The 12 Scariest Movies of the Last 20 Years

Halloween is approaching and it’s time to spend your nights curled up with a scary movie. If you don’t keep up with the hundreds of horror movies that release each year, you may have missed some heavy hitters. These are the scariest horror movies movies released from 2005-present.

Wolf Creek (2005)

Wolf Creek is a horrifying story about meeting a bad dude in the middle of nowhere. In the isolation of the Australian Outback, three tourists on a road trip have car trouble and are “saved” by a local named Mick Taylor. When they wake up after being drugged, the trio discovers Mick plans to torture them at his leisure so far from civilization no one can hear them scream.

Scariest scene: After he catches one woman after she tries to escape, Mick delivers a chilling monologue about a torture technique he learned in the Vietnam war. He explains that by stabbing her in the back, he has severed her spinal cord and she will be paralyzed. His victim will be alive and able to experience terror and pain, just completely unable to escape.

The Host (2006)

Academy Award winning director Bong Joon-ho made this creature feature about a South Korean family whose lives are disrupted by the sudden appearance of a monster from the Han river. The monster kidnaps Park Hyun-seo, the pre-teen daughter of Park Gang-du, a vendor who runs a snack bar with his father. The Park family search for Hyun-seo as the government disseminates misinformation via the media.

Scariest scene: The first appearance of the monster and the area’s descent into pandemonium is truly a chilling scene and a demonstration of monster-movie excellence. Our protagonist Park Gang-du is delivering food from his snack bar to customers when our attention turns towards chaotic movement down the pier. A sea-monster has emerged from the river and is running towards the crowd of people.

Funny Games (2007)

A shot-for-shot remake of the Austrian original, Funny Games is a psychological horror movie about two amoral young men who break into a wealthy family’s home to torture them to death for fun. At first using their put-together appearance to appear non-threatening and gain entry into the Farber family’s home, the two men then calmly explain that they’d like to play some games with the family. One game involves the family matriarch Ann (Naomi Watts) searching for their dog, which one of the men has beaten to death with a golf club. The level of stone-cold psychopathy the men display is forever unnerving.

Scariest scene: The film’s one supernatural/absurd element is also the scariest as it demonstrates the complete control the killers have over the family. At one point Ann manages to wrestle the shotgun away and kills one of the men. The other finds the TV remote and “rewinds” the events so he is able to prevent Ann from grabbing the gun in the first place.

REC (2007)

An intense Spanish found-footage horror movie about a reporter, Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco), and her cameraman, Pablo (Pablo Rosso), who get quarantined inside an apartment building where an outbreak is occurring. The residents of the apartment building panic, and the infected become violent. Investigators believe one resident’s dog started a bizarre kind of rabies outbreak that spreads extremely fast, but, throughout the terrifying night, the bigger truth is eventually revealed.

Scariest scene: Desperate to escape the apartment building, Ángela, Pablo and a firefighter search for a key to leave through the basement into the city’s sewer system. Pablo records Ángela as she frantically searches for the key in one of the apartments. When they exit, the stairwell is full of infected people coming to get them.

The Strangers (2008)

After a failed engagement at a friend’s wedding, couple James and Kristen plan to spend the night at James’ isolated family summer home. Despite being exceptionally late, the doorbell rings shortly after their arrival, and a young girl asks for someone the couple is unfamiliar with (“Is Tamara home?”). Through a series of jump scares, the couple realizes that they are being stalked by three masked assailants with seemingly no purpose other than to terrorize them.

Scariest scene: One of the reasons The Strangers is so scary comes from the penultimate scene when the strangers are asked “why?” and respond simply “because you were there.” The killers stalking and torturing their victims with no motive at all leaves the audience uneasy about the idea that the events of the film could easily happen to them.

Sinister (2012)

Sinister is a suspenseful supernatural horror movie about a true crime writer, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), who moves his unwitting family into a murder house in order to research his next book. Unfortunately he uncovers a supernatural element to the murders, a demonic entity named Bughuul. Bughuul grooms children to murder their families and then allow him to consume their souls. Ellison races to piece together the series of family murders and Bughuul’s motive while living in the haunted murder scene.

