100 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time
25. Magic (1978)
Chucky might be the most famous living dead doll in movie history, but he's far from the most fearsome. That title goes to Fats, the ventriloquist's dummy at the heart of Richard Attenborough's painfully overlooked 1978 chiller Magic.
The cast around Anthony Hopkins' lead (he also voices Fats, obviously) is great - particularly Burgess Meredith - and this is very much the tale of a smart, compelling horror idea done well. It's not particularly inventive and it doesn't have a huge number of scares, but it's most profoundly entertaining - and horrifying - in its portrayal of Corky's (Hopkns') breakdown as he loses touch with reality. That's the true horror here.
It also comes with one of those cheap but effective stinger reveals that set up the idea for a sequel that never came. In horror movies, that's far more forgivable.
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24. Suspiria
Dario Argento’s beautiful streak of vivid colour within the horror industry is something to be marvelled at. What would potentially just be a simple B-movie left to fade into obscurity has long since remained relevant and engaging simply for its beautiful technical style, a film as gorgeous to watch as it is to try and unpick its central mystery.
When dancer Suzy transfers to a new school, she soon learns that not all is as it seems, with strange occurrences ramping up into one bizarre revelation. With a jangling score from Goblins and a palette that sets this dreamy scenario alight, Suspiria creates a whole unsettling world of its own - one that slowly but surely unpicks your nerves with each disturbing step Suzy takes.
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23. It (2017)
Who'd have thought that a remake of the cult classic TV mini-series (which wasn't actually all that great on reflection) adaptation of Stephen King's most famous character creation would manage to avoid all of the pitfalls and become one of the best modern horror movies?
Strictly speaking, It shouldn't really have worked at all. It had to compete with Tim Curry's legendary Pennywise, it had to try and adapt VERY weird material and it was beset with production issues early on. Luckily, that all proved to be a perfect storm: Bill Skarsgard avoided direct comparisons with Curry, the film played down the weirdness and went with King's Amblin-like focus on the coming-of-age tale in there and the production issues evaporated.
Thanks to leaning on what made Stranger Things so great and giving Skarsgard licence to really mess with the audience, It works in a way nobody could have predicted, marrying both King's eye for young character dynamics and his compulsion to scare the living daylights out of us.
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