The 20 best haunted house movies, ranked

After the massive box office success and critical acclaim of Ring in 1998, there was a flood of new Japanese ghost stories, of which Dark Water is doubtlessly the best. This haunted house apartment horror is initially about a single mother and her young daughter facing such spooky goings-on as hair in the tap water and a reappearing red bag—then things get pants-wettingly terrifying and, finally, utterly heartbreaking. It’s infinitely better than the U.S. remake, too.

Famously, producer Charles Brackett wanted Alfred Hitchcock to direct The Uninvited, but the Master Of Suspense was unavailable. As a result, Lewis Allen helmed this 1944 tale about a brother and sister moving into a mansion in Cornwall, England—and he made a quiet, tense thriller replete with gorgeous shots of the Cornish coast. The movie was a launchpad for young star Gail Russell, who was signposted for celebrity but tragically passed away at the young age of 36.

Proven to be the scariest film of all time by actual scientists, Sinister is about a true crime novelist (Ethan Hawke) moving into the house of a murdered family and finding more horrors than he bargained for. Future Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson crammed these 109 minutes with crap-yourself jump scares, generating a word-of-mouth hype so powerful that the movie made $87 million after a meager $3 million production budget. And it’s still absolutely terrifying a decade on.

Despite being released amid a wave of schlocky haunted house horrors that followed Insidious in the early 2010s, The Conjuring won critical acclaim and box office success by eschewing modern trickery and shooting straight for timelessness. Its practical effects and old-school scares even earned the film comparisons to The Exorcist—the highest of compliments. The franchise spawned by this James Wan movie is now among the most powerful and popular in all of horror.

The Daniel Radcliffe-led blockbuster is the most famous adaptation of The Woman In Black, but it isn’t the best. That honor instead goes to this obscure British TV movie. The story of solicitor Arthur Kidd traveling to a dead client’s house to sort her belongings is slow and uneasy, until it crescendos with one eye-bulging jump scare. It aired on primetime ITV on December 24, 1989, and promptly ruined Christmas for any kid that saw it.

To horror aficionados, William Castle was and remains the god of gimmicks, often screening his movies with some kind of real-life novelty to add to the experience. In the case of 13 Ghosts, in which characters can only see the spirits with special goggles, he introduced “Illusion-O”. Basically, the audience wore 3D glasses where one lens showed the ghosts on-screen and the other didn’t. Today, this movie’s still gloriously goofy even without that in-theater touch.

Paranormal Activity was buoyed by a unique form of guerrilla marketing that asked anyone who watched its trailer to demand to be able to see it in their local cinema. The buzz got the attention of Paramount, and what was in 2007 a low-budget indie picture got a 2009 wide release and made nearly $200 million. The horror landscape was morphed by its ability to make big bucks using little money and a creative found-footage setup.

Released in 1980, The Changeling was too late to capitalize on the freaky child trend epitomized by The Exorcist and The Omen and underperformed at the box office. However, in the decades since, this story of composer John Russell (George C. Scott) being haunted by the ghost of a disabled young boy has rightfully earned cult status. It’s a hauntingly gradual crawl, deftly directed by Peter Medak and with an ever-charismatic star at its center.

Although haunted house movies enjoyed a renaissance around the turn of the millennium, it was mostly through remakes like 1999’s The Haunting and House On Haunted Hill, which crammed themselves with dreadful CGI. Despite being an original story, only The Others evokes the dread of such masterpieces as The Innocents. It also ends with a striking, inspired twist that instantly made this movie worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the classics.

J.A. Bayona may be better known nowadays for directing Jurassic World, but his Spanish-language, Guillermo Del Toro-produced debut, The Orphanage, is still his masterpiece. Dark, depressing and packing some powerhouse twists, this tale of a woman returning to her old orphanage in an attempt to renovate it offers everything you need from a spine-tingling ghost story. It could well be worth prepping something more lighthearted to put on afterwards.

