The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
The 80s and 90s are where a lot of cinema's DNA was written. Films that set the templates still running today.
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.
Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren't prepared for the madness that lurks within.
A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
After going their separate ways, Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and Fred reunite to investigate the ghost of Moonscar the pirate on a haunted bayou island, but it turns out the swashbuckler's spirit isn't the only creepy character on the island. The sleuths also meet up with cat creatures and zombies... and it looks like for the first time in their lives, these ghouls might actually be real.
Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda find a log cabin in the woods with a voice recording from an archeologist who had recorded himself reciting ancient chants from "The Book of the Dead." As they play the recording an evil power is unleashed taking over Linda's body.
A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done.
What separates great horror from cheap horror is craft. These films use silence, anticipation, and image with the precision of a surgeon.
Aspiring Florida defense lawyer Kevin Lomax accepts a job at a New York law firm. With the stakes getting higher every case, Kevin quickly learns that his boss has something far more evil planned.
While working on a thesis about audiovisual violence, film student Ángela finds a snuff video where a girl is tortured until death. Soon she discovers that she was a former student in her university, and that the authors of the video are not very far either.
Count Dracula, a 15th-century prince, is condemned to live off the blood of the living for eternity. Young lawyer Jonathan Harker is sent to Dracula's castle to finalise a land deal, but when the Count sees a photo of Harker's fiancée, Mina, the spitting image of his dead wife, he imprisons him and sets off for London to track her down.
When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.
A year after the murder of her mother, a teenage girl is terrorized by a masked killer who targets her and her friends by using scary movies as part of a deadly game.
The best true story films don't over-dramatise. They trust that the truth is dramatic enough. These do.
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.