The 13 Scariest Movies We’ve Ever Seen

Last House on the Left is probably the scariest movie we’ve ever seen, because everything that happens in it could easily happen in real life. And too often does.

Its portrayal of casual, pointless cruelty is incredibly despairing, and Mari’s death – walking into a lake, just wanting it all to be over – is endlessly haunting.

It works because all the acting is outstanding, especially by Sandra Peabody (above, left) and Lucy Grantham (right). Writer-director Wes Craven has an obvious skill for scaring the hell out of us, but Last House on the Left has an unfussy, seemingly tossed-away quality that makes it even scarier.

Writer-director Michael Haneke’s 1997 Austrian home-invasion movie — and his 2007 English-language remake — is another movie where almost everything that happens could happen in real life: A family led by Tim Roth and Naomi Watts is taken hostage by two boyish sadists.

In a normal movie, things happen realistically until some movie miracle occurs and the good guys win. But when Funny Games breaks with reality, it breaks in favor of the villains — played by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett.

The basic comfort we expect from movies is cruelly denied us.

This is one of the scariest of all horror movies even if you don’t believe in the devil.

It’s really about trying to protect your child — a particularly stirring fear in 1972, as the world seemed to go mad. Director William Friedkin painstakingly earned every single scare, and has haunted pretty much everyone whose seen it. It’s profoundly disturbing long before Linda Blair’s head starts spinning.

One of the most effective tricks of the scariest movies is making us imagine what’s happening in those long-neglected corners of our own country… like the Texas backroads, for exampe.

Maybe the scariest thing about the movie — besides all the chainsawing — is that Leatherface and co. have been able to carve out this awful niche in isolation — because in our benign neglect, we let them.

This is a movie with a reputation for being absolutely disgusting, which it is. But what makes it one of the scariest movies we’ve seen is how well it introduces a villain who is in total control, and has no regard for his patients/victims.

If you’re expecting a series of relentless gross outs, you won’t get them: Writer-director Tom Six skillfully, slowly escalates the terror, painstakingly setting up his very dark, very awful final sequence.

Oh sure. Jaws seems like a fun movie sitting here, reading this list on dry land. Try thinking about it the next time you’re on a boat… or swimming… or just standing in murky water.

Steven Spielberg masterfully conjured a killer we don’t even see that often… which may have been the scariest thing about it. And of course it’s plenty scary — and perfectly allegorical — to see how blase the town leaders are about protecting people’s safety when a little money is on the line.

We know: Maybe you think of Alien as a sci-fi movie rather than a horror movie. Can we settle on sci-fi horror movie? Alien is one of the scariest movies on the list, and sneaks up on you like a  drooling Xenomorph. Ridley Scott’s second film masterfully starts things off with the extremely routine details of a space mission before walloping you with one of the most horrifying sequences in any movie – the Facehugger scene. Things only get worse from there.

And of course Sigourney Weaver’s Alien, who doesn’t seem like the main character at the start of the film, quickly became one of the greatest heroines in all of film.

This Roman Polanski film, based on the Ira Levin novel, builds up incredible creepiness as it perfectly captures the infantilization of the pregnant Rosemary (Mia Farrow) by everyone around her. It finally fulfills our and her fears with an outcome even more horrible than the one we imagined.

There’s also an inescapable darkness to the movie, knowing the horror and nastiness that entered the lives of Polanski and Farrow in the years after the film.

The stars of The Blair Witch Project — Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams — are marking its 25th anniversary and plans for a reboot by asking Lionsgate for more money and “meaningful consultation” on future projects. Whatever comes of it, it’s hard not to see the effectiveness of their work on this stellar fake documentary.

Almost nothing we’ve seen on film is as scary as Mike’s body language at the end, in the basement — his shame, his fear, his surrender. It’s kind of reminiscent, actually, of Mari’s final scene in Last House on the Left.

Being one of the scariest movies ever made doesn’t take a lot of money — it just takes great imagination and observation.

Think of all those cheesy 1970s and ’80s slasher films, and how you can laugh at their cheesy dialogue and fake-looking violence.

Terrifier 2 is like one of those movies if everyone did everything really well. The acting is good, the people turned inside-out look exactly how we’re afraid they would look, and Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) is relentlessly cruel, maybe especially when he’s hamming it up.

Writer-director Damien Leone is very good at horror, and Terrifier 2 — which gained viral attention for making people get sick or pass out in theaters — is easily one of the scariest movies we’ve ever seen. And one of the wildest.

Maybe the scariest thing about Candyman is what happens to the titular villain. His righteous anger makes his killing spree feel eminently understandable, in a horrible way.

Candyman is a still-brilliant film with wise points to make about racism and gentrification that still stand today — and may be more relevant than ever. But even without all the social commentary, we’d still be plenty scared of a hook-handed killer whose vengeance is abetted by bees. Tony Todd is excellent as the lead villain, as are Virginia Madsen (above) and Kasi Lemmons.

The telekinesis isn’t the scary part of Carrie. Even the pig’s blood isn’t the scary part of Carrie, undeniably one of the scariest movies.

What’s scary is the completely casual, careless cruelty of Carrie’s high school tormentors. Consider how much premeditation goes into their prom night humiliation, and for what? To make an awkward girl feel worse?

The swagger with which Billy (John Travolta) kills that pig may be the scariest thing in the whole movie. And it’s even worse that he attacks fellow humans with the same nastiness.

Hostel isn’t one of the scariest movies we’ve seen because of the gross-out torture scenes — though, OK, some of those are pretty scary. It’s scary because it isn’t hard to imagine that there might really be a place in some forgotten (to Americans) corner of the world where you can bid to kill people in whatever way you see fit. Or, conversely, where people could pay to kill you.

Eli Roth’s movie doesn’t just work because of the hard-to-watch set pieces — it works because of the scary questions it asks about what money can and can’t buy. He’s also masterful with tension and suspense and unexpected humor.

Humor that only makes the scary parts scarier.

Let’s lighten up with this list of the 13 Movies That Earned 100 Times Their Budget at the Box Office and this list of the 13 Funniest Movies We’ve Ever Seen.

Main image: Rosemary’s Baby. Paramount.