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Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) and her husband, Ed (Patrick Wilson), are paranormal investigators hellbent on helping the Perron family as they're haunted in their own farmhouse. The Warrens were real people who dedicated their lives to exploring the paranormal (or as some see it, duping the vulnerable), and they also investigated the real-life mystery of the Amityville house purchased by George and Kathy Lutz. Now, enjoy EW's ranking of the 20 best haunted house movies of all time. Films in the following century like The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Old Dark House (1932), and Rebecca (1940) certainly presented creepy, decrepit manors, but their walls were haunted by earthly threats. However, The Uninvited (1944) creates the supernatural template by which horror films like The Haunting in Connecticut (2009), Crimson Peak (2015), and Hereditary (2018) still follow today. From The Innocents to Paranormal Activity, most of these haunted house movies will have viewers leaving all their lights on at bedtime.
Hotel Cecil
All genres have been included, but being haunted houses, the most predominant genre is of course horror. Haunted houses are at the heart of many of our favorite ghost stories and have translated into some of the best haunted house films. For movies you can watch now on Netflix check out these lists like the best horror movies on Netflix, best anime shows and best comedies on Netflix.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (
The idea is scary enough, but it’s the relentless execution, so to speak, that will get you. Maybe you always thought that inward yawning noise was silly when you heard people talking about how terrified they were? The majority of the action is from the perspective of a motley crew of professional scarers constructing their first "haunt" in an old hotel. Unfortunately, the only reason we’re seeing them is as part of a documentary covering a tragedy that occurred on the attraction’s opening night. Constantly genuinely unnerving and inventive, not to mention definitely not for those with a fear of clowns, Hell House LLC is a brilliant found-footage surprise. Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair.
Scariest Haunted House Movies of the 2000s - MovieWeb
Scariest Haunted House Movies of the 2000s.
Posted: Fri, 22 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
'The Watchers' (June
Artful atmospheric camera work and creepy residents are icing on an ominously chilling cake. Yes, the Overlook Hotel technically isn’t a house, but the Torrance family did use it as living quarters during Jack’s tenure as hotel caretaker during the offseason. At least until the ghosts of its past helped usher in Jack’s mental breakdown.
One of the investigators, Nell, came into the investigation already wracked with guilt over a loss, making her fragile mind susceptible to the house. The Haunting takes a two-prong approach to the terror; Nell’s psychological deterioration and the legit paranormal activity. Director Robert Wise delivers a masterful treatise on grief and horror, and proves even a G-rated movie can get under your skin. This made for TV movie stirred up controversy for the BBC upon initial airing, as its mockumentary style left viewers convinced what they’d just watched had been real. It plays like a live TV special with a camera crew on-site attempting to investigate the truth behind the most haunted house in the country.
Los Angeles City Hall
The best horror is about the human condition and The Changeling is as much an exercise in grief as an unnerving supernatural drama. Adapted from a novel and brought to life by horror TV master Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker), a lot of the familiar tropes in haunted house horror took their cues from this one. The Rolf family get an opportunity to trade their cramped New York apartment for a mansion on the cheap for summer vacation. The only caveat to the low rental fee is that they have to consent to bringing the owners’ elderly mother three meals a day up in the attic room. But despite the familiarity with modern haunted house fare as we know it, Burnt Offerings presents the most unique haunted house of them all. I won’t spoil it, but between the refreshing concept and its talented cast, this is a must.
The Curse of the Cat People (
It shows someone with a camera holding a lawnmower that ends a girl lying on the ground without getting into too much detail. The Silent Movie Theatre is said to be haunted by the ghosts of its first two owners. John Hampton opened the theater in 1942 and dedicated his life to preserving silent films… using toxic chemicals that eventually gave him cancer.
Legend of Hell House plays to our expectations for something like this, and it does that with relentless enthusiasm. More than its status as one of the best haunted house movies ever made, The Innocents, based on the Henry James novella The Turning of the Screw, is a psychological horror masterpiece. This film is another dramatized adaptation of a paranormal investigation by the famed supernatural detectives, Ed and Lorraine Warren. Sara and Peter Cambpell are forced to move to Connecticut after their son Matt is diagnosed with cancer.
While interviewed by a documentary film crew, a family recalls the strange, unexplainable phenomena they began to experience shortly after their teenage daughter was found dead by drowning in Australia. For fans of such ghostly classics as The Haunting and The Shining—not to mention the glorious, bloody excess of old Hammer Studios fare—Crimson Peak is a must-see. Released in 1980, The Changeling was too late to capitalize on the freaky child trend epitomized by The Exorcist and The Omen and underperformed at the box office. However, in the decades since, this story of composer John Russell (George C. Scott) being haunted by the ghost of a disabled young boy has rightfully earned cult status. It’s a hauntingly gradual crawl, deftly directed by Peter Medak and with an ever-charismatic star at its center.
If you can do that, you will leave with one of the most entertaining movie-watching experiences in your life. The Legend of Hell House partially works for how seriously it takes it story and characters. It helps to fill your movie with actors who seem to have a genuinely good time with the material. It’s a simple story of some researchers hitting up a famously haunted house, with painful, life-threatening results.
There are plenty of great found-footage horror movies out there that I could point to as haunting, but the last scene of Paranormal Activity possibly made everyone in the world jump out of their seats. It concludes with Katie, fully possessed, lunging at the camera before everything cuts to black, and yes, it still makes me jump to this day. True horror only works if it plays on the fears that lie deep in the heart and both shows do precisely that. "The Haunting of Hill House" suggests that traumatic childhood experiences are capable of haunting us more hellishly than any house. "The Haunting of Bly Manor" similarly relies on the fear of the unknown, the otherworldly perception of children, and the thin line between life and death for its impact. While not as scary as "The Haunting of Hill House," it has just as much heart and deftly reveals that behind every haunted house there is usually a human face and heart.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles.
Yes, the OVerlook is technically a hotel, but what is a hotel, if not the combination of dozens of miniature houses all stacked up on one other? Plus, it acts as a home for Jack Torrance's family – and some other bad spirited abodes. The Stephen King-created hotel houses disturbing twins, rotting women, and a dutiful bartender... Loosely based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (also the basis for The Haunting of Bly Manor) and with a script from none other than Truman Capote, this ghostly tale is packed with atmosphere you could cut with a knife.
Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer's haunting Holocaust drama is now streaming on Max. Christian Friedel plays Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, while Sandra Hüller is his wife Hedwig. The film follows the mundanities of their family's domestic life in an idyllic house in the shadow of the camp and has been praised for its portrayal of the banality of evil. The movie was nominated for five Oscars and won Best International Feature Film and Best Sound. Being such a horror fan, I also love reading terrifying novels that keep me awake at night.
It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well. It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case.
Ari Aster's films always have moments that make you want to squirm, but the one I have to point out from Midsommar is the first ceremony they do during the festival. The two eldest of the group jump off a cliff, and their lives end rather quickly, but the slow-motion and graphic way they pass sits with you. If we're being honest, there are plenty of moments in The Exorcist that I could put on this list. But the one I have to name is when Regan has a seizure due to the demon in her body flailing her up and down.
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