Top 10: My Favorite Horror Films (With Asterisks)
Well, well, well… if it isn’t Halloween time again.
And with Halloween comes everyone’s favorite season (and if it isn’t yours, you’re wrong). Pumpkins on porches, fake cobwebs tangled in the trellis, and brown leaves carpeting the lawn. The air turns sharp, the nights come early, and people start summoning demons and shit. In other words—the perfect time to dive back into one of cinema’s most daring, delirious, and deeply human genres:
Horror.
For all the masterworks and franchises across film history, none hit quite like horror does. No other genre digs so deep into our fears, our fascinations, our private little nightmares. Whether we’re confronting what terrifies us, or—just maybe—living vicariously through the monster, horror gives us the perfect excuse to feel something dangerous from the safety of a dark room.
It’s also my favorite genre. Always has been.
So, in honor of the season, here’s my personal Top Ten Horror Films (with asterisks) for 2025—give or take, subject to change, revised in the dead of night, etc.
(The asterisks are my way of admitting that this list is fluid. It shifts with mood, memory, and moon phase. These are my favorites this time—next time, who knows?)
Honorable Mentions:
Savini’s Night of the Living Dead (1990) — Didn’t want to overload this list with zombies.
The Lighthouse — A masterpiece, but for this list, I’m not counting it as horror proper.
Daybreakers — One of the vampire genre's greatest unsung entries.
Pumpkinhead — Brilliant monster design; deserves more love.
Train to Busan — Closer to a family tragedy to me, doesn't feel like a horror film; still flawless.
The Conjuring — Classic, confident, and genuinely fun.
Evil Dead (Remake) — Not the original, but surprisingly grimy and great.
Cabin in the Woods — More satire than straight horror, but too clever not to mention.
Melancholia — Not a horror film, but sure as hell feels like one. This movie still sticks with me.
Re-Animator — If this list had an 11, this would be it. Perfect intersection between camp and horror.
#10 The Fourth Kind (2009)
Sitting at a criminally low 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Fourth Kind might just be the most misunderstood—and most terrifying—horror film ever made. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. The kind of existential, Lovecraftian, the-universe-does-not-care-about-you scary that seeps into your bones and rearranges your sense of reality.
The film, directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, takes place in Nome, Alaska, a town already haunted by isolation, where people have been mysteriously disappearing for decades. It’s framed as a “true story,” part mockumentary, part dramatization—complete with “real” archival interviews and side-by-side reenactments featuring Milla Jovovich, who introduces herself in the opening as “playing Dr. Abigail Tyler.” That single creative choice—breaking the fourth wall before the story even begins—sets the tone for something profoundly unsettling.
And here’s the thing: it works. The hybrid format, often written off by critics as a gimmick, ends up being the film’s greatest weapon. It blurs the line between fiction and fact so completely that you start to doubt your own memory of what you’ve seen. It’s the cinematic equivalent of gaslighting—slow, invasive, and impossible to shake.
Jovovich delivers one of her most underrated performances here. Her descent from rational scientist to something broken and barely human feels painfully authentic. She’s not running from monsters or brandishing shotguns; she’s being quietly consumed by the realization that the world—her world—is wrong. Elias Koteas (The only true Casey Jones), playing the skeptical friend, gives the film a grounded counterweight, but even he can’t anchor the sense that reality itself is slipping.
The interviews. The hypnosis tapes. The distorted audio that sounds almost human but not quite. It’s all unnervingly clinical—until it isn’t. There are moments in The Fourth Kind where the fear stops being cinematic and starts feeling spiritual. Like it’s reaching for something we aren’t meant to understand.
Is it aliens? Possession? Psychosis? Maybe all three. The movie never tells you outright, and that’s what makes it so effective. It doesn’t want to explain itself—it wants to infect you with the same doubt that’s consuming its characters.
And that’s the true genius of it. The Fourth Kind dismantles you. It takes the comfort of belief, of meaning, of faith, and whispers: what if none of that matters?
It’s not an easy watch. It’s slow, clinical, and completely merciless. But for me, that’s exactly why it works. Horror isn’t always about blood or monsters—it’s about the awful vastness of the unknown. And The Fourth Kind stares straight into it without blinking.
Scariest movie I’ve ever seen. Hands down. And I’ve never trusted white owls again.
It had been years since I last watched Clive Barker’s Hellraiser—long enough for memory to sand down the edges, for nostalgia to take over. But when someone recently compared my work in Wicker Hill and The Morgue to Barker’s The Hellbound Heart, I figured it was time to open that box again.
