The Shining
“All work no play made Jack a dull boy,” in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The Shining might not be as shocking as Alien or as tense as The Blair Witch Project, but it is the most haunting tale ever spun by a camera. Standing on its own, The Shining is the only one of the 10 films on this list that is not simply scary while you watch it, but its mastery of the psychological horror will push your mind to the limits as Jack Nicholson descends slowly, vividly, and all too realistically into madness. The Shining will mystify you, horrify you, and finally break you from the second it starts to the moment it ends. But does it ever truly end?

The Silence of the Lambs
The major fear factor in The Silence of the Lambs comes from the riveting, immortal and perfectly terrifying performance of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. However, The Silence of the Lambs stands out among its counterparts on this list as a personal analysis above a horror film. This Academy Award-winning crime horror forces us to face the actual terrors that surround us, the ones we don’t want to accept. The film makes you question your own fears and your ability to face them. It makes you ask if you can you answer the scariest question of all: “Have the lambs stopped screaming, Clarice?”

A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Kruger has been immortalized in horror film history not because of his fantastic portrayals or his terrifying scars, which can seem eerily comical, but rather because he is the perfect killer. As a thought, not a real person, Freddy invades your dreams where you can be slaughtered, maimed, and yes, even killed. The most terrifying thing about A Nightmare on Elm Street is not the pop out scenes, the gore or the frightening dream sequences. It is the fact that you have to go to sleep sooner or later. Pray it’s later.

Saw
Serial killers in films always had some sort of twisted motive or deep driving instinct pushing them to kill. In Saw, however, you find a murderer who treats his killings like games. This twisted portrayal of murder pushed the audience to their viewing limits as Jigsaw forced his victims to maim, hack and push themselves into some of the most disturbing and grisly deaths ever seen on camera. When it’s finally, “Game over,” we realize that the most terrifying part was that we all knew nobody was ever really going to win.

Alien
Science fiction is a genre that acts as an outlet for other genres, but nobody thought that a horror sci-fi film was possible until Ridley Scott gave the world Alien. Alien was not advertised with trailers or clips, but with a single poster with the simple tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” This intrigued audiences enough to go and see the film without spoiling the horrific images they were about to remember forever. The film managed to create an organism that spawned itself through gory chest bursting, disturbing face-hugging and horrifying molting. No matter how manly they thought they were and no matter how little they claimed to be scared, they couldn’t shake the feeling that something was sitting inside of their chest just waiting and waiting and waiting.

Blair Witch Project
Released in 1999, this classic “mockumentary” follows the story of three film students trapped in a maze-like forest with nothing but two video cameras as they are hunted by a terrifying supernatural being. This movie has everything: history, folklore, symbolic elements, the list goes on. If anything, though, I think the best part of this movie is watching the psychological toll taken on the people in the movie, not to mention the ending totally leaves you with goose bumps.

The Ring
This is based on the Japanese creation Ringu, a movie in which a journalist becomes afflicted by a cursed tape and must understand its origins in order to break it. She learns the curse is created by a young girl who is the victim of her own horror story, and she’s waiting for whichever comes to her first: salvation or vengeance. This is one of the best horror movies of the last decade not just because it’s scary, but because the whole plot is complex and substantial, which is find preciously scarce in the horror genre these days. The very best part, though, is that every scene has a bleak, stagnate feeling that is beautiful in a very gloomy and chilling way.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973)
Based on a “true story,” the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is possibly the most notable slasher flick in history. When five people are on an investigative trip, they encounter a violent hitchhiker who turns out to be just a preamble to the nightmare they must endure when they are stranded in a small homestead with a chainsaw-wielding killer known as “Leather Face.” This film is incredible not because it is scary (it’s really not, by today’s standards), but because of the history behind the production—its popularity and controversy set a completely new standard for gory slasher films. Many have tried to imitate, none have really succeeded.

The Grudge
Like The Ring, this is America’s approach on Japan’s original version. The Grudge is about an American nurse who comes upon a house cursed by the spirit of an enraged woman and her son who were murdered. This is one of the scariest movies ever made and the producers did an awesome job at creating the spirit of the murdered woman, with her disturbingly round eyes.

The Exorcist
This 1973 film is the mother of all possession films. When an actress’s 12-year old daughter becomes possessed by the Devil, she consults a God-doubting priest for an exorcism. Not only is this movie possibly the best classic horror, but it’s pretty hard not to appreciate its monumental affect on horror film history.