The 20 greatest slasher horror movies of all time

Is that a drill or are you just happy to see me? In The Slumber Party Massacre, a group of high school girls is terrorized by power tool-wielding Russ Thorn, who takes phallic innuendo to a level that would make Norman Bates blush. What began as a parody of the genre from feminist writer Rita Mae Brown was reworked by the studio into a straight slasher. Still, the humor of the film is unmistakable, and the group of girls, led by Michelle Michaels, makes for a fun onscreen hangout, even amid all the drilling and killing. This is also one of the few ’80s slashers to be directed by a woman.

For the love of God, do not mistake this for the 2005 Uwe Boll film; if you see Christian Slater and Stephen Dorff you’ve got the wrong movie. We’re talking instead about the Jack Sholder-directed Alone In The Dark, which features a who’s who of distinguished horror gentlemen in Jack Palance, Martin Landau, and Donald Pleasance. This madcap home invasion film follows a psychiatrist and his family who are terrorized by four escaped mental patients—a crazed military vet, a child molester, a pyromaniac, and a shy serial killer—during a power outage. Alone In The Dark has a lot on its mind, from nuclear protests, the treatment of the mentally ill, and the capacity for violence in the so-called sane, which makes it one of the most thematically competent of the ’80s slashers. Despite the cast, and Pleasance’s then prominence in the Halloween franchise, Alone In The Dark still feels like an under-discussed gem, which has certainly helped keep its third act reveal hush-hush.

She’s a star! Pearl, the prequel to Ti West’s 2022 slasher movie X, is the most recent film to make this list, and it takes the slasher to places we’ve never been before. While it was a struggle deciding which West film to include here, Pearl won out for the sheer audacity of being a 1918 slasher set against the backdrop of World War I and the Spanish Flu, along with the ways the filmmaker trades familiar slasher aesthetics for ones inspired by The Wizard Of Oz (1939) and Hollywood musicals of the ’40s and ’50s. Lead and co-writer Mia Goth delivers a showstopping performance as the titular character, who would do anything to escape the dull duties life has assigned to her and instead become a movie star. She’d even kill for it. A magnetic portrait of a woman cracking under the expectations of womanhood, Goth cements herself as one of modern horror’s most compelling characters, and her nearly five-minute monologue is a sight to behold.

Moving on from World War I, our next entry sees the repercussions of World War II brought to bear in 1980. In Joseph Zito’s The Prowler, a soldier receives a Dear John letter from his girlfriend while overseas. A year later, he returns, dressed in a full combat uniform and finds her with another man on Lovers’ Lane and kills them both. Thirty years after that incident, he returns again to murder college students at their graduation party. What The Prowler lacks in originality of plot, Zito makes up for with his atmospheric, neo-Gothic direction. But the real star of the film is special effects maestro Tom Savini, who’d already carved out a name for himself on Dawn Of The Dead, Friday The 13th, and The Burning. Savini has often cited The Prowler as his best work, a high bar indeed, but a shower scene involving a pitchfork certainly puts this film in the conversation.

Ok, settle down. We all know Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is a masterpiece. So why the hell isn’t it on this list but Richard Franklin’s Psycho II is? Am I glutton for punishment? Do I agree with Quentin Tarantino that the sequel surpasses the original by making us care about Norman Bates? No, but hear me out. Psycho is a proto-slasher, in which two onscreen murders happen. But Psycho II is directly in conversation with slasher films of the ’80s. It uses the expectations of the first film and the reveal that everyone knows at this point, even if they haven’t seen the film, and subverts them by bringing back horror’s most iconic killer as a victim, which Anthony Perkins plays with layered conviction. Plus, the subversion of the final girl with Meg Tilly’s Mary, makes Psycho II one of the first movies to use audiences’ knowledge of formula against them, culminating in an incredible ending, that yes, I’ll say it, tops the original’s.