And no surprise here but; it still holds up.
Released in 1987, Hellraiser remains one of the most daring, transgressive pieces of horror cinema ever made. It’s not just a story—it’s an atmosphere, a fever dream of flesh and desire rendered in latex and shadow. From the moment the puzzle box opens, Barker’s world feels tactile—sweaty, dimly lit, and uncomfortably intimate. Every wall, every sigh, every drop of blood is alive.
The cast is small and well-acted. There’s a claustrophobic intensity to it—the sense that everything is happening just behind a locked door or beneath your own skin. Andrew Robinson’s brittle domesticity, Clare Higgins’ unholy sensuality, Ashley Laurence’s desperate innocence—it’s all perfectly balanced between tragedy and obsession.
And then there are the Cenobites. Icons of a different order. Each one distinct yet unified, grotesque and elegant in equal measure—figures that transcend simple monstrosity. They aren’t villains in the conventional sense; they’re explorers. Philosophers of sensation. Their design is immaculate: surgical leather, cold metal, and the erotic geometry of pain. Pinhead, especially, remains a visual masterpiece—less a monster than a priest of forbidden knowledge, calm in the face of human agony.
The practical effects still astonish. There’s a texture to everything—blood that looks wet, skin that looks torn, bodies that seem to ache. Barker’s use of in-camera effects gives the film a perversely organic realism, the kind that digital work could never replicate. You don’t just see the resurrection of Frank Cotton—you feel it, as if the movie itself were breathing.
But what makes Hellraiser timeless is its confidence. Barker directs like a man certain that horror is meant to be beautiful, and beauty is meant to be horrifying. The film moves with perfect rhythm—measured, deliberate, never wasting a frame. It’s horror as ritual, and every cut feels like an invocation.
There’s a reason so many horror creators—myself included—still draw from Barker’s palette. Hellraiser is the rare kind of horror film that seduces as much as it terrifies. It drips with style, eroticism, and dread in equal measure. It’s bold, unapologetic, and absolutely unforgettable.
The box may change hands, but the promise never does.
No tears, please. It’s a masterpiece.
#8 Child's Play 2 (1990)
The Asterisk: The first one is better, but the second is my favorite
For some reason, this sequel has always stuck with me more than the original. Maybe it’s because the first Child’s Play feels more like a product of its time—darker, grittier, almost procedural. Maybe it’s because of Christine Elise as Kyle (childhood crush, no shame). Or maybe it’s because this was the movie where Brad Dourif truly became Chucky.
Dourif doesn’t just voice the doll—he possesses it (pun intended). His performance in Child’s Play 2 is electric, gleefully unhinged. He’s vulgar, vicious, and hysterically self-aware. There’s a manic joy in his delivery that turns Chucky from a clever concept into a full-blown horror icon. He’s the living embodiment of the franchise’s tonal sweet spot—funny without being cartoonish, terrifying without needing to try too hard.
The film itself moves like a kid’s nightmare on fast-forward: bright colors, manic energy, and violence that feels both absurd and disturbingly personal. There’s a confidence in its rhythm that the first movie hadn’t yet earned—a willingness to lean into the weirdness of its own mythology.
And that third act. The toy factory. The conveyor belts. The molten plastic. It’s one of the best climaxes in horror history—grand, chaotic, and strangely operatic. Watching Chucky dragged through his own creation, mangled by the very machinery that birthed him, feels like some twisted industrial ballet.
Child’s Play 2 isn’t the best film in the series—that honor still belongs to the original. But it’s the one that feels the most alive. The pacing, the energy, the sheer commitment to mayhem—it’s horror distilled into pop chaos.
It’s the movie where Chucky stops being a killer doll and becomes something much better: a legend.
And yeah, if my friend’s doll were still around, I’d probably still ask him to lock it up.
Freddy Krueger and Chucky have always been my two favorite horror icons. They’ve got what so many others don’t: personality. They talk. They sneer. They’re absolute bastard assholes—and that’s exactly why they work. The sarcasm, the swagger, the vulgar humor—it’s infectious. They enjoy what they do, and that twisted joy gives them a kind of charisma that masked, silent killers could never touch.
Maybe that’s why Halloween and Friday the 13th never clicked for me. Michael and Jason are effective symbols of death, sure—but Freddy and Chucky feel alive. They’re chaos with a sense of humor. They kill, but they also perform. There’s something theatrical about it, something gleefully mean.
