27 Horror Movies That Scared the Sh*t Out of Us

“I was definitely too young to see Signs when it came out in theaters, but I still begged my mom to take me and my brother. She relented and I spent the whole time hiding behind a towel she forced me to bring. I grew up in a rural area, and while I wasn’t near any cornfields, I was convinced aliens were coming to get me. For weeks after seeing the movie, I was too afraid to feed the goats in the barn past dark because I was worried there were aliens lurking behind every corner.” – Grayson Gilcrease, assistant editor, Celebrity and Entertainment

“Without question, the movie that has haunted me throughout my adult life is Jeepers Creepers. I watched it when I was maybe 10 and it was the first movie that I recall watching that DID NOT have a happy ending. The monster, called The Creeper, absolutely terrified me. Any time I would be asked to bring the garbage cans up from the driveway, I would run as fast as I could and keep my eyes closed as long as I could. I was convinced I was going to get swept up by the monster and have my eyes gouged out like Justin Long.” – Murphy Moroney, associate editor, Family

“I’ve seen Hereditary once and exactly once because I refuse to subject myself to that literal house of terrors within the movie ever again. For weeks after watching this film, I couldn’t sleep without making sure Charlie’s ghost wasn’t lingering by my bedside, watching me sleep. Sometimes at night, when it’s especially dark, I still check the corners of the ceiling to make sure a possessed Toni Collette isn’t perched there like a giant spider, waiting to pounce and possibly set my bed on fire. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the twist ending has left me haunted with images of decaying heads on sticks and creepy supernatural cults. While I do think this is a great horror movie, I definitely won’t be watching it again. Nope.” – Chanel Vargas, editorial assistant, Trending and Viral Features

“The fact that it was based on true events just gives me chills every time. The killers, who wear extremely terrifying masks, are after an innocent couple for no other reason than ‘they were home,’ and the setting in the woods just makes being in isolated spots really unnerving.” – Caitlin Hacker, editor, Celebrity

“I had nightmares about the freaky big eyes crawling in the corner of my room, and the noise that the girl makes. Whenever I enter an attic, I think about the little boy show up behind me and meowing. Or if I look back at old photos, someone might randomly be in the background of every one. Everything freaks me out about The Grudge.” – Gianna Capovilla, project manager

“There was a scene in The Grudge where the protagonist hides under her sheets and the ghost crawls up her bed – this scared the ever-living sh*t out of me, because it violated the place where I’d always felt safe. To this day I hate putting sheets over my head.” – Brinton Parker, assistant editor, Trends and Viral Features

“Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses actually terrorizes me. The shakiness of the camerawork makes it so realistic and the characters are just so depraved that it goes beyond a spook factor and just makes you feel weird about humanity en masse. The ending also has an insane, last-minute plot twist, too, that I prefer to just not think about right now.” – Kelsey Garcia, assistant editor

“Hear me out on this one: The Woman in Black is a pretty underrated horror movie. It didn’t get great reviews, but something about the actual way the titular woman looked was so haunting in such a classic way. While this is definitely a movie that relies upon some cheap scares, it made me want to sleep with a nightlight, well, basically ever since I saw it.” – KG

“I admittedly haven’t seen many horror movies all the way through because I’m a big fat baby, but I thought I could make it through the entirety of The Shining when I got to college. Having only seen bits and pieces of it, I was sure I could deal with it since I figured it was more of a thriller and not so gory. Uh, yeah, turns out, there are gory parts, but that still isn’t even the scariest thing about it. Every element of the Stanley Kubrick film is so chilling that you couldn’t pay me to watch it again.” – Shannon Vestal Robson, director, Celebrity and Entertainment

“This Guillermo del Toro movie is my favorite horror film of all time. If you want to be psychologically disturbed, then this is for you. I never thought I’d put ‘gorgeous’ in the same sentence as ‘horror movie,’ but the cinematography of The Orphanage rivals the story itself. And the story itself is MESSED. UP. You will be on edge the entire time – it’s creepy, it’s mesmerizing, it’s deeply upsetting, and it’s not at ALL what you think it’s going to be.” – Hilary White, editor, Love & Sex and Smart Living

