RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Chuck Russell
CAST: Madison Iseman, Aaron Dominguez, Melanie Jarnson

Honor the late, great Chuck Russell, who passed away this year, with his little-seen remake of an ’80s cult item. Russell himself was active in the ’80s – he made a rad remake of The Blob from 1988 as well as the acclaimed third Nightmare on Elm Street – but Witchboard plays more like a forgotten and surprisingly good mid-2000s supernatural horror movie. Madison Iseman plays a recovering addict whose mental state frays as she forges an unexpected connection to a spirit board that possesses her with visions from its creator.  

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: George Romero
CAST: Jan White, Raymond Laine

A few years after he made history with Night of the Living Dead, George Romero fused domestic drama and the occult; the resulting oddity (sometimes titled Hungry Wives or Jack’s Wife) isn’t the scariest thing in his career, but is a fascinating time capsule of its second-wave-feminism era (and accompanying suburban discontent).

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Carter Smith
CAST: Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, Shawn Ashmore

Scott B. Smith (no relation to the director) adapted his own well-reviewed, bestselling horror novel about carnivorous vines (!) found at a Mayan ruins site. Though the movie didn’t reach the same level of acclaim as the book, The Ruins does creepy-crawly plant horror better than the same year’s The Happening, with some visceral visual effects. 

RATING: TV-PG
DIRECTOR: Terence Fisher
CAST: Peter Cushing, Robert Urquhart, Hazel Court, Christopher Lee

The title makes it sound like a later-period entry in Universal’s Frankenstein series that began back in 1932. But The Curse of Frankenstein actually kicks off another, unrelated series based on the Mary Shelley classic, loosely adapting that novel in the first Frankenstein movie for Hammer Films. It became Hammer’s first big horror movie, ushering in an era of monster movies taking advantage of lurid color and looser content restrictions to deliver vivid red blood and ghastly new experiments and demises for the dead and undead alike. 

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Rob Zombie
CAST: Scout Taylor-Compton, Malcolm McDowell, Danielle Harris

No, not the one with Jamie Lee Curtis – or the other one with Jamie Lee Curtis. This is a different Halloween II, Rob Zombie’s sequel to his own remake, which does pay homage to the hospital setting of the “original” 1981 sequel. After that impressive opening, though, Zombie’s second Michael Myers movie goes in a weirder, darker, more creatively bold direction than either his remake or most of the Halloween sequels it followed. Audiences largely avoided it, but fans of Zombie’s distinctive work often consider it one of his best.

RATING: TV-PG
DIRECTOR: Robert Siodmak
CAST: Lon Chaney Jr., Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige

Robert Siodmak, one of the great underappreciated directors of his era, went on to make a bunch of terrific noirs and psychological thrillers, including some proto-horror work. Son of Dracula came before his peak period, and if his foray into the Universal Monster world isn’t quite up to his later films, it is an entertaining example of his genre versatility.  The film follows Lon Chaney Jr.’s mysterious, ah, Count Alucard (spell it backwards) as he arrives on a New Orleans plantation, invited by Katherine Caldwell (Louise Allbritton), who may have designs on something only this mystery man can provide. It’s more of a potboiler than the elegant original, and Chaney is no Bela Leguosi, but Siodmak’s stylish direction makes Son of Dracula a lot of fun anyway.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Levine
CAST: Amber Heard, Whitney Able, Michael Welch

It’s a measure of how much the horror market has shifted over 20 years that All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a clever and well-shot slasher movie, somehow wound up in release limbo for a full seven years after its Toronto premiere, at least in the U.S. (some international releases followed a little more quickly). It finally came out in 2013, and while it might have been underwhelming after seven years of mystery, now it’s easy enough to watch it and appreciate its evocative cinematography, strong performances (especially from a young Amber Heard), and clever sociological twist. Director Jonathan Levine went on to a Hollywood career, directing several Seth Rogen movies and the horror comedy Warm Bodies; he was recently tapped to direct the Tom Cruise sequel Days of Thunder. Not very spooky, but his feature debut remains one of his best.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Tom Holland
CAST: William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall

No, the director isn’t the Spider-Man who’s married to Zendaya. This Tom Holland has horror bona fides: He co-wrote and directed the original Child’s Play, wrote Psycho II, and made this suburbs-set horror movie about a teenage boy who realizes his new neighbor is a vampire – and enlists the help of an only-on-TV vampire hunter to try and stop the creature’s killing spree. It’s not the most intense vampire movie you can watch, but it’s one of the most fun, playfully injecting vamp mythology into a culture that presumes familiarity with it already.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Neil Jordan
CAST: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan

Neil Jordan’s best-known horror movie is Interview with the Vampire. But honestly, his other, far lesser-known, female-driven vampire film featuring heavy backstory is the more consistently entertaining of the two. It may not have Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, but Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan are sensational as a mother-daughter pair of vampires forced to relocate to a small coastal town in England, a location that gives way to surprising amounts of gothic atmosphere.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Neil Marshall
CAST: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid

