There are a few things you expect when going to see a good horror film. The main lead who is enough of an everyman to make it easy for you to imagine them as your stand-in in that world. A scary soundtrack that makes the hairs at the back of your neck stand up. A kickass villain who will haunt your dreams and make you regret ever buying tickets to the film when the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com offering was playing on the next screen—and, of course, a few characters that fall prey to the villain in satisfyingly gory ways.
Naturally, most innovative films are able to succeed while playing against expectations. Here are 10 such horror films which did not need to kill off characters to build their terrifying mythology.
The Babadook
Few modern horror films are as good at atmospheric horror as The Babadook. The setup is pretty simple. A low-income single mother is struggling to raise her young son when their house begins to be haunted by a malevolent entity that takes the shape of a demon from a children’s fable.
What follows is an unsettling exploration of motherhood, mental health and the effects of isolation on regular people. To the end, you remain uncertain of the true state of things in that house, but you can’t stop wondering about it.
The Conjuring
The film that put director James Wan on the map and established him as a master of the horror genre. The Conjuring follows the life of a family that experiences paranormal events in their newly-bought home and have to call in supernatural experts Ed and Lorraine Warren to get to the bottom of the affair.
It’s a fairly straightforward tale of a haunting and its effect on the very young, but what sets the feature apart is its clever use of tired horror cliches like jump scares in a modern and effective manner. You may see the scary moments coming, but you’ll still find yourself wincing unexpectedly and feeling that thrill of horror that such movies are meant to provide.
Poltergeist
Poltergeist is such an indelible part of pop culture that it is difficult to find someone who has not seen most of the scenes at least in passing, but a movie like Poltergeist deserves to be seen in its entirety, so you can appreciate the way individual scenes of horror build into a crescendo of terror. Poltergeist was The Conjuring of its time, except it was less reliant on CG and used practical effects to tell the tale of a malevolent entity haunting a family by possessing the soul of their child.
The Others
While most other entries on this list are straight horrors, The Others is really a family drama disguised as a very effective horror film. Nicole Kidman turns in an award-winning performance as a beleaguered mother trying to keep her two children safe as they live alone in a remote country house in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Things take a turn for the worst with the arrival of three new entities who claim to be the true owners of the house. It is up to the mother and her two young ones to make a stand for their home and discover a secret in the process that has gone down in history as one of the most shocking moments in cinema.
The Blair Witch Project
This is another film that you know about even if you have never seen it. It is difficult to overstate the impact this low-budget pioneer in the ‘found-footage’ genre of films had on audiences when it first came out. A slew of copycat films that used similar tactics to scare the audiences somewhat dilutes the effectiveness of The Blair Witch Project upon rewatching, but it still remains a prime example of how effective such films can be in immersing audiences in the narrative when done right.
Signs
M. Night Shyamalan has fallen out of favor with audiences recently, but there was a post-Sixth Sense era where he was hailed as the next Spielberg and Hitchcock combined. But, before he became overly-burdened with the expectations of topping Sixth Sense’s twist ending with something even more audacious, Shyamalan made Signs.
This slow-burner takes its time building up to an atmosphere of unease as we follow a family that relocates to a farmhouse where strange crop circles begin to appear, signaling the arrival of extra-terrestrials. This ambitious narrative combines Science-fiction with theology to explore terror in a very intimate setting.
The Stepford Wives
Remember when Get Out was all the rage? Many people pointed out similarities to Stepford Wives. When young wife Joanna Eberhart relocates to a seemingly idyllic new suburban area, she discovers a wives club made up of eerily perfect, submissive women. This satirical thriller is light on scares but does have enough biting social commentary told in a witty manner to make it worth a watch.
April Fool’s Day
A slasher film with a difference. It would be strange to imagine a slasher film with zero victims, but that is the central conceit of this 1986 classic. College girl Muffy invites her friends over to her remote mansion on an island for a weekend of revelry.
Things take a turn for the worse when a web of lies begins to unravel, and guests begin to disappear one by one. The movie was hailed by critics for offering a slasher film with little in the way of gratuitous violence, and it’s a tongue-in-cheek commentary on sexy slasher horror movie trends.
1408
Before IT came to theaters, 1408 was the most successful Stephen King adaptation at the box-office. A writer, Michael Enslin, who specializes in research of paranormal phenomena, checks into a hotel room that is said to be the epicenter of hauntings and other mysterious occurrences.
Although initially skeptical, Enslin soon realizes that he has finally discovered a genuine case of paranormal phenomena as things rapidly take a turn for the worst and he is forced into a fight for his very survival.
Freaks
While many modern horror films take pride in pushing the envelope in terms of gore, Freaks was a 1932 feature that was button-pushing in a way that no other film has been since. That is because Freaks was made before the censors imposed a list of restrictions on horror films to prevent films with the kind of shocking content that Freaks became known for.
The film follows the story of a troupe of circus performers who band together to save their friend from the clutches of a beautiful but cruel and conniving trapeze artist. The film is hard to stomach for many people even today, but it ultimately has a story to tell that is tragic, macabre, and compelling.
