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.
Go back far enough and you find films that had no idea they'd become classics. The 80s and 90s produced more of them than any other era.
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.
A priest discovers an ancient canister containing a strange liquid in an abandoned church. When a group of graduate students and scientists are tasked with studying it, they unknowingly unleash an evil force waiting to destroy all of humanity.
A Catholic school newcomer falls in with a clique of teen witches who wield their powers against all who dare to cross them -- be they teachers, rivals or meddlesome parents.
A single mom is raped by an invisible force. Her psychiatrist believes the experience stems from childhood trauma, while she knows something supernatural is at play.
When secretive new neighbors move in next door, suburbanite Ray Peterson and his friends let their paranoia get the best of them as they start to suspect the newcomers of evildoings and commence an investigation. But it's hardly how Ray, who much prefers drinking beer, reading his newspaper and watching a ball game on the tube expected to spend his vacation.
A young opera singer is stalked by a deranged fan bent on killing the people associated with her to claim her for himself.
The horror films worth watching are the ones that stay with you not because of the scares but because of what the scares meant. These films mean something.
After being shot in a toy store, a serial killer transfers his soul into a Good Guy doll. A mother then gifts it to her 6-year old son Andy, which unleashes terror upon the city.
Arriving in Chicago, Henry moves in with ex-con acquaintance Otis and starts schooling him in the ways of the serial killer.
Strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.
In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.
A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of human consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from Native American shamans, he explores these altered states of cognizance and finds that memory, time, and reality itself are states of mind.
The films that stay with you aren't always the ones that answer every question. Sometimes it's the ones that leave you with better questions.
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.