10 Best Wilderness Horror Movies

Far from the campy kills of Wrong Turn, John Boorman's classic 1972 Deliverance is a film so unsparingly realistic and unsettling that it's often not even considered a horror.

Call it what you like (though it's hard to imagine finding at least one sequence anything other than terrifying), this survival film is one of the most upsetting and intense endurance tests in the sub genre’s history. Deliverance remains realistic and horrific decades later in its simple story of four businessman who raft upriver, only to run afoul of monstrous hillbillies and become embroiled in a battle for survival.

Unbearably tense, the film's simple plot benefits from incredible stunt work undertaken by the cast themselves, as well as all-time great chemistry between the stoic Burt Reynolds, the nebbish John Voight, and a career-best Ned Beatty as their traumatized friend. This one, like Walter Hill's later Southern Comfort, is strong stuff that won't sit well with all viewers, but those willing to brave its depths will be rewarded with a sharp and brutal commentary on human nature and the state of civilization.