The best horror movies of the 2000s

Beginning with a slew of teen slashers and PG-13 remakes, through a wave of fast zombies and hard-R splatter, and into the birth of the "elevated horror" trend that would dominate the following decade, the 2000s were an exciting (and tumultuous!) period for scary movies. Much of the horror output from Hollywood studios lacked inspiration during this time, and the dark mood that followed 9/11 and the Abu Ghraib scandal looms over "torture porn" films like Hostel and the Saw franchise. But when you expand the lens to include indie and international filmmakers, the 2000s explode with creativity and energy. (Ironically, it was also a great decade for horror-comedy.) This change was fueled by a handful of factors, all of them related to the increasing importance of the internet in everyday life.

Horror movies went truly global in the aughts, as film festivals and movie blogs made directors like Guillermo del Toro, Park Chan-wook, Edgar Wright, and Takashi Miike internationally famous among film buffs. And even for those filmmakers who didn't become household names, an explosion in specialty DVD labels brought key works from movements like the Korean New Wave, New French Extremity, and J-Horror to global audiences. The influence of blogs was also felt within the American film industry, as all-night movie marathons and secret screenings — many of them held at the original Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas — became launching pads for word-of-mouth hits after those events were written up online.

Whether mainstream audiences and critics were ready for the most innovative horror work of the '00s is another story. But luckily, there's more than one redemption arc in EW's list of the 25 best horror movies of the decade.

<i>Let the Right One In</i> (2008)

This Swedish import swept into American theaters in 2008 like a blast of ice-cold air, stunning critics and audiences alike with its unique, haunting take on vampire myths. The film stars two newcomers, Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson, as Oskar and Eli, two lonely kids living in the same apartment block in a small Swedish city in winter.

Oskar is drawn to Eli, but there's something very strange about her relationship with the older man (Per Rangar) she lives with—a man who, we later discover, goes out at night and drains random victims of blood like deer carcasses. With its frozen setting, enigmatic characters, and haunting tone, Let The Right One In is, at its core, a twisted and terribly sad love story—as all the best vampire movies are.

<i>Trick R' Treat</i> (2007)

Godzilla: King of the Monsters director Michael Dougherty made his feature debut with this anthology film, which initially struggled to find distribution— it went direct to DVD in 2009 — but has since become a seasonal staple.

This collection of grisly horror vignettes all take place on Halloween night in the fictional town of Warren Valley, Ohio, and are all tied together by black comedy and autumnal atmosphere. It also features Anna Paquin as a reluctant party-goer dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, Brian Cox as a stingy neighbor who pays for his lack of holiday cheer with his life, a school bus full of the vengeful ghosts of murdered kids, and a creepy little hellion named Sam.

<i>American Psycho</i> (2000)

Director Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner bring a fresh female sensibility to their adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' controversial bestseller, about a Wall Street investment banker named Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) who moonlights as a deranged serial killer.

Harron and Turner emphasize the comedy of '80s yuppie manners inside Ellis' orgy of bloodlust, highlighting its savage satire of toxic masculinity and consumer excess. Bale's very game performance only adds to the heightened absurdity and comedy of this very dark, violent movie—it's no surprise that Bale-as-Bateman has birthed multiple memes in the 22 years since this movie's release.

<i>Shaun of the Dead</i> (2004)

Game changers like Shaun of the Dead only come around so often. As well as being Edgar Wright's breakout hit, this film also introduced the world (the world that wasn't already watching British TV, anyway) to Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. And they're just the duo that's needed to get us through the zombie apocalypse with good humor and a high BAC.

Shaun is ground zero for the so-called "zom-com" (zombie comedy), and it remains sharper and sillier than its many imitators: An extended opening sequence has the title character going through a day in his life barely noticing the undead chaos that's happening all around him. The comedy is perfectly executed, the gore delivers when it needs to, and most importantly, it's just an extremely entertaining film.

<i>Ginger Snaps</i> (2000)

Ginger Snaps does for the werewolf movie what Let The Right One In did for vampire stories. But, although it was directed by a man (John Fawcett, who went on to work on Orphan Black), this modern monster movie has had a big impact on feminist horror filmmaking.

