Get ready to be properly scared...
We're all doing the same thing this October, and that is "watching some spooky movies". However, with SO MANY spooky movies to choose from, it can be tough to know which ones are actually worth your time.
However, if you've got NOW, then you can access some of the greatest horror movies of all time, and we've picked out ten of the best you definitely watch (or rewatch) during your evenings and weekends.
In the run-up to Halloween, you can check out each and every one of these with your
NOW Cinema Membership.
Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock's iconic slasher movie really pushed the envelope back in the day, and while it is tough to see what the censors were getting in a fuss about, what still holds up is the pure tension and scariness running all the way through it. An on-the-run embezzler (Janet Leigh) spends the night at an isolated hotel, run by a seemingly nice man (Anthony Perkins), and she decides to take a shower... you probably know the rest.
The Birds (1963)
Yes, it is Hitchcock again, but think about it... If one of today's best directors announced that they were making a movie about killer birds, we'd all think they were throwing their career down the toilet. Instead, Hitchcock takes the unexplainable phenomenon of suddenly murderous birds descending on an island town and makes it absolutely terrifying.
Halloween (1978)
Horror icon John Carpenter's first team-up with scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis for this extremely simple slasher flick... but one that still remains one of the scariest movies ever made. The sense of tension and fear throughout is palpable, with Michael Myer's unstoppable killing force rampaging through a sleepy little town on Halloween. And with Laurie Strode, Jamie Lee Curtis gave us a horror icon for the ages.
The Fog (1980)
Carpenter and Curtis reunited for this old-school ghost story, but ramped up to the maximum levels of terror thanks to the arrival of an eerie fog... but this fog is filled with the killer ghosts of men who were killed in a shipwreck 100 years earlier. Avoid the 2005 remake, which brought the fog but forgot to bring the scares.
The Shining (1980)
When one of the world's greatest ever directors decides he wants to make a scary movie, then you know you're in for something special. Stanley Kubrick puts Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in a remote hotel and we watch as they start to lose their minds thanks to the ghosts who are already taking up residency there.
The Evil Dead (1981)
While we all mostly know Evil Dead II as being both more popular and more of a manic comedy than a horror, the original Sam Raimi-directed entry in the franchise was a low-budget, properly grisly horror movie. Just as liable to turn your stomach as it is to send you jumping out of your couch in fright.
Candyman (1992)
Putting issues of race and social divide at the centre of the horror, while still remaining scary enough to hang around in viewer's minds for DECADES afterwards (What other scary movie has you afraid to say a name into a mirror??).
Shutter Island (2010)
Another example of one of the world's best ever directors (Martin Scorsese) teaming up with some amazing actors (DiCaprio, Ruffalo, Kingsley, Williams, Clarkson, we could go on and on) to make a high-profile and very classy but still totally scary movie. Whenever the set up for the movie involves the cast heading to a psychiatric hospital to investigate mysterious goings-on, then you know you're in for a spooky time...
Us (2019)
Following up Get Out was gonna be tough for writer/director Jordan Peele, but he succeeding in keeping his horror bar spectacularly high with this story of evil, murderous doppelgängers suddenly appearing all around the world. It also doesn't hurt that the film is fronted by Lupita Nyong'o delivering not one but TWO of the best performances in a horror movie of recent years.
The Invisible Man (2020)
And speaking of incredible performances in scary movies, Elisabeth Moss grounds what could be a silly idea - a woman believes she is being tormented by an invisible man - and helps make it something properly psychologically terrifying.
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