43+ Horror Movies That Take Place in Winter

The weather outside is frightful!

Winter is spooky because it is the season when plant life dies and the landscape becomes barren. The brisk air is ghostly. The days are darker and the cold temperatures lead to a maddening cabin fever. What’s scarier than a haunted house? A haunted house with a blizzard outside so you can’t escape.

This list catalogs the best horror movies that take place in the winter, with some thrillers sprinkled in for lighter fare. When darkness hits at a cool 5pm, light a fire and turn on one of these creepy movies for a bone-chilling good time.

Black Christmas (1974)

Black Christmas is obviously a Christmas horror movie first and foremost, but it also contains some fantastic winter imagery throughout. From a scene showing ice hockey (the most wintery of all sports) to a community search for a missing person in the frozen, snow-covered night, Black Christmas is ice cold. But perhaps the most unnerving images in the film are the recurring shots of one of the killer’s victims seated in the attic of the sorority house with the plastic bag she was suffocated in still covering her face. Sitting in front of a window, the crinkled plastic bag over the young woman’s head brings to mind the streaks of frost on the frozen glass beside her.

The Shining (1980)

In Stanley Kubrick’s Meisterwerk of psychological horror, themes of geographic isolation and bone-chilling temperatures intermesh with the story of a dysfunctional family whose patriarch slowly goes mad as they house-sit a haunted hotel which has been shuttered for the winter. Roger Ebert wrote: “The movie is not about ghosts but about madness and the energies it sets loose in an isolated situation primed to magnify them.” Three decades later Stephen King wrote a sequel to The Shining which was adapted into a film by Mike Flanagan, Doctor Sleep (2019).

The Thing (1982)

This is director John Carpenter’s favorite film he has directed. It is also widely considered one of the best and scariest horror movies of all time. The Thing follows the crew at a research station in Antartica as they discover a malevolent shapeshifting alien in their midst. As the creature can turn into any one of them, no one can be sure who to trust. Every year since 1982, crew members at all British research stations in Antarctica have made a habit of watching The Thing on June 21—which is the longest night of the year on the South Pole.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

When he was very young, a boy named Billy was warned by his grandfather that Santa Claus punishes naughty people. Then Billy witnessed his parents getting killed by Santa Claus, resulting in Billy being placed in an orphanage. But now Billy has reached the age of 18 and is being released from the orphanage—and he has plans to punish the naughty by becoming Santa Claus himself. The film led to four sequels and a 2012 remake.

Curtains (1983)

Protip for any aspiring actress in a horror film: DO NOT go to any auditions that take place in a remote mansion. In fact, anyone who has ever watched horror movies would know well enough that nothing good ever happens in remote mansions. In Curtains, a half-dozen actresses ignore common sense, attend auditions at a remote mansion, and begin being targeted by a masked serial killer, who hunts them down across the ice, through the snowy woods, and on snowmobile.  

Dead of Winter (1987)

A loose remake of My Name is Julia Ross (1945), Dead of Winter is a horror thriller about an aspiring New York City actress, Katie McGovern (Mary Steenburgen), who is in a dire financial situation and desperate for work. She takes a job replacing a woman who looks like her in a film shoot at an upstate New York mansion. Everyone on set claims Katie is a dead ringer for the actress she is replacing, Julie. The next morning, Katie finds her driver’s license in the fire and all of her IDs missing but is trapped at the mansion by a snow storm.

Wolf’s Hole (1987)

A group of students head to an isolated mountain cabin to take a skiing class. What appears to be a typical 80s slasher movie turns into a sci-fi film as the group’s instructors are revealed to be aliens with a deranged request. Will the students work together to escape? Or turn on each other to fulfill their leader’s demands in exchange for safety?

Misery (1990)

Kathy Bates won a Best Actress Oscar for her chilling performance as Annie Wilkes, an obsessed fan who rescues, then holds hostage her favorite writer, Paul Sheldon—played by James Caan. To his horror, Paul gradually realizes that Annie’s original intent may have been to nurse him to health, but she becomes determined to not let him leave. The inhospitable winter weather surrounding Annie’s house is every bit as villainous as Annie is.

Fargo (1996)

This crime thriller is loosely based on a real-life story of a kidnapping/ransom plot gone horribly awry. In Fargo, the endless cold is merely a metaphor for the heartless and sadistic brutality that unfolds as the foiled plot claims one victim after the next. Frances MacDormand won an Oscar for Best Actress for her brilliantly subtle portrayal of a kindly but tough pregnant female cop.

