry killing spree of her highschool's most dastardly. Newton is delightful as the wallflower-turned-psychopath, and Vaughan fully commits to teendom with all its hardships and vulnerabilities (not to mention secret handshakes). But Freaky also boasts some of the most inventive murders in recent memory – letting table-saws rip, doing unspeakable things with a wine bottle, and even dispatching someone with a tennis racket. It's ace. – BWRead the Empire review.

Scott Derrickson knows how to get under your skin. Anyone who's seen The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, and then found themselves awake – or, worst of all, awaking – at 3am will know why. Because Derrickson goes out of his way in this unsettling fusion of courtroom drama and all-out exorcism horror to establish that 3am is the Devil's Hour. It's when he likes to run around, playing with fresh souls, wiping your Bake Off series record off your Sky box. That kind of thing. It's hard for any director to enter the same sandpit as The Exorcist and emerge with their dignity intact, but Derrickson (a man of faith himself) manages it with an ultra-intense movie that asks questions about the nature of faith, while having its contorted cake and eating it with an ultra-committed performance from Jennifer Carpenter as the eponymous Emily Rose – whose tragic death during an exorcism is the subject of the film's biggest questions, and most shocking scenes. The real moments of dread, though, are saved for Tom Wilkinson's priest, who has a habit of waking up at 3am. After watching this, you may develop that habit too. – CHRead the Empire review.

Adapting RL Stine's other horror novel series (aimed at older readers than Goosebumps), Leigh Janiak's film trilogy – all shot together, and released across three weeks on Netflix – could have been a straight-up nostalgia fest, since each film tackles a well-worn era of horror history. Part One: 1994 nods to Scream and its ilk, Part Two: 1978 calls to mind slasher flicks like Friday The 13th, while Part Three: 1666 evokes everything from The Witch to The New World. But beyond homaging iconic scary movies and periods of American history, Janiak's films offer a contemporary critique of privilege and power structures, reaching back into the nation's origins, all decked up in a rip-roaring, blood-soaked conceit that sees a set of serial killers in the seedy town of Shadyside repeatedly rising up to wreak bloody murder. Which Part works best will be a matter of personal preference, each succeeding in telling its own story within a wider narrative — but it ultimately culminates in a hugely satisfying finale in Part Three, as the big picture comes into focus and battle-lines are drawn. It's a major feat — Janiak pulling off a bold, brilliant narrative experiment that's supremely watchable, shockingly gory, and told with real purpose. – BTRead the Empire review of Part One, Two and Three.

Sometimes imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. Alejandro Amenábar's English-language debut is a loving pastiche of a certain era of cinematic chiller, which itself evoked the classic ghost story's Victorian heyday. Specifically – although it's set half a century later – its story of a buttoned-up matriarch (Nicole Kidman) rattling around a vast Jersey country pile with two unusual children and a depleted, creaking domestic staff, can't help but evoke Jack Clayton's The Innocents. But Amenábar's film turns its own creepily effective screws, and its self-isolation scenario has recently made it weirdly resonant again (there's even a modern-day remake in the works; lucky us). An unusually gothic box office hit, justly garlanded with awards, it's beautifully photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe and hauntingly scored by Amenábar himself. And rewardingly, if you don't spot the Shyamalan-like twist coming, it's a completely different film on second viewing. – OWRead the Empire review.

Despite a recent holiday in the Marvel Universe, Scott Derrickson's true home is horror, and 2012's Sinister is arguably the film on his scary CV that best makes that case. There's a real atmosphere of oppressive dread to the film, as rubbernecking crime writer Ethan Hawke moves his family into the scene of a whole-family murder, and then finds a cache of appalling (and horrifyingly realised) Super 8 snuff movies in his attic. The deaths he's investigating are far from isolated, and in each case a child was never found… Sinister is perhaps underrated in the Blumhouse canon, with dark, doomy scares – and a neat subtext about things captured on film being projected back to life. Only a final 'boo!" moment right at the end, apparently chasing a franchise for killer pagan deity Bughuul (or 'Mr Boogie'), lets the dark side down. Watch out for a mischievous Vincent D'Onofrio's uncredited role as an obvious Basil Exposition. – OWRead the Empire review.

Talk about a big swing. After his stellar Haunting Of Hill House series, filmmaker Mike Flanagan adapted Stephen King's sequel novel to The Shining – creating a film that somehow succeeds in bridging the divide between King's stories and the narratively divergent Stanley Kubrick adaptation the author famously dislikes. But for all that it takes on the Kubrickian iconography and Kingian narrative, Doctor Sleep is a Flanagan film through and through – one that explores alcoholism and the legacy of family tragedy via a protagonist who's grown up with a supernatural gift. Ewan McGregor is the grown-up Danny (now 'Dan') Torrance, whose 'Shining' abilities are reawakened by powerful youngster Abra (Kyliegh Curran), who's being targeted by cult leader Rose The Hat (Rebeca Ferguson) and her immortal troupe of psychic vampires. It's not a typical The Shining: Part 2 story – but is a deep, dark, fantastical and emotional work in its own right, with a stellar turn from Ferguson, and a thrilling conclusion that respectfully resurrects the old ghosts of the Overlook. – BTRead the Empire review.

Before there was Censor, there was Berberian Sound Studio. Instead of a beleaguered BBFC employee, Peter Strickland's psychological thriller follows a sound engineer, played by Toby Jones, as he heads to an Italian film studio to work on a giallo titled 'Equestrian Vortex'. Soon enough, he's feeling like a pack of wild horses are galloping across his brain, as the horrors he watches on screen start to leak into real life. Plus, in the ultimate test of his battered psyche, nobody will sign off his expenses. It's no mean feat to make a story about an edit-suite employee exciting – let alone transporting. But Strickland plunges us into an artfully designed nightmare, working wonders from the mundane peculiarities of the filmmaking experience. Female actors scream repeatedly in sound booths; foley artists stab vegetables to create the perfect sound – it all starts to feel more like some arcane dark ritual than a post-production process. And the soundscape Strickland conjures will haunt you for days. – NDSRead the Empire review.

