Horror Movies That Are Actually Scary

Sure, there are myriad great horror films, but as artistic as they may be, they're not truly scary in legitimately terrifying ways. These movies are.

Horror exists on a spectrum. There is the prestige, elevated fine art of horror seen in things like The Shining and Hereditary; the gross-out splatter horror of Dead Alive and Evil Dead; the psychologically twisted horror of Audition and Repulsion; the body horror of Videodrome and Tetsuo: The Iron Man; the horror comedy wonder of Young Frankenstein and Bubba Ho-Tep; the silly old-school classics like Them! and The Blob; and the important, all-time greats like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween. But for many people, as great as these films are, they aren't genuinely scary.

Of course, there is also a spectrum of horror viewers. For many people, The Exorcist or The Thing is downright terrifying, but then again, many people are disturbed by Courage the Cowardly Dog. If you're a seasoned horror fan, having built up a tolerance and become desensitized by years of gore, then it takes something very specific to scare you. However, it needs to be something more than just nasty, sick, morally reprehensible content likely found beneath the Disturbing Movie Iceberg; 'scary' and 'disgusting' are not directly correlated. Thus, without sinking into the soul-sick depravity of A Serbian Film, Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, or others, for your viewing terror, here are some movies that are genuinely, actually scary.

10 PHOTOS

1. Suicide Club

Director Sion Sono is no stranger to controversy, courting it with a filmography that frequently interrogates the mores, social structures, and repression of Japanese society; The Hollywood Reporter called him, "the most subversive filmmaker working in Japanese cinema today." His 2001 film Suicide Club is one of his best, and perhaps his most legitimately scary.

The bizarre, chaotic movie chronicles a contagion of suicide that is plaguing young people across Japan. The film intersects high schoolers, detectives, a pop singer, and a crazed cult in its dark depiction of a society addicted to entertainment and heading toward death. From its shocking beginning to an infamous musical moment in a bowling alley, Suicide Club is truly freaky.

2. [Rec]

There are too many found footage horror films; the technique itself has lost just about any creative juice that makes it worthwhile, though there are gems here and there, such as Creep and some of the V/H/S segments. Perhaps the scariest-found footage horror film (outside the mostly just gruesome and gross Cannibal Holocaust) is [REC], an excellent Spanish horror film from 2007.

The film follows a TV news reporter (played by the actual television host Manuela Velasco) as her and a cameraman while filming a local fire station for slice-of-life reporting, follow the firemen into an apartment building where an infection is spreading. Mastering the art of the jump scare and tapping into the full potential of found footage, [REC] is legitimately terrifying.

3. The Descent

The Descent, director Neil Marshall's perfect follow-up to the great Dog Soldiers, lives up to its title by descending into an almost literal hell, a cavernous abyss filled with monsters that double as an allegory for a woman's psychology. The film has a quick, excellent, and intense beginning, in which a woman suffers a terrible loss and remains in a haunted state.

Eventually, she accompanies some equally athletic girlfriends for a sporty vacation of cave-diving, only to discover horrors in the depths. A bloody, relentless movie, The Descent is brimming with not just shocking moments but true horror artistry. (Marshall's next film, Doomsday, is an underrated gem as well, but much less serious).

4. They Look Like People

Written and directed by Perry Blackshear with his usual cast (Evan Dumouchel, MacLeod Andrews, Margaret Ying Drake), They Look Like People is a real outlier. Though it's a beautiful study of friendship and mental illness, it also has some of the most unsettling imagery and moments in recent horror, from an almost subliminally horrifying beginning to sudden bursts of terror.

Following two friends who reunite after some time, one of them suffering from either a bad breakup or a psychotic episode, They Look Like People is a true anomaly, announcing Blackshear (and his refusal to cut away from horrifying imagery) as a filmmaker to keep track of.

5. Benny's Video

Director Michael Haneke has often been associated with the horror genre, even if he's never truly made a horror movie. This is likely because the master filmmaker is preoccupied with violence, and not in an exploitative and unethical way; his films study and expose the expectations and addictions we all have when it comes to entertainment. In a way, his films teach you to hate films.

His early movie Benny's Video may be the most uncomfortable and intense version of this, or at least the most authentically scary. In a film that follows a teenager and videographer compelled to film everything, more squeamish viewers will likely shut this off after 20 seconds.

6. Antichrist

Lars Von Trier's film Antichrist masters a mood of menace, even if it isn't genuinely scary for roughly half its runtime. That first half, however, is perfectly filmed and purposefully haunting, as two unnamed characters (everyone else in the film has their faces blurred out) suffer the loss of their young son and head into the woods for a therapeutic retreat. What follows is an escalation of disturbance, and a study of depression and the fear of women, in a film that feels actually demonic.

7. Martyrs

Martyrs is a grimy but brilliant example of the New French Extremity movement, which shocked the world with excessive gore, sexuality, and misanthropy. High Tension, Inside, and Raw are all excellent examples of this, but Martyrs may be the scariest. Following a woman who was seriously abused in her youth, Martyrs studies her maturation and revenge but complicates any easy ethics. By utilizing supernatural imagery, something the French movement often shied away from in its depiction of purely human horrors, Martyrs is able to incorporate some great jump scares in its mix of intense violence, psychological horror, and pure terror.

8. Begotten

Begotten is an experimental film of sorts, but brief and accomplished enough to be neither pretentious nor dull. With some of the most incendiary imagery to ever sear into the viewer's mind, Begotten's loose plot blends together various creation myths from human history and presents them in a gritty, extremely distorted, black-and-white nightmare.

E. Elias Merhige (the forgotten genius behind this and Shadow of the Vampire) creates disturbing visuals of the character God Killing Himself that is instantly timeless, and without any dialogue, this experiment in time and myth becomes impossible to forget.

9. Oculus

Filmmaker Mike Flanagan may have transitioned to TV with great series like Midnight Mass, but his films (especially the earlier ones) remain wonderful. Following his creepy short film Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With a Plan, Oculus documents a brother and sister's attempts to scientifically understand an antique mirror they think is responsible for the horrible tragedies of their youth. The mirror seems to induce a violent psychosis, so their study is a dangerous one which ultimately leads to some truly horrifying moments in Flanagan's most frightening, depressing film.

10. Pulse

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa made a series of masterful, horror-adjacent films in the late '90s and early 2000s, including Cure, Charisma, and Séance, but Pulse is the most legitimately scary of the bunch. The extremely prescient 2001 Japanese horror film loosely follows a computer virus of sorts and the various ways in which ghosts are passing from the digital realm into the physical ones. Combining some very dark imagery with a few perfect jump scares and an overall apocalyptic tone, Pulse is the kind of movie that scares you while watching it, but scares you more with the existential dread which follows.