Getting Scared with your fellow audience member when something shocking happens, or jolting together as one during a primo jump scare, is one of the great pleasures of going to the movies. And over the past few decades, the art form has figured out almost every possible way to frighten us, unnerve us, make our hair stand on us, chill us, thrill us and touch upon our most primal of fears. We’ve gathered all of the old-school monster movies and modern serial-killer thrillers, the creature features and the slasher flicks and the canon-worthy creep fests.
Evil Dead II (1987)
Director Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell returned to the woods after six years for Evil Dead II, which leans into the gruesome excess of the first but ups the ante to a ridiculous degree (this was the one where an eyeball flies into a person’s open mouth). Though Evil Dead II didn’t invent splat-stick, it sure did perfect it, and went on to influence countless other comedy gross-outs. Raimi managed to chill and scare his audience plenty with stylish and over-the-top antics.
The Descent (2005)
Neil Marshall’s truly terrifying claustrophobic creature feature, ‘The Descent’. Sarah’s friends want to make her feel better after the tragic death of her family so, instead of y’know, buying her some gin, they take her on a caving trip. Unfortunately, the movie wouldn’t be on this list if the six women were there to have a heartwarming, gently comedic adventure where they all grow as people. From the moment this lot lower themselves into the darkness below the Appalachian mountains, it’s very clear that getting back out into the light again isn’t going to be likely.
The claustrophobia of The Descent is horribly real. Before you even discover what’s lurking down there – with a night vision reveal so spectacular that it goes down in jump scare history – this cave system is stone horror. The women are experienced explorers but every shot of squeezing through tiny spaces as rubble gently falls, every huge cavern only lit in one tiny corner by their flares, and every step they take further into the abyss is heart-racing stuff.