Moving Pictures [/ˈmuvɪŋ ˈpɪkʧərz/] n - A personal register of horror films, each marked out of 10. The genre repays close attention: the best of it is about something, and the terror is but the means of delivery.
2026
-
Exit 8I would genuinely start tweaking if this happened to me IRL. Nana Komatsu looks so pretty in this. Amazing movie all around. -
Iron LungExtremely well made horror movie. Builds on a very solid material and genuinely impressive work from Markiplier. -
Scream 7Kinda mid. All movies feel the same. Good second monitor movie -
UndertoneSound design horror done with genuine craft. Brilliant sounds and story progression. Impressive work from the cinematographer as well. -
PrimateStraight up Monkey mode. Going RABID even. Great gore and the mistakes in the movie weren't too ragebaity. -
They Will Kill YouVery fun movie to watch. Nice amount of gore. Great acting by Zazie. -
HokumGood amounts of scaries and story progression. Just slightly above average in how enthralling it is. Not much in the terms of creativility in the direction or storytelling. -
ThrashPretty good shark themed horror. Classic Florida am i right? -
Ready or Not 2Surely they won't give her the same dress 3 movies in a row. -
PassengerGood sound design. Great camera work as well. Story's not bad. The makeup's really good but the main bag thing wasn't that scary. Pretty silly how there wasn't a real threat. -
Send HelpHeeeeelp! Heeeeelp meee! Heeeeelp! -
The MummyKinda creepy but the Evil Dead Rise formula didnt end up working out on this one. -
HiveI always knew those meddling kids at the park were evil alien monsters. -
Faces of DeathStory's not bad but I couldn't stand the acting. I was skipping past some parts just to get over the acting and the ragebaity storyline. Bottom of the pile for 2026. -
EddingtonIt was alright. Kinda boring in the sense not much happens and that the dread aspect is not really there
2025
-
Bring Her BackThe Philippou brothers proved Talk to Me was not a fluke. Sally Hawkins is terrifying in a way that feels new: not a monster, a person completely consumed. The horror isn't just a demon but the inescapablility of being around people. best movie of 2025 -
Shelby OaksChris Stuckmann's debut earns it. The found footage frame is a delivery mechanism, not a crutch, and the supernatural mythology is genuinely original. Extremely creepy and well shot movie. Incredible stuff -
SinnersVampires, sure. No real threat in the movie. No real opposition, no real deaths. no real dread. Music is amazing ofcourse but there's no sense of urgency or overwhelming power. i wished there was a creative way to imply the dread and inevitability of coming out alive in the movie -
The MonkeyOsgood Perkins at his most darkly comedic. The actual monkey doll and all the deaths are pretty good. There's a sense that the main characters could just drop dead any minute whihc keeps the movie exciting. -
Heart EyesValentine's Day slasher that knows its genre well enough to play with it. The kills are creative and the leads have genuine chemistry. Really fun to watch too. Excellent work! -
ObsessionAs someone's who's afraid of women, this is truly terrifying stuff! Great work! -
Final Destination: BloodlinesThe franchise returning to form. The death sequences are the most inventive since the second film, and the mythology gets a genuinely interesting expansion. -
TogetherBody horror as relationship horror. The metaphor is obvious and works precisely because it is obvious. -
The Ugly StepsisterNorwegian body horror fairy tale that earns every uncomfortable moment. The violence toward the self is more disturbing than any monster.
-
BugoniaSci-fi horror that works rewally well, but the concept is strong enough to carry it. The dread is always there that a loose cannon might just fire at any given moment and they still somehow make the ending shocking. It all being real in the end is kinda corny, but I see why they would go that route to make it funny.
-
The SubstanceCoralie Fargeat commits absolutely. One of the most viscerally uncomfortable films in years. Body horror as a treatise on self-destruction and the violence of being looked at. -
NosferatuEggers earns every shot. The fog, the rot, the fever-dream pacing. Bill Skarsgard is genuinely horrible in the correct sense of the word. -
28 Years LaterBoyle back on form. The rural decay is oppressive in exactly the way the original was urban-claustrophobic.
2024
-
OddityIrish folk horror at its quietest and most patient. The antique shop in the opening five minutes tells you everything about the register. -
HereticThree-hander theological horror. Grant is terrifying because he is reasonable for most of the runtime.
-
MaXXXineTi West sticks the landing on his trilogy. The 80s pastiche is never cynical. -
LonglegsCage is unhinged in the best way. The FBI procedural frame gives the occult elements room to breathe.
2023
-
Talk to MeThe best possession film since Hereditary. The social media framing is not decoration, it is load-bearing. The Philippou brothers announced themselves here.
-
When Evil LurksArgentine rural horror with rules the film commits to absolutely. Nihilistic and relentless in a way that feels earned rather than exploitative. -
SkinamarinkDestabilizes the frame until the house itself is the monster. Slow beyond slow, then suddenly unbearable.
