Image via Indepent Film Company/Shudder
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Brad LaCour
Published 58 minutes ago
Brad LaCour is a Senior List Writer for Collider. Based out of Los Angeles, California, Brad lives close enough to the stars but is too busy to find out where exactly they live. Brad is fairly certain he's seen Paul Stanley twice in a grocery store, but was too afraid to ask.
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One of the best things about horror is that it’s a genre that encourages outside-the-box thinking. Horror fans not only want to see odd ideas or bizarre interpretations of our day-to-day life experiences — they gravitate toward them. They want something they’ve never seen before, and they want it to scare the hell out of them.
A great horror movie is like seeing a nightmare on screen, and nightmares don’t adhere to logic or reasoning. Anything imaginable can exist within a horror movie, and because of that, the genre remains the most exciting and unpredictable. From abstract terrors to cinematic perspectives never attempted, these are the 10 most unique horror movies of all time.
10 'In a Violent Nature' (2024)
Ry Barrett as Johnny stands overlooking a ravine while holding his murderous weapons in In a Violent NatureImage via Shudder
The audience sees a slasher movie from the viewpoint of the killer in the movie In a Violent Nature. When a locket is taken by a group of campers in a remote wooded area, the vengeful spirit of Johnny (Ry Barrett) is reawakened in the form of an unkillable corpse. The audience follows Johnny on his singular-minded quest to retrieve the jewelry, brutally killing anyone who stands in his way.
In a Violent Nature isn’t the first movie to center the plot around the villain, but never before was it a silent, hulking predator such as the Jason Vorhees-inspired Johnny. By changing the perspective of the movie from the victims to the killer slowly pursuing them, a more methodical pace is applied. The story moves much like Johnny, with a calm, detached view of the heinous acts being perpetrated to create a unique and unsettling viewing experience.
9 'Rubber' (2010)
A tire faces off with a police car in Rubber.Image via Realitism Films
Horror movies have featured some of the most iconic villains of all time — Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers — but in Rubber, we get a psychic tire. Rubber tells the story of a sentient tire named Robert that rolls along, using psychokinesis to cause its victims to explode. While Robert’s tour of mayhem continues in a desolate desert town, a group of spectators watches from a distance using binoculars.
Fans of David Lynch’s body of work will appreciate Rubber for its darkly comedic dissection of horror starring quirky characters who knowingly exist within a story. Rubber takes meta-filming to its limits, frequently questioning the concept of storytelling and the audience’s passive consumption of violence. Because of these surreal elements, Rubber is more of an artistic experiment in expression than it is a traditional movie with a beginning, middle, and end.
8 'Good Boy' (2025)
Indy the Dog in Good Boy.Image via SXSW
Proving that there are still new ideas to be explored, 2025’s Good Boy tells a horror story from a dog’s perspective. Indy the Dog has enjoyed a lifetime of adventures with his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), but their fates take a dark turn when the ailing man moves the pair to a remote home in a rural area. As dark forces look to consume Todd, Indy must find a way to save his best friend before it’s too late.
The premise is likely to trigger a chuckle from the skeptics, but Good Boy uses the viewpoint of Indy to tell a compelling haunted house story. In many ways, Good Boy relies on tropes the audience is likely familiar with, but they seem fresh and more impactful as seen through the eyes of a lovable pooch. Good Boy was a labor of love from director Ben Leonberg, who spent 400 days shooting the film, and the finished product proves the time was well spent.
7 'Bubba Ho-Tep' (2002)
Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as John F. Kennedy in Bubba Ho-tep (2002)Image via Vitagraph Films
Two famous historical figures battle an ancient evil in Bubba Ho-Tep. In a small Texas nursing home, a man who believes he’s Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) and his friend, who claims to be John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis), discover residents are being murdered by a mummy. To save the remaining residents from having their souls sucked, Elvis and JFK fight the mummy to the death.
Bubba Ho-Tep has a premise that seems like random words were drawn out of a hat, but the movie is far from a parody. Campbell and Davis do an excellent job of grounding the material, and they play their parts in an understated and emotionally rich manner. Bubba Ho-Tep defies simple categorization because of how many genres it borrows from, all the while making a lasting statement about aging, regret, and coming to terms with both.
6 'A Quiet Place' (2018)
John Krasinski as Lee Abbott, holding a finger to his lips in A Quiet Place.Image via Paramount Pictures
Sound is normally a vital component to building tension, but the absence of it proves to be even more impactful in A Quiet Place. The story follows a small family that carefully and quietly lives in a world devastated by aliens with superpowered hearing. After a tragedy leaves the family grieving, they face the challenge of welcoming a new addition without making sounds that would draw lethal attention.
