Ever since movies like Get Out and Hereditary hit big, weve seen a superhero-like amount of horror films hit theatersand, thanks to streaming services like Shudder, about a centurys worth of cult gems dug up from the grave. Its a lot to sort through, so we rounded up 40 of the spookiest options for you to this Halloween season. Fair warning: When I watched one of the movies on this list (George Romeros Martin) for the first time, my buddy passed out in the first five minutes and an ambulance showed up. So proceed with caution.

Amazon iTunes

After her estranged mother dies, Annie (Toni Collette) begins to notice some peculiar activity around her house. After another shocking tragedy, Annie begins to spiral out of control. Is there a supernatural force attempting to manipulate her family, or is it all in her head?

Amazon iTunes

A family (led by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt) silently navigate a post-apocalyptic world, stalked at every turn by monsters that hunt their prey with a supercharged sense of hearing. Although the family of survivalists have so far managed to avoid the extraterrestrial hunters, the fractures within their own relationships may lead to their downfall. You will spend this entire movie on the edge of your seat.

Amazon iTunes

In Jennifer Kent's gothic Australian thriller, a young widow is burdened with her troubled six-year-old son. But it only gets worse for the beleaguered mother when the titular character of her son's picture bookthe tall, top hat-wearing spook named the Babadookbegins to creep beyond the pages of his book and wreaks havoc on the mother and son.

Amazon iTunes

Six adventurous women go into the dark depths of an unmapped cave in North Carolina, hoping for a fun trek through the darkness. But their mountain vacation is disrupted when they discover that they aren't the only ones in the cave, which also happens to be full of flesh-eating humanoid monsters who hunt them women down.

Amazon iTunes

Annie thinks she's found a nice guy in her new boyfriend, but after they have sex, he reveals that he's being stalked with an unnamed evilwhich will now hunt her down until she can pass "it" onto the next person she sleeps with. The moody, retro-inspired horror film is a modern classic with an unsettling, unimaginable monster that our heroine must outsmart.

Amazon iTunes

A young black photographer (Daniel Kaluuya) joins his girlfriend (Allison Williams) for a visit to her suspicious, Obama-supporting parents' home and discovers that they can't be trusted in Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning modern masterpiece. In Esquire, Stephen Thrasher called the film, "The Best Movie Ever Made About American Slavery."

Amazon iTunes

It's hard to pull off a children-from-hell movie, which makes it all the more remarkable how beautifully this Austrian thriller unspools the mystery of twin boys (who for some unknown reason are always wearing matching tank tops) and their mother whose face is disguised in bandages and may not be their mother.

Amazon iTunes

In the very literally titled French art-horror classic, a famous and unhinged surgeon kidnaps beautiful women and tries to transplant their faces onto his daughter who is, yes, missing a face.

Amazon iTunes

Wes Craven was one of a few masters of horror who plumbed the depths of America's Vietnam War-era cultural divides in this grimy, arty thriller about two teenage girls who encounter escaped prisoners in the big cityand how the tables get violently turned.

Amazon iTunes

In the most disturbing allegory for childbearing gone wrong, Mia Farrow's Rosemary becomes increasingly panicked about her painful pregnancy and the mysterious neighbors in a building with a history of Satanism. The great Ruth Gordon won an Oscar for her role as Rosemary's fiendishly quirky neighbor, who isn't as sweet as she seems.

Amazon iTunes

Samantha, a broke college student struggling to pay her rent, picks up a babysitting job from a weird couple named the Ulmans. Things get even more strange when Samantha learns that her charge is not a child, but in fact Mr. Ulman's ailing mother. Foolishly ignoring her intuition, Samantha's gig turns into a night from hell when she realizes the Ulmans have some particularly devious plans for her.

Amazon iTunes

Nearly four decades after its release, The Exorcist is still the scariest movie ever madeand features one of the most terrifying movie villains in Regan MacNeil, an innocent 12-year-old girl possessed by a demonic force. William Friedkin's Oscar-nominated film was pretty much the first prestige horror movie, with incredible performances, heavy thematic material, and game-changing scares.