-
Evil Dead RiseMoving the deadites into a tower block was a better idea than it had any right to be. The elevator sequence belongs in a canon. -
Infinity PoolCronenberg Jr. making body horror about privilege. The neon-soaked resort setting is unbearable in exactly the right way.
2022
-
BarbarianEarns every tonal shift. The film knows exactly when to be funny and when to stop. The basement reveals are perfectly sequenced.
-
PearlMia Goth's performance alone justifies its existence. Technicolor melodrama as a horror film about ambition and rot. -
NopePeele using spectacle as a Trojan horse for something colder about exploitation and the gaze. The sky is genuinely menacing. -
XTi West proves he understands the grammar of 70s slasher better than most people who grew up watching it. The double casting is the movie.
2020 and 2021
-
His HouseThe best horror film of 2020. Haunted house as refugee trauma. Remi Weekes directing with a control that most veterans lack.
-
Saint MaudA24 at its most controlled. Religious mania as body horror. The final image is burned into memory.
-
The Invisible ManLeigh Whannell reconfigures the concept as a film about coercive control. The empty spaces in frame do genuine work.
-
TitaneDucournau's Palme d'Or winner makes no concessions. Body horror as identity horror. Unclassifiable. -
MalignantWan committing to the most absurd premise and making it work entirely on his own conviction. The third act is a gift.
2017, 2018 and 2019
-
Hereditary (2018)A film that genuinely earns a perfect score in the genre. Toni Collette's performance belongs in any discussion of screen acting. The grief is real; the supernatural is a consequence of it. -
Get Out (2017)Peele's debut is a perfect horror film. The sunken place sequence is one of the finest moments of pure cinema in the last decade. -
Midsommar (2019)Aster's daylight horror is more disturbing than anything played in darkness. Florence Pugh's grief arc makes the pagan horror personal. -
Raw (2017)Ducournau's debut is cannibalism as coming-of-age. The body transforming, consuming, discovering. Deeply uncomfortable and completely precise. -
Suspiria (2018)Guadagnino's remake has no interest in competing with Argento. It makes something different and political and genuinely disturbing on its own terms.
2016
-
The WitchEggers' debut is a historical artifact and a formal masterwork. The period language, the goat, the final minutes. Horror that believes in evil.
-
The WailingNa Hong-jin makes a Korean village into an epicenter of folk terror. The longest horror film on this list and not a minute wasted.
-
The Autopsy of Jane DoeSingle location, two characters, escalating dread. The morgue has never been more hostile.
-
Train to BusanThe best zombie film since 28 Days Later. The class dynamics written into the seating car layout. Yeon Sang-ho earns every emotional beat.
Classics
-
The Shining (1980)Kubrick making a horror film that defies every attempt at a definitive reading. The geometry of the hotel is wrong. Everything is wrong. Jack Nicholson giving the definitive unraveling performance. -
The Exorcist (1973)Still effective after fifty years because Friedkin grounds it in the mundane. The horror is a mother watching her child disappear. Everything else follows from that.
-
Alien (1979)Scott making a haunted house film in space. The design work by Giger is irreplaceable. Every subsequent alien film has been trying to get back to the original's dread. -
Halloween (1978)Carpenter invented the slasher grammar with a budget of three hundred thousand dollars. The score, the shape, the suburban ordinariness turned wrong. Everything that came after is a footnote. -
Rosemary's Baby (1968)Polanski building paranoia in broad daylight. The horror is in the social fabric, the neighbors, the husband, the ordinary world that is entirely complicit. Mia Farrow is extraordinary.
-
Psycho (1960)Hitchcock killing the protagonist in the first act and daring the audience to follow. The shower scene is still the most technically precise scare in cinema. Bernard Herrmann's strings are inseparable from it. -
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)Tobe Hooper making a film that feels like it was discovered rather than produced. The heat and the grime and the wrong feeling of every frame. Leatherface as pure physical menace. -
Night of the Living Dead (1968)Romero inventing the modern zombie and saying something about America while doing it. Shot in black and white on a budget that should not have produced a masterwork. The ending remains one of the most savage in American horror.
-
The Thing (1982)Carpenter again, with Rob Bottin's practical effects as the film's true star. Paranoia horror with the most inventive creature design ever put on film. The ending is a masterclass in ambiguity. -
The Fly (1986)Cronenberg making a body horror film about disease, aging, and the terror of watching someone you love disappear into something unrecognizable. Jeff Goldblum giving the performance of his life.
-
Suspiria (1977)Argento making a film that operates on pure sensation. The colors, the Goblin score, the geometry. Not a logic film. A fever film. There is nothing else like it. -
Carrie (1976)De Palma and King making horror out of adolescent humiliation. Sissy Spacek making you feel every second of Carrie's suffering before the prom. The split screen finale is pure cinema.
-
Don't Look Now (1973)Roeg making grief into a horror film. Venice as a city of wrong turns and cold water. The red coat. The ending arrives like a blow and refuses to explain itself.