12 of Martin Scorsese’s Favorite Horror Movies

Martin Scorsese is one of the best and most prolific American filmmakers. Beginning in 1967 with the drama Who’s That Knocking at My Door, Scorsese has directed 27 films. Notably, he won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Taxi Driver (1976) and in total his films have been nominated for 101 Academy Awards, with 20 wins including Best Director in 2007 for The Departed.

In his 50+ year career Scorsese has never directed a straight horror movie. The most horror-adjacent Scorsese films are: Cape Fear (1991), Bringing Out the Dead (1991) and Shutter Island (2010). However, the filmmaker has professed his love for the genre. This list compiles horror movies Martin Scorsese has recommended over the years.

The Uninvited (1944)

The Uninvited is a scary haunted house movie about a brother and sister who move into a seaside house in England. They quickly discover a supernatural presence in the home and begin to unravel a mystery. This was one of the first haunted house movies to play the haunting for scares instead of laughs.

Psycho (1960)

A secretary steals $40,000 from her boss and sets off for her boyfriend’s home in California. She stops at a roadside motel for the night and meets the strange proprietor, Norman Bates. Known for its major plot twist, director Alfred Hitchcock pleaded with audience members not to spoil the ending for others since “it’s the only one we have.”

The Haunting (1963)

Another haunted house movie, The Haunting is about a group of people who join a paranormal investigator to stay in the notoriously haunted Hill House. Supernatural events occur, but mostly off screen. The focus is on the terror the home’s inhabitants experience. It is based on the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House.

The Exorcist (1973)

After playing with a Ouija board, a girl becomes the victim of demonic possession at the hands of a demon named Pazuzu. Her actress mother seeks the help of religion when the girl’s disturbing behavior can’t be explained by medicine or psychiatry. Father Karras and Father Merrin arrive to perform an exorcism.

The Entity (1983)

Single mother Carla is violently tormented by a supernatural entity. Seemingly unable to escape the haunting, the woman turns to science for help. The Entity is based on the disturbing true story of a woman named Doris Bither

The Changeling (1980)

After losing his wife and daughter in an accident, a composer moves across the country and into a historic mansion to start over. However, the home has its own dark history that manifests as a haunting. The composer seeks to uncover the mystery behind the haunting and confronts his own grief in the process.

The Shining (1980)

The Shining is about the Torrance family, Jack, Wendy and Danny, who move to a remote hotel in the Colorado mountains to serve as caretakers over the winter off season. Not only is it a scary haunted hotel movie, the horror in The Shining also comes from isolation, cabin fever and Jack’s internal demons. While it is hinted that he was abusive before the story begins, the hotel’s sinister energy preys on Jack and eventually turns him into a monster intent on killing Wendy and Danny. As Stephen King wrote in the novel the film is based on, “This inhuman place makes human monsters.”

Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster’s first feature film received the honor of high praise by Scorsese. The film is a family drama presented through the vehicle of scary supernatural horror. It follows the Graham family as they fracture in the wake of a series of tragedies and the supernatural events that lead to their downfall. Hereditary is #1 on Creepy Catalog’s “Scariest Movies of All Time” list.

A couple of years ago, I watched a first film called Hereditary by a director named Ari Aster. Right from the start, I was impressed. Here was a young filmmaker that obviously knew cinema. The formal control, the precision of the framing and the movement within the frame, the pacing of the action, the sound — it was all there, immediately evident. But as the picture went on, it started to affect me in different ways. It became disturbing to the point of being uncomfortably so, particularly during the remarkable family dinner scene after the sister has been killed. Like all memorable horror films, it tunnels deep into something unnameable and unspeakable, and the violence is as emotional as it is physical.

Martin Scorsese, Midsommar Director’s Cut Blu-ray

Midsommar (2019)

Scorsese is also a fan of Ari Aster’s second feature film, Midsommar, a psychological horror movie about a group of friends who travel to Sweden to experience a remote commune’s Midsommar festivities. He liked the movie so much he wrote the introduction to a booklet included in the film’s director’s cut blu-ray.

Pearl (2022)

A prequel to the slasher movie X (2022), Pearl establishes the back story of the title villain. As a disturbed young woman living on her family farm during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, Pearl is desperate to escape her life by becoming a famous dancer. Her failure unleashes her murderous instincts. Of writer/director Ti West, Scorsese said “Ti West’s movies have a kind of energy that is so rare these days, powered by a pure, undiluted love for cinema. You feel it in every frame.”

Scorsese has said he loves Ti West’s entire X trilogy, expressing particular appreciation that the three films are set within (and represent the styles of) “three different moments in movie culture.”

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

A psychological horror drama about a lonely teen, Owen, who connects with a classmate, Maddie, over their shared love of a television show. Maddie claims the show is “more real” than real life and the line between their world and the show’s world becomes increasingly distorted. Scorsese said I Saw the TV Glow is “emotionally and psychologically powerful and very moving.”

Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers’ masterful reimagining 1922’s Nosferatu (based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula) transports viewers to Transylvania where the vampire Count Orlok manipulates and feeds on a young real estate agent. Meanwhile the Count forges a psychic link between himself and the object of his infatuation, the agent’s wife Ellen.

Further reading:

• 34 Scariest Movies of All Time
• 60 Fun Facts and Lore About ‘The Shining’ and ‘Doctor Sleep’
• 80+ Horror Movies About Making Movies