When Wes Craven unleashed A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, he didn’t just make a slasher—he built a myth. Freddy Krueger was born already infamous, a monster whose evil ran deeper than knives and nightmares. Burned alive by a town’s vengeance, reborn in the dreamscape, he became the embodiment of what we can’t control—sleep itself. His power wasn’t just that he could kill you; it was that he could make you afraid to close your eyes.
Robert Englund’s performance carries the film and makes the character. There’s no hiding behind a mask here—Freddy’s face is the horror. His grin, his voice, the way he moves—it’s all sharp edges and dirty laughter. He’s equal parts predator and performer, terrifying precisely because he seems to be having such a good time.
The dream logic of the movie still holds up today. Craven knew exactly how to twist reality just enough to make the viewer question their own footing. The boiler room, the melting stairs, the bed that swallows a teenager whole—everything feels wrong in a way that only nightmares can. It’s surreal, sweaty, and cruel, and it doesn’t let you go until the credits roll.
Nightmare on Elm Street didn’t just define a generation of horror—it reshaped what fear could look like. It proved that imagination could be lethal, that the worst things don’t hide in shadows—they hide behind your eyelids.
Freddy’s legacy sits comfortably on horror’s Mount Rushmore, right next to Michael, Jason, Chucky, and Pinhead. But even among giants, he stands out. He laughs while the others stalk. He talks while the others breathe heavy. He plays with his food.
And that’s why I’ll always come back to him.
Not because he’s the scariest.
But because he’s the most fun to watch burn the world down.
#6 Event Horizon (1997)
The only reason Event Horizon isn’t higher on this list is because so much of it never made it to the screen. What we got is brilliant—but what we didn’t get might have been transcendent.
Event Horizon is, without question, one of the greatest sci-fi horror films ever made. It’s a masterpiece of atmosphere, design, and dread. Every inch of that ship feels alive—every corridor groaning, every bulkhead humming with something ancient and watching. The set design alone is a work of art: gothic, industrial, and claustrophobic, like a cathedral built to worship black holes.
The cast is unreal—Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, Joely Richardson—all of them giving the kind of grounded, desperate performances that sell the madness. There’s no wink, no irony. Everyone plays it straight, which makes the descent into hell all the more believable.
What’s always drawn me to Event Horizon is how confidently it merges two genres that usually cancel each other out. It’s the cold precision of hard science fiction fused with the spiritual rot of cosmic horror. The movie doesn’t just suggest hell—it implies that hell is part of the universe, waiting patiently beyond the veil of what we can measure. That idea has always haunted me.
And then there are the effects—real, practical, tactile. Flesh and metal merging. Blood suspended in zero gravity. A ship designed like an autopsy scar. It’s beautiful and disgusting at the same time, the kind of visual storytelling that sticks under your skin and refuses to leave.
The tragedy, of course, is what was lost. So much of the original cut—over half an hour of footage—was stripped away to make the film “marketable.” Rumor has it that the full version still exists somewhere, sealed in a salt mine, buried beneath decades of cinematic history. And if that’s true, then the greatest horror film ever made might still be down there in the dark, waiting for someone to dig it up.
Paul W.S. Anderson gets a bad rap, and sometimes rightfully so, but Event Horizon proves what he’s capable of when everything aligns. It’s bold, brutal, and unflinching. The kind of film that doesn’t just scare you—it changes the temperature of the room you watch it in.
If you’ve never seen it, you’re missing one of horror’s purest nightmares.
But when I revisited it as an adult—when my brain and my patience caught up—I finally understood. Misery isn’t just a great horror film. It’s a great film, period.
Adapted from Stephen King’s novel and directed by Rob Reiner, Misery is a masterclass in psychological horror. No ghosts, no aliens, no supernatural curse—just a woman, a typewriter, and the suffocating terror of obsession. It’s King’s cleanest, most precise adaptation to date, a story that trades spectacle for suffocating intimacy.
James Caan plays Paul Sheldon, a novelist literally broken by his own creation, and Kathy Bates delivers what might be the single greatest performance in horror history. Her Annie Wilkes is sweet, lonely, motherly—and then, without warning, monstrous. The shift happens in her eyes before it ever happens in her hands. It’s terrifying because it feels real.
Bates deserved every ounce of that Academy Award for Best Actress—still the only woman ever to win for a role in a horror film. It’s easy to forget how unprecedented that was, and still is. She didn’t just play a villain; she embodied the delicate madness that horror so often oversimplifies. Annie Wilkes isn’t a caricature—she’s heartbreak and rage and loneliness given form.