The story revolves around two goth-y Canadian outcasts, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and her older sister Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), whose relationship is tested when Ginger is attacked by a strange animal and transforms into a sexually aggressive werewolf. Ginger Snaps was ahead of its time in the way it applied classic horror tropes to a story about female sexuality and coming of age, making it a precursor to films like Jennifer's Body and Raw that use similar themes.

<i>Drag Me to Hell</i> (2009)

After an extended period away from horror, Sam Raimi returned to the genre that made him famous with Drag Me To Hell, a pulpy, propulsive rollercoaster ride of a demon possession movie. Alison Lohman stars as Christine, a loan officer at a Southern California bank who evicts the wrong old lady and finds herself cursed as a result.

Like all of Raimi's work, Drag Me to Hell is painted in cartoonish broad strokes as Christine desperately fumbles to find a way to break the curse in three days, before she gets, well, dragged to hell. But for a PG-13 rated horror movie, it's surprisingly intense and freaky as well — also classic Raimi.

<i>Jennifer's Body</i> (2009)

The world wasn't ready for Jennifer's Body when it was first released in 2009, garnering dismissive reviews from critics who didn't seem to get what writer Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama were going for in this claws-out gem of a high school horror movie.

Amanda Seyfried stars as Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, a bookish teenager whose best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) transforms into a bloodthirsty, hyper-sexual succubus after she climbs into a van with some douchebags after a disastrous rock concert. Queer, quippy, and tons of fun, Jennifer's Body captures the feeling of watching a horror movie at a sleepover with your best friends.

<i>Paranormal Activity</i> (2007)

Made on a budget of $15,000, Paranormal Activity is the microbudget haunted house movie that could. A surprise mega-hit that counted Steven Spielberg — who, according to legend, was so scared by the movie he threw away his DVD screener copy — among its biggest backers, the keys to the film's success are twofold.

First is its embrace of the new technologies that were entering American homes in the 2000s, documenting an era where cameras were becoming an increasingly ordinary part of daily life through the medium of found-footage horror. Second is its patience, which leads to some extremely effective scares as producer/writer/director/editor/cinematographer Oren Peli spins the tale of an ordinary suburban couple terrorized by an unseen entity.

<i>The Descent</i> (2005)

Another viscerally scary film that takes viewers on a dark and intense ride, The Descent is a movie that's not recommended for people with a fear of tight spaces. Most of the movie takes place underground, following a group of friends who go spelunking in a cave (supposedly in North Carolina, but actually shot in southern England) inhabited by an unknown… something.

Following his debut Dog Soldiers in 2002, The Descent was an international breakout hit for director Neil Marshall, who would go on to film some of the most epic battle scenes on Game of Thrones. This survival horror/monster movie hybrid is also notable for having a nearly all-female cast, which was a surprising departure when it hit theaters in 2005.

<i>The House of the Devil</i> (2009)

Starring Jocelyn Donoghue as a college student hard up for cash who takes on a suspicious babysitting gig, The House of the Devil is Ti West's masterpiece. This early '80s slasher throwback has the same dynamic sensibilities as a Pixies song, starting off quiet, then getting loud, then going quiet again before exploding in an onslaught of violence that's the stuff of every bible-thumper's worst nightmares.

An early appearance by Greta Gerwig as the doomed best friend and a memorable needle drop from The Fixx in the film's most celebrated scene further ups The House of the Devil's street cred, making this an all-around solid example of the best indie-horror the '00s had to offer.

<i> The Devil's Backbone</i> (2001)

The 2000s produced a pair of instant-classic ghost movies out of Spain: 2007's The Orphanage, from director J.A. Bayona, and 2001's The Devil's Backbone — which is set during the Spanish Civil War, but was made by a Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro. The aughts were also good for del Toro, who broke out into the mainstream with his dark fairytale Pan's Labyrinth later in the decade.