Sleepaway Camp is campy slasher goodness set at a summer camp. It also has what many have claimed to be one of the greatest horror movie twists of all-time. We won’t spoil it here, and if you’ve made it this long without it being revealed to you, consider yourself lucky and go watch the film right now! Efforts to preserve the reveal make discussing the ending in a contemporary context challenging, but some have found it to be an affirmation while others have found it tasteless. Wherever you land, Sleepaway Camp is impossible to forget, and odd plot contrivances, even odder performances, kids with adult attitudes, adults who definitely shouldn’t be working with kids, a novel use of a curling iron, and a hard to miss fake mustache make it a laugh riot that has become a cult staple for horror movie nights. Plus, there’s a killer end-credits ballad.

In retrospect, selling House Of Wax with “see Paris die,” isn’t such a great look. But when you move past the Paris Hilton of it all—she’s actually tolerable in the film—you arrive at one of the best horror remakes of the early aughts. Director Jaume Collet-Serra brings a thick layer of grime to this wax-coated nightmare, which follows a group of teens, led by Elisha Cuthbert, who are on their way to a football game when they get stranded in a ghost town with a wax museum as its centerpiece. Collet-Serra, who would continue to make his mark on horror with Orphan and The Shallows before moving onto increasingly big-budget action flicks, excels here with elaborate set pieces that add a lot of variety to the grisly stalk-and-slash proceedings. Come for the gore gags and bodies being covered in hot wax, stay for the technical wonder of the finale set in the melting wax museum.

Controversial, boundary-pushing, and downright scuzzy, Bill Lustig’s Maniac presented the seedy side of early ’80s New York City in a way few films did. You’ll feel like you need a tetanus shot and an STD exam just from watching it. Joe Spinell stars as Frank Zito, a psychotic serial killer with real mommy issues who brutally murders women in NYC, scalping them, and attaching those scalps to mannequins he keeps in his dwellings. The gruesome effects mark another career highlight for Tom Savini. As gross as it all is, Maniac takes a further uncomfortable turn when Frank begins stalking a local photographer, who doesn’t know Zito’s identity and engages in a romance with him. Spinell, a fantastic character actor who’d never be mistaken as a romantic lead, brings just the right amount of charm to his character’s sinister nature, making you almost believe there’s hope for him. Unfortunately for Zito, and maybe for the viewer as well, he just can’t leave those damn scalps alone, leading to a nightmarishly memorable recompence.

After a run of amusing and creative though not particularly smart Nightmare On Elm Street sequels, Wes Craven returned to helm Wes Craven’s New Nightmare in the early 1990s. Craven’s first stab (get it?) at the genre self-awareness and meta slasher he would perfect two years later with Scream, New Nightmare posits that the reality we’ve seen in the previous six entries are in fact only movies. But those movies kept an all too real dream entity at bay. But in the aftermath of Freddy’s Dead (1991), and the apparent end of the franchise, this entity is released and takes the form of Freddy Krueger, who is no longer the jokester audiences had become familiar with in the sequels. It’s not Nancy’s dreamscape Freddie seeks to invade this time, but rather Heather Langenkamp’s. Robert Englund, John Saxon, Langenkamp, and Wes Craven all portray fictionalized versions of themselves as “reality” and fiction begin to blur and Langenkamp is forced to embrace the role of Nancy one last time.

There was just something about pranks going awry in ’80s slasher movies. In Mark Rosman’s The House On Sorority Row, a group of sorority sisters decide to take revenge on their house mother, Mrs. Slater, who destroys Vicki’s waterbed after the sorority girl brings her boyfriend back to her room. Instead of just going to Waterbeds And Stuff to get a new one, the girls steal Slater’s cane and force her to retrieve it at gunpoint at the bottom of an empty pool, where Vicki accidentally shoots Slater. Hell of a prank! But the joke’s on them when Slater’s body disappears and the girls start getting picked off one by one. Beyond creating a compelling mystery, The House On Sorority Row stands out for its dreamlike cinematography and the all-time greatest line reading of “How do we know she is alive?”

