Who says horror movies aren’t good movies?
Some of the best movies we’ve seen in the 21st century have fallen into the horror genre. And we’re not just talking about Oscar darlings such as 2017’s Get Out — which, if you’re asking, deserved every award nomination and win that it got. Or Jordan Peele’s amazing follow-up film, Us.
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And we’re not just talking about fancy foreign films such as Pan’s Labyrinth or The Orphanage, either.
Even some of the movies that didn’t make this list—lesser-known foreign films, some limited releases, films without a Metascore, or films that rated a Metacritic Metascore under 71—still really deserve a special shout out. In the 2017 version of It, Bill Skarsgård’s take on Pennywise shows he’s an actor to watch.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) may not have an Oscar-worthy original screenplay, but it’s almost as tight and terrifying as the original Alien.
The Wailing (2016), a deeply unsettling Korean tale of rural menace and inexplicable violence, is an absolute must-see. The Conjuring movies are bolstered by excellent actress Vera Farmiga. And The Taking of Deborah Logan, a tiny 2014 flick that has no Metascore at all, is definitely worth seeking out for fans of found-footage horror.
Our point is simple: Not every horror movie is The Human Centipede, and it’s high time that this creepy, bloody and, yes, fun, genre, got the respect it deserves.
Here’s our definitive list of the finest members of the horror film genre of the 21st century.
The only thing scarier than these flicks? The very idea of missing out on them.
56. We Are What We Are (tie, 2013)
First on the list: We Are What We Are. A dark ritual, passed down since pioneer times, is threatened when a matriarch dies and leaves some unusual responsibilities to her daughters.
Metacritic Score: 71
56. Shadow of the Vampire (tie, 2000)
John Malkovich plays filmmaker F. W. Murnau as he works to make the classic vampire movie Nosferatu. Murnau is so determined to make an authentically scary movie that he hires an actual vampire to consult.
Metacritic Score: 71
56. Don’t Breathe (tie, 2016)
You’ve seen horror movies about home break-ins before, but this film turns that trope on its head as the protagonists are the ones doing the breaking and entering.
Metacritic Score: 71
56. The Descent (tie, 2005)
If the claustrophobic setting of this film weren’t scary enough to get you to turn the lights on, there are also a pack of hungry, subterranean Gollumesque creatures.
Metacritic Score: 71
52. The Devil’s Candy (tie, 2015)
Following in the footsteps of The Amityville Horror and other demon-real-estate films, The Devil’s Candy explores a house with a supernatural pest problem.
Metacritic Score: 72
52. The Cabin in the Woods (tie, 2012)
There’s a lot going on here. Without giving too much away, there is, of course, the cabin, a bunker filled with monsters, and a team of manipulative scientists.
Metacritic Score: 72
52. Bone Tomahawk (tie, 2015)
This 2015 film looks like a western on its surface, but there’s a scary, if not culturally sensitive, twist.
Metacritic Score: 72
52. Hellboy (tie, 2004)
Part superhero movie, part horror flick, this film follows a benevolent half-demon fighting forces like Nazis and witches.
Metacritic Score: 72
48. 28 Days Later… (tie, 2003)
Imagine waking up in the hospital only to discover that the world has been ravaged by the zombie apocalypse. That’s the set-up of this 2003 classic.
Metacritic Score: 73
48. The House of the Devil (tie, 2009)
When a broke college student responds to a babysitting ad, things go horribly wrong.
Metacritic Score: 73
48. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (tie, 2017)
A teenage boy seems to have the power to kill, and maybe heal, a family he blames for his father’s death.
Metacritic Score: 73
48. Zombieland (tie, 2009)
Zombie comedy had a moment in the early 2000s, and this hilarious movie was among the best of the bunch.
Metacritic Score: 73
48 Thirst (tie, 2009)
A Catholic priest volunteers for a medical experiment to find a vaccine for a deadly virus. But instead of inoculating the man, the vaccine turns him into a vampire.
