100 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time

31. Dead Of Night (1945)

An Ealing Studios classic that is a must-watch for Horror aficionados, Dead of Night is an anthology horror replete with creepy ghost stories, some elements of comedy, and a seriously sinister puppet called Hugo.

There are plenty of Horror movies of that era that cinephiles should track down, but Dead of Night is undoubtedly one of the decade’s best, and indeed, one of the finest British Horrors of all time.

[EP]

30. [REC]

Created as Paco Plaza’s take on both the found footage phenomenon as well as the ever popular zombie craze in cinema, [REC] starts as a documentary on the local fire station’s night shift workers, following them in their routine activities as the evening wears on. It’s only when a visit to a woman trapped in an apartment building goes awry that they realise something very wrong is going on with some of the town’s residents: and by then, they’re locked in the building with them.

One of the best shaky-cam efforts since The Blair Witch Project, [REC] plays with the classic formula and comes up with something absolutely terrifying - bringing about an ending that is enough to leave you with nightmares for a good long time. Seriously. Quarantine has nothing on this.

[AM]

29. 28 Days Later

It’s easy to forget how influential 28 Days Later was, and it boiled down to one simple-sounding idea:

“What if the zombies… could run?”

Divisive as hell at the time, the movie knew precisely how to inject just enough of an evolution into the zombie genre, so those of us who’ve tired of endless shuffling hordes had an altogether new phenomenon to dissect.

Danny Boyle’s direction is something else, too. The blistering pace and pure, feral tenacity with which he portrays the zombies themselves, only to occasionally get in tight with a surviving pack of humans, showcasing just how overpowered the average person has become.

As essential to zombie fiction as Day of the Dead or George A. Romero, to this day there are entire theses dedicated to just how seminal this was, and still is.

[ST]