An under-seen Blumhouse banger, Creep is a lo-fi horror of social awkwardness – a film that constantly prods at the boundaries of what might be considered strange but ultimately harmless behaviour, and leaves the audience with a sticky question: at what point would you run away, at the risk of seeming rude? A two-hander between stars and co-writers Patrick Brice (who also directs) and Mark Duplass, it follows Aaron (Brice), a financially-troubled videographer who accepts $1000 dollars to film Josef (Duplass) across the course of one day. Josef claims to have a brain tumour, and wants a video recording of himself for his unborn child – but he is also, crucially, a creep and a weirdo, causing Aaron to wonder, 'what the hell am I doing here?' as their time together unfolds. With a barbed sense of humour and a series of effective jolts, Creep makes so much of a none-more-minimal set-up, with a pitch-perfect performance from Duplass and an unforgettable final scene. – BT

As it turns out, childhood games make great horror concepts. In Tyler Gillet and Matt Betinelli-Olpin's riotous Ready Or Not, new bride Grace (Samara Weaving) has to choose one to participate in with the in-laws on her wedding night. It's a ritual she starts off thinking is a bit of fun, but turns out to be a very real version of Hide and Seek – where she is the prey and the very rich, very awful family she has married into (including Mark O'Brien's husband Alex, Adam Brody as brother Daniel, Andie MacDowell as matriarch Becky and Henry Czerny as father Tony) are the predators. With her lacy white dress, Converse high tops and rifle under her arm, Grace is a glorious addition to the canon of final girls, put through the wringer as the game's high stakes wring kinetic, Raimi-esque moments of splatter – and those demented final few scenes solidify Ready Or Not as a modern horror favourite. – SBRead the Empire review.

The original Japanese Ring is an outright classic – but since it was released in 1998, it's not eligible for this list. Enter Gore Verbinski's American adaptation, this time featuring Naomi Watts in the central role as Rachel – a mother and investigative reporter who watches that videotape as she looks into the death of four teenagers, and attempts to escape the fate that awaits her. Though living up to Hideo Nakata's film is a tall order, Verbinski manages to maintain all the atmosphere and creepiness that made Ring so impactful, whilst adding his own immaculate visual style to the tale – his signature slick, stylish aesthetic (also seen in the mad but muddled A Cure For Wellness) is in full effect here, creating a major, mainstream international hit that miraculously doesn't dilute the original's scares. Drenched in greys and blues, if the melancholy palette doesn't evoke enough chills to actually make you shiver, the horrifying visuals of Samara's victims – plus her iconic crawl through the television screen, still nightmare-inducing here – certainly will. - SBRead the Empire review.

Werewolf movies are hard. Like zombie movies, they serve as Trojan horses for Subtext and Serious Points and Big Themes That Make You Think. But, possibly because An American Werewolf In London and The Howling is a combo that's impossible to improve upon; or possibly because it's hard to pull off a good transformation sequence without tipping over into unintentional hilarity, they're relatively thin on the ground. Ginger Snaps, John Fawcett's 2001 Canadian horror, is – along with Neil Marshall's explosive horror-comedy Dog Soldiers – the best of the century so far. A feminist take on the tried and trusted 'someone gets bitten by a wolf, turns into a wolf' trope, it makes fairly obvious but still affecting connections between the slow descent into wolfdom and the various challenges faced by women. It's based around a truly fiery turn from Katherine Isabelle that should have made her a huge star, and the central relationship between her Ginger and Emily Perkins' downbeat Brigitte is relatable and, ultimately, heartbreaking. A wolf movie sharp in both wit and claw. – CHRead the Empire review.

Remaking George A Romero's all-timer zombie flick should have been horror heresy. But in his feature debut, director Zack Snyder – working from a screenplay by a young James Gunn – offered up a new version of the zombies-go-to-the-mall story with a flavour all its own. That's partly because it inherited 28 Days Later's fast-running dead, swapping Romero's creeping terror for scenes of ferocious, frenzied flesh-eating, amping up the carnage for more hardened early-'00s audiences. But it also gained new thematic resonance as well, depicting carnage and catastrophe in post-9/11 America – just look at the opening title sequence (a Snyder-signature musical montage, here set to Johnny Cash's 'When The Man Comes Around) which invokes War On Terror imagery as the zombie plague spreads. Gunn's script is lean, mean, and impressively grim (a zombie newborn, anyone?), while Snyder's filmmaking has much of the style he'd later be known for, with more bite than his blockbusters. – BTRead the Empire review.

There aren't many good films as fantastically nasty as 2005's Wolf Creek, Greg McLean's horrible slab of brutality. Its success is sealed from the start – it begins hedonistically, with a couple of British tourists (Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi) and their Australian friend (Nathan Phillips) living it up down under, and it's filmed on video, with subtle home-movie vibes. An authenticity runs through it, and you're on board with them immediately – so when things get gnarly, you feel it. That doesn't take long: after their car breaks down, a middle-aged man named Mick (a very scary John Jarratt) appears, to help them out. And he does, for a while. Before drugging them, and torturing them. It turns out he's an outback serial killer – a psychotic Crocodile Dundee, with more knives. And guns. There's nothing supernatural here: just pure exploitation of our fear of the unknown, of isolation, and of very scary strangers. Nowheresville, Australia is an unforgiving place at the best of times, and McLean milks it for all its worth with this very gruesome, very grisly bit of work. – AGRead the Empire review.

