50 Scary Movies To Binge This Valentine’s Day As An Excuse To Cuddle

1. Sinister. The soundtrack makes you feel super uneasy. Plus that lawnmower scene was a feeling a horror movie has never done to me before.

2. It Follows. It’s the only movie to have ever made me so genuinely uncomfortable and scared that I almost had to leave the theater. The end wasn’t that scary to me, but my favorite parts of horror movies have always been the build up because I always found myself disappointed in the monster or the scare tactic used after the build up etc. But that movie was just one long sense of dread that something’s coming, I was constantly checking the background, it was really unnerving for me.

3. There is a film called Shutter, the original Asian version and not the US remake. Scared the hell out of me in parts… I hate ghosts and this was about ghosts in photographs.

4. A Quiet Place. I have a fear of silence. I had to exit the theater.

5. The Witch is so unsettling. I’m a grown man and typically good when it comes to horror movies, but this one had me calling my dog over so I could cuddle with him for safety.

6. Oculus. My greatest fear is not knowing what’s real and that movie messed with me.

7. They Look Like People is an amazing horror movie. It’s not a very jump-scary movie, it’s horror is more focused on building dread and it does it beautifully.

8. House On Haunted Hill. Saw it when i was young and tried watching it again as an adult and I still can’t get through that movie.

9. The Conjuring. That fucking scene where the girl slowly looks up and sees the demon on top of the wardrobe is possibly the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in a film.

10. Fire in the Sky. Aliens abduct some loggers. That’s all the spoiler you are getting. That movie still viscerally terrifies me.

11. Rosemary’s Baby. The terror being alone and not believed by anyone while truly terrible things happen to you and those you trust betray you creeped into my mind and I didn’t sleep right for over a week. I was an adult, I don’t think a kid could be scared the same way.

12. I think Hereditary already deserves a spot on one of the scariest movies. Everything following that scene is an excruciating descent into unbreakable grief that you know will destroy you.

13. The Strangers. I was very glad I watched it in my 1 bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor, where there was essentially only one way into my apartment. I could not watch it in my house today, with multiple access points

14. Mother on Amazon, baby scene was too much.

15. Darkness Falls. I have always been afraid of something floating above me with my head under the blanket.

16. I saw The Grudge in theaters and it scared me so much that I grabbed the guy next to me by accident. We both had a laugh of relief.

17. Stigmata. The only movie to ever cause my to have a nightmare. It didn’t help I had a mirror beside my bed so I woke up to seeing vague movement in the dark.

18. The Blair Witch Project. A) It looks like it was filmed where I live B) I live in the woods in the middle of nowhere so I hear a lot of weird stuff at night C) There were some abandon houses in the woods around me that looked exactly like the house they find in the movie.

19. The first couple Saw movies because it is pretty easy to imagine yourself in those situations.

20. Texas Chainsaw Massacre – the original. 40 years ago and I still get the shakes thinking about the girl who jumped out of the freezer.

21. The 1979 version of When a Stranger Calls.

22. REC is an amazing Spanish found footage zombie movie. It starts slowly with a documentary film crew following a team of firefighters, but once it kicks into high gear it becomes a relentless, claustrophobic, violent hellride.

23. Buried with Ryan Reynolds. The scariest part of all is that nothing in the movie is supernatural at all.

24. Jaws. I consider it a horror movie. It made me never want to swim in the ocean.

25. Tim Burton’s Coraline, gives nightmares every time I watch it.

26. Martyrs, that is the only horror movie that’s managed to genuinely scar me.

27. The Grudge. It just is relentless, it doesn’t stop.

Every few minutes there’s that death rattle, or the kid’s catty growl, or an eye staring at you. You think you’re safe on this bus in the daytime? Think again, Buffy!

28. The Shining has a special disturbing element to it that has never fully let me go. Even though I’ve probably watched it upwards of 30 times, it still makes me feel just as on edge as the first time I watched it.

29. The Babadook. “You can bring me the boy. You can bring me the boy.”

30. The Butterfly Effect. It was the first scary movie I’d ever watched, was never into them, but a friend put it on when we were having a sleepover at her place and I had no idea what it was about… Had nightmares for a while after that; it really makes you think and it fucked me up.

31. House of 1000 Corpses. I’m a horror junkie and not much scares me, but that one was pretty intense, and really felt like it could happen.

32. I watched The Ring. I couldn’t sleep for like 2 weeks.

33. The original made for tv IT. The scene with the blood coming out of the picture and Pennywise standing in the field scared me so much. I don’t think I watched the whole thing at the time because that spider is so bad even 10 year old me would have laughed.

34. My Bloody Valentine (the original, not the campy remake).

I saw it on cable when I was in elementary school and it really did a number on me. I stayed up all night playing Intellivision, and my mom, bless her, stayed up with me on the couch in the living room.

35. Hostel. Too real, too cruel. Still makes me cringe.

36. Funny Games (the original).

37. It didn’t really terrify me but the movie Room 1408 did make me super uncomfortable and it was great. Like it’s not the best movie ever but watching the main character slowly go insane was awesome. Really great movie.

38. Donnie Darko – I know it’s considered a psychological thriller but Frank the Bunny scares the shit out of me still to this day.

39. Serbian Film. The imagery was a fucking nightmare.

40. The Exorcist. My mother showed it to me when I was 4. 35 now, still not over it, thanks Mom, glad no one found your corpse for a few weeks.

41. Pet Sematary. Accidentally watched this when I was 8 and I still daren’t watch it again 15 years on.

42. I saw Sleepy Hollow twice.

The first time I was with two friends, late afternoon; we giggled the whole time and just ripped the film to shreds. Pfft, that wasn’t scary.

The second time I was in the house on my own and had insomnia, so stuck on the TV in my bedroom around 2am to try and distract myself. Channel 4 was showing the film and I knew it was hilarious and not scary, so didn’t bother turning on the light.

This was a mistake and did not help my insomnia.

43. It’s not even that scary but The Exorcism of Emily Rose, it may have been the based on true story story part that did me. After a month of watching that movie I started to wake up around 3 am (actually pretty precisely at 3 am) and that was nerve wracking on top of my continuous nightmares (those weren’t because of the movie I’ve always had them).

44. I saw Annihilation in the theater alone and that movie really freaked me out for some reason. The bear was bad, but the showdown at the end was the worst for me. That movie really got under my skin.

45. Silence of the Lambs I saw at the cinema during its original release in 1991; scared me plenty good.

46. The Fourth Kind. Was just a kid and had no idea whether it was real or not because of all the “documentary footage”. Honestly the only one that had me genuinely scared ever.

47. Arachnophobia. Saw it in theaters when I was young. Good lord that movie is terrifying.

48. Signs. It’s not even objectively that scary! But fucking hell did it scare the shit out of me. I still can’t bring myself to watch it or I’ll be paranoid going around every corner of the apartment when it’s dark.

49. Alien, when I first watched it I had nightmares for weeks, I even had on of those nightmares where you wake up but still dreaming, when that happened to me I had a xenomorph in my fucking face with both mouths open dripping laviver all over me.

50. The Thing (’82). Was a kid when I saw it, scared the living daylights out of me. Good special effects for its time.