“Because you were home.” Bryan Bertino’s home invasion slasher is the stuff of nightmares because it feels so very plausible. It’s the kind of movie that reignites the fear of being home alone, of someone standing behind you in the dark, and of peering out the window after midnight. What the film lacks in body count it makes up for in its nerve-wracking experience. A couple, portrayed by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, find their romantic getaway turning into a fight for survival against three masked intruders who have no motive other than to terrorize and commit violence. From the simplicity of the concept to the uncanny ordinariness of the masks to the jarring use of musical cues, The Strangers strips horror down to its most basic elements and reminds us that sometimes the simplest concepts can be the most frightening.

Fine, boo me all you want. Say what you will about Michael Bay Platinum Dunes horror remakes, but Marcus Nispel’s Friday The 13th takes all the best elements of the long-running franchise, puts them in one big pot of boiling Crystal Lake water, and adds plenty of sex, drugs, and blood. Everyone has their favorite elements of the Jason mythos, from Pamela Vorhees’ head, Jason with the sack over his mug, Jason with the hockey mask, and countless kills. But only one film delivers on all of that, and gives us a running, skilled hunter version of Jason, masterfully portrayed by Derek Mears, who gives the iconic killer an “Oh shit!” presence again. While your mileage may vary, the film also has some of the funniest dialogue in the series and characters that actually give you a reason to root for their survival—or their deaths. Plus, that cold open is one for the ages. You’ll never look at a sleeping bag the same way again.

You ready for it? Child’s Play 2 is better than Child’s Play. There, I said it. The band-aid has been ripped off. What the sequel lacks in the novelty of the first film, it makes up for in every other way. The late John Lafia and writer Don Mancini are just having a blast this time around, leaning further into the black humor the franchise would become known for and punching up the absurdity of the premise of a foul-mouthed, 3-foot-tall doll with the soul of a voodoo-adept serial killer. Brad Dourif further refines Chucky’s voice here, and Andy and Kyle’s relationship as foster siblings really sets up the core of the current Chucky TV series and its theme of chosen family. The thing that really puts it ahead of the first film is the incredible third act set piece in the doll production factory. It’s basically a Rube Goldberg machine of peril and a real showcase of puppeteering and practical effects.

Valentine’s Day? In this economy? George Mihalka’s My Bloody Valentine is a working-class slasher that trades horny teenagers for horny coal miners. There’s something compelling about the film’s focus on older characters, making it distinct from most slashers at the time. After a terrible mining accident on Valentine’s Day 20 years ago that drove one miner, Harry Warden, to cannibalism and murder, the town of Valentine Bluffs celebrates the holiday for the first time in two decades. But when heart-shaped boxes start showing up, each containing a human heart, the town is forced to once again reckon with the accident, while a group of miners and their girlfriends party in the abandoned mine, unaware a killer is on the loose. There’s also a sense of history, not only in the mining town’s tragic history but the relationships between the characters, making it feel like we’re in the midst of a long-running drama. The film’s chilly and naturalistic atmosphere and gruesome deaths offer plenty to love.

Say his name five times in the mirror, I dare you. Virginia Madsen’s Helen Lyle takes that dare in an effort to complete her thesis on urban folklore and the legend of the Cabrini Green Candyman. What she unlocks are the hidden sins of Chicago’s history, and when the grisly murders begin, it’s Helen who becomes the suspect. Bernard Rose’s Candyman nearly transcends the trappings of a slasher film, and it certainly doesn’t follow the structure of the subgenre. But its inclusion on this list, and in such a high-spot, is because Candyman speaks directly to our fascination with slasher killers, urban legends, and building mythologies around these masked figures. From the first time he appears on screen, Tony Todd creates an iconic horror character, but what makes the film so endlessly fascinating is that Candyman is the doorway through which Helen emerges as an urban legend of her own, evidence of humanity’s power to create monsters, deserved or not.