Fans of Succession might find it hard to believe that Brian 'Logan Roy' Cox could ever be credibly menaced – surely any witch, zombie or slavering ghoul could easily be repelled with a bellowed "FUCK OFF!" But so good is The Autopsy Of Jane Doe that you start to fear even for this craggy king of rage. The premise of the thriller is spooky-simple: late one stormy night, a father-and-son coroner team (Cox and Emile Hirsch) find themselves with one final cadaver to dissect before quitting time. But as they get to their slicing and hacking, the corpse — a mysterious young woman — reveals itself as being full of secrets. The kind of secrets that lead to screams and blood on the floor. It's a rip-roaring mood piece, with thunder crashing and lockers full of human remains starting to rattle. But Norwegian director André Øvredal leavens the scares with humour too, making it a black comedy in the Drag Me To Hell mould. Special mention to Olwen Kelly, who as the titular character somehow manages to steal the show while lying down, motionless. – NDSRead the Empire review.

Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's Spanish zombie horror upped the ante on the found-footage genre with its simple premise and sharp, precision-timed shocks. Seen through the eyes of a local news team who are trailing a fire crew's night shift, REC is shot almost exclusively in a quarantined apartment block, where a seemingly average call-in about a troubled older resident turns into a claustrophobic battle for survival. The film grabs at your every nerve as the shaky handheld lens plummets you into the epicentre of the carnage, in which residents, emergency services and the news crew try and invariably fail to navigate through a building ravaged by the infected. Balagueró and Plaza get scary-creative with the film's limited location, including a stairwell shot that will have you reaching for the lightswitch every time you go downstairs for a midnight snack. The film's sequels attempted to cash in on its surprise success – and evolved the zombie lore in an interesting direction in the second film – but none quite match the dizzying thrills of this first effort. – BWRead the Empire review.

Never has a single red balloon seemed so frightening. After the beloved but flawed 1990 TV adaptation, Andy Muschietti's IT brought Pennywise to a new generation in a triumphant retelling of Stephen King's classic, combining a coming-of-age warmth with classic horror scares. In separating the film's dual timeline, this first half solely focuses on the young Losers' Club – think Stand By Me with serious scares. The young actors – including Jaeden Martell, Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis and Jack Dylan Grazer – do a stellar job, making you care so much for the characters that you're both scared on their behalf, and scared for their safety. And rightly so: Bill Skarsgård's full-throated embodiment of The Dancing Clown himself, complete with outstanding costume and makeup design, is truly the stuff of nightmares. This film's success earned Muschietti the chance to tell the other timeline in King's novel in Chapter Two, with its own impeccable casting and admirably large canvas – but this first part is purer, sweeter, and scarier. – SBRead the Empire review.

This Swedish vampire coming-of-age film plays out more as a gothic fairytale than a beastly horror, but that's not to say there isn't plenty of guts and gore to be found in its belly. The first horror film from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy director Tomas Alfredson, Let The Right One In charts the blossoming romance between Oskar – a bullied, ethereal-looking kid – and the elusive Eli, who has moved onto his estate with her guardian. There's plenty of sinister goings on to undercut the tentative kindness that the two share; the means by which Eli's guardian drains a local boy, for example, to feed the young girl with whom he holds a questionable relationship. Yet their bond persists in spite of their wretched circumstances, which unfurl in the crisp nocturnal chill of Stockholm. As well as putting a new spin on the vampire film (in the same year that also gave us True Blood and Twilight) this blood-sprayed snowglobe of a film also offered horror enthusiasts that rare gift: a happy ending. – BWRead the Empire review.

Part of a 'Guillermo del Toro Presents…' strand that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years, the man's fingerprints as a producer can be found all over this tale of an abandoned Spanish orphanage and the children who never left it. But that's not to diminish the work of J.A. Bayona, who's obviously since gone onto great things of his own. If there are slight mis-steps – a gratuitous shock shot of a road accident (jarringly inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the film) and an over-egging of a Peter Pan and Wendy metaphor (you probably got it already, but the film really wants to make sure you understand) – those are small niggles in a film that otherwise never puts a foot wrong. A strangely moving and sentimental film that nevertheless chills to the bone. – OWRead the Empire review.

Despite its title, debut director Prano Bailey Bond holds nothing back in Censor – it plays as a swirling vision that pours right from the filmmaker's head, born of a clear love for scuzzy VHS tapes. Set in Britain in the 1980s at the height of the moral panic around video nasties, it follows Enid (a remarkable Niamh Algar), whose work as a film censor forces her to watch lo-fi gore-fests for hours on end. When she sees one that links directly to unresolved trauma surrounding the disappearance of her sister, she spirals into chaos – growing obsessed with the very pieces of work she's supposed to critique. Bailey-Bond employs lurid neon lighting, disorienting close-ups and Giallo-esque visuals to both pay homage to horror history and immerse you in Enid's head, with aspect ratio changes and scuzzy TV screens turning her loosening grip on reality into a meta-look at scary movies itself. – SBRead the Empire review.

