The films

WATCHcanon

Cannibal Holocaust

Found footage nineteen years before Blair Witch, and six animals actually died to make its point.

WATCHcanon

Christine

Carpenter directing King's killer car in the same year he made almost nothing else work.

WATCHcanon

Cube

Six strangers in a lethal maze of identical rooms, shot on one set for under 400,000 Canadian dollars.

WATCHcanon

Deliverance

Not marketed as horror and the founding text of an entire horror subgenre.

WATCHcanon

Evil Dead II

Half remake, half sequel, and it turns the first film into slapstick without losing the nastiness.

WATCHcanon

Midsommar

Runs the folk horror formula in constant daylight. Everyone is perfectly hospitable throughout.

WATCHcanon

Poltergeist

A suburban family, a television, and a chair-stacking sequence that has never stopped being copied.

WATCHcanon

The Mist

Frank Darabont's third King adaptation, and the ending he changed is one of the cruellest in cinema.

WATCHcanon

The Omen

A film about a man realising his son is not his. Jerry Goldsmith won the Oscar and earned it.

WATCHcanon

The Skin I Live In

Almodóvar's only horror film, and it is a revenge story disguised as a mad-scientist melodrama.

WATCHcanon

They Live

Carpenter's angriest film, disguised as a B-movie, about sunglasses that let you see the ads underneath everything.

WATCHcanon

Wrong Turn

Competent, well shot, and exactly what it says. Stan Winston did the mutants.

WATCHcanon

Annihilation

No villain at all, only a process. The last twenty minutes are the closest film has come to Lovecraft.

WATCHcanon

Battle Royale

A class of Japanese schoolchildren are dropped on an island and made to kill each other. Kinji Fukasaku's last major film.

WATCHcanon

Cloverfield

A monster attacks New York, filmed on a camcorder from street level, and the marketing invented a genre of mystery.

WATCHcanon

Paranormal Activity

15,000 dollars into 193 million, and a decade of imitators nobody asked for.

WATCHcanon

The Fly

Under the effects it is a film about watching someone you love get a terminal illness, and Goldblum plays it that way.

WATCHcanon

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Almost bloodless and completely unbearable. Heat, noise and exhaustion doing all the work.

WATCHcanon

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Craven's best idea: a killer who gets you where you cannot stay awake to avoid him.

WATCHcanon

A Quiet Place

A high-concept gimmick executed with real discipline. The nail on the stair is the whole film.

WATCHcanon

Dracula

Stagey, slow, and it has no score at all. Lugosi's face is the entire reason it survives.

WATCHcanon

Friday the 13th

Copied Halloween without any of the craft, added Savini, and proved the formula worked anyway.

WATCHcanon

Godzilla

A serious film about the atomic bomb with a man in a suit in it, and the American recut removed most of what mattered.

WATCHcanon

Insidious

Wan's best jump scares and the film that built the modern haunting industry. The Further is silly and it works.

WATCHcanon

Sinners

Coogler in 1932 Mississippi with twin Michael B. Jordans and a juke joint. Shot on 65mm and it shows.

WATCHcanon

The Blair Witch Project

Cost about 60,000 dollars, took nearly 250 million, and shows you nothing at any point.

WATCHcanon

The Others

A twist that survives a second viewing, which is rarer than it sounds.

WATCHcanon

28 Days Later

Shot on DV, made them fast, and restarted the whole genre for fifteen years.

WATCHcanon

Eraserhead

Five years of weekend shooting, and it is about being a father and being terrified of it.

WATCHcanon

Frankenstein

Karloff in Jack Pierce's makeup, and the flat head is a copyrighted design rather than anything from the novel.

WATCHcanon

Misery

Kathy Bates won the Academy Award, which is one of two horror performances ever to do it.

WATCHcanon

Rosemary's Baby

A film about a woman whose body and doctor and husband are all making decisions without her.

WATCHcanon

The Cabin in the Woods

A machine for explaining why every other film on this site is shaped the way it is.

WATCHcanon

The Substance

Body horror about how the industry treats women over fifty, with Demi Moore doing the bravest work of her career.

WATCHcanon

Carrie

De Palma's split screens, a bucket of blood, and the last thirty seconds that made an entire genre of ending.

WATCHcanon

The Evil Dead

Prosecuted dozens of times and won more often than it lost. Raimi was 21 and it shows in the best way.