Amazon iTunes

Donnie Darko which gave us a taste of how great (and weird) Jake Gyllenhall could befollows Donnie as his cliche teenage-social-outcast problems somehow accrue interdimensional stakes. Its a perfect scary-movie blend: A troubled teen, memorable monster, all set during the Halloween season.

Amazon iTunes

It created the modern zombie genre, and its fondness for sociopolitical echoes. But even more than that legacy, George A. Romero's low-budget black-and-white original proved that you don't need money to create a horror classic; you just need braiiiiiiiins.

Compass International Pictures

Amazon iTunes

John Carpenter's bogeyman slasher nightmare spawned a legion of inferior sequels that couldn't diminish the ominous power of his original, about a psychopath who returns to his hometown years later to don a misshaped William Shatner mask and stalk Jamie Lee Curtis.

Amazon iTunes

Arguably the scariest film of all time, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's bestseller generates terror from its meticulous filmmaking. And, courtesy of Jack Nicholson's turn as a murderous paterfamilias, it also features the most memorable horror-movie performance in the past few decades.

Amazon iTunes

The story of a child molester who returns from the dead to prey upon his killers' children in dreams, Wes Craven's seminal shocker recognizes that you're never more vulnerable than when asleepa fact that naturally set up countless scares for one of the biggest horror franchises in film history

Amazon iTunes

Its sequel may boast grander man-vs.-beast action, but Ridley Scott's gorgeous 1979 outer-space saga about a group of astronauts battling against a malevolent extraterrestrial is still the franchise's most deeply frightening installment.

Amazon iTunes

Ignore all the remakes, remake sequels, and remake prequels, and stick with Tobe Hooper's original 1974 grindhouser, about a slightly unhinged hippie-hating family with a house notable for its giant meet hooks, human bone furniture, and slammable slaughterhouse metal doors.

Amazon iTunes

A cautionary tale about the perils of stealing from your bossand, also, about staying at roadside motels run by mamma's boys. Alfred Hitchcock originated the surprise first-act murder of the star with the story of a woman (Janet Leigh) on the run who is way too accepting of a dark-haired stranger's (Anthony Perkins) generosity.

Amazon iTunes

The only thing scarier than facing off against a hideous intergalactic monster is facing off against one that has the ability to shape-shift into human forma who's-the-creature scenario that director John Carpenter employs for intense suspense (with some great, gross special effects).

Amazon

Japanese director Takeshi Miike is infamous for pushing the boundaries of good taste, though he's rarely delivered more extreme tension than with this 1999 film about a man who discovers that dating can be a deadly affair.

Amazon iTunes

A young outcast boy meets, and falls in love with, a young immortal bloodsucker in this superb 1980-set Swedish vampire romance from Tomas Alfredson, which climaxes with an unforgettable pool sequence.

Amazon iTunes

Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-ho's 2006 film is a fantastic, Spielbergian tale of a South Korean family under siege from an extraordinary foenamely, a giant sea monster created from toxic dumping.

Empire International Pictures

Amazon iTunes

Michael Rooker is a serial killer whose crimes don't warrant much attention from the powers that be in John McNaughton's cold, clinical, harrowing character study (partly based on real events).

Amazon iTunes

Brian De Palma's adaptation of Stephen King's novel is an unbearably disturbing portrait of youthful alienation and fury, with one of the genre's most unforgettable fire-and-brimstone endings.

Amazon iTunes

A couple (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) grieving from the death of their daughter become convinced that she's trying to contact them from beyond the grave in Nicolas Roeg's profoundly unnerving thriller. You'll never look at little girls in red coats the same way again.

Amazon iTunes

The movie that for a brief time in the early aughts made everyone afraid of their TV. Naomi Watts plays a journalist investigating why people keep dying from watching a certain video tape. And just like all of the best scary movies, it's got a creepy kid.