While Karyn Kusama's underrated teen-horror-comedy Jennifer's Body is being rightly reappraised, this foray into deep discomfort is a starker, more emotional tale. The awkward dinner party is an age-old narrative device for creating drama, but one that Kusama mines smartly. Divorcé Will (a bedraggled Logan Marshall-Green) accepts an invite to a get-together at his ex's house, having split when their young son accidentally died, and ends up getting much more than he bargained for. As the night continues, Will's grief bubbles back up to the surface, exacerbated by topics of conversation that soon broach far beyond your typical "how's work?" queries, touching on disturbing revelations that send the diners into disarray. Kusama establishes tone and atmosphere with powerful precision, twisting emotional knives that wring real pain, all the horror evident on Marshall Green's face. Not widely seen in the UK, it's a nightmare that you'll invite your horror-minded nearest and dearest to check out when the credits roll. – BT

There's a reason the quote used in Saint Maud's later trailer from Empire's own James Dyer simply read: "Fuck me!" Rose Glass's darkly delicious directorial debut is a wild ride, growing more intense across its brief runtime until it goes all-out in a blaze of glory, spitting viewers out on the other side. Morfydd Clark gives a breakout performance as the deeply religious live-in nurse of the title, whose holy obsessions take a violent turn when she starts caring for cancer-stricken ex-dancer Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), and feels a divine calling to save her soul. Glass's vision of Maud's breakdown is as exquisite as it is excruciating, ranging from surreal moments of physical possession to squeamish acts of body horror and self-flagellation. The garish-yet-grim setting of a UK seaside town stuck in time adds to the sense of Maud's isolation, and the final shot is one for the ages, solidifying Glass as a filmmaking star of the future. Praise Maud. – SBRead the Empire review.

If an early-career Christopher Nolan were to make a horror movie, it might come out something like Mike Flanagan's Oculus – a film constantly playing with perceptions of reality, told across two intercutting timelines. In the present day, Karen Gillan is Kaylie – a woman convinced her parents' deaths were linked to a haunted mirror in their childhood home, collecting her brother Tim (Brenton Thwaites), recently discharged from a psychiatric hospital, to confront it once and for all. As their night unfolds under the influence of the 'Lasser Glass', we also revisit the events in their childhood that led to the pair becoming orphans — each narrative echoing the other, as history looks set to repeat itself. Adapted from Flanagan's own early short film, Oculus is brilliantly conceived and sharply executed – its most wince-worthy moments (Kaylie chomping into a lightbulb) complemented by unseen horrors that evoke equally vivid images in the audience's mind. As with Flanagan's best work, the family story hits on an emotional level – and where his later tales offer cathartic resolutions, here he indulges in a crushing climax sure to leave viewers in a reflective state. – BTRead the Empire review.

Where Insidious saw James Wan get major mileage from a tiny budget, the director went for broke with The Conjuring, his cinematic take on real-life paranormal investigator duo Ed and Lorraine Warren. Just as JJ Abrams' Super 8 was both a homage to and revival of a bygone era of Amblin blockbusters, Wan's The Conjuring is a full-blooded evocation of iconic '70s horror – from The Exorcist to The Omen – through a modern lens. Here, the Warrens – played beautifully by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga – investigate a possession in 1971 Rhode Island, desperately helping a family that's being plagued by a supernatural force. Wan directs with old-school verve, swinging his camera around in glorious tracking shots that trace the geography of the Perron family home, orchestrating spine-tingling setpieces with perfectly-timed jolts – and delivering a stellar, self-contained mini horror flick in that opening Annabelle sequence. But the real secret to The Conjuring's success is the Warrens themselves – it's so rare to see a loving, married couple lead a horror movie, and their palpable bond adds real heart to the hauntings. – BTRead the Empire review.

Forget ghosts and ghouls – sometimes the scariest thing in life is the thought of it ending. Natalie Erika James' Relic draws on the most human of all fears – growing old – turning one character's descent into dementia into a horrifying, disorienting, heartbreaking piece of genre filmmaking. It stars Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote as mother and daughter Kay and Sam, who go to search for grandmother Edna (Robyn Nevin) when she goes missing – and though they quickly find her, there's a sense that she's no longer the person she once was. Edna is a haunting presence, struggling to cling on to the remnants of herself; Kay and Sam try to figure out how best to care for her, whilst dealing with the walls of their family home closing in around them – literally. Touching and spooky but familiar to start with, Relic really ramps up in the third act, with a brilliantly blindsiding tonal switch, and a devastatingly emotional ending, boasting desperately sad imagery that strikes at something horrifyingly true. – SBRead the Empire review.

Do you wanna play a game? If it's anything like the gruesome predicaments in Saw, probably not. Resulting in eight sequels (so far) – raising the bar for innovative methods of murder and eventually making a star of that creepy, chubby-cheeked clown on a tricycle – James Wan and Leigh Whannell's original Saw is by far the leanest in the series, and less outrageously grotesque than the films that came after it. Its streamlined story sees two strangers (Cary Elwes and Whannell himself) wake up chained to the pipes of a dingy bathroom, with a dead body in the centre of the room – and if they don't escape before time runs out, they die. In there with them is an old hacksaw, and it soon becomes clear that it isn't intended to cut through their chains…. Responsible for some of the most iconic horror imagery of recent decades, and sparking a gamification of gore that has inspired many a film since, Saw quickly became a defining horror force, with a twist ending that's deservedly gone down as an all-timer rug-pull. – SBRead the Empire review.

There are so many reasons why Kill List is so effective that you can, appropriately, list them. First, there's the sheer unknowability of it all – director and co-writer Ben Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump tell a compelling but fractured story that you never quite get the full picture on, as soldier-turned-hitman Jay (Neil Maskell) accepts one last hit-job offer from old buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) and tumbles down a deep, dark rabbithole. Secondly, there's the realism of it all – there's a kitchen-sink approach here, with improvised character-driven sequences that play out with such mundanity that when the shit eventually hits the fan, it all feels palpably possible. Thirdly, there's the aforementioned fan-hitting shit – psychological unease and wince-worthy violence eventually giving way to all-out cult horror that's squirm-in-your-seat terrifying. And fourthly, you have a gut-punch ending that takes a film so largely steeped in realism and takes it into mind-bendingly mythical territory – allegory crashing in on actuality in a way that throws you completely off-balance. Cross all those off your list, and you have a British horror classic. – BTRead the Empire review.

