10 Best Scary Movies That Will Stick With You Forever

Infamously one of the most challenging movies of all time to watch, Martyrs is a hard movie to stop thinking about for more than just its brutal violence. The film, which follows a young woman and her friend taking revenge on a family that tortured her as a girl, explores why human beings would enact such horrible violence upon one another.

A film that falls into the “is it a thriller or a horror movie” debate, I Saw the Devil, follows an NIS (South Korea’s equivalent of the CIA) agent who stalks and toys with the serial killer who murdered his wife. We see our hero repeatedly capture, torture, and release the man who killed his wife until a gut-wrenching finale.

Lake Mungo is among my favorite horror movies and one that’s built to stay with you well after it ends. The mockumentary film centers on a family grieving the death of their daughter who drowned.

But as they grieve, they begin to see blurry images of her in their family photos and soon in pictures and film recordings of their home. It’s a movie that sticks with you because its horror is grown out of genuine grief and an unwillingness to let go of the dead.

Personally, I think Eden Lake, which follows a couple attacked by teenagers while on vacation in a small town, is trying a bit too hard. But one fan says, “The ending had me thinking about it for weeks,” and others agree.

It’s undoubtedly a hard-hitting horror movie with brutal violence galore, and there’s no denying that the ending, which I won’t spoil, is shockingly bleak.

Many horror fans say The Ring stuck with them well after watching it. One says the movie was their gateway into loving movies that truly terrified them. It’s about a cursed VHS tape that kills those who watch it.

Another says they took their horror-loving dad to see The Ring when it was released, and his review was wildly positive because it gave him nightmares.

Whether viewers have seen only one or both Terrifier films, they all agree that Art the Clown’s sadistic and creative ways of murdering people, or sometimes (even more disturbingly) not killing them, are hard to get out of your head.

While some of the movies on this list stick with you because they’re unnerving or even emotionally impactful, the Terrifier films stick with you because of indelible gory images.

Some horror fans might not consider We Need to Talk About Kevin a horror movie. But it’s a film that can rock you to your core and stay with you for weeks after watching, so I feel just fine including it.

The movie centers on a woman who lost her husband and daughter at the hands of her son, who also killed several of his classmates, and portrays her in both the lead-up and the aftermath of that horrible event.

After The Ring, The Blair Witch Project receives the most shout-outs as a movie that won’t leave you after it’s over. The found footage film about a trio of film students making a documentary about a historical witch is a significant piece of horror history. Given how many people it still terrorizes to this day, it’s easy to see why.

Without spoiling anything, it’s easy to say that what makes 28 Days Later stick with people is its “humans are the real monsters” plot development late in the film.

That story beat is preceded by introducing audiences to a group of people who have to survive a world overrun by former human beings that have become zombie-like violence machines. 28 Days Later is a great movie from start to finish, but the film’s finale makes it unforgettable.

One horror fan says that David Cronenberg’s Videodrome has stuck with them for life as the first film that introduced them to body horror. But, they say, “It wasn’t even the awesome practical effects that got me but the whole concept behind the movie,” which explores the sometimes blurry line between reality and TV.

This thread inspired this post.