The 14 Scary Movies That Bend the Boundaries of Possibility

Money is a parasite. Parasite explores power dynamics between two families, the low-income Kim family, and the wealthy Park family. Through some chicanery, the Kim family finagle their way into taking the jobs of the Park family's previous employees.

Initially, the black comedy offers offbeat one-liners and hilarious plotlines. For example, the daughter of the Kim family, Ki-Jung, steps in to provide art therapy for the bratty Park kid. She plants her underwear in the Park's private taxi, suggesting unprofessional behavior on the driver's behalf. This act lands, Ki-taek, the father, in the driver's position. Yet, the most significant scheme imparted on the Parks by the Kims is the tuberculosis peach. The Kims learn of the housekeeper's allergy to peach fuzz and scatter it around the mansion, prompting her allergic reaction. With a pack of hot sauce and access to the Park's kitchen trashcan, Chung-sook, the Kim family's matriarch, soon throws on an apron.

After each family member acquires a job at the Park House, the Kims conspire to hang out in the estate while the Kims go on vacation. What they discover twists the satirical commentary of class systems and elitism into a tale of revenge. The Academy-Award-winning film erupts into a bloodlust battle between and within class systems, and what's so terrifying about Parasite's discourse is the reality it presents. These struggles between classes do exist, and they aren't ever pretty.

Psycho provides one of the earliest tonal shift examples in horror. Marion Crane steals a lump sum of money from her boss and takes off, headed toward her boyfriend's home. She stops for a night at a motel where she meets the eerie proprietor, Norman Bates.

In one of the most notorious scenes in horror movie history, Norman Bates kills Marion Crane in the shower, repositioning the film's focus. The story moves from the runaway woman to a deep psyche analysis of Mama's boy Norman and his affliction with multiple personalities.

Psycho becomes an exploration of identity, meditating on what it means to stand out from the strict guidelines society sets up for us.

Hereditary approaches horror through one of the most effective tools the genre can utilize: grief.

Charlie and her older brother Peter attend a high school party on the night of their grandmother's funeral. Peter does what most high school boys would and disappears upstairs with his friends and crush, leaving his sister alone near the snacks. She ends up ingesting nut residue, to which she is highly allergic. What transpires after this incident leaves viewers with agape mouths, clammy hands, and stomachs brimming with tension. The horror showcased in Hereditary plunges into possession, yet the deeper truths lie in the heightened family dynamics: possession absent of any supernatural entities. Through the death of the maternal grandma, the viewer learns of her extensive history with a cult revolving around the evil deity, Paimon.

Peter (Alex Wolff) and Annie (Toni Collette) are perfectly cast. The undercurrent of animosity reverberating between these two sticks with you long after your viewing concludes. In fact, most of the scenes throughout Hereditary nuzzle into a permanent nook in your head, occupying your thoughts while you hope to fall asleep.

Martyrs is one of the best movies ever created. This French film opens as a revenge tale centered around two young girls tortured as children. Haunted by individual demons, the girls return to a childhood home where one of them endured physical and psychological torture.

Once the girls arrive at the home, they learn the torture endured didn't end when they escaped. A character known as Mademoiselle introduces herself and subjects them to extreme torture, hoping to draw out a martyr in one of them and unleash the answer to life after death.

You cannot predict what happens in Martyrs at all. The film is pure art, albeit gruesome, ghastly, horrific art. It is a masterclass in filmmaking.

Martyrs strays into territory so many films attempt to achieve but never come close to reaching. We have underlying metaphors of religion, martyrdom, of course, exacting revenge, seeking justice, and so many more I haven't even begun to uncover. This film is about what happens when you have a belief you feel so strongly about you submit to it, despite the death or brutality it evokes.

The final scene is one of the most breathtaking scenes in cinema history. Without spoiling anything, hope is bleak, at best.

In Jordan Peele's directorial horror debut, Get Out, an interracial couple, Rose and Chris, travel upstate to spend the weekend with Rose's parents. Nervous about meeting her parents for the first time, Chris airs his worries, unaware whether Rose mentioned his race. Rose reassures him everything will be okay and her parents are not racist. So, when Chris arrives at the Armitage estate and finds all of the staff is black and acting peculiar, he brushes aside a gnawing gut feeling for his love interest. He carries on, ignoring the microaggressions and racist chatter.

