30 Best Supernatural Horror Movies You Need to Watch
Supernatural horror movies are one of the scariest movies ever. Even though I have watched some of the titles on this list a long time ago, they still hunt me in my nightmares. And that is not a surprise, because the movies on this list are the scariest supernatural horror movies of all time.
This list is full of classic supernatural horror movies such as The Shining, The Exorcist and such, and newer masterpieces, such as The Conjuring, The Ring, Hereditary and many others as you will see below. But don’t worry, even if you have watched a lot of supernatural horror movies, and think you have seen them all, we have some less known gems to scare the s*** out of you. Let’s check them out.
The Shining (1980)
Writer Jack Torrance (J. Nicholson) is in a creative crisis. When he is offered a job as a security guard at the secluded Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado, it seems like a good solution to his problems. Namely, during the winter the hotel is closed, and he and his family – wife Wendy (S. Duvall) and little son Danny (D. Lloyd) – will be its only tenants for several months. Soon a snowstorm cuts off the Torrances from the rest of the world.
Danny, who is clairvoyant and has the ability to communicate telepathically – “radiate” – with other worlds, soon discovers that the hotel is populated by ghosts, former employees and guests, dating back to the early 20th century. Unaware of such phenomena, Jack begins to drink more and more, is dissatisfied with his writing and cannot get rid of writer’s block. Moreover, he becomes increasingly grumpy and aggressive, especially after hanging out with Mr. Grady (P. Stone), a former security guard who killed his wife and twin daughters.
The Exorcist (1973)
Chris (E. Burstyn) is a movie actress who recently came to Washington on business. Suddenly, she begins to notice unusual changes in the behavior and appearance of her twelve-year-old daughter Regan (L. Blair). Although everything seems like an outburst of schizophrenia – the girl throws herself on the bed, screams and hits the wall, the psychiatrists, disgusted by the case, fail to help her.
As the unusual disease progresses, a desperate Chris decides to forget the doctors and seek help from the church. Namely, it seems to her that it might be a case of a demon or devil entering a human body, and perhaps the priests could have an answer to that. She thus befriends a young priest from a nearby town, who himself is struggling with his own personal problems.
The Conjuring (2013)
Based on true events, “The Conjuring” tells the story of how world-renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren are called to help a family terrorized by the presence of dark forces inhabiting their secluded home.
Including its multiple sequels and spin-offs.
The Ring (2002)
Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is a journalist who decides to investigate the mysterious death of her niece and her three friends, who all seem to have died on the same day, at the same time. After learning that her niece died with a terrifying grimace on her face, Rachel looks through the room and finds pictures of the cabin where four young people spent the weekend before her death.
Finding the cabin, Rachel finds an unmarked videotape in it, which is rumored to cause anyone who watches it to die seven days after watching it. Rachel still looks at her and, together with her ex-husband Noah (Martin Henderson), comes up with details about the author of the recording. The unknown facts about Samara’s life may be able to save them from the curse, but for that they have to wait seven days.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) notices that she, like several of her friends, is increasingly having terrifying nightmares in which she is being hunted by an unknown man armed with a glove containing sharp knives.
When the first victims begin to appear, Nancy realizes that the unknown killer is becoming more and more powerful, so she decides to pull him out of his dreams in order to finally stop him.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Several friends, two of whom are girls and three guys with a camper, are going for an exciting weekend in a cabin on the lake. Whether they like it or not, they will discover the terrible secret that this secluded cabin hides.
The Omen (1976)
As he rushes to Rome’s main hospital at six o’clock in the morning on June 6, American ambassador Robert Thorn (G. Peck) is faced with the news that his wife Katherine (L. Remick) has given birth to a stillborn child. Knowing that Katherine is an extremely sensitive woman, Robert decides to follow the advice of Father Spilett (M. Benson), a priest, who suggests that he adopt a child whose mother died during childbirth that very morning.
Katherine suspects nothing, but a few years later, during the fifth birthday celebration of their son Damien (H. Stephens), it will be shown that he is not an ordinary boy. After noticing a black dog near Damien, his nanny Holly (H. Palance) will suddenly commits suicide in front of all the guests. Robert will not pay too much attention to the tragic event, until an extremely worried father Brennan (P. Troughton) enters his office. Claiming that he and Katherine are in mortal danger, the priest tries to persuade Robert to devote himself to prayer immediately.
Robert will be further upset when photographer Jennings (D. Warner) shows him photos taken on David’s birthday. In addition to the rope-like shadow wrapped around the late nanny Holly’s neck, they also clearly see a spear-like shadow pointed at Father Brennan. At the same time, Katherine also begins to notice Damien’s unusual behavior, especially after his new tutor, Miss Baylock (B. Whitelaw), arrives at their house.
Poltergeist (1982)
A quiet American family lives in a pleasant suburb. But one day strange things start happening. Things seem to move on their own, and the youngest child, Carrol Anne, hears voices from the TV on a channel that has no programming. That evening, the place is also affected by a storm in which Robbi is almost eaten by a tree in front of the house, and Carol Anne is pulled into another dimension through the television. The family seeks help from a parapsychologist, Dr. Lesh, who should help in the search for Carrol Anne.