Following his dismal first Hollywood experience on Mimic, this was Guillermo del Toro's triumphant return to Spanish-language filmmaking. The elder brother of Pan's Labyrinth, it's very much a companion piece to the later film: explicitly political as well as eerie; a complementary take on the Spanish Civil War set five years before Ofelia met El Fauno. An idiosyncratic metaphorical thread running through the film compares unquiet spirits with unexploded bombs, and there are real ghosts present in the orphanage where young Fernando Tielve (giving an affecting lead performance after only auditioning to be an extra) is placed thanks to the ongoing violence. But del Toro's thesis, as in Pan, is that the supernatural is hardly worse than the real world's own horrors. The spooky Santi (Junio Valverde) is much less of a threat than the orphanage's flesh-and-blood caretaker. – OWRead the Empire review.

Anybody who recommends watching Martyrs always does so with severe cautioning. So, since you should always Martyrs responsibly, here's your official Empire warning: Martyrs is almost as hardcore as horror gets. It contains unspeakable images that cannot be unseen, and goes to places so disturbing that it truly should not be watched lightly. Still here? Then strap in for a harrowing tale taking in trauma, torture, and transcendence, as a victim of childhood abuse pursues revenge against the seemingly ordinary family she thinks imprisoned her in a slaughterhouse 15 years previously, and discovers unexpected horrors in the process. Pascal Laugier's film is a shapeshifter – one that begins in a realm of Tarantino-esque OTT splatter, and changes tack halfway through as it delves into depravity. Its brutal excesses, though, are ultimately in service of the story and its themes – and the compelling characters make this more than just an 'are-you-still-watching?' ordeal. It'll either propel you to a heightened state of consciousness with its uncompromising visions – or leave you cowering in a corner, regretting the last 100 minutes of your life. Your choice. – BTRead the Empire review.

After Remi Weekes' auspicious early career in short filmmaking – check out his heart-stopping Tickle Monster to get a good read on his talent – the filmmaker unearths real terror in the desperate position faced by refugee couple Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (u1e62u1ecdpu1eb9 Dìrísù) in his feature debut. Following a harrowing ordeal in their native South Sudan, the pair are forced to flee to the UK, where a shabby council house plays host to their worst internal fears while they battle discrimination from the outside. Weekes juxtaposes some seriously creepy monster design with surreal manifestations of Rial and Bol's diaspora. Nothing quite summons dread, however, like a simple scene in which Rial loses her bearings on the estate – a rising level of panic settling in across her face as all manner of potential threats lie nearby. Dìrísù and Mosaku are astonishingly well matched, and bring strong, grounded performances to a story rooted in tragedy and brought to vivid life. – BWRead the Empire review.

More so than jump scares and gore, David Robert Mitchell's It Follows deals in unease and dread. Underrated talent Maika Monroe stars as Jay, a young woman who has sex with a boy, only to discover that the act has passed on a kind of supernatural curse – wherever she goes, a murderous force follows her. It could look like someone she knows, a stranger in a crowd; whatever it needs to get close to her. The only way to (temporarily) get it off her back? To have sex with someone else, and pass the curse on. Vintage clothes combined with the '80s synthy score and seemingly ageless tech make the setting hard to pin down, adding to the off-kilter atmosphere – and the creepiness escalates as Jay and her friends try to figure out how to free themselves, never able to relax lest they spot an ominous figure making a beeline straight for them. It's a uniquely ominous execution of a brilliant concept – but fair warning, you will find yourself jumping at random people in your peripheral vision for a while after watching… – SBRead the Empire review.

For the most part, Joel Anderson's Australian mock-doc features no outright scares. It's constantly compelling, though – a Twin Peaks-ish account of 16-year-old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker), who's drowned in a lake, and the possibly spiritual events her family experiences in the weeks and months after as they come to learn she was hiding significant secrets from them. The rest of the Palmer family is utterly convincing as they wade through their grief and growing understanding of what was happening in Alice's life, and when the dark heart of what Alice was facing is finally revealed, it's absolutely devastating. The closing minutes of the film bring it all crashing home, pairing properly bone-chilling images with a droning sound mix that burrows under the skin and refuses to leave. Appropriately for a ghost movie, Lake Mungo continues to haunt long after the credits have rolled. – BT

Amid the South Korean horror boom, Na Hong-jin's 150-minute epic stands out as a nerve-shredding highlight – gorgeously shot, incredibly atmospheric, and with a final act that instils terror on a primal level. Kwak Do-won is Jong-goo – a bumbling policeman investigating a series of massacres that seem to be connected with an unusual outbreak, as superstition leads to mistrust of a Japanese stranger living out in the woods. Across its first hour, The Wailing displays a Bong-ian sense of tonal mischief – there are flickers of Memories Of Murder in its police procedural plot and surprising bouts of comedy. But as it goes on, the film plungers into deeper, darker territory, building in intensity as possible possessions and mysterious infections call for flaming shamanic exorcisms. Come the heartbreaking finale, you'll be fully under its spell. – BTRead the Empire review.

For most horror directors, darkness is where true terror lies – creatures wreathed in shadows and spectres half-glimpsed, ready to strike when night falls. All of which serves to make Ari Aster's Midsommar even more uncanny: its nightmarish visions unfold in broad daylight, as a sun-bleached Scandi folk festival gets messier than your typical Glasto mudbath. As with Hereditary, Aster plunges viewers face-first into the dizzying depths of grief – here via Florence Pugh's Dani, who has recently lost her entire family in horrific circumstances and finds her only lifeline in half-hearted boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), who was on the verge of breaking up with her when tragedy struck. Reluctantly invited to join Christian and his friends at the Hårga festival – perpetually bathed in sunlight – it's not long before Dani's creaking psyche is rocked by hallucinogens, betrayals, and bodily mutilations, leading to a flower-wreathed fiery finale that's already become iconic. Aster creates vivid images here – both brutal and beautiful – that make familiar folklore territory feel new, and Pugh is breathtakingly raw as the devastated Dani. Her expressions of pain, despair, and ecstasy are truly unforgettable. – BTRead the Empire review.

