The 50 Scariest Horror Movies Ever Made (Part 1)

Art is subjective, no matter what the box office numbers or Rotten Tomatoes may try to sell you. A film critic doesn’t have to write “in my opinion” because as soon as they start talking about whether something is good or not, it’s automatically an opinion. True, there are certain things that many people agree on. Fear is not one of them.

So for this Halloween season I asked my fellow CraveOnline Film Channel writers Witney Seibold and Fred Topel to collaborate with me on a project that would highlight the horror movies we actually thought were scary, whether or not they were actually any good. There’s a lot of overlap between “good” and “scary” in our estimation, but they don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. All three of us contributed a highly personal list of our Top 50 Scariest Horror Movies, ranked from absolute scariest to merely very scary. Points were assigned based on each film’s rankings, and a master list soon formed. As film critics we were trusted to define “scary” however we saw fit: existential terror, nail-biting suspense, startling “Gotcha!” moments, or the kind of fear that makes you curl up into a ball after the final scene, wondering if there was any good left in the universe whatsoever.

The result is what follows… Part 1 of it at least. Every writer was invited to write whatever they wanted to say about the films they themselves nominated as the scariest horror movies ever made, and I have attributed their writings to them with a link to their Twitter accounts, in case you want to start an argument about the film’s placement on the list, its scariness or lack thereof. I’ve learned a lot about what scares the staff here at CraveOnline. We’d certainly like to know what scares you too.

Enjoy today’s list, presenting #50-26 of CraveOnline’s 50 Scariest Horror Movies Ever Made, and come back tomorrow for a full overview of our picks and – of course – the vaunted Top 25.

Check Out #25-1 of CraveOnline’s Scariest Horror Movies Ever Made!


William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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