The Evil Dead (1981)
The plot involves five young people on vacation: Ash (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Barker), their colleagues Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), Scott (Hal Delrich) and Shelly (Sarah York). Unplanned, they stop by an abandoned mountain hut surrounded by an impassable forest. Before settling in for the night, they discover a book similar to the ancient ones, full of obscure hieroglyphs and ghostly illustrations, as well as a dagger made of human bones and an audio recording.
In the video, the professor of archeology describes the content of the Sumerian “Book of the Dead” full of spells with which otherworldly demons came to life and which then haunted the living. It goes on to state that possessed persons can only be stopped by dismembering them completely. When they play the tape later, the recorded translation of the ritual spells terrifies the clairvoyant Shelly and simultaneously unleashes evil from the forest. Evil spirits throw themselves into their work with pleasure
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
A lawyer takes over the case of the murder of a young student on whom a priest performed an exorcism. In a decision it had almost never made before, the Catholic Church officially recognized the demonic possession of Emily Rose, a nineteen-year-old freshman in Minnesota.
The exorcism was performed and recorded, and the footage played a key role in the events that followed. Told in fragmentary images, the story of The Exorcism of Emily Rose follows the trial of a priest accused of negligence that resulted in the death of a young girl believed to be possessed.
The Others (2001)
The island of Jersey, 1945. World War II has ended, but Grace’s (Nicole Kidman) husband has not returned from the battlefield. In a secluded Victorian house, she raises her two children alone, within the terrifying restrictions imposed by strict religious principles.
Her children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), suffer from an unusual and rare disease: they must not be exposed to direct daylight. The family is joined by three new servants, who many years ago worked here for another family, and were surprised to learn that Grace was expecting them. The servants must learn the main rule: the house must always be in semi-darkness. Strange things begin to happen: Anne tells her mother that another boy, Victor, lives in the house.
Grace punishes her, but then she herself begins to be gripped by anxiety and fear. Wanting the advice of the local priest, she sets out for the village, but gets lost in the thick fog on the way. On the verge of madness, she no longer trusts anyone. He clashes with his servants and his children. He has to face a terrible truth.
It (2017)
When children start disappearing from the small town of Derry, Maine, a group of young friends will face their worst fears when they attract the attention of the evil clown Pennywise, whose history of violence and murder goes back a long way.
Sinister (2012)
Ethan Hawke is in the role of Ellison, a writer who specializes in true crime topics. After a top bestseller, he ran out of ideas to inspire him to write, so he started looking for a case that would make him famous again.
So he moves with his family to a small town where a serial killer recently hanged an entire family. Hiding from his wife, Ellison moves his family into the very house where it happened. When moving in, he finds a box full of home movies in the attic, which he decides to investigate in detail…
Stir of Echoes (1999)
Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) is a worker, lives with his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) and son Jake and is dissatisfied with his life. He never longed for fame, but he never thought that he would become such an ordinary man with an average lifestyle.
At a party, Tom asks Maggie’s sister Lisa (Illeana Douglas), who works in parapsychology, to hypnotize him. Although he looks down on Lisa’s occupation, after that hypnosis his life changes irreversibly. He also discovers parapsychological abilities in himself and scenes from the life of the missing girl from the neighborhood begin to appear to him. These visions drive Tom crazier and crazier, and his family life begins to fall apart…
Insidious (2010)
A family tries to prevent evil spirits from possessing their child who fell into a coma after a mysterious event in the attic. But there is a lot behind that endless dream; dealing with the paranormal, and re-encountering the past; which is the key to getting their son back once and for all.
Silent Hill (2006)
Tortured and desperate because of her seven-year-old daughter Sharon’s (J. Ferland) big problem – sleepwalking and nightmares, Rose Da Silva (R. Mitchell) decides to take her to the only place she mentions in her rants, the town of Silent Hill. After a long drive, Rose approaches a small town, but as it is difficult to enter it due to the bad road, and as she noticed a police car blocking her way, she accelerates and enters the town, after which she crashes and falls unconscious.
When he wakes up from his coma, he realizes that Sharon is missing, and that she is alone in this abandoned, ghostly town. Rose goes in search of her, encountering bizarre events that slowly reveal to her the terrible truth of Silent Hill.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
A young married couple Rosemary (M. Farrow) and Guy (J. Cassavetes) move into a building with a bad reputation. Their neighbors are a friendly elderly couple – Roman (S. Blackmer) and Minnie (R. Gordon) Castevet, who give Rosemary more attention than she would like. Soon strange things begin to happen – a girl from the building dies in an unexplained way, Rosemary is haunted by terrible nightmares, strange chants are heard behind the neighboring wall, and Guy also becomes different than usual – cold and distant.
When Rosemary becomes pregnant, completely contrary to expectations, she begins to lose weight, is pale and exhausted, and suffers from severe pain. She soon begins to suspect that the tenants of the building have some unknown plan for her unborn child, and she will try to do everything to protect him. But maybe it’s not the child that needs protection.