The most brain-breaking film you can watch that stars David Caruso and isn't Hudson Hawk, Session 9 is a criminally underseen horror gem. The logline is simple: an asbestos-cleaning crew (comprised of Caruso, Peter Mullan and Josh Lucas, among others) head to an abandoned insane asylum in Massachusetts to tidy the place up. It does not, as you might imagine, go well. But this is no cheapie chiller, lobbing jump scares at you every ten minutes. Instead, Session 9 is a film that goes all in on mood, its dank, doomy vibe worming its way into your brain. From the sounds of it, that vibe was right there on set: Caruso has recalled that the genuine old hospital they filmed in (a place that apparently inspired HP Lovecraft) was "always scary... a terrifying location". That sense is palpable. And the deeply unsettling things that happen to this film's characters will certainly make you think twice before you agree to tidy up an abandoned insane asylum. – NDS

Sometimes the scariest horror films are the ones that don't announce themselves as a horror film. Watch the first ten minutes of Scream or The Exorcist, and you'll be in no doubt that what you're experiencing is hell-bent on heebying your jeebies. Audition, on the other hand, begins in the mode of a romantic drama. A middle-aged widower named Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is urged by his son to find a new partner, and begrudgingly decides to stage fake auditions to see if love will strike. It's all very sweet and warm and human, and makes you wonder if Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan ever explored the remake rights. Then, about an hour later, the film goes berserk. Asami (Eihi Shiinia), a young woman who enthralled Aoyama, is shown sitting in an apartment that's completely empty aside from a sack and a phone. The contents of that sack will be revealed. They will make you feel ill. And in a sequence never to be forgotten by anybody who has seen it, Asami will put a wire saw to some truly gnarly use. Audition requires a strong stomach – as does most of the oeuvre of Takashi Miike – but it's a masterful, chilling ride, all the more disturbing for the fact it cranks up slowly to its bugfuck finish. – NDSRead the Empire review.

Leigh Whannell's reinvention of The Invisible Man took a horror icon of old and transplanted it effortlessly into the 21st Century, using fear of the unseeable as an astoundingly relevant metaphor for the paranoia that comes from surviving a relationship based on abuse, coercion and control. Elisabeth Moss excels as Cecilia, who manages to escape her violent husband and optics expert Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) – but though Adrian is reported as dead soon afterwards, she suspects he is using his life's work to hunt her down, while everyone else assumes she's simply traumatised. Whannell employs numerous devices to make Cecilia (and the audience) aware of Adrian – a steamy handprint in the shower, breath in the cold air, paint splattered over his form – and builds unbearable tension right from the opening scene, as Cecilia silently, desperately tries to get out of the house. It's a bold, powerful take on a character well over 100 years old – and filled with brilliantly orchestrated scares. Be honest, who didn't flip out during that restaurant scene? – SBRead the Empire review.

There are scary films on this list. That's pretty much a given when you have a feature called The 50 Best Horror Movies Of The 21st Century. But there's a genuine case to be made that Takashi Shimuzu's 2002 cracker might be, pound for pound, the scariest film on this list. Laden with doom, drenched in dread, suffused in spookiness, it's a tale of a curse from which there is no escape – and the kind of vengeful ghosts who would have Sadako hurriedly rushing her haunted VHS tape back to the store. Those ghostly death rattles will haunt you. The American remake, also directed by Shimizu, is also something of a low-key belter. – CHRead the Empire review.

There have been few horror twists more surprising in the last decade than The Babadook – the titular top-hat-wearing ghoul in Jennifer Kent's Aussie horror – somehow becoming an LGBTQ+ icon. But if the creature's flair for the dramatic (decked out in unconventional fashions and communicating via pop-up picture books) earned it an unlikely fanbase, Kent's film is ultimately a stark, serious monster movie, as Essie Davis' widowed Amelia finds herself at the end of her tether with tearaway son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who's spooked by bone-crunching, rattle-breathed storybook figure The Babadook when night falls. The sometimes-campy creature effects gave the 2010s a fresh piece of horror iconography, and Kent foregrounds Amelia's spiralling sanity with power and precision, leading up to a beautifully cathartic climax. – BTRead the Empire review.

Amid all the real-life horrors that unfolded in 2020, Host provided a much-needed release. Shot remotely on laptops in the height of lockdown, director Rob Savage – along with writers Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley – hit on a genius idea for their feature debut: stage a Zoom call in which six pisstaking participants host a seance and soon get what's coming to them, all unfolding in the 'Screenlife' style pioneered by Blumhouse's (underrated, but here bettered) Unfriended. It sings for a number of reasons – partly because the irreverent interplay between the cast members feels so funny and real in the opening minutes, partly because the film is precisely as long as it needs to be at an ultra-tight 55 minutes, and partly because it's scary as hell. It's thrillingly inventive too – the Zoom call presentation is not only perfectly recreated, but proves fertile ground for jolts that could only work in the digital world of video chatting. It's riotously good fun – and deserves to go down alongside The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity for getting maximum mileage from lo-fi ingenuity. End meeting. – BTRead the Empire review.

