An image from Charles Laughton’s 1955 horror film ‘The Night of the Hunter.’
Criterion
Each year, it seems Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the “Best Horror Films of All Time” makes the rounds on internet horror forums, with people either excited or dismayed about the rankings. The source of the latter’s frustration tends to be that newer movies receive way more attention than the classics, which often fall by the wayside (The Thing is ranked #142, for instance, while the seemingly forgotten 2020 film Host is ranked #7). There are so many great horror movies to discover that it’s nearly impossible to look at a list like this and know where to start, which is why I decided to highlight ten of those films, all of which come with my highest recommendation.
Below, you can find ten films that have achieved a score of at least 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. There are, of course, dozens of horror movies that fit this criterion, but these in particular feel lost in the fray of that ever-polarizing list. For each movie, I include a trailer and reasons why its horror continues to endure, sometimes even decades later.
The Most Critically Acclaimed Horror Movies on Rotten Tomatoes
The Wicker Man (1973)
69 reviews — 91% approval rating
A cornerstone of the folk horror subgenre (a section of cinematic history I admittedly didn’t know much about until 2025), The Wicker Man unfolds like a mystery steeped in seasonal and agricultural rites, structured around the journey of a Christian outsider confronting the cyclical, sensual worldview of a pagan culture. The film mirrors religious conversion or pilgrimage stories in reverse: Howie is not the one converting others but is slowly destabilized and lured by the rituals around him. Thus, Robin Hardy’s film becomes unsettling in ways few horror movies achieve. It’s not the violence that confronts us, but the joy we see among the Pagans. The villagers sing, they dance, they make love in broad daylight, all while Sergeant Howie stands to the side, horrified—partly by their boldness or their recklessness, but mostly by their freedom. His faith promises salvation through denial. And he fails to see that denial is already a kind of death.
Frankenstein (1931)
95 reviews — 94% approval rating
Despite Boris Karloff’s legendary performance, when I think about Frankenstein, I think less about the monster and more about the man who made him. Dr. Frankenstein seeks to discover the root of life not out of cruelty, but out of pitiful desperation; a hunger to transcend his own limits, to play God, to escape the banality, the unanswerable questions of humanity. But in his doomed attempt to rise above life and its creation, he forgets to live. Counter this with the creature, whose first steps are beautiful as he reaches for light, for warmth, for connection. He’s innocent—until the world gasps in horror, rejects him, tells him what he truly is. The monster becomes monstrous only because no one will hold him. Thus, the film’s tragedy isn’t that man played God, but that he couldn’t love what he created. It makes you realize that we are all our own experiments, and that the only way to survive what we’ve built, to retain our humanity, is to stop running from the creature and finally take its hand.
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
87 reviews — 93% approval rating
When one thinks of horror movies, one like The Night of the Hunter doesn’t necessarily come to mind. Yet, few films frighten me the way this black-and-white one does. The villain, Harry Powell (played by Robert Mitchum for one of cinema’s greatest performances), is terrifying, but he’s most terrifying because of how much truth hides inside him. His hands, tattooed with LOVE and HATE, tell us everything: the war isn’t out there somewhere, but inside us. The film just gives it a face. His opponent is Rachel Cooper (the unbelievable Lillian Gish), a woman who protects the lost children of this film, who carries faith not as law but as care. Director Charles Laughton takes that idea and terrifyingly sculpts it into a walking fever dream, where every shadow hides both grace and threat for two children on the run from a monster. At all times, innocence and terror coexist in the same frame. It’s that balance, that tension between Powell’s hate and Cooper’s love, that makes the film feel eternal.
Kuroneko (1968)
24 reviews — 96% approval rating
In an unsettling manner that comes to define the aesthetic of Kaneto Shindō, vengeance becomes poetry. In his greatest film, Kuroneko, the “supernatural” is not treated as spectacle but as grief, now given form. The “horror” of the film isn’t a malevolent spirit—it’s the rage of women brutalized by war, who use their ghostly presence to seduce and kill the men responsible. Bound by love to the world that betrayed them, their fury never stops feeling achingly human. Watching this heightened emotion play out in such a serene manner is bewitching: murders unfold like dances, and ghosts glide through moonlight, their pain disguised as elegance. It’s terrifying because it’s tender. Shindō refuses to separate horror from beauty. Every movement feels like an apology for what must be done. These women are monsters because the world left them no other form of existence. Yet in their faces, through Shindō’s vision, we can see something pure: the need to be seen, to be remembered, to be held.