Scariest scene: While there are plenty of well-crafted jump scares in Sinister, the scariest scenes might be the contents of the Super 8 footage Ellison finds in the home’s attic that depict gruesome family murders. The footage shows one family being hung from a tree in their yard. Another shows a family chained inside their car, which is then set aflame. A third reel shows a family having a fun day at the pool and then cuts to family members being tied to lawn chairs and pulled underwater to drown, after which Bughuul is visible in the pool. Ellison burns the reels and moves his family out of the murder house. However, in his new home’s attic Ellison discovers a projector and the Super 8 reels, this time with “Extended Cut Endings” that reveal the shocking truth of who killed each of the murdered families.

The Conjuring (2013)

In 1971, the Perron family moved into a Rhode Island farmhouse and discovered it was haunted by a witch named Bathsheba Sherman who once gave her baby to the Devil as a sacrificial offering. The family is terrorized by the spirit, and it begins to possess matriarch Carolyn (Lili Taylor). Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren are called in (fresh from working on the Annabelle case) to help the family de-ghost their house. The real life story is cataloged in a book called The Demonologist. Vera Farmiga said she read the book for research and it scared her so much she would only read it on planes.

Scariest scene: The Perron women play a game called “hide and clap,” which is like hide and seek but the hiders have to clap to give the seeker clues about their location. An epic jump scare occurs when Carolyn hears claps coming from a newly discovered basement staircase. After being pushed down the stairs and locked in, she lights a match in an attempt to see her assailant. Instead, we see hands clap directly behind Carolyn’s head.

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015)

Be My Cat is an unhinged Romanian found footage horror movie about a man, Adrian, who is desperate to convince Anne Hathaway to star in his movie after seeing her as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). He hires local actresses to shoot demos that he hopes will convince Hathaway to come to Romania and work with him. It’s like watching a bizarro Borat that is a scary horror movie instead of a comedy.

Scariest scene: Initially viewers may get the impression Be My Cat is a comical and sad film about a delusional man. But it’s hard to identify the line between what Adrian presents as fiction and reality. In one scene he tortures an actress by performing surgery on her to make her thinner. When his neighbors investigate, he explains away the actress’ screams by telling them he is filming a horror movie. Which, technically, he is. Then, upon returning later to find Flory dead, Adrian is unsure if he is playing a character anymore, or if he is the character.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is a South Korean found-footage ghost movie about a web series crew who do a live broadcast from a haunted psychiatric hospital hoping to gain views. At the asylum, they begin filming and notice a doll moving on its own. Things get stranger and scarier as they find coffins, footage they didn’t film, and one of the crew becomes catatonic.

Scariest scene: The scariest scene involves the catatonic crew member. She suddenly opens her eyes and they appear to be all black. At the same time a demonic voice erupts from her body.

Hereditary (2018)

Hereditary is director Ari Aster’s feature debut, and he started off with a literal bang. Early in the film the character the audience presumes will be a main character is suddenly — and gruesomely — beheaded in an extremely upsetting accident that leaves the Graham family suffocating in the wake of trauma. The trauma fractures the family unit, leaving them vulnerable for a demon king named Paimon.

Scariest scene: While Hereditary is chock full of disturbing scenes, the most terrifying is when a teen discovers his mother in the attic, decapitating herself with piano wire. The attic scene takes place in the middle of a relentless finale in which there are no breaks from disturbing scene after disturbing scene. When the credits roll, there is a tremendous sense of relief that viewers feel as they are finally allowed to catch their breath and process what they have just witnessed.

Terrifier 2 (2022)

Terrifier 2 is so scary that people were literally throwing up in the theaters. This slasher sequel follows Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) as he is resurrected and stalks Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) on Halloween night.

Scariest scene: The infamous “bed scene” in Terrifier 2 was so bloody, violent and scary that we’re only sharing the “before” photo here. This is a sick, sad scene that will stick with you long after the screen goes dark.

Longlegs (2024)

Longlegs sees Maika Monroe as new FBI Agent Lee Harker who joins a team investigating a decades-long series of familicides in which a cryptic, Satanic letter is found at each crime scene. Nic Cage plays the serial killer Longlegs, and his performance borders on comical in a deeply upsetting way.

Scariest scene: There is a heart-pounding scene early in the film where Harker is at her home in a secluded, wooded area late at night. The curtains are open and we know the house looks like a fishbowl from the outside: easy to see in, harder to see out. Someone bangs on the door and Harker draws her gun and even goes outside to investigate the strange noise. When she comes back there is a coded letter from Longlegs sitting on her desk.

Read our full list of the 35 scariest movies ever made here.