Nobody does body horror quite like visionary French filmmaker Julia Ducournau. Her astonishing feature debut Raw stars Garance Marillier as vegetarian Justine, who ends up developing a taste for flesh after enduring an extreme initiation at veterinary school. A uniquely feminine perspective on the genre, she gets your skin crawling from the start through the visceral physicality of her imagery – a horse panting on a treadmill, skin doused in gallons of blood and paint, fingernails scraping against a raised red rash. The cannibalism is infused with a story of sisterhood, and a rabid interpretation of female desire; seeing a man so beautiful it makes your nose bleed, or literally sinking your teeth in at the moment of climax. With her second feature, Titane, about to blow audiences away, Ducournau is one of the most exciting voices in cinema this century. - SBRead the Empire review.

Though Hereditary is director Ari Aster's first feature, it's provided some of the most unforgettable moments in horror cinema of recent decades. That severed head, a man set alight, a particularly nasty self-decapitation – try as you might, these things cannot be unseen. If we lived in a world where awards juries valued horror as much as other, 'worthier' genres, Toni Collette would surely have swept the board for her performance as Annie, an artist who designs miniature figures and houses. The film begins with her burying her mother, a cold and distant woman who has passed on more than the usual mommy issues. Grief tears at the fabric of her family, including husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff) and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro), a strange girl who seems unusually connected to her dead grandmother. A depiction of generational trauma utterly soaked in despair and darkness, this was one hell of an opening statement from a filmmaker sure to be a future legend of horror filmmaking. - SBRead the Empire review.

To scare people on an elemental level, to create an atmosphere that really gets under your skin – and stays there – you have to go as real as possible. For The Witch, Robert Eggers eschewed smoke and mirrors. He wanted the fear of witches that was all too real – and destructive – in the 17th Century to be palpable, and it is: the whole thing feels like death. Eggers filmed with only natural light, used dialogue from Puritan prayer manuals, and dressed his characters in clothes made from antique cloth; composer Mark Korven even used musical instruments from the era, resulting in an authenticity that helped Eggers to create a permanently anxious atmosphere. As a banished settler family (including a mesmeric Anya Taylor-Joy in her debut role) gets to grips with diabolical forces in the woods – beginning with their baby being stolen and killed – evil takes hold, poisoning them all. But for all the mystery and paranoia, when it comes to the crunch, ambiguity goes out the window – this witch is a witch. You will believe. All that and demonic goat Black Phillip, too: a right little bastard if ever there was one. – AGRead the Empire review.

If you don't count The Gift – and nobody should count The Gift – Sam Raimi hadn't gone near horror since dropping the mic with the one-two-three punch of the Evil Dead trilogy. He'd done a Western, a baseball movie, a snowbound thriller, and three Spider-Man movies, but he clearly yearned to hear audiences scream in fright. So he returned in 2009 with Drag Me To Hell, determined to show that time may have moved on, but he could show horror's new wave a thing or ten. An almost outrageously OTT horror, Raimi deploys almost every trick he's learned over the years to bring this tale of a bank clerk (Alison Lohman) who finds herself the unwitting recipient of an ancient curse to grim and grisly life. There are shocks timed to perfection, as well as a coal-black sense of humour running through the whole affair (the last shot is one for the ages), and a masterful control of the audience's emotions. It's not all sturm und drang – check out the eerie silence of the moment when Lohman finds herself watching a floating handkerchief – but it's the kind of goofy thrill ride that only Raimi can conjure up, with possessed animals thrown into the bargain just for good measure. A goat from the GOAT? Can't bleat it. – CHRead the Empire review.

Horror movies don't get much more stripped down than Orin Peli's deeply unsettling found-footage spook-a-thon. The amount of dread conjured from one single recurring camera set-up is astonishing – a static, ice-blue night-vision shot of a bedroom, where any single movement becomes a jolt of nightmarish proportions. Convinced that things are going bump in the night, couple Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat) set up a camera to film themselves while they sleep – and over the course of a few weeks, the ghostly goings-on start to escalate. If the franchise later became known for more OTT setpieces (note: Paranormal Activity 2 contains a real all-timer of a jump-scare) and extended lore, it's the simplicity of the original that's most effective: a lightly-pulled corner of a bed-sheet, a set of demonic footprints appearing in baby powder, a deep-sleeping Katie looming over Micah in the night. Like the best horror flicks, it's breathlessly scary in the moment, but really comes to life when you're safely tucked up in your own bed. (Or are you?) No wonder it turned Blumhouse into a powerhouse. – BTRead the Empire review.

Some scary films play out like a nightmare. All credit to Brit filmmaker Neil Marshall, then, because The Descent plays out like an entire Jenga-pile of bad dreams, all clattering into each other while the audience clings on for dear life. It starts harrowingly enough, as the life of outdoorsy Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is shattered in an instant – a car accident killing her husband and daughter, but leaving her alive. A year down the line, her friends invite her on a spelunking trip – but what they don't tell her is that they're actually exploring an unmapped area, and when they become caved in, there's no clear escape room. If the claustrophobia of those underground caverns is near-unbearable, Marshall ups the stakes even further when it becomes clear the women aren't alone in those unexplored caves – and the fight for survival is going to be tooth-and-nail. Part psychological panic-attack, part subterranean monster movie, it's an aptly-titled film – a descent in more ways than one. – BTRead the Empire review.

As high concepts go, Train To Busan's four-word pitch is a doozy: zombies on a train. More expansively, Yeon Sang-ho's adrenaline-pumping undead thrill-ride follows a father and daughter who are stuck on a high-speed train while an outbreak spreads across its many carriages, becoming part of a band of survivors fighting to make it to their final destination. Using the speedy zombies popularised by 28 Days Later and the Dawn Of The Dead remake, Yeon also has his undead legions convulsing and contorting as the virus takes hold – an animalistic addition to zombie lore that adds to the terror. Gong Yoo really makes you care about Seok-woo, and the love he shares with his daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) is palpable – but it's the burly Sang-hwa who's the break-out (played by Ma Dong-seok, now starring in Eternals and known in Western cinema as Don Lee), believably battling the infected as the film barrels towards its terminus. The confined coaches amp up the claustrophobia – but Yeon retains that tension and terror in sequences away from the train too. All in all, it's a real first-class zombie-train experience. – BTRead the Empire review.