Suspiria (1977)
64 reviews — 94% approval rating
No horror movie—nor any movie, period—has ever captured the haunted-house-brought-to-life, fever-dream-that-refuses-to-end energy of Suspiria. Dario Argento doesn’t care much about story, so he instead focuses on building a world; a cathedral of vibrant color and sound where logic dissolves and only sensation remains. The film’s horror isn’t in what we see, but in what we feel. Beauty itself can devour us. Argento openly chooses to trap us in a universe ruled by aesthetics, where the colors of life and death are indistinguishable. The movie isn’t filled with kills, but compositions. But beneath that spectacle lies something achingly familiar: the fear of surrendering control. Suzy (Jessica Harper) wanders through a world shaped by power she cannot comprehend. To survive, she must stop trying to make sense of everything and simply walk through the terrifying-yet-intoxicating paradox that art and evil often spring from the same source; the only way to understand the nightmare is to immerse herself in it.
House (1977)
42 reviews — 90% approval rating
In one of the most unique experiences in the world of horror, Nobuhiko Ōbayashi—whose style here is best characterized, terrifyingly enough, as “playtime”—turns death into slapstick, horror into collage, memory into a haunted toybox. This sort of absurdity shouldn’t work, but, as many cult fans of I will attest, it does. But the reason for that is far beyond the candy-coated chaos of this film, where flying heads and man-eating pianos abound. The real connection lies in the humanity of House. Ōbayashi made the film after his daughter told him what scared her most, which wasn’t the things we understand on an everyday level, but the unexplainable, the mysteries of life that could never happen but often feel like they might. So despite the anarchy on display stylistically, the real terror of this film is pure, filtered through innocence and sadness refracted until it sparkles.
Diabolique (1955)
88 reviews — 95% approval rating
Admittedly, it took a few viewings for me to warm up to Diabolique, where reason rots in real time. Henri-Georges Clouzot crafts his suspense not from jump scares or violence, but from the slow corrosion of certainty. It’s not the murder that scares us, but what happens when the plan begins to unravel, when logic itself turns against you. Christina and Nicole believe killing Michel will free them, without ever realizing that freedom built on deceit becomes another prison. Clouzot creates a world that frames morality like a precise, beautiful, merciless labyrinth that makes us wonder whether innocence ever existed. Diabolique remains a classic and endures to this day not because of its “twist,” but its empathy for the damned. Christina’s desperate need to believe she’s done the right thing exposes something universal: our craving to control what should be accepted, to orchestrate life so finely that we feel in control of its rules and judgments.
X (2022)
230 reviews — 94% approval rating
Maxine’s struggle to live her life to the fullest plays out so well in this twisted horror arena from one of modern horror’s greatest auteurs, Ti West, who is adept at using the genre’s bloody offerings to give these internal battles color and texture. This slasher isn’t about sex or violence so much as the aching need to be seen, to feel alive inside a body that’s always moving toward decay, all of which becomes unmistakable commentary on the horror genre: the porn crew’s dream of stardom and the elderly couple’s obsession with lost youth mirror each other, each group desperate to outlast time. The story itself is so entertaining, the meta message is so deep and the characters are so interesting that you almost forget that we’re following one woman’s journey to achieve mental stability from the very beginning. But by the end, X sure makes its mark. And in its wake, I’m amazed more movies can’t pull it off.
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
26 reviews — 92% approval rating
The monsters of Johan Borg’s paintings in Hour of the Wolf are not symbols, but confessions, crawling out of his canvases, sitting at his table, whispering his failures back to him—that’s probably the most succinct way to summarize Ingmar Bergman’s entire grim aesthetic. It makes you wonder if Hour of the Wolf—which turns creativity into a haunting, art into an autopsy—is truly Bergman’s “only horror film,” as many claim. This sort of horror lands because it refuses to distinguish genius from sickness. Johan’s visions are grotesque, yet familiar. Are the ghosts real? Or are they simply the cost of needing to make something beautiful? This film is about the moment creation turns cannibalistic: when art stops expressing pain and starts devouring it. This sort of experience challenges you to not run from your fears, but translate them into meaning, to paint your nightmares until they make sense—even if they never do, even if the monsters refuse to leave.
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
61 reviews — 97% approval rating
It’s tempting to treat Eyes Without a Face like a morality play about obsession, but to me it’s more of a meditation on identity and visibility; on how being seen becomes its own form of horror. Through this lens, Georges Franju’s film becomes a premonition of a modern world where faces define existence, where losing one’s face equals erasure. Christiane’s mask isn’t just concealment, it’s commentary; it’s the face society chooses to give her after she no longer fits our standard of beauty. Her tragedy isn’t disfigurement, but invisibility. Dr. Genessier, who disguises social conformity as love, tries to fix what the world says is broken, forcing Christiane into the tyranny of appearances. Thus, every surgery becomes an act of violence against authenticity. For a horror movie, there’s rarely any shrieking, hardly any frenzy—just the slow rhythm of denial as a doctor chooses to embalm life rather than restore it.