For a Friday with friends, you need a film that doesn't require perfect silence to work. Something engaging enough that it holds attention even in a room with people in it.
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 dangerous combination of radiation and insecticide causes the unfortunate Scott Carey to shrink, slowly but surely, until he is only a few inches tall. His home becomes a wilderness where he must survive everything from spiders living in the cellar to his beloved cat.
A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.
During an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his television-executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.
In a mid-19th century Essex country house, a young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.
An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.
These films work because they respect their audience. They don't rush to the scare. They build it, layer it, let it sit â and then they deploy it perfectly.
Henry Frankenstein pieces together body parts in the hope of bringing a human-like creature to life. The mad scientist's dreams are shattered by his monstrous creation awakening with rage to a world that hates and fears him.
Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.
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.
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.
Some films don't just tell stories - they change what stories can be. These are the ones that shifted what came after them.
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.