10 Most Entertaining Horror Movies of All Time

Image via Lions Gate Films Published Aug 20, 2026, 4:57 PM EDT Jeremy has more than 2700 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. Sign in to your Collider account Some people don’t find horror movies particularly appealing, let alone fun, since the genre is all about inspiring scares (obviously). And then even if you do like horror movies, you're unlikely to find them all fun anyway, because quite a few don’t go for that sort of thing tonally. Plenty of great ones are intensely feel-bad experiences, and the sorts of films that you might watch once and never again. The ones below, though, can all be considered among the most broadly enjoyable and overall entertaining horror movies ever made. Some of them are a good time because they blend horror with comedy, while others emphasize action and thriller elements alongside the horror, mitigating the intensity of what might otherwise be a good deal scarier. If you like horror even a little bit, you'll probably get something out of these (and shouldn’t find too many of them too intense, either). 10 'Dawn of the Dead' (1978) Image via United Film Distribution Company The original Dawn of the Dead could well be the best zombie movie ever made, though it’s got some competition from a couple of other zombie films George A. Romero was behind. Namely, Night of the Living Dead, which came first and so it scores points for being so influential on the whole sub-genre, and Day of the Dead, which rounded out the loose original “of the Dead” trilogy, and proves nasty and violent in a way that still feels visceral 40+ years on from release. 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, however, is the most purely enjoyable of the three, and also the funniest. Not that it’s a full-on comedy, but it’s got its moments, and it feels the most satirical of the bunch. There’s also an escapist element to the whole premise, since it makes waiting out a zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall look kind of fun at times (until everything inevitably goes to hell, but such is life when you're stuck in this particular sub-genre). 9 'Aliens' (1986) Image via 20th Century Fox There are more profound sci-fi movies out there, sure, but there’s also something to be said for the ones that prioritize thrills and more visceral emotions, like Aliens. If anything, it feels a little unusual to call this one a horror movie, since the horror is downplayed compared to the first movie (released in 1979). You do still get some horror, but it’s there alongside quite a bit by way of action and thrills. You had an alien in Alien, and then you’ve got aliens in Aliens. What more do you need/want? The main characters are better-equipped, and the setting isn't quite as claustrophobic, though there is an obvious added threat because Alien got pluralized and stuff. Anyway, it’s very well-paced and always entertaining, so it’s most worthy of a spot here out of all the movies in the Alien series (even if you wanted to argue the first is still the best overall or objectively). 8 'From Dusk Till Dawn' (1996) Image via Troublemaker Studios From Dusk Till Dawn is a pretty extreme movie, in some ways, though it’s not particularly frightening when it also proves exceptionally willing to not take itself very seriously. It purposefully has a shake-up right around the mid-point that isn't really a twist, since it comes so out of nowhere and basically turns a crime/thriller sort of movie into a particular kind of horror film. If you don’t know what kind of horror movie it turns into, just watch the thing ASAP, since it’s easy to have it spoiled, a bit like how it’s hard to enter into The Sixth Sense or Psycho without knowing the most surprising parts. From Dusk Till Dawn is just a lot of fun, and fun of the somewhat stupid (in a good way) variety, too. 7 'Versus' (2000) Image via Distant Horizon It’d almost be easier to list the genres Versus doesn’t belong to than the ones it does, because it begins feeling like a gangster movie, grows to feel more like a martial arts/samurai one, and then it’s also a horror, action, fantasy, and thriller film at the same time, on top of all that other stuff. It is chaotic, and maybe it’s a bit too much all at once, yet there’s a good deal of excitement that can be felt trying to keep up with it all. It is the Citizen Kane of samurai/yakuza/horror/fantasy/action/thriller movies. People are in a forest, and there’s a portal, and through that portal come all sorts of different monsters/threats. It is high-concept and very silly, while impressively keeping that energy up for two hours. Versus is great, and not enough people really know about it. It is the Citizen Kane of samurai/yakuza/horror/fantasy/action/thriller movies, without a doubt. 6 'American Psycho' (2000) Image via Lions Gate Films The book that American Psycho was based on proves a lot more confronting than the film, but still might technically qualify as a dark comedy in parts… or at least it’s satirical. It’s just incredibly graphic, while the movie is also pretty graphic, but certainly softened up. There’s less detail, and not everything described in the book is visualized on screen (it’s for the best, in all honesty). So, American Psycho (2000) is a little more entertaining in the conventional sense, while the original novel might be more biting and overall effective as a piece of incredibly bleak satire. The movie’s spawned a bunch of memes, and it is hilarious at times, though it never strays away from being a psychological horror movie, meaning it would be inaccurate – despite what the existence of those memes might make you think – to describe it as a pure comedy. 