Metacritic Score: 73
43. The Others (tie, 2001)
The game changed for the haunted house genre with one bone-chilling line of dialogue: “Are you mad? I am your daughter.” We’re still super creeped out 17 years later.
Metacritic Score: 74
43. The Orphanage (tie, 2007)
This 2007 Spanish-language haunted house flick has a picturesque, creepy mansion and ghost-sensitive child.
Metacritic Score: 74
43. The Invitation (tie, 2016)
A dinner party turns out to be a murderous cult initiation.
Metacritic Score: 74
43. Creep (tie, 2015)
The monster isn’t a ghost or some undead creature, but a real person whose mental illness makes him extremely dangerous.
Metacritic Score: 74
39. Creep 2 (tie, 2017)
Between the first and second films, the Creep series gets even creepier.
Metacritic Score: 75
39. Mother! (tie, 2017)
A two-hour explosion of Biblical imagery and gore, this film simultaneously received boos and a standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Metacritic Score: 75
37. Shaun of the Dead (tie, 2004)
This 2004 British film was peak-zombie-comedy.
Metacritic Score: 76
37. What We Do in the Shadows (tie, 2015)
This cult comedy by Taika Waititi follows the daily lives of vampires in New Zealand living in an eternal frat house situation.
Metacritic Score: 76
37. 10 Cloverfield Lane (tie, 2016)
Would you rather do battle in an alien invasion or sit out the worst of it in the basement of a probably dangerous doomsday prepper?
Metacritic Score: 76
34. The Gift (tie, 2015)
Joel Edgerton wrote, directed, and starred in this movie about what happens when your past, quite literally, comes back to haunt you.
Metacritic Score: 77
34. Gerald’s Game (tie, 2017)
This Netflix movie, based on a Stephen King novel, starts off terrifying and just gets more traumatizing as time goes on.
Metacritic Score: 77
32. 28 Weeks Later (tie, 2007)
The sequel to 28 Days Later is arguably even scarier than the original.
Metacritic Score: 78
32. It Comes at Night (tie, 2017)
A disease seems to have already killed off most of the world’s population at the beginning of this movie. One family has managed to stay healthy, isolated in their house in the woods, but for how long?
Metacritic Score: 78
32. Under the Skin (tie, 2014)
Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who seduces men and then (maybe) melts them down for parts.
Metacritic Score: 78
32. The Devil’s Backbone (tie, 2001)
Guillermo del Toro directed this 2001 film about a little boy who arrives at an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. Carlos follows visions of a ghost on the grounds to uncover the secrets of the orphanage.
Metacritic Score: 78
28. Annihilation (tie, 2018)
Natalie Portman plays a cellular-biology professor who enters an opalescent blob that seems to be wrecking and replicating DNA from every living thing it encounters.
Metacritic Score: 79
28. Green Room (tie, 2016)
A band of neo-Nazi skinheads attacks a punk rock band that witnesses a murder at a music club.
Metacritic Score: 79
28. Only Lovers Left Alive (tie, 2014)
Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston play two vampires married for centuries. Sure, they deal with some very vampire-specific problems, but honestly, this movie is just as human and romantic as it is creepy.
Metacritic Score: 79
28. Let Me In (tie, 2010)
This is a remake of a 2009 Swedish film about a vampire who befriends a young boy, but the American version definitely holds its own, and Chloe Grace Moretz’s performance is disturbing as they come.
Metacritic Score: 79
24. Resolution (tie, 2013)
It’s a twisted lovechild of The Ring and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There are creepy videos, alien devotees, and one monster of an ending.
Metacritic Score: 80
24. The Endless (tie, 2018)
This functions as a sort of sequel to Resolution. Watch the two back-to-back for a terrifying night of happily brainwashed people and extraterrestrial terrors.
Metacritic Score: 80
22. Raw (tie, 2017)
A vegetarian student is hazed by classmates and forced to eat raw rabbit liver. The protagonist soon discovers an insatiable love for all meat, and we do mean ALL.
Metacritic Score: 81
22. Goodnight Mommy (tie, 2014)
Mommy just got back from surgery with her face in bandages. But mommy’s acting different. She’s meaner. Is she… really mommy?