It makes perfect sense that A Quiet Place doesn't put a foot wrong – because if one of its characters does, everything goes to hell. Written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, it's a tight concept – mysterious monsters with extremely keen hearing have forced the world (or what's left of it) into silence – that was then rewritten by director/star John Krasinski, who put even more emphasis on the parenting metaphor. Here, protecting your kids is even more of a life and death situation than usual, and Krasinski constructs a masterclass in tension, in narrative economy, in horrible chills and nerve-shredding jump scares, with a simple but ingenious story strand involving the Abbotts' deaf daughter Regan (a magnificent Millicent Simmonds). The enjoyable but less groundbreaking sequel only confirmed that A Quiet Place was lightning in a bottle: a lean, taut exercise in horror, working aces on every level, functioning as a superb human drama and a thrilling monster movie. Hear, hear. – AGRead the Empire review.

There's nothing quite like The Mist. Frank Darabont – who'd previously adapted Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile – stripped things right down for this vicious, biting, fabulously batshit take on the author's creepy-crawly nightmare. With a foreboding fog taking hold, the inhabitants of small-town Maine hunker up in a general store, setting the stage for a no-holds-barred exploration of human folly as Darabont goes full Lord Of The Flies in a supermarket. Darabont is so good at this – it's a microcosm of division, politics, and perspective bashing heads, as the townsfolk start killing each other without any help from the inter-dimensional beasts trying to break in. Devout religious zealot Mrs Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) is at least as scary as the giant insectoids. But then. But then! As the survivors take a final stand, The Mist goes operatic, in awe of its monsters, culminating in a conclusion so utterly depressing, so supremely sadistic, that King said he'd wished he'd thought of it himself. If you've seen it, you're probably still scarred. – AGRead the Empire review.

You have to hand it to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland – nearly two decades ago, they identified Great Britain as an island ready to implode with rage. The duo's don't-call-it-a-zombie-movie (note: for all intents and purposes, it is a zombie movie) had the same seismic effect on horror as Trainspotting had on the Britflick – cinematically raw, narratively uncompromising, thematically prescient, and full of images that have lingered in the cultural consciousness ever since. When London fell eerily quiet in lockdown, it was shots from 28 Days Later's spine-tingling opening sequence – Cillian Murphy in a hospital gown, wandering around the abandoned capital – that flooded social media. While purists might scoff at its Z-status, since it reimagines the walking dead as the running infected, the film amps up Romero's vision of viral terror in adrenaline-pumping ways: infection is rapid, the afflicted arrive at breakneck speed, and certain survivors pose an even bigger threat. Its impact can be felt on nearly every post-apocalyptic zombie tale since – from Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead, to Train To Busan and The Walking Dead. 19 years later, it's as potent as ever. – BTRead the Empire review.

To make a truly iconic horror film – one that becomes part of the wider cultural fabric, while still being beloved by genre die-hards – you need to get so many things right. You need a killer concept, something so hooky, so smart but simple, that it instantly takes purchase – like the dream-battlegrounds of A Nightmare On Elm Street, or the 'you watch the tape, and then you die' conceit of Ring. You need an image that burns its way into the public consciousness and transcends its origins – like a pair of ghost-girl twins standing in a hallway, or a knife-wielding boogeyman in an inside-out William Shatner mask. You need a properly great protagonist to root for – one who'll linger as long in the memory as the forces of evil they're battling, like an Ash or a Laurie Strode. And finally, you need an all-timer villain able to strike true fear, turning real-life horrors into something heightened and cinematic – a Ghostface, or a Xenomorph, or a Pennywise.Get Out has it all. With his directorial debut, Jordan Peele created something that instantly felt like A Moment as well as a movie. He got that killer concept down – a Black American man uncovers all-new levels of appropriation when visiting his white girlfriend's parents. He served up all kinds of indelible images – Daniel Kaluuya's hypnotised Chris with his eyes wide and tears pouring down his cheeks as Catherine Keener's Missy puts him under her influence; his inky descent into the Sunken Place; LaKeith Stanfield's Andre and his horrified expression having briefly snapped back to reality at the family gathering; Allison Williams' Rose eating her Fruit Loops separately from her milk. He gave us one of the most empathetic horror leads in years, Kaluuya bringing so much charm to Chris, while also portraying his world-weariness when Rose is apparently oblivious to the discomfort he knows he'll experience over the course of their visit.And when it came to horror villains, Peele did not hold back: with the Armitage family, he took aim at white, seemingly-liberal America ("I would have voted for Obama for a third time if I could" is as painful as it is hilarious) and the festering racism that still lies underneath it all. He identifies a nation that wants to commodify Black bodies, culture and talent, but that doesn't care about Black lives – picking at real scars through a moviefied lens of brainwashing, body-swapping, possession, and torture.The thematic preoccupations of Get Out run deep – it's a film that taps into a vein of political consciousness in horror running all the way back through to Romero's original Night Of The Living Dead. But as a movie-movie – a Friday night, grab-the-popcorn horror – it works brilliantly too, full of satirical wit, crowdpleasing moments ("I'm TS-motherfuckin'-A"), hypnotic setpieces, and delivering a blood-soaked rampage in the final reel. It's a searing, supremely entertaining, seriously impressive work sure to go down in the halls of horror history – and, in a rare move, even the Academy agreed, with a Best Original Screenplay win, and nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. Get in. – BTRead the Empire review.