Chris should have listened to his gut.

After a hypnosis session with Rose's mom, Chris falls deep into a chasm within his mind. At this point, he understands the extent of the danger he's in. Later, he wakes up strapped to a chair in a padded room, watching a video describing the Armitage's intentions to transplant Chris' brain into a white man's body, perpetuating modern slavery.

Tarantino's Death Proof opens with a gaggle of girls driving to a neighborhood bar. A stuntman that drives a death-proof car (Stuntman Mike) sits alone at that bar, following the group of women. As they leave for the night, Stuntman Mike stalks and plows into them with his indestructible car, killing all of them on the spot. Thanks to his death-proof (for the driver) car, Stuntman Mike wakes up in a hospital bed, almost every bone broken but alive.

Once recovered, he finds a new girl group to torment, but little does he know they're stuntwomen.

Death Proof showcases a power struggle between men and women and the subversion of the male gaze. The final girls in Death Proof retrieve their power status, refusing to let men treat them as meat.

Audition begins as a lighthearted rom-com. A widowed husband (Aoyama) decides he's ready to dive back into the dating world after seven years, so he creates a fake play and holds auditions to cast the perfect woman for his love interest. The first two-thirds of the film set up a serene love story between a twenty-four-year-old woman (Asami) and a man at least twenty years her senior. But hey, he's finding happiness again; how can we be mad at him?

On the surface, the film proffers everything is grand and dandy, except for one short shot of Asami's bedroom. A large lump in a brown potato sack thrashes in the middle of the room while Asami takes a phone call from the new love of her life, Aoyama.

This particular scene introduces a vague nagging notion that something is awry with Asami, but we need more information to name the idiosyncrasy.

In the film's final act, Audition spirals into a nightmarish hellscape of revenge through such a rare lens explored in the '90s, the female gaze. Reality and fiction blur together for everyone except Asami, who is determined to reclaim feminity apart from the oppressive permission of those responsible for her pain. Men.

Kiri kiri kiri.

Barbarian fooled everyone. The film's marketing depicted two strangers (Keith and Tess) meeting at their double-booked Airbnb, and as trailers should, it left room for our imaginations to draw conclusions. With the given information and our previous knowledge of the genre, we may presume Keith's (Bill Skarsgård) character assumes responsibility for plotting a double booking to kill victims or perpetuate some kind of evil. It doesn't help that Skarsgård also played Pennywise in the IT films.

The film's first twenty minutes lean into the idea that we can't trust anyone except ourselves, no matter how charming they are.

Not a single theory predicted the plot of Barbarian.

We enter the basement trope: Tess finds herself in a foreign basement where a secret entrance reveals a torture chamber straight out of Be My Cat. A bloody handprint decorates the wall, a dilapidated bed sits in the middle of the room, and a camcorder rests on a tripod. Longing for some help, Tess reverts to Keith.

He brushes off Tess's concerns, asserting subconscious male dominance over her, and to prove his masculinity, he disappears into the basement. Moments pass without Keith's return, so Tess traipses back to the hidden passageway, searching for Keith.

Barbarian undergoes three harsh tonal shifts, employing adept mood and atmosphere to progress the films underlying delineation of what it means to be a woman and the importance of unlearning harmful family values.

The Farber family travels to their lakehouse for a vacation. Once they arrive, they meet two young men who alter the course of their plans. Funny Games (1997) and the (2007) shot-by-shot remake acknowledges the audience with one of the characters breaking the fourth wall. This gesture serves as an inner reflection, posing the question, why are we tuning into such violence? Especially when violent crime in real life occurs so frequently.

Throughout the film, audience members often ask themselves why they continue to watch the violence on screen. Do we enjoy consuming brutality? The film shows little to no violence on screen, but the realism depicted in Funny Games opposes any grand Hollywood sketch of violence. Funny Games doesn't have to show explicit violence for it to succeed. The lingering dread felt through the subtext reaches the audience with greater effect than the execution of violence ever could.

We are left wondering why we watch this kind of content and what it says about us as viewers. Why aren't we getting up from our couches and trying to halt bloodbaths in our neighborhoods? Funny Games doesn't have the answer, but it certainly poses the question from the beginning.