Metacritic Score: 81
22. Revenge (tie, 2018)
In this French horror film, a rape victim is pushed off a cliff to her death in the middle of a desert… only to seemingly come back to life and seek revenge against her aggressors.
Metacritic Score: 81
22. The Wailing (tie, 2016)
In this South Korean horror film, a mysterious stranger arrives in a small village at the same time a horrible disease starts to turn people into crazed murderers.
Metacritic Score: 81
22. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (tie, 2014)
If you haven’t seen this 2014 film, it’s a safe bet that you’ve never seen an Iranian vampire western before.
Metacritic Score: 81
22. Tigers Are Not Afraid (tie, 2019)
In this horror fairytale, a group of orphaned children, armed with three wishes, run from the Mexican drug cartel that killed their parents.
Metacritic Score: 81
22. Us (tie, 2019)
Jordan Peele’s truly terrifying horror film about evil dopplegangers was inspired by a classic Twilight Zone episode. It delves further into the depths of horror than Get Out while delivering beautiful cinematography and a relevant message.
Metacritic Score: 81
15. A Quiet Place (2018)
Real life husband and wife Emily Blunt and John Krasinski star as a couple whose family hides out quietly while a sharp-eared alien race hunts humans.
Metacritic Score: 82
15. Mandy (tie, 2018)
Nicolas Cage plays a man out for vengeance in this film that has received rave reviews since its premiere at Sundance.
Metacritic Score: 82
15. Let the Right One In (tie, 2008)
This is the original Swedish version of the childlike-vampire story you saw a few movies back. The two films are pretty similar, but the original created the cold, eerie palette that the remake drew from.
Metacritic Score: 82
15. The Love Witch (tie, 2016)
Anna Biller wrote, directed, edited and composed music for this feminist horror comedy about a witch who uses magic to seduce men.
Metacritic Score: 82
11. The VVitch (tie, 2016)
A Puritan family builds a home at the edge of a forest teeming with witches.
Metacritic Score: 83
11. Drag Me to Hell (tie, 2009)
A loan officer in Los Angeles gets cursed by an elderly woman whose mortgage extension she denies.
Metacritic Score: 83
11. Taxidermia (tie, 2009)
This ridiculously dark comedy horror flick tells the story of three generations of Hungarian men: a World War II orderly who is tortured by his superiors, a Cold War-era speed eater and a troubled modern-day taxidermist.
Metacritic Score: 83
11. It Follows (tie, 2015)
There’s nothing scarier than a sexually transmitted invisible stalker. Honestly.
Metacritic Score: 83
7. Under the Shadow (2016)
In 1980s Tehran, a mother confronts an evil spirit during a missile strike.
Metacritic Score: 84
7. Get Out (tie, 2017)
The Oscar-winner for 2018’s best original screenplay, Get Out is a horror movie as well as a biting piece of social commentary.
Metacritic Score: 84
5. The Host (2007)
An American military scientist demands chemicals be dumped into a drain that flows into South Korea’s Han River. A giant creature begins to wreak havoc.
Metacritic Score: 85
4. Babadook (2014)
This movie has all of the best horror tropes: a stressed-out mom, a creepy kid, and a boogeyman for the ages.
Metacritic Score: 86
3. Hereditary (2018)
If we learned anything from The Leftovers and The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s that, if you meet Anne Dowd, by no means should you let her teach you how to communicate with dead people. This movie takes family drama to a disturbing new level.
Metacritic Score: 87
2. The Lighthouse (2019)
This black-and-white masterpiece, directed by Robert Eggers and starring William Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, is a chilling tale of lighthouse keepers who lose their sanity.
Metacritic Score: 91
1. Werckmeister Harmonies (2001)
This 2000 film is a bleak tale of existential horror set in Cold War-era Hungary. In it, a dark and disturbing circus visits a struggling town, complete with a stuffed whale carcass and a star performer who drives the masses to a violent revolt.
Metacritic score: 92