Amazon iTunes

When The Blair With Project originally came out in 1999, people didn't know whether it was real or fiction. Advertised as "found video footage," it tells the story of three students who travel to a small town to investigate a murder, and eventually get terrorized in the woods.

Amazon iTunes

Sam Raimi's 2009 horror film is the perfect example of unspeakable horror and gross-out humor. Alison Lohman plays a bank loan officer who turns down an elderly woman's request for an extension on her mortgage payment. The woman retaliates in witchy ways, placing a curse on her new enemy and promising an untimely death.

Amazon iTunes

A nine-year-old Russian girl adopted by a kind American couple (played by Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard), Esther begins to act out in dangerous ways: bullying her new brother as well as kids at school, murdering a nun, and trying to seduce her new adopted father. It doesn't take one long to realize that maybe this kid is not all she seems.

AmazoniTunes

If youre Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagino, how do you follow up one of the most memorable love stories of the 2010s? By making one of its best horror films. His remake of Dario Argentos 1977 classic puts Dakota Johnson in the leading role as an American dancer auditioning at a world-famous dance academy in Berlin (where, spoiler, the dance instructors arent just dance instructors!).

AmazoniTunes

Before James Gunn hit it big with Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy, he was making weird-as-hell genre flickslike the Michael Rooker and Elizabeth Banks-led Slither. Yes, theres a comedic bent to the movie, which takes place in a small town that an alien organism begins to terrorize, but its body horror elements will leave a slug-sized stamp on your brain.

AmazoniTunes

In Robert Eggerss feature directorial debut, a Puritan family in colonial New England move to a farm outside of their Plymouth colony, where they encounter all kinds of crazy supernatural shit in its surrounding forest. Come for the period-piece colonial throwback, stay for the scary goats.

AmazoniTunes

If youre unfamiliar with the story, which is based on a Stephen King novel, It follows a group of children battling against an ancient, supernatural clown named Pennywise. Of course, the 1990, Tim Curry-led It miniseries will always be a classicbut Pennywise was just begging for 21st Century, big-budget CGI effects. The giant clown in that projector scene? Tentacles swinging from Pennywises mouth? Good luck sleeping.

AmazoniTunes

Even though this horror-world OG is nearly 100 (!) years old, this story of Count Orloks hosting of Thomas Hutter still delivers the goods. Yeah, old scary movies like this tend to look a little campy in modern times, but Noseferatus creepy mug, shadowy photography, and a timely message about xenophobia hold up today.

AmazoniTunes

Body-snatching plots will always be unnervingand Philip Kaufmans remake of the 1956 original nails exactly why that is. The incredible cast of Jeff Goldblum, Donald Sutherland, and Leonard Nimoy star in the film, where San Franciscos citizens start acting a little weirdand Goldblums character is tasked with finding out the cause.

AmazoniTunes

I would imagine its hard to make a cannibal movie, let alone one thats not a gross-out mess or a campy write-off. Raw, which tracks a vegetarian starting her first semester at veterinary schoolwhere, woah, she gets a taste for flesh. It sounds simple, but Raws built-in suspense (how far is she willing to go?) and art-film vibe makes it worth the watch.

AmazoniTunes

For a breathless 90 minutes of Stephen Lang in prime form, check out Dont BreatheFede lvarezs breathless horror-thriller. The movie follows three robbers who try to steal $300,000 of cash from a house in an abandoned Detroit neighborhoodwhich happens to be owned by blind Gulf War Veteran, Norman Nordtrom (Lang).

Amazon iTunes

Master of moving between genres, Steven Soderbergs shot at horror is just as great as the rest of his filmography. Unsane stars Claire Foy as Sawyer Valentini, who is tricked into a 24-hour stay at a secretive psych ward.

Go here to see the original:

40 Scariest Halloween Movies of All Time - Best Classic Horror Movies - Esquire