But in terms of sheer terror, this stark, spine-tingling ghost story, about a school for orphaned boys haunted by a melancholy corpse known as "the one who sighs," is the scariest film in del Toro's filmography. The Devil's Backbone is beautiful, horrifying, and deeply sad all at the same time.

<i>The Others</i> (2001)

Nicole Kidman's performance is the draw in the old-fashioned ghost story The Others, the English-language debut of Spanish-Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar.

Kidman stars in this artfully executed haunted house flick as Grace, the agoraphobic mother of two children who suffer from a genetic disorder that makes them extremely sensitive to sunlight. If that makes you think of fragile psyches and shadowy corners full of unseen energies, you'd be correct. Because although words like "restrained" and "mature" can be used to describe The Others, the film also doesn't skimp on tension or scares.

<i>May</i> (2002)

Writer-director Lucky McKee has yet to fully recapture the magic of his debut feature, 2002's May, a character-driven horror movie that captures McKee's warped sense of humor with sympathy and warmth while still delivering the grotesque goods.

Angela Bettis gives one of the best horror performances of the decade as the title character, a deeply lonely veterinary assistant and amateur taxidermist with a lazy eye and no friends who loses her already tenuous grip on reality after experiencing one too many romantic rejections. You'll feel for her and be afraid of her at the same time.

<i>28 Days Later</i> (2002)

Danny Boyle changed the undead game with 28 Days Later, whose red-eyed "rage zombies" popularized the concept of the fast-moving dead—a whole different monster from the shambling slowpokes of the Romero era. Writer Alex Garland would go on to become a celebrated filmmaker in his own right with Ex Machina and Annihilation, and stars Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris — both up-and-comers at the time of filming — rocketed to fame after the film's release.

Shot in very-of-its-time digital DV, 28 Days Later expertly balances intense horror, character-driven drama, and memorable imagery — most famously, a shot of Murphy standing on an abandoned London Bridge covered in trash.

<i>REC</i> (2007)

Found footage horror came back with a vengeance in the '00s. But few films in the subgenre can compete with the original 2007 REC in terms of edge-of-your-seat excitement.

The film also birthed one of the best horror heroines in the genre's history in the form of Angela (Manuela Velasco), a TV reporter on a seemingly ordinary assignment following a group of firefighters on a night call at a Barcelona apartment building. Except there's nothing ordinary about the source of these tenants' distress: The building is under siege by cannibalistic creatures that are part demon, part zombie, and completely freaky-looking, and Angela and her crew are going to have to fight to stay alive.

<i>Noroi: The Curse</i> (2005)

An even finer example of the found-footage subgenre comes from Japan, where director Koji Shiraishi brought some very creepy innovations to the format in 2005 with Noroi: The Curse. The film is framed in the style of a TV documentary special, supposedly left unfinished after its host, paranormal researcher Masafami Kobayashi (Jin Muraki), went missing while investigating the title phenomenon.

Noroi: The Curse builds a complex internal mythology using clips from fake reality TV series and faux newscasts, steadily undermining the viewer's sense of reality by combining sinister figures from Japanese folklore with an overwhelming sense of impending doom.

<i>Pulse</i> (2001)

Pulse (a.k.a Kairo) is the best horror movie ever made about the internet, full stop. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa made a name for himself with a series of horror films in the late '90s and early '00s, all of them with a powerful sensation of cold, dark emptiness at their center. 

Pulse is a ghost story, featuring two interwoven storylines about young Tokyoites who begin to see and hear strange apparitions flitting across their computer screens. It's a slow burn, but there are scenes in Pulse that are scary enough that you might find yourself forgetting to breathe.

<i>A Tale of Two Sisters</i> (2003)

Another ghost story — this one hailing from South Korea — A Tale of Two Sisters combines handsome filmmaking, intensely terrifying paranormal sequences, and psychosexual subtext that gives this twisty film the aura of a fairy tale.

Director Kim Jee-woon uses every trick in the haunted-house book when spinning the tale of two vulnerable sisters, their neglectful father, and their evil stepmother, all of whom are trapped together in a shabby (but beautifully filmed) old country house. As the story unfolds, Kim steadily unravels everything we know about these characters and their relationships, leading to a shocking finale.