A fiercely effective Australian art piece, Lake Mungo takes place after teenager Alice Palmer drowns while swimming, with her ghost seemingly haunting her family home. To delve into the plot any further is to spoil a movie full of original twists and turns, represented through a mockumentary ostensibly about coming to terms with loss and grief. It also has a jump scare that will destroy you. Just watch it as soon as you can, OK?

Fun fact: Betelgeuse only appears in Beetlejuice for about 17 minutes. However, that doesn’t stop this Tim Burton movie from being a classic. It creatively tells the story of a recently deceased couple trying to scare away the people who’ve moved into the house they’re haunting. Then Michael Keaton steps in as the fast-talking ‘bio-exorcist’ and steals the show. It was a breakthrough for both the actor and the director, who’d tag-team again the following year on Batman.

For fans of such ghostly classics as The Haunting and The Shining—not to mention the glorious, bloody excess of old Hammer Studios fare—Crimson Peak is a must-see. Guillermo Del Toro’s love letter to this subgenre somewhat sinks at the hand of its predictable twists, but what’s much more memorable is the lavish visual style, not to mention show-stealing performances from Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. This is extravagance in the very best sense of the word.

A marriage of haunted house spooks with Steven Spielberg’s sentimentality and big-budget craftsmanship, Poltergeist was a rare bona fide horror blockbuster in its day. Forty years on, it’s persisted thanks to the relatable nuclear family at its heart—not to mention scares suited to each character, and by extension engineered so that at least one of them can freak out any demographic in the audience. As for us, it’s that puppet clown thing that messes us up.

The second appearance on this list by gimmick master William Castle, House On Haunted Hill is seemingly as barebones B-horror as you can get. It stars Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart as a couple who invite guests to a seemingly haunted house, with the promise of $10,000 each once they stay (and survive) the night. However, in theaters, Castle accompanied certain scares by flying a skeleton over the audience. This is still a brilliantly campy time without the added bells and whistles, though.

On the surface, this 2020 British horror is about a South Sudanese couple fleeing to the U.K. and quickly discovering they’re cursed. However, beneath the hood, His House is also a powerful allegory for the trauma of war forcing you to leave your country and relocate to a new, indifferent, sometimes racist culture. First-time director Remi Weekes instantly established himself as one to watch with this debut, as did lead actors Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku.

It’s not uncommon for a horror movie to be likened to a fever dream, but nothing in the genre quite deserves the comparison like House. This 1977 J-horror about a group of girls spending the summer in a Tokyo home is a psychedelic nightmare. Bright colors, manic editing, batshit set pieces, and a disorienting soundtrack by prog-rockers Godiego define this hellish fantasy, which, apparently, is intentionally mental to evoke the way a child would retell a traumatic experience.

A loyal adaptation of the Shirley Jackson ghost story The Haunting Of Hill House, The Haunting is every bit as suspenseful and claustrophobic as its source material. This jewel in the crown of directing king Robert Wise (also responsible for The Andromeda Strain and The Sound Of Music—yes, really) effectively combines scares and an unreliable protagonist to make for a truly compelling chiller. Julie Harris’ lead performance is excellently erratic, as well.

We’re bending the rules here, since The Shining is more a haunted hotel movie than a haunted house movie. However, this Stanley Kubrick masterpiece is so genius that it deserves to be in the upper echelons of basically every movie list ever written. Not only is it genuinely creepy—this tale of the Torrence family spending a winter stuck in a summertime resort is also rich in what-does-it-mean symbolism that’ll keep you guessing long after the credits roll.

The Innocents wasn’t a pioneering haunted house movie, nor is it the most famous. However, director Jack Clayton’s low-budget thriller is perfect. It’s a horrifyingly atmospheric thriller that’s torturous in its quietness, making every twitching curtain and figure walking across the frame a silent terror that will imprint on your retinas. The performances are all believable and fragile, the costumes magnificent and the color contrast striking. To this day, it is one of the most visually flawless (not to mention flat-out terrifying) black-and-white movies you will ever see. Every frame truly is a painting in this master stroke that’s waiting, begging to be recognized.