A Quiet Place is a unique horror movie, both in its plot structure and execution. Although marketed as an alien invasion story, which it partly is, the film is predominantly a family drama about dealing with loss and how families continue on in the face of trauma. In a confident piece of filmmaking, these ideas are conveyed through a largely silent feature, using even the slightest of sounds to inspire terror at the threat it could pose.
5 'Titane' (2021)
A young girl with a device around her head in 'Titane'Image via Neon
It will be hard to ever look at cars the same way ever again after watching Titane. The French body horror drama follows Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a woman with murderous impulses who has a unique appreciation for cars. When her actions force her to go on the run, Alexia passes herself off as the long-lost son to Vincent (Vincent Lindon), a firefighter who is willing to accept a lie for emotional comfort.
From director Julia Ducournau, Titane takes an unorthodox approach to exploring sexuality in a way that has never been done before. Although many scenes of Titane have the capacity to shock, the horror film is more than a series of grotesque images designed to make the viewer uncomfortable. The bizarre plot developments, such as our main character becoming pregnant by a car, are an eye-catching way of commenting on themes like sexual identity and the lasting impact of emotional and physical trauma.
4 'Suspiria' (1977)
Suzy holds a knife and looks ahead in Suspiria.Image via International Classics
A ballet academy is the unlikely setting for the surreal horror film Suspiria. Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) attends a prestigious dance academy in Berlin, hoping to perfect her craft, but strange occurrences at the school make her increasingly uneasy. After Suzy learns the truth about the academy, she’ll be forced to fight for her life if she hopes to escape.
The operatic visuals and haunting score of Suspiria contribute to its status as one of director Dario Argento’s scariest horror movies. Plot takes a backseat to an emotional state of mind in Suspiria, with Argento more concerned with what the viewer is feeling rather than assigning logic to the events on screen. However, it’s also that lack of a structured story in the traditional sense that heightens the horror, keeping the audience off balance while experiencing the dreamlike narrative.
3 'Eraserhead' (1977)
Jack Nance as Henry in Eraserhead close-up black-and-white shot.Image via Libra Films International
David Lynch made an immediate impression in the film world with his first feature, Eraserhead. Set in a cold and eerie industrialized world, Eraserhead follows Henry (Jack Nance), a man who becomes the apprehensive father to an unusual-looking, monstrous baby. As his responsibilities grow, Henry begins to collapse under the pressure of fatherhood, resisting madness but slowly failing.
To watch Eraserhead is to experience a nightmare while being awake. For Lynch, the nightmare was a personal one, with Eraserhead a way for him to work through his anxieties about impending fatherhood. Heavily inspired by the surreal visuals typically found in German expressionism, Lynch’s early black-and-white film evokes feelings of confusion and despair in a memorable way that would inspire a generation of future filmmakers.
2 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (1984)
Director Wes Craven was responsible for some of horror’s biggest movies, but his most influential and celebrated creation will always be A Nightmare on Elm Street. The film follows high school student Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) as she and her friends are terrorized in their dreams by the undead killer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). As Nancy learns more about who Freddy is, she’ll understand the truth of why the killer is targeting her.
By the time Freddy started dream-hopping around Elm Street, slashers were sleepwalking through a tired formula of cliches. A Nightmare on Elm Street threw out the conventional wisdom of how to approach slashers with a supernatural spin that proved revelatory to audiences. Horror fans were given a villain who would never run out of ideas on how to torture his victims, and that theory would be tested in the years to follow.
1 'Psycho' (1960)
Janet Leigh as Marion Crane screaming in the shower in Psycho.Image via Paramount Pictures
A game-changing horror movie that redefined the genre for decades was Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller classic, Psycho. Secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) disappears after stealing money from her job, and the trail goes cold at the Bates Motel. Soft-spoken owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) was the last to see her alive, but he’s hiding that information, along with a dark secret, from the people looking for her.
Psycho’s plot may seem overshadowed by more modern, outlandish ones, but Hitchcock’s classic slasher was mind-blowing when released. The concept of killing what was presumably the main character midway through the film was unheard of in 1960, and it would still be considered risky now. Later reveals would further distinguish the film as a one-of-a-kind experience, but the shower scene is still referenced 65 years later for a reason.
Like
Psycho
R
Horror
Mystery
Thriller
Release Date
September 8, 1960
Runtime
109 minutes
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Writers
Joseph Stefano, Robert Bloch
Cast
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Janet Leigh
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Martin Balsam
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Movie
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Horror
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Eraserhead
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