What makes Misery work so well is its restraint. It’s brutal without spectacle, tense without tricks. Every sound of the typewriter, every shift of the bed frame, every squeak of a floorboard feels like a gunshot. It’s horror distilled to its purest element: control.
By the end, it’s not about blood or shock—it’s about survival. About watching two people push each other to the edge of sanity and beyond.
Misery is a masterpiece of pacing, tone, and acting. Proof that horror doesn’t need to hide behind metaphor or monster suits to be terrifying. Sometimes, it just needs a room, a writer, and a fan who loves him a little too much.
What can possibly be said about George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead that hasn’t already been said a hundred times over? It’s a cornerstone of the genre, a blueprint for modern horror, and one of the most brilliantly constructed films ever made on limited means.
Released in 1978, Dawn is Romero at his most confident—bold, political, funny, and grotesque all at once. It’s a masterclass in tone, where satire and savagery walk hand in hand. Four survivors take refuge in a shopping mall, and in doing so, Romero delivers one of the sharpest commentaries on consumerism ever put to screen—all while redefining what a zombie film could be.
Everything about it works. The cast is small but magnetic; their chemistry feels lived-in, exhausted, and real. The effects—Tom Savini’s work, especially—remain iconic: bright, bloody, and unapologetically raw. There’s something almost joyful in the gore, a kind of grim celebration of practical filmmaking at its absolute peak.
The pacing is near perfect. The quiet stretches hit as hard as the chaos. The mall itself becomes a character—sterile, echoing, absurdly comforting. There’s humor, there’s heart, and beneath it all, there’s that lingering Romero melancholy: the awareness that survival isn’t victory, it’s just the next day.
I don’t think Dawn is Romero’s best zombie film—that honor, for me, belongs elsewhere—but it’s unquestionably the one I revisit most. There’s something endlessly rewatchable about its rhythm, its texture, its strange mix of apocalypse and absurdity. It’s a movie that rewards every return viewing with something new, whether it’s a background detail, a sly joke, or another layer of bleak truth.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Dawn of the Dead changed horror forever. Every zombie film made since lives in its shadow, knowingly or not.
Putting it at number four feels almost wrong—but if that doesn’t tell you how serious I am about the top three, nothing will.
George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead isn’t just the best zombie film ever made—it’s one of the greatest horror films, period. From the performances to the direction, from the suffocating tension to Tom Savini’s career-defining practical effects, Day represents the genre at its absolute peak.
Everything about it is turned up to eleven. The world has ended, and what’s left of humanity is tearing itself apart in an underground bunker—scientists, soldiers, survivors, all clawing at each other while the dead patiently wait above. It’s claustrophobic, oppressive, and beautifully bleak. Every corridor hums with despair. Every argument feels like a countdown.
The cast is unforgettable. Lori Cardille’s calm, exhausted strength. Joseph Pilato’s unhinged Captain Rhodes, barking rage like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. And then there’s Bub—the first zombie to make us feel something other than fear. He’s the heart of the film, a tragic mirror held up to the humans who’ve long since lost their own.
Savini’s effects work here is still unmatched. The gore is grotesque, yes, but there’s a craft to it—a detail, a weight—that makes every torn limb feel almost reverent. It’s artistry through decay. You don’t just watch it—you feel it.
The score, composed by John Harrison, is another monster entirely. It worms its way into your head, that synth pulse threading through the film like a slow heartbeat. It’s eerie, relentless, and somehow both futuristic and funereal. I’ve had dreams ruined by that music. I’m not exaggerating.
If Dawn of the Dead is Romero’s most rewatchable film, Day is the opposite. Not because it falters, but because it hits too close to the bone. The dread is so complete, the hopelessness so perfectly realized, that you don’t revisit it casually—you return to it like a ritual. Every viewing is an ordeal, and that’s the point. You live the apocalypse with these characters, and by the end, when the light finally breaks through, you’re as relieved as they are.
Day of the Dead feels almost mythic to me, like Seven Samurai through a nihilist’s lens. You stop thinking about it as a movie and start experiencing it as an event.
It may have only been a fraction of Romero’s intended vision, but that fraction is enough to eclipse almost everything else in the genre.
Day of the Dead is dread perfected—Tom Savini’s masterpiece, Romero’s masterwork, and the zombie film every other one will always be chasing.
It’s nearly impossible to make a list like this without wondering if The Thing should be number one. Honestly, it probably should be. It’s the kind of film that makes you question what perfection even means, because every time you think of a single thing it might have done wrong, you realize you’re nitpicking the definition of flawless.