Initially enough of an obscurity that its sequel never even came out in theaters in the U.S., The Descent has grown in reputation over the past 20 years, to the point where it’s now considered one of the best and most intense horror movies of the 2000s. It helps that it will freak some viewers out before it even gets to the creature-feature or the gore; scenes of a group of spelunkers exploring cramped underground graves are enough to induce nightmares in anyone with even a hint of claustrophobia. On top of that, the mutated bat-people emerge! The attempts at trauma-mining setup may be a little hackneyed, but as far as gnarly creature horror goes, it’s hard to beat The Descent.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Mitchell Lichtenstein
CAST: Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Josh Pais

There are, unavoidably, a great many horror movies about vampires, zombies, slashers, and creatures, some of which appear on this very list. There are vanishingly few, however, about the idea of vagina dentata – women’s genitalia lined with, yes, teeth. That’s precisely what this darkly funny indie horror is about, featuring a command performance by Jess Weixler as a teenage girl whose sexual awakening has some bloodier-than-usual results.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Clive Barker
CAST: Andrew Robinson, Claire Higgins, Ashley Laurence

Clive Barker’s adaptation of his own novel won’t be to all tastes. But it’s a fantastical horror movie unlike any other, standing head and shoulders above the many sequels it spawned. Barker’s mythology involves a mysterious box that summons Cenobites, creatures from another dimension that blur together pain and pleasure, making this one of the more perverse and sexually charged of the famous 1980s horror pictures.

RATING: PG-13
DIRECTOR: Stephen Sommers
CAST: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Oded Fehr

Stephen Sommers reinvigorated the creakiest of Universal’s original monsters by making, essentially, Indiana Jones with more supernatural monsters (instead of nazi-style human ones). It’s not exactly wall-to-wall scares, but it’s a perfect transition from one throwback (two-fisted action-adventure) to another (monster horror!) for younger movie fans.

May (2003)

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Lucky McKee
CAST: Angela Bettis, Anna Faris, Jeremy Sisto

An indie-horror cult classic that riffs on both Carrie and Frankenstein, Lucky McKee’s movie was barely released commercially back in 2003 but is well worth checking out. Angela Bettis gives a bravura nervous-loner performance as a vet tech who winds up building an unusual doll collection; Anna Faris in her pre-sitcom days provides killer comic support. May and May are macabre and heartbreaking in equal measure.

RATING: PG-13
DIRECTOR: Barry Sonnenfeld
CAST: Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christina Ricci, Christopher Lloyd

The Addams Family, a smash hit from the early ’90s, is easily the kid-friendliest movie on the list – nascent horror kids and even less spookily-inclined older elementary schoolers will enjoy it – while also having impeccable fall vibes, with stunning production design, great one-liners that outwit the beloved sitcom it’s partially based on, and note-perfect performances from every cast member. Oh, and get this: the sequel is even better.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Robert Eggers
CAST: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Black Philip

The movie that arguably established A24 as a horror-label force, and definitely established Robert Eggers as a major name in the genre, is short yet spookily immersive. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the daughter of a family too annoying even for the Puritans, exiled in the New England woods in the 17th century, and bedeviled by a witch – though it’s Taylor-Joy who shoulders the blame.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Dario Argento
CAST: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci

Forget Luca Guadagnino’s drab remake with Dakota Johnson and go straight for the visually arresting original, surely one of the medium’s greatest triumphs of shapes and colors. The story is pretty simple: Suzy (Jessica Harper) attends a German ballet school and discovers what any of us might have suspected: It’s run by a coven of murderous witches. The widely beloved film from Italian master Dario Argento became hugely influential with its eye-popping colors and ear-popping score from prog-rock act Goblin.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Bob Clark
CAST: Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea

Man, 1974 was a hell of a year for the barely-existent slasher genre; it’s also when The Texas Chain Saw Massacre made its gnarly mark. That one is perpetually Tubi-available, but plenty of services have it on hand, and plenty of folks have seen it. So while it’s obviously more December than October, Black Christmas is equally worthwhile, as a mysterious creep terrorizes a sorority house with some of the most gorgeously lit and framed stalking the genre has ever seen. Two very different remakes couldn’t touch it.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Tobe Hooper
CAST: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Gunnar Hansen

Like I said: A hell of a slasher year. Honestly, Texas Chain Saw is available all over the place, so it’s not necessarily imperative that you watch it on Tubi. But it’s probably one of the dozen or so best and most influential movies ever made, so if you haven’t seen it and don’t have any subscription services handy, don’t let that stop you! After all, it’s one of the scariest and most visually distinctive horror movies ever made, following a group of young people who stumble upon a family of cannibals. The old rumors about Tobe Hooper not actually directing his later (and less disturbing) horror film Poltergeist will seem particularly absurd once you’ve seen this singular horror masterpiece.

RATING: R
DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
CAST: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken

Tim Burton is known for his spooky movies, yet he rarely puts out something violent enough for an R rating. His retelling of the Washington Irving story – this time with actual supernatural elements and a strong influence from the Hammer Studios films of the 1960s and 1970s – is bloody enough to serve as an exception. Johnny Depp plays an investigator version of Ichabod Crane, Christina Ricci plays his love interest, and none other than Christopher Walken (with stunt assistance from original Darth Maul actor Ray Park!) plays the horseman himself. It’s simply one of the most beautifully painterly atmospheric horror films.