Hereditary (2018)
After the death of Ellen Graham, her family begins to uncover terrifying secrets about their origins. The more they discover, the more they strive to avoid the sinister fate they have inherited. This horror sensation by director and screenwriter Ari Aster won over critics at the Sundance Film Festival.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
When a young couple moves into a seemingly typical house in the suburbs, they become increasingly disturbed by the presence of ghosts. The ghosts seem to haunt Katie the most, a student who feels that something has been haunting her all her life
Carrie (1976)
Carrie White is a withdrawn and insecure teenager, who lives in an isolated house with her single mother Margaret, a religious fanatic. Because of her reticence, Carrie is a frequent target of teasing by her schoolmates, who make fun of her in the cruelest way.
Even when she comes home, she is not better off – her fanatical mother assures her that all women are sinful, and for the slightest trifle she beats her and locks her in a dark room. After a particularly traumatic episode, Carrie discovers a surprising truth about herself – she has telekinetic abilities.
Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
Los Angeles, 1965, a widow and her two daughters accidentally invite evil into their house. When the youngest daughter is possessed by a merciless ghost, this small family will have to face great fears in order to return the ghost to the place it came from.
Truth or Dare (2018)
A group of friends decided to look for a break from the routine of everyday life and school duties during the spring holidays in Mexico. Eager to party on a student budget, a gullible new acquaintance lured them into a situation none of them wanted. The bad decisions they planned to make during those spring holidays for the purpose of having a good time are not even close to what happened to them in the end.
The Ritual (2017)
A group of college friends meet to go hiking together in the Swedish mountains. When they find themselves in a dense forest along the way, someone’s menacing presence will begin to haunt them.
1408 (2007)
Writer Mike Enslin’s world collapsed after the death of his beloved daughter, and we meet him as a cynical and arrogant author of successful books in which he demystifies haunted houses and cemeteries. Enslin is a rationalist who does not believe in otherworldly forces, so he accepts a new challenge with great self-confidence – staying in the infamous room 1408 of the New York Dolphin Hotel, where several dozen people have died or committed suicide, and where the hotel management has not accommodated guests for many years.
The hotel manager tries in every way to dissuade Enslin from spending the night in the infamous room, but the writer is relentless, and since the law is on his side, the manager has to give in, extremely reluctantly. Very soon after being placed in the room, Enslin will understand why no one has lasted more than an hour in it, and when his sobriety and rationality in a direct encounter with his own subconscious and paranormal phenomena collapse like a house of cards, he will admit capitulation and try to get out, but there is no exit from that room. Unless his wife, whom he left after the death of their daughter, motivates him with her deep affection to an act that could bring him deliverance.
The Grudge (2004)
Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is an exchange student in Japan who wants to become a nurse. One of the sisters did not show up for work and Karen agrees to replace her. Arriving at the given address, he finds an elderly American woman, a catatonic Emma (Grace Zabriskie), in the house, and the rest of the house looks abandoned and neglected. While tending to an infirm old woman, Karen hears scratching from upstairs and goes to see what it is.
She is greeted by something supernatural, scarier than anything she could have imagined, and a chain of terror is triggered in the house caused by a terrible, long-born evil. More and more people are dying, and Karen is drawn into a circle of terror and discovers the secret of a wicked curse that has settled in the house. Her task is to break the curse before it’s too late.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch play father and son, Tony and Austin, who work as pathologists. The story takes place in the morgue, where they deliver the body of an unknown, beautiful young girl, who inexplicably ended up at the scene of multiple murders. Without any visible clues or evidence that could point to the reason for the death, the father and son resolutely go in search of any evidence.
Mama (2013)
For five long years, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), search for two sisters who got lost in the forest on the day of their mother’s death. But when, by some miracle, the children are found alive in a ruined cabin, the couple wonders if the girls are the only guests they have hosted in their house?
Are the sisters experiencing post-traumatic stress, or are some other inexplicable phenomena occurring? How did the girls survive all those years?
The Prodigy (2019)
In her long-awaited foray into the horror-thriller genre, Taylor Schilling stars as Sara, the mother of a young son, Miles, whose disturbing behavior signals that he may be possessed by an evil, possibly supernatural force.
Fearing for her family’s safety, Sarah must choose between her motherly instinct to love and protect Miles and her desperate need to find out what – or who – is behind his evil behavior. She is forced to look to the past for answers, taking the audience on a wild ride, one where the line between perception and reality becomes terrifyingly blurred.
The Possession (2012)
Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) see no cause for alarm when their youngest daughter Em becomes strangely obsessed with an antique wooden box bought at a yard sale. But as Emma’s behavior grows increasingly strange, the pair discover that the box harbors dark and terrifying secrets, and that the demon that inhabits it is powerful and ready to destroy its human host.
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
he plot focuses on a recently released patient from a mental institution who returns home with her sister, only to face disturbing events between her stepmother and the ghosts haunting their house—all of which are connected to a dark past in the family’s history.