John Carpenter’s The Thing isn’t just a great horror film—it’s a perfect one. It’s a perfect mystery, a perfect creature feature, a perfect exercise in paranoia, isolation, and fear. It’s science fiction at its most terrifying and horror at its most intelligent. It’s one of those rare films that doesn’t just age well—it becomes more relevant, more precise, and more unsettling with every passing year.
Released in 1982 and dismissed at the time by critics and audiences alike, The Thing has since risen to the top of the genre for good reason. Every single element works. The Antarctic setting is as important as any character—an endless white void that traps everyone in its silence. The ensemble cast is incredible, with Kurt Russell’s MacReady anchoring the chaos through sheer force of weary charisma.
And then there are the effects. Rob Bottin’s practical work remains some of the most astonishing ever put to screen—still unmatched four decades later. There’s texture, weight, fluidity, and invention in every transformation. You can smell the latex, feel the heat of the lights melting it. These aren’t effects made to shock; they’re effects made to disturb. Every creature feels wrong in a way that digital horror still can’t replicate.
The tension is unbearable. Carpenter directs with a surgeon’s precision—his framing and pacing so tight that even silence becomes threatening. Ennio Morricone’s minimalist score hums like a pulse under the ice, keeping everything just on the edge of breaking.
The Thing is horror stripped of excess. No jump scares, no cheap twists—just dread, suspicion, and a monster that wears your friend’s face. It’s body horror. It’s psychological horror. It’s cosmic horror. It’s all of it at once, layered perfectly until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
There’s not a wasted frame in the entire film. Everything feels deliberate, earned, alive.
So, yes—The Thing could easily sit at number one. In fact, it probably deserves to.
But if it’s sitting here at number two, that can only mean one thing: somewhere above it waits something even more perfect.
The Asterisk: Greatest Sci-Fi Horror. Greatest Horror. One of the Greatest Films, Period.
This movie was made in the seventies.
Not the eighties. Not the nineties. The seventies.
Watch it again with that thought in mind and try to tell me Alien isn’t one of the greatest achievements ever put to film.
Ridley Scott’s Alien stands at the intersection of horror, science fiction, and art, each part sharpened to a perfect edge. Every frame is deliberate. Every shadow, every hiss of steam feels alive. Scott directs with absolute control, understanding that the most enduring fear comes from stillness and patience.
The Nostromo is one of the most convincing settings in cinema. It’s industrial, dirty, and claustrophobic—a working-class freighter where the air feels heavy and the walls sweat. The machinery looks like it actually functions. The “retrotech” style gives the entire film weight, grounding the terror in a space that feels practical, believable, human.
Then there’s the creature. H.R. Giger’s design changed visual storytelling forever. Its form feels mechanical and organic at once, erotic and repulsive, familiar yet impossible. You don’t need to understand what it is to understand the dread of facing it.
At the heart of it all stands Ellen Ripley. Sigourney Weaver gave us one of fiction’s greatest heroes—strong, smart, frightened, resilient. She’s proof that strength isn’t the absence of fear but the ability to keep moving through it. Ripley feels like a person you could meet: flawed, capable, stubborn. She survives not through dominance, but through will.
That human core is what makes Alien timeless. The film captures isolation better than almost any other—how the dark presses in when you realize help isn’t coming. It’s a haunted-house story built out of steel and vacuum, and the house happens to be adrift in space.
More than forty years later, it still looks new. The lighting, the sound design, the pacing—all of it functions with precision. Even the quiet moments carry tension; the silence has depth. Every revisit feels like entering a dream you already know will end badly.
Alien sits at the top for a reason. The craft, the atmosphere, the performances, the monster, the myth—it all fits together with absolute confidence. It’s not just the best sci-fi horror film ever made; it’s a perfect film, period.
The Closing Credits
Lists like this are never permanent. They shift and evolve, just like the person making them. On another day, in another mood, any one of these films could move up or down a few spots. That’s the beauty of it. Horror is alive—it grows, it mutates, it meets us where we are.
But what doesn’t change are the feelings behind the choices. Every movie here left a mark: a sleepless night, a lingering image, a strange calm that followed the fear. Each of them did something only horror can do—they moved me.
Whether it’s the cosmic dread of The Fourth Kind, the transgressive beauty of Hellraiser, the nihilism of Day of the Dead, or the sheer perfection of Alien, these films all share one thing in common: they remind me that horror isn’t about darkness—it’s about revelation.
And as the list changes, that truth never will.
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