“I first watched Wait Until Dark when I was a senior in college majoring in film studies. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to be scared since the movie came out so long ago (1967) and I figured the thrills wouldn’t hold up today, but boy was I dead WRONG. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! And yes, that iconic jump-scare scene made my entire body tense up. A must watch.” Terry Carter, editorial assistant, Celebrity and Entertainment

“This movie was released when I was in college. One of my friends came into class looking like garbage on day and when we asked him if he was OK, he said that he had seen Paranormal Activity the night before and he literally hadn’t slept at all. I should have heeded his warning, because this movie makes you feel like no space is safe.” – Maggie Pehanick, editor, PS Voices and SEO

“I think what makes this movie so scary (apart from the terrible nightmare of a little girl) is the sense of urgency about it. You know time is running out and you know something absolutely horrible is going to happen when it does. The imagery from the infamous video is beyond disturbing, but for me there are a few scenes in The Ring that when I first saw it way back when, I wanted to get up out of my seat and excuse myself until they were over. It’s a great combination of jump scares, really messed up images, and an actually interesting storyline. Plus, everyone is scared of evil children, because they are the worst.” – HW

“On the surface, It Follows sounds pretty generic. A girl has sex with some dude, then realizes she’s being followed by a disturbing entity. However, apart from being cleverly executed, the movie is just straight-up scary. The thing that follows her only ever walks (it doesn’t even run), but the fact that it just keeps coming will get your heart rate up.” – MP

“This was one of the first pulse-pounding thrillers I ever watched, and it had a devastating twist to boot. I was a freshly minted teenager, and the entire film had me at the edge of my seat, panicking and biting my nails. That night (and for quite a few nights after), I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept glancing at the doorway to my bedroom, where light was flooding in from the hall. Every time I looked, I was convinced a menacing silhouette would be there, waiting to strangle the life out of me.” – Ryan Roschke, assistant editor

“Listen, I’m not saying Sinister is the best horror movie I’ve seen. I wouldn’t even call it particularly phenomenal compared to some of the other great scary films I’ve seen in recent years. And yet . . . that Bagul guy scared the sh*t out of me. Not only did I find all the Super 8 ‘home videos’ to be incredibly disturbing, but man . . . that monster. Right after I saw it, I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing his disfigured face.” – RR

“This movie is the horror genre at its finest – classic, haunting, creepy, but still with a solid plot line that will surprise you. The tense atmosphere is steady throughout, the antiquated occult and religious undertones mingle together with the present, and it will leave your spine tingling.” – HW

“I hate scary movies and my genius ex-boyfriend and his genius friend decided that this movie called V/H/S 2 would be a good idea and SCARED THE LIVING F*CK OUT OF ME.” – Dominique Astorino, assistant editor, Fitness

“Poltergeist ruined me for years! OK, forever. It took until Scream movies for me to watch scary again. I was the same age as the young girl and had a huge Raggedy Ann doll that looked a little like that crazy clown that sat in my room across from my bed. Needless to say the doll was moved, but I still slept in my parents’ room for like a month. They made me sleep on the floor so looking under the bed was terrifying.” – Lisa Sugar, editor in chief

“Sometimes late at night when I close my eyes, I can still see the vision of Reagan projectile vomiting burned into my retinas. It’s a real 50/50 of me finding that movie hilarious while also being deeply, deeply scarred.” – Becky Kirsch, senior director, content strategy