Malignant is a hoot. The film opens with Madison, a pregnant woman experiencing visions of tragedies perpetrated by a man named Gabriel. Madison has no recollection of her early life but feels somehow, she and Gabriel share a connection.

A love letter to Giallo films and the campy subgenre of horror, Malignant never takes itself too seriously. Gabriel's appearance mocks a brittle-haired detective who favors a budget voice changer— a reference to Ghostface?— that can scale entire buildings without hurting so much as a finger. The film's final act hones in on the meaning of camp, with outlandish explanations and grand gestures that find homes solely in such extravagant, campy material.

Subtextually, Malignant metaphors the possessive hold mental illness thrusts over those dealing with various disorders or conditions. But more so, it suggests imaginary friends are creepy.

If you watched a lot of YouTube in the later 2000s, your inner child will light up during Spree. Joe Keery nails his role as novice YouTuber Kurt Kunkle, an awkward, unfunny teenager who solicits advice from his famous neighbor to grow his following.

Spree blends dark comedic brushstrokes with undertones reflecting our insatiable desire to chase likes, equating our worth to the popularity of our online presence. With social media's everpresent inflation of our spotlight effect, we think if someone is watching us, we better give them something to watch. And if Kurt Kunkle knows one thing about becoming a famous YouTuber, it's that clickbait and pranks captivate audiences.

Spree unpacks our obsession with fetishizing and idolizing celebrities, specifically influencers. The film grossly satirizes the idea that we only matter if we have fans or followers.

Even after death.

Set in the 1990s, Super Dark Times introduces two best friends (Josh and Zach) in love with the same girl and the lengths they will go to to get her. The film opens as a suspenseful thriller. Josh, Zach, and two other friends accidentally kill someone with a katana, but instead of contacting the police, they try their best to cover up the evidence, leaving the past where it belongs. In the rearview mirror.

Josh's guilt riddles him. He shakes in class, drenched in a cold sweat, while Zach disappears into his own, entertaining his time in a way unknown to Josh. Yet Josh believes he is up to something shady.

Super Dark Times unleashes a harsh, harrowing coming-of-age story about overcoming guilt and handling perception. When the boys cross a point of no return, each one of them reacts discretely. We are still determining exactly who will do what, but we know something sinister brews. The film offers a conversation about curiosity, boredom, and loyalty.

With a title like The Vanishing, we know someone will disappear. The question is, how? The protagonist of this film shaves years off his life trying to figure out the answer. The original Dutch film premiered in 1988 and told an account of one couple (Saskia and Rex) who pull over at a gas station to refuel. When Saskia doesn't return to the car, Rex fizzles into a frenzy, hell-bent on finding her.

The Vanishing meditates on the idea of closure—the incessant need to find the motive behind a heinous act. We won't stop until we know the why and the how, no matter what level of danger it places us in or who it subsequently hurts. This innate desire for closure keeps us awake at night, bleeding into our daily life and affecting (and ruining) relationships. Our fixation harms us more than the acceptance of the unknown.

Rex devotes his life to uncovering the truth behind Saskia's disappearance, and in a terrifying final scene, he finally gets his wish. As they say, the only way out is through.

How many times has a horror flick deceived you? The finest horror movies subvert tropes and stereotypes, avoiding familiar territory and establishing new subgenres. Successful horror movies excel when they begin as one genre and spin into disturbing, terrifying stories of the macabre, unleashing the unexpected. These 14 films are my favorite examples of tonal shifts in horror. What are yours?

Dating apps suck. After giving up the ruse of shallow dating apps, Noa finds herself grocery shopping with a handsome man named Steve. The in-person meet-cute turns into a weekend getaway at Steve's house, where Noa learns that his tastes are, well, refined.

Much like Barbarian, Fresh starts as a rom-com. A new couple enjoys one another's company, enjoying the beauty of the honeymoon phase until one finds an irredeemable character trait about the other. Fresh comments on how the male gaze chews up women and treats them as pieces of meat. Especially men of higher status. Ones that believe women owe them their bodies.

Fresh dishes a revitalized take on the dating scene. But, that sentiment, unfortunately, also applies to dating irl. With social media influencing how people portray themselves, we never truly know anything about anyone. We never know what someone is into. Before we satisfy our hunger, we need to know what we're eating.