5 'Godzilla Minus One' (2023) If you’ve never seen a Godzilla movie before, for whatever reason, and you're not sure you want to start from the very beginning (1954 was a while ago, sure, though that first movie is pretty great), then Godzilla Minus One might be a good entry point. Not that the Godzilla movies all belong to the same continuity, but Godzilla Minus One does take place further back in time than any other Godzilla movie… not including one part of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, which takes place during World War II, since that movie involves time travel. Godzilla Minus One takes place right after the end of World War II, and the stakes feel especially high because Japan is made even more of an underdog than usual against Godzilla, since the king of the monsters strikes while the country is in the process of recovering after the war. It’s really intense and exciting stuff, being expertly crafted in a way where you don’t necessarily have to be a huge fan of kaiju movies to get a whole lot out of it. 4 'Grindhouse' (2007) Image via Dimension Films There are two movies in one here, because Grindhouse is a double feature. So, it’s a bit over three hours long if you watch it as it was originally released, but both movies have come out on their own in extended versions, so if you want more Planet Terror, you’ve technically got it, and if you want more Death Proof… well, the same goes there. Just make sure you don’t miss the fake trailers, either way, because they were built into Grindhouse but might elude you if you watch the movie separately. “Fake” trailers back in 2007, at least, because a bunch of them were expanded into actual movies: Hobo with a Shotgun, Thanksgiving, and Machete (the last of those got a sequel, too, but it’s better to pretend it doesn’t exist, to be honest). Grindhouse is a pretty great throwback to exploitation movies of old, and itself feels like one of the very best exploitation/grindhouse movies of all time, too. 3 'Evil Dead II' (1987) Image via Rosebud Releasing Corporation The Evil Dead (1981) kicked off a trilogy where every movie was quite different tonally, but still undeniably the work of a single director: Sam Raimi. Technically, it kicked off a series, though nothing directed by anyone else has hit quite the same as any of the Raimi originals. The third film, Army of Darkness, is very broadly entertaining as a comedy, more than a horror movie, so Evil Dead II is going here, because it retains some horror from the original movie. It’s creepy at times, yet very silly at other points, fluctuating between horror and comedy flawlessly throughout. Getting that balance right feels like it should be impossible, but here is Evil Dead II. It exists. It is perhaps the most Evil Dead of the Evil Dead movies, owing to it being right in between the horror-heavy original and the slapstick madness of Army of Darkness. 2 'An American Werewolf in London' (1981) Image via Universal Pictures The movie delivers what the title promises, because this movie is indeed eventually about an American in London who turns into a werewolf. Well, he gets bitten fairly far away from London, and his friend is killed in the same attack, but ends up in a London hospital. Also, his friend sticks around as someone stuck between being alive and dead, haunting him and saying he can’t move on until the whole wolf's bloodline is ended (the same goes for other people killed – but not turned – by a werewolf). An American Werewolf in London does these genuinely interesting things with werewolf movie conventions, plus some other stuff, all the while being surprisingly funny. It works as a comedy about as effectively as it works as a sometimes genuinely creepy horror movie. The balancing act is comparable to that of Evil Dead II, but An American Werewolf in London might well be even funnier with its comedy and more frightening when it comes to its horror. 1 'Jaws' (1975) Image via Universal Pictures Just as An American Werewolf in London probably won’t ever be topped, as far as werewolf movies go, so too is Jaws untouchable when it comes to the topic of shark movies. There have been others released since 1975, and a few have been entertaining, sure, but this is beyond the gold standard. Like, it’s hard to find a sub-genre where there’s such a clear winner (like with gangster movies, for instance, there may be debate over what’s better between the likes of The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Goodfellas). Jaws is the shark movie, though. Steven Spielberg made the definitive dinosaur movie as well, with Jurassic Park, which would be here if it were considered a horror movie. It’s not quite horror-related the same way Jaws is, though, but since it’s tense and scary at times, consider it honorably mentioned just now. Jaws, though. What a movie. Obviously, but still, what a film. Jaws Release Date June 20, 1975 Runtime 124 minutes