“I was 10 years old, and as a kid my parents didn’t really censor me from stuff. They always told me, ‘It’s a movie, these things aren’t real.’ One day I went inside and it was on TV. There was a really creepy gross guy chasing a girl down a hall. His face was awful and he attacked her and probably blood I don’t remember. What I do remember is thinking, ‘This is really terrible. I’m so glad movies aren’t real.’ And then it went to commercial and the voice said ‘BASED ON A TRUE STORY.’ I tried to watch it once when I was older and couldn’t. Cannibals. Chainsaws. Leatherface. All of that = scary AF.” – Sabrina Eldredge, product management director

“I’ve never jumped more in my life – the music is almost more scary than the movie itself. I saw this movie when I was in my teens, and I never wanted to babysit again. The power gets cut, the kids go missing, the house cleaner is killed in the aviary, and the main character literally has to fend for her life. It was traumatizing to watch.” – GC

“This movie functions on so many levels. It’s about a woman who is already exhausted being a single parent to her troubled son when a monster turns up. You never really know what’s real and what’s not, and I’ll be damned if ‘Baba-dook-dook-dook’ didn’t echo in my head for weeks after watching this movie.” – MP

“When I was in high school, I visited some family friends in Germany and discovered that the only thing on TV there was German news and Aerosmith music videos. When I saw a movie was airing, I figured I’d tune in, even though it was dubbed in German. (I do not speak German.) Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie star as parents mourning the death of their young daughter. They take a trip to Venice and things get freaky when the father starts catching glimpses of his dead daughter in crowds. Honestly, I don’t say this often, but f*ck this movie. It’s that scary.” – MP

“Horror movies about the supernatural never really scare me. I love them; it’s just not realistic to me and so it’s not scary. However, violence against women is horrifying. There’s a movie called The Poughkeepsie Tapes and it isn’t even particularly good. It’s one of those movies that’s a fake documentary and all of my friends decided to tell me it was real. It’s from the point of view of a serial killer/kidnapper who films all of his kidnappings, torture, and murder. It centers around his abduction of a 16-year-old girl in the suburbs and how he holds her hostage in his basement for years and forces her to torture other victims, to be his sex slave, and a lot of other really horrible things. It’s not even that this is a good movie; it’s just got some of the most sick, twisted, most horrible things in it that anyone has ever thought of and I was crying by the end of it until my friends took pity on me and told me it wasn’t a real documentary. It’s incredibly disturbing, and as much as I love horror movies, I don’t think I’ll ever watch this one again.” – Sarah Siegel, editorial assistant, shopping and products

“I felt a little sick watching this movie – it was that tense. I didn’t know what to expect going into it, but the weird intersection of sci-fi meets serial killer made for a suspenseful movie (and a climax I did not see coming). Suspenseful to say the least; the acting and plot were on point, which is not something you see a lot of in the horror genre. #goodman4life” – Michele Foley, content director, Fitness

“When I was 13, I went to see Darkness Falls, which is basically about a vengeful, spirit form of the Tooth Fairy who can only move in darkness, and is dead-set on murdering the man who escaped her as a child years before. In other words: it’s dumb as hell. Still, I have never been so profoundly scarred by a movie (and this is coming from someone who watches horror movies on the regular). I vividly remember lying under the covers night after night after watching it, sweaty and tense and paralyzed as I imagined all of the grisly ways the Tooth Fairy was going to rip me to shreds. My parents’ electricity bill was through the roof until I moved out, and you can bet your ass I had a nightlight in my college dorm room (#noshame). I have nightmares about it at least once a month, and the day I saw it had been added to Netflix, I nearly had a panic attack. To sum this all up: can someone send me a few suggestions for a good psychiatrist? Thanks.” – Quinn Keaney, assistant editor, Entertainment

“The Descent is desolate, dank, bleak. It will make you feel claustrophobic; it will make you want to check and make sure your lights are working. Essentially the entire movie takes place in a dark cave, and most of what you see is revealed via a night-vision camera. And you’ll wish you hadn’t seen it. You’ll feel like you’re trying to claw your way out of the cave right along with the characters, and the film is also not short on jump scares and a ton of twists.” – HW