There’s no purpose to scream: Our viewing manual to the most significantly acclaimed horror films of all time will help you decide which chillers to movement this Halloween.Bettmann/Getty Images
Halloween manner Halloween movies — and for some, Halloween films same horror films.
To assist you’re making the maximum of the autumn season, we’ve got put together a countdown of the 25 pleasant horror films of all time, from “Psycho” to “A Quiet Place.” The list is based on horror rankings from the movie-review mixture website online Metacritic.
Movies are ordered from appropriate to great — there are no awful horror movies in this list. Most ties have been damaged by means of searching at the full quantity of evaluations that went into each film’s Metacritic rating.
Overall, simplest films with at least 15 Metacritic-tracked opinions are included in this countdown. We similarly narrowed the list to horror movies that can be streamed on subscription offerings, together with Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+, or on loose, advert-supported services, which includes Pluto TV and Tubi. (CBS Essentials, Paramount+ and Pluto are all subsidiaries of ViacomCBS.)
Read on to look which films made the very last cut — and to discover in which to flow all of them proper now.
(Note: Metacritic scores and streaming availability are present day as of guide; if a film is to be had to circulate on a couple of systems, we’ve got listed up to two options.)25. “A Quiet Place”Paramount Pictures
Making proper on its name, this 2018 movie from author-director-celebrity John Krasinski (“The Office”) rarely registered above a whisper en path to becoming a field-office destroy. Emily Blunt, Krasinski’s actual-existence wife, co-stars. Krasinski and Blunt play a married couple who ought to keep matters hush-hush, lest their own family turns into centered by mysterious, sound-sensitive creatures.
In the Seattle Times, critic Moira Macdonald praised “A Quiet Place” as “taut and regularly pretty terrifying.”
Watch “A Quiet Place” on Paramount+ (subscription required)
Metacritic score: 8224.”Under the Shadow”Vertical Entertainment US thru YouTube/screenshot
“Under the Shadow” is a 2016 Persian-language movie set in wartorn Iran in the Nineteen Eighties. The psychological chiller from author-director Babak Anvari worries a mother (played by way of Narges Rashidi), her daughter (performed by way of Avin Manshadi) — and the doll the mom says will defend them from a malevolent pressure.
“The movie is first charming, then terrifying,” Noel Murray wrote for the Los Angeles Times.
Watch “Under the Shadow” on Netflix (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: 83 (25 reviews)23. “Drag Me to Hell” (2009)Scream Factory
Released in 2009, in the wake of the economic crumble, Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell” tells the story of a mortgage officer (played by means of Alison Lohman) who is cursed after she denies a mortgage extension.
Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek found the movie scary a laugh — the result of “an specially joyous type of filmmaking.”
Watch “Drag Me to Hell” on Showtime (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: eighty three (32 evaluations)
(CBS Essentials and Showtime are each subsidiaries of ViacomCBS.)22. “Saint Maud”A24
Released in 2021, “Saint Maud” is the most up-to-date film in this countdown. Morfydd Clark stars as a hospice nurse who’s out to shop a soul.
According to the Atlantic’s David Sims, creator-director Rose Clark “hold[s] the viewer guessing until the very last minute.”
Watch “Saint Maud” on Hulu (subscription required)
Metacritic score: 83 (35 opinions)
Watch “Saint Maud” on Paramount+ (subscription required)21. “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”Warner Home Video
Johnny Depp earned a nice actor Oscar nomination because the vengeful barber on the bloody coronary heart of this 2007 version of the identical-titled Broadway musical.
TV Guide Magazine’s Maitland McDonagh praised director Tim Burton for remodeling the Stephen Sondheim supply fabric into “a cheerfully gothic morality tale.”
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is the primary — but not remaining — musical in this countdown.
Watch “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” on Paramount+ (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: 83 (39 critiques) 20. “The Witch” (2016)A24
Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Queen’s Gambit”) stars as a teenager accused of being a witch in this 2016 film set in Puritan New England of the 1600s.