Jack Frost (1997)

This direct-to-video comedy/slasher hybrid takes place in a fictional town called Snowmonton. On the week before Christmas, a serial killer with the convenient name of Jack Frost is being shuttled toward his execution when the truck he’s in crashes with a genetics truck containing DNA that causes Jack’s body to fuse with snow on the ground. He reemerges as a murderous snowman.

Storm of the Century (1999)

Storm of the Century is a Stephen King made-for-television miniseries. Unlike his other movies, this is not an adaptation of a novel but an original screenplay he wrote. In a small island off the coast of Maine, a town is cut off from the mainland by a storm and must prepare for the weather to get even worse. Right before the storm hits one of the residents is found brutally murdered and the townspeople know it could have only been someone on the island. The prime suspect is a mysterious stranger, André Linoge, who has just arrived in town.

American Psycho (2000)

American Psycho is by no means a traditional winter movie. Unlike so many of the films on this list, it does not feature snowed-in landscapes or wintry rural locations. Yet the movie does take place entirely in the winter and has many references to the holidays, but what is more is that the whole atmosphere of the film is steeped in the cold desolation of winter; there are no bright or summery scenes or anything warm about the cinematography.

Indeed director, Mary Harron seems to go to great lengths to abstractly and physically portray a setting that is as barren and cold as the serial killer protagonist at the movie’s center. It might not be the coincidence that the only visual reference to the sun in the film is the artificial tanning bed and everything else is as drab as the darkest and most frigid night of winter.

30 Days of Night (2007)

Barrow, Alaska, is situated on the northernmost tip of Alaska, and every year around winter solstice, its residents must endure thirty full days without sunlight. This is why nearly three-quarters of the town’s 500 residents vacate Barrow and head south during that month. This time around, a group of vampires preys upon the remaining residents, forcing locals to hide in horror and desperately await the next dawn.

Wind Chill (2007)

Two college students meet through a ride-share board and drive from Pennsylvania to Delaware for the holidays. When they take a risky detour, they find themselves stuck in the snow and isolated from help. Passing the time in the car, they begin to have ghostly encounters.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Oskar is a lonely and bullied boy who lives in the frosty climate of Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. He meets another lonely child named Eli, and they quickly become friends. Oskar slowly realizes that Eli is a vampire, but his loneliness trumps any qualms he has about Eli’s condition.

See also: Let the Right One In (2008): 21 Fascinating Facts and Trivia Items

The Children (2008)

Two families spend a Christmas vacation at a remote country house. The children become ill and afterwards begin to exhibit sinister tendencies, like hiding a rake in the middle of a sledding path and causing a gruesome end for one of the parents. While the snowy weather traps the remaining parents at the home, they fight for their lives against their children.

Dead Snow (2009)

A Norwegian comedy horror movie about seven medical students who take a ski vacation over Easter break. The group learns that locals were tortured by Nazi soldiers during World War II. The group then begins to be hunted by a squad of zombie Nazis.

Frozen (2010)

Childhood friends Dan and Joe, along with Dan’s girlfriend Parker, are skiing in New England before the resort closes down for a week due to an incoming storm. The trio begs a chairlift operator to let them go on one more run, but a miscommunication results in the friends being trapped in the chairlift after the resort closes. Slowly they realize no one has noticed them and help may not arrive for five days.

See also: 31 Survival Movies About Being Trapped in Strange Places

Devil’s Pass (2013)

A found footage horror movie that explores the well known unsolved mystery called the “Dyatlov Pass incident“. Five college students from Oregon decide to retrace the hiker’s steps to make a documentary. The group may find answers as to what happened to the hikers, but it comes at a terrible price. A reviewer at Rotten Tomatoes said: “A mixture of Blair Witch and Chernobyl Diaries, Devil’s Pass is an intense and frightening thriller.”

Snowpiercer (2013)

From Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho comes this post-apocalyptic thriller set at some point in the future after a climate-change experiment designed to halt global warming actually led to an Ice Age. Snowpiercer is the name of a high-speed train that travels the globe, holding the few living remaining humans who survived the big freeze. But even in the train, there is a class system: Toward the front, the rich passengers eat real food and enjoy luxuries that are inconceivable to those back in coach, who are fed protein bars made from dead insects and are forced to do whatever they’re told—and a class war seems inevitable.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

Oz Perkin’s directorial debut was this psychological horror movie about a boarding school student (Kiernan Shipka) who is left behind over a holiday break. Meanwhile another student (Emma Roberts) tries to make her way back to the school by hitching a ride with a stranger and his wife. The two storylines eventually collide in a gruesome series of events.