<i> Hostel</i> (2005)

Hostel is a movie that practically dares you to like it. Eli Roth's follow-up to his breakthrough feature Cabin Fever (2002) starts off as a satire of some of the ugliest Americans ever to travel abroad, following the exploits of a group of hedonistic frat-boy types partying their way across Europe.

Then something shifts, and the movie unleashes a gauntlet of sadistic violence that's very effective at making the same viewers who found these characters intensely annoying a few scenes ago feel guilty for ever hating them. It's an ugly, cynical, mean-spirited, low-key brilliant movie, and Roth's best effort as a director so far.

<i>Martyrs</i> (2008)

Pascal Laugier's Martyrs is one of the best films to come out of the micro-movement known as the New French Extremity, a sort of European cousin to "torture porn" that produced a series of shockingly violent horror films in France in the mid-2000s.

Laugier's film stands out because it has the thematic heft to back up its mind-bogglingly intense gore, using the story of two traumatized young women who escape from a bourgeois cult obsessed with transcendence through torture — only to be drawn back into its sinister clutches — to make a devastatingly bleak statement on faith.

<i>Inside</i> (2007)

Inside may not be as deep as Martyrs, but it stands out for how relentlessly violent and viscerally upsetting it is — a real feat in the decade that also brought us the Saw series. This particular French horror film, helmed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo,  takes place on Christmas Eve, as a pregnant woman named Sarah (Alysson Paradis) prepares to go to the hospital for an induced labor the following morning.

Then, an unnamed woman, played by an unhinged Béatrice Dalle, shows up on Sarah's doorstep, bearing a pair of very sharp scissors and a disturbing demand: She wants Sarah's baby, and she's willing to perform amateur surgery with no anesthesia to get it.

<i>Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon</i> (2006)

Another ahead-of-its time hidden gem, the 2006 mockumentary horror flick Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon anticipates the meta-slasher movies of the 2010s and '20s with a satirical faux doc following an up-and-coming horror villain named Leslie Vernon as he plans his first big mass murder.

No one's heard of Leslie yet, mind you. But his mentor assures him that he'll be bigger than Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees once his plan comes to fruition. The film pivots from wry mock-doc to straightforward slasher in its second half, but its wit remains sharper than the farm equipment Leslie uses to dispatch his victims.

<i>Slither</i> (2006)

Long before anyone would ever think of putting him in charge of anything, future DCEU head James Gunn rose out of the Troma trenches and into the mainstream with this goofy, gross (in a good way) horror-comedy.

The story harkens back to the alien invasion movies of the 1950s, but with way more one-liners and exploding heads: Michael Rooker stars as a macho everyman in small-town Texas who's possessed by an alien slug creature that crawls into its victims' mouths and transforms them into slimy, malevolent blobs. Wisecrack experts Elizabeth Banks and Nathan Fillion co-star in this wild, goopy, often laugh-out-loud hilarious ride.

<i>Frailty</i> (2002)

The late, great Bill Paxton gives one of the finest performances of his career in Frailty, a psychological thriller starring the actor as a religious fanatic in small-town Texas who recruits his sons for a divinely inspired mission to kill "demons."

Now, whether the family's victims are actually possessed by evil spirits, or if they're innocent bystanders caught up in a deadly delusion, is open to interpretation. And that's a big part of the intrigue Paxton —who also makes his directorial debut here — is building in this hidden gem from 2002, which co-stars Matthew McConaughey and Powers Boothe.

<i>Pontypool</i> (2008)

Not content with one inventive twist, the low-budget Canadian horror thriller Pontypool has two. First, there's the film's claustrophobic setting: The story takes place over one snowy morning in the small Ontario town of Pontypool, where washed-up radio shock jock ​​Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is narrating a zombie apocalypse in real time from his recording booth.

Then there's the way the virus spreads. Rather than your typical bite or scratch, Pontypool's curse spreads through the repetition of certain trigger words, enabling director Bruce McDonald to pull off what sounds like an impossible feat: A dialogue-driven zombie movie.

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