In Time Out, critic David Ehrlich wrote that “The Witch” is “one of the most really unnerving horror films in latest memory…”
Watch “The Witch” (2016) on Showtime (subscription required)
Metacritic score: eighty three (forty six critiques)19. “The Lighthouse”A24
This black-and-white, 2019 entry is the second one film on this list from filmmaker Robert Eggers, who additionally wrote and directed “The Witch.”
The psychological horror tale stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as nineteenth-century lightkeepers who conflict with the isolation of their publish.
“‘The Lighthouse’ stands as a monument to two enormous performances,” Tara Brady praised within the Irish Times.
Watch “The Lighthouse” on Amazon Prime Video (subscription required)
Metacritic score: 83 (fifty one opinions)
Watch “The Lighthouse” on Tubi (free, with commercials)18. “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary”Encore+ via YouTube/screenshot
If the horror style teaches you anything, it is to expect the unexpected. Enter “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary,” the second one musical on this countdown of horror classics.
This 2003, black-and-white Canadian production looks and plays like a silent film (however with a rating, natch). And that’s no longer the half of it: The Guy Maddin movie recasts Bram Stoker’s vampire story as a ballet.
“…I hasten to add that that is the maximum inventive vampire photograph of the ultimate 80 years,” John Powers wrote for the L.A. Weekly.
Watch “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary on Shudder” (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: eighty four
Watch “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary” on Shudder on Encore+ YouTube channel (loose)17. “The Host” (2007)Showbox Entertainment thru Amazon/screenshot
This film is the 2007 access from Bong Joon Ho, the Oscar-prevailing filmmaker of “Parasite.” In “The Host,” the Han River in Seoul, South Korea, is infected. Monster movement ensues.
Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum called the movie “wildly pleasing.”
Viewer beware: Do now not confuse this film with the 2013 Hollywood sci-fi movie, additionally titled “The Host.”
Watch “The Host” (2007) on Amazon Prime Video (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: eighty five
Watch “The Host” (2007) on Hulu (subscription required)16. “The Babadook”Scream Factory
“The Babadook” is a 2014 Australian horror film that finds a widowed mom (performed by means of Essie Davis) and her younger son (played by means of Noah Wiseman) terrorized by using a individual from a pop-up children’s e-book.
The Portland Oregonian’s Marc Mohan known as the film a “close to-masterpiece of unease.”
Watch “The Babadook” on AMC+ (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: 8613 (TIE). “Eraserhead”Libra Films
This 1977 cult film marks the feature debut of writer-director David Lynch (“Twin Peaks”). The avant-garde tale concerns a person (performed via Jack Nance) and his area-alien-esque baby.
TV Guide Magazine called “Eraserhead” a “creepily sensuous film that suggests that the darkish and troubling matters we adore to repress inhabit dresser drawers, stay behind the radiator or lie beneath the bed.”
Watch “Eraserhead” on HBO Max (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: 87 (15 critiques)
Watch “Eraserhead” on Criterion Channel (subscription required)thirteen (TIE). “The Invisible Man” (1933)Universal/Getty Images
This 1933 movie, the original massive-display tackle H.G. Wells’ conventional story, is the first of 3 titles on this listing that belongs to what’s now called the Universal Classic Monsters franchise.
Claude Rains stars in “The Invisible Man” as a scientist who gains the energy of invisibility, but loses his mind.
“The strangest man or woman but created by the display screen,” Variety declared upon the movie’s unique release.
Watch “The Invisible Man” (1933) on Shudder (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: 87 (15 reviews)13 (TIE). “The Wicker Man” (1974)Anchor Bay Entertainment
Not to be stressed with the significantly mocked Nicolas Cage remake, the authentic “Wicker Man” was praised by using Variety for a screenplay “which, for sheer creativeness and close to-terror, has seldom been [equaled].”
Edward Woodward (“The Equalizer”) stars in the 1974 movie as a police sergeant whose look for a lacking female takes him to a Scottish island, where the goings-on are, in a word, extraordinary.
Watch “The Wicker Man” (1974) on Amazon Prime Video (subscription required)
Metacritic rating: 87 (15 reviews)eleven (TIE). “Jaws”Universal/Getty Images