10 Scary Movies Guaranteed To Keep You Up All Night

Several respondents highlight Event Horizon, which follows a crew sent into space to investigate a ship that disappeared years ago and has recently reappeared without any of its original crew, as a movie that messed them up on first viewing.

I shared it with my 30-year-old tough guy roommate a few years ago, who decided to leave the lights on longer than usual after the movie ended.

The Devil’s Candy is the only movie that’s made me scared to walk home after seeing it in theaters. The film about a family that moves into a home after its original owners die, only to discover that it may be a place that opens residents up to hear the voice of the devil, is horrifying on several levels.

The father of the family that moves into the house listens to the voice and is inspired to create terrifying pieces of artwork. At the same time, a previous resident has been driven to kill children by the voice and eventually targets the daughter of the new residents.

While not exactly a traditional horror movie, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia has kept many people awake at night after instilling an inescapable existential dread. The film has two distinct halves that tell related but different stories.

The first centers on a woman’s social and emotional self-destruction on her wedding night. But the second story, about that woman’s sister anxiously fearing another planet colliding with Earth, is where the real horror lies.

The nearby planet is supposed to pass by Earth without incident, but she can’t help but fear that there will be a collision, and Trier places the audience firmly in her point of view.

The classics are classics for a reason. Many horror lovers agree that the original 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre disturbed them when they first saw it and still does today.

It’s about a group of young people who a family of cannibals hunts. One fan of the film says that the grainy look of the film makes it feel all the more real and terrifying.

As the movie that launched a modern horror universe, it’s easy to forget how scary The Conjuring is. But many fans agree that the film is one of the most effective horror movies they’ve seen. It’s about a family who calls in paranormal investigators after moving into a new home where strange and frightening phenomena occur.

One fan says the film includes “the best-executed jump scare I’ve ever had the pleasure/displeasure to see.”

Sinister has kept a good number of people awake at night. The movie centers on a true crime writer and his family who move into a new home where the writer discovers a series of homemade snuff films.

But the films aren’t just disturbing; they also seem to open him and his family up to threats from a mystical, supernatural entity. Sinister is an incredibly effective and upsetting movie that some fright fans say they couldn’t finish because “something about it felt really creepy in a not-fun way.”

Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, many horror fans are still shaken by The Exorcist. The movie about a young girl possessed by a demon and the priest who must exorcize the demon has firmly withstood the test of time and still deeply scares viewers today.

But an even greater testament to its power to frighten is one fan who first saw the movie decades ago and still has nightmares about it.

Many horror fans agree that Ju-On: The Grudge is one of the most effectively terrifying movies ever made that will keep you from feeling safe in your own home.

The movie follows a young social worker who takes a job caring for a sick woman but soon discovers that vengeful spirits curse the woman's home.

The spirits appear from anywhere in the film, leaving some people checking under covers before getting in bed for the rest of their lives.

I don’t think this mockumentary movie about a serial killer who kept tapes of his crimes is particularly effective. But I seem to be in the minority as several horror fans say that the movie shook them to their core and still haunts them. One person says they were so upset by it that they recommended other people not watch it.

The Vanishing is the rare horror movie that’s less about an act of horror than its fallout and how fallout can ensure the horror never ends. The film follows a man who desperately seeks to discover what happened to his girlfriend, who disappeared from a gas station while on a road trip.

But early into the film, the man who kidnapped her reaches out and invites the boyfriend to learn more about what happened to her. What follows is a game of psychological cruelty with a finale that will leave you breathless.

This thread inspired this post.