For a marathon to work, you need a few films that people already love, at least one genuine discovery, and something that sparks a conversation at the end.
Horror works best when it earns the dread before deploying it. The best films in the genre build something you care about, then threaten it.
Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover something far more devastating than imagined in the form of a 50 meter tall monster whom the natives call Gojira. Now the monster begins a rampage that threatens to destroy not only Japan, but the rest of the world as well.
Real zombies arrive and terrorize the crew of a zombie film being shot in an abandoned warehouse, said to be the site of military experiments on humans.
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
Grace is a woman who lives in an old house kept dark because her two children, Anne and Nicholas, have a rare sensitivity to light. When the family begins to suspect the house is haunted, Grace fights to protect her children at any cost in the face of strange events and disturbing visions.
A ragtag group barricade themselves in an old Pennsylvania farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls ravaging the Northeast.
What separates great horror from cheap horror is craft. These films use silence, anticipation, and image with the precision of a surgeon.
Adventurous filmmaker Carl Denham sets out to produce a motion picture unlike anything the world has seen before. Alongside his leading lady Ann Darrow and his first mate Jack Driscoll, they arrive on an island and discover a legendary creature said to be neither beast nor man. Denham captures the monster to be displayed on Broadway as King Kong, the eighth wonder of the world.
Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.
In postwar Japan, Godzilla brings new devastation to an already scorched landscape. With no military intervention or government help in sight, the survivors must join together in the face of despair and fight back against an unrelenting horror.
Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween Night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
Vampire housemates try to cope with the complexities of modern life and show a newly turned hipster some of the perks of being undead.
The films that change cinema are rarely the ones trying to. They're usually just trying to be great - and accidentally redrawing the map.
Great horror stays with you because it was never really about the monster. The films that linger are the ones that used fear to say something true.