10 Best Wilderness Horror Movies

You already know who it is...

Come on, could the likes of The Hills Have Eyes or Wolf Creek really have taken the top spot here?

It's tricky territory to navigate (appropriately enough for a list of wilderness horrors), but even though it's deeply predictable there's good reason that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre earns the number one spot. The greatest wilderness horror ever made, Tobe Hooper’s sweaty nightmare earns its position through sheer cinematic power.

Low budget, grimy, filled with technical mistakes and questionable semi-professional acting, this one simply shouldn't work.

But the film's inventive, invasively close up camerawork, its expert use of suspense to hide almost every gory moment, its unrelenting speed and constant noise makes the atmosphere pervasively terrifying, a veritable rollercoaster which triggers bone deep terror in the viewer.

The Texan vistas are appropriately vast and empty, the sunshine is tangibly overheated, and the cast seem genuinely exhausted by their ordeal. Many later wilderness horrors may boast more complex plots, themes, backstories, and monsters, but none have the raw power of this unmissable genre classic.