On the subject of urban legends, Bob Clark’s other Christmas story is perfect for holiday gatherings. Black Christmas takes the story of “the babysitter and the man upstairs” and refashions it as a yuletide slasher with decidedly progressive feminist leanings. A group of sorority girls, led by Olivia Hussey’s Jess, are about to head home for Christmas break when they start receiving obscene and increasingly violent phone calls. The girls are picked off one by one by an unseen killer with real incel energy. But the misogynistic threat of violence isn’t just coming from outside, unknowable forces. It’s also stemming from Jess’ decision to get an abortion, her boyfriend’s reaction to it, and the police who refuse to take the calls seriously. Black Christmas takes notion that “the call is coming from inside the house” and makes it both a literal and thematic source of horror, resulting a perfectly wrapped gift of a film.

“Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.” By the time Freddy Krueger was introduced to the world in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Wes Craven had already broken new ground in horror twice with The Last House On The Left and The Hills Have Eyes. In 1984, the output of slasher films had slowed, and Craven was beyond the kind of copy-and-paste efforts of many directors at the time. Rather than going down the masked killer mystery route, Craven conjured up a dream demon who was the stuff of psychosexual teenage nightmares, a former predatory school janitor brought back from hell to get revenge on the children of the parents who put him there. By creating a scenario in which changing location provided no protection and pushing the boundaries of practical effects, Craven completed the slasher trinity with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) who gave both Michael and Jason a run for their money (literally), while also giving us arguably the second-most iconic final girl in Nancy Thompson (Heather Lagenkamp), Craven gave the slasher subgenre a four-bladed shot in the arm.

To grandfather’s grave we go. When five friends head out to rural Texas, they learn a hard lesson about trespassing. The Vietnam War subtext is hard to ignore and there’s a real “fuck around and find out” energy to what goes down, separating The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from later slashers where the killers are the invaders. Here, they’re just home when nosy kids come snooping. Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an assault on the senses. The atmosphere is so thick you can almost smell the stink of the Hitchhiker and his headcheese and the horrors of the Sawyer house. And those sounds, from the first-time Leatherface slams the door, to Jim Siedow’s laughter and chewing at the dinner table scene, to the buzz of the chainsaw, become impossible to shake. As a result, TCSM is often remembered for being a gory film, but it’s a largely bloodless affair that attacks the senses in a way that leads you to imagine something worse than what you’re actually seeing onscreen.

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” By 1996, slashers had become pastiche and largely relegated to straight-to-video releases. Everyone knew the motives and the rules, and terms like “final girl” had entered the lexicon of the average horror filmgoer. So once again, it was up to the brilliance of Wes Craven to revive the slasher film for the second time and introduce another gamechanger to the genre. Scream embraces both the audiences’ and characters’ knowledge of horror films, as the killer Ghostface uses the genres standards to both play into and subvert expectations in order to target Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) in a plot born of conversations surrounding the effects of violence on American youth. An incredible opening saw Craven pull a Hitchcock and kill off the film’s biggest star, Drew Barrymore. But the rest of the cast more than made up for her absence, delivering iconic and instantly quotable characters, some of whom we’re lucky enough to see in the franchise to this day. And let’s not forget, Scream wouldn’t be Scream without the incredible talents of Roger Jackson, whose voice made the rare talkative slasher villain both menacing and memorable. The sequels each have their own high points, but this first one is simply lightning in a bottle.

And finally, let’s bring it home with the night he came home. John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s Halloween is slasher perfection. It’s not the first, but it was the one that established the most replicated formula, and ushered in the elements that would become tropes. A man in a mask carrying the psychological flaws of a tragic childhood incident. A virginal young woman who is goodness and innocence manifest while her rule-breaking friends are destined for death. And an ever-rising body count. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is an unlikely survivor, which is what makes her survival so important. Forget about the sequels for a moment, and where the franchise goes, love it or hate it. Halloween is a story about the end of innocence and how that loss affects two people across 15 years. There’s a beauty in Halloween’s simplicity, in everything from Dean Cundey’s cinematography to John Carpenter’s iconic score, but underneath is an exploration of the American boogeyman that forces us to confront the seemingly purposeless evil that brews there. It’s no wonder filmmakers keep returning to the concept, and why every slasher movie to follow in its wake stands in the shape cast by its long shadow.