Oz Perkins’ chilling and meditative puzzler is one of my favorites…Great performances across the board, what appears at first to be a story about girls encountering a supernatural force when left behind at their boarding school is revealed to be something even deeper by the end. I love this movie for a lot of reasons, but particularly because of how it touches on an unexplored facet of possession stories.

Mike Flanagan on his favorite horror movies

The Lodge (2020)

A soon-to-be stepmother named Grace (Riley Keough) joins her fiancé and his two children for a Christmas vacation at the family’s remote lodge. The family’s strained relations are made worse when the dad returns to the city for work. Isolated together, Grace and the kids begin to experience unexplained events.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

The seventh installment of the Paranormal Activity franchise is another found footage film, this time following amateur filmmakers Margot and Chris as they visit Margot’s estranged family in an Amish homestead in upstate New York. While visiting, Margot learns about her mother Sarah, who abandoned her at birth. After finding a church in the woods, Margot investigates and discovers the horrifying truth about her mother.

The Retreat (2020)

A pair of buddies go hiking in Upstate New York’s notoriously frosty Adirondack High Peaks. As they settle in a holiday cabin and begin sipping some psychedelic-spiked “tea,” things go horribly wrong. Are the two being terrorized by a Wendigo? Or is it a hallucination induced by the tea?

The Oak Room (2021)

A low-budget suspense movie set in a small town bar on the night of a snowstorm. RJ Mitte (Walter White Jr. from Breaking Bad) stars as a prodigal son who returns to his hometown to visit a bartender who was best friends with his deceased father. He proceeds to tell the bartender a story about a bar like his on a night just like this. The film works up to a subtle twist-ending and could also be considered a mind f*ck movie.

No Exit (2022)

This Hulu original is about a woman, Darby (Havana Rose Liu), who breaks herself out of rehab and steals a car in order to visit her dying mother on her death bed. A massive winter storm interrupts her plans and she ends up taking shelter at a roadside visitors center with four strangers. The creepy setting turns into real danger when Darby discovers a little girl bound and gagged in the back of one of the stranger’s van.

Other Winter-Themed Horror Movies

• The Invisible Man (1933) stars Claude Rains in the title role of the H.G. Wells novel about a mysterious man who arrives wrapped in bandages at a lodge one snowy night.
• The Abominable Snowman (1957) two scientists get stuck in the frozen Himalayas while searching for the legendary Yeti.
• Satan’s Blade (1984) travelers at a remote ski resort, trapped in the midst of mysterious fatal stabbings, are horrified to learn of a legendary mountain monster who may be responsible.
• Ghostkeeper (1981) three snowmobilers get stranded at a remote mountain lodge where an old lady keeps an evil monster in the basement.
• Ghost Story (1981) takes place during a frigid winter in New England where a group of storytellers end up encountering a real ghost.
• Iced (1989) a serial killer starts picking off skiers at a remote mountain resort one-by-one.
• The Edge (1997) a survival thriller about three men who are stranded in a remote frozen wilderness after their plane crashes.
• A Simple Plan (1998) a crime thriller set in snowy Minnesota where three dumb friends attempt to run away with over $4 million in cash.
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999) in a frigid winter in New York City, a man (Tom Cruise) encounters a cult.
• Ravenous (1999) American soldiers fight cannibals while attempting to survive at a remote outpost in the Sierra Nevadas.
• Cold Prey (2006) is a slasher film that takes place in the isolated mountains of Norway.
• The Donner Party (2009) is a fictionalized treatment of the real-life expedition crew who got stranded in California’s frozen Sierra Mountains and resorted to cannibalism.
• Whiteout (2009) a crime thriller starring Kate Beckinsale as a U.S. Marshal called to investigate the murder of a scientist in Antarctica where the sun is about to set for six months.
• The Colony (2013) to survive brutal temperatures above ground, a group of humans builds an underground colony—and finds that the cold weather is the least of their problems.
• Extinction (2015) humans have migrated towards bitterly cold climates to escape zombies, but the undead evolve to become threatening once again.
• We Are Still Here (2015) during a brutal winter in rural New England, a couple is haunted by ghosts.
• The Snowman (2017) a detective movie about a killer who uses snowmen in his crimes.

Further reading:

• 60 Fun Facts and Lore About ‘The Shining’ and ‘Doctor Sleep’
• 28+ Best Isolation Horror Movies
• 25+ Best Christmas Horror Movies: An Advent Calendar of Holiday Terror