Want to know the best Horror Movies? How about the worst Horror Movies? Curious about Horror Movies box office grosses or which Horror Movies movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Horror Movies movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information…and a lot more.
This page looks at the Top 100 Horror Movies….statistically speaking. What does that mean? We looked at box office grosses, reviews from critics & audiences and award recognition and put them in our witches cauldron. We mixed all the stats together and came up with our Top 100 Horror Movies. Our top ranked Horror Movie….was a box office hit, was loved by critics and audiences and even managed to win the Best Picture Oscar®. The following table shows all the stats involved that helped us reach our rankings. Obviously they are way more Horror Movies out there. Is your favorite Horror Movie missing?….just commented at the bottom and we will research and see if your suggestion can crack our Top 100 Horror Movies. To see all 600+ Horror Movies we researched…check out this link. UMR Horror Movies
Drivel Part: Years ago we got a request from Steve Lensman to do a Horror Movie UMR page. The last four or five Octobers we have thought we should do that Horror Movie page and every year before we knew it…Halloween would be over! Well today, WoC (Wife of Cogerson) was working on the database and pulling in information on 1000s of movies. When I saw that she was pulling in information on Thrillers….I casually mentioned…..”You should do that with Horror Movies…Steve has been asking for that page for years”. Well….three hours later….WoC had an UMR page with almost 400 Horror movies. So for the first time ever…..UMR has a page that was not completed by Cogerson….nope this baby belongs to WoC. So let me be the first to say it….GREAT JOB WoC!
Horror Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Horror Movies by the stars of the movies
- Sort Horror Movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses based on actual ticket sells (in millions)
- Sort Horror Movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Horror Movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Horror Movie received.
- Sort Horror Movies movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
*** During our update we lost our easy to find search box. Well WoC did some work and found a new way to search through this massive table. In the second row….first column…you will see “Movie (Year)”. You can type in a search word here and it will search the table.
Breakdown by decades:
- 1920s……3 movies
- 1930s……9 movies
- 1940s……3 movies
- 1950s……8 movies
- 1960s……7 movies
- 1970s…..14 movies
- 1980s…..12 movies
- 1990s…..15 movies
- 2000s…..14 movies
- 2010s…..14 movies
I have seen 28 of the movies, high considering I am not a fan of horror movies generally. However, I am a fan of the Universal films of the 1940s and Hitchcock’s Psycho and The Birds.
That should read 1930s Universal films, not 1940s.
Hey Flora…28 is pretty impressive…as I know horror is far down your list of genres to watch. I knew you had seen the Hitch movies….not sure I knew you liked the Universal Movies so much. As always…thanks for the visit, the comment and the tally count.
Hey Flora…understood.
LOVE myself a good Horror movie anytime 😉
So I have seen 85 of the listed films, and although I’m not sure I’d include The Bad Seed or Lambs, I’m not complaining. Sometimes it’s difficult to categorize a movie…is Invasion of the Body Snatchers a sci fi or a horror film? Naming all the favs would take too long, but maybe one or two for each decade?
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is very imressive indeed, The original King Kong stands each repeated viewing, as does Bride of Frankenstein. I am a big fan of the original Cat People (and its sequel, which doesn’t make the cut here), Creature from the Black Lagoon and House of Wax are REALLY worth checking out the 3 D versions of, while Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a great political statement in the disguise of a horror/scifi film. As I admire the work of Ray Harryhausen, I break my own rule and name a fourth fav of the 50’s: The Beast from 20 000 Fathoms scared the beep out of me when I was a child. The Birds, Psycho, Whatever happened to Baby Jane, Rosemary’s Baby and the hauntingly atmospheric The Innocents are more than 2 movies again that I really love from the 60’s. Halloween is a film that was grounbreaking to the genre in the 70’s, while Exorcist was too much for me back then- and I never gave it another try. Poltergeist, Dressed to Kill (yes, I do like Michael Caine) and Freddy’s first Nightmare movie are my highlights of the 80’s. The 90’s belong to Bruce Willis and Anthony Hopkins- don’t know how often I’ve seen The Sixth Sense and Silence of the Lambs. The Others, Conjuring, Don’t Breathe are highlights from 2000 on, with It just too fresh for me to decide weather it will stand the “Test of Time”- only saw it 2 days ago, and the TV movie has always been a favorite- but I did enjoy the remake.
Some movies I’d like the “Stats” for are Them, Tarantula and the other movies produced in the 40’s by Val Lewton (Curse of the Cat People, The Leopard Man, I walked with a Zombie…) as well as the more recent Lights Out.
So, a big Thank You to WoC for this highly appreciated page on one of my favorite genres!
Hey Lupino.
1. 85 puts you second place….only behind Steve’s 89. I was shocked that I reached 80…as I am not a horror fan at all.
2. Good breakdown by decade.
3. I love the ending of Cabinet….one of the best ever. You are not alone in thinking Bride is better than Frankenstein.
4. I was glad King Kong did so well….as that is one of Steve’s all-time favorite movies….and this page was his request.
5. Cat People 2….had a UMR score of 37 ish…so it was closer to 150 than 100.
6. If you type in “Cat” in the second “Movie (year)” at the top of the table….it will pull up all the Cat movies WoC included in the table….it is an extra “Easter Egg” nobody knows exists.
7. Glad to see you liked The Innocents….a great movie!
8. You are a smart man mentioning Dressed to Kill and The Sixth Sense….lol. Right there with you.
9. Nobody in my house wants to see It…..so I guess it will be months before I see it.
10. Some of the movies you want to see stats for are already hidden in the table….see number 6 in this comment.
11. Yes…it is hard to put movies in one genre…..I think almost all the movies listed here could be in two or three different categories….but overall WoC did an excellent job of putting this together.
12. Thanks for sharing your vast knowledge on horror movies…it was a fun comment to read.
Hey Bruce,
thanks for your reply and the tip about the “Easter Egg” 😉
I thought you might take the inclusion of Dressed to Kill and Sixth Sense as “Flattery”, but I really love those movies and would have included them even if I’d known you hated Bruce and Michael 🙂
I’m right there with you on Caligari and Bride of Frankenstein, and I do understand Steve’s love for the original Kong, as it is one of my all time favs, too. To think that this film is almost 90 years old! Wouldn’t have thought you’d agree with me on The Innocents…sad to see the ticket buying audience wasn’t that impressed back in the day.
Thank you, Steve
No thank you WoC…you are AMAZING!
Hey Steve
1. Glad you like your requested page…sorry it took so long to get done. WoC to the rescue…..lol.
2. 89 is shockingly only a little more than me.
3. Movie genres can be difficult to categorize when doing a page like this one.
4. Lambs was listed on all the lists WoC checked out….but I see your point about that movie.
5. That is a lot of horror movies in your collection.
Good feedback
Finally a horror page on the UMR, well done Bruce and WoC.
Some of these are borderline horror and a few don’t even cross the border. Aliens has some scary moments but can it be classified as a bonafide horror movie? A sci-fi thriller definitely. Jaws has or had jump out of your seat moments but so did Jurassic Park and that wasn’t horror either.
I’ve seen 89 of the 100 films listed here, too many favorites to list. Good to see Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho topping the critics chart. And that other psycho Hannibal Lecter topping the UMR chart, movies with psychopaths are a gray area when counting horror movies. Psycho has a frightening atmosphere of dread while The Silence of the Lambs is filmed like a police procedural with two dangerous psycopaths on the loose. Dirty Harry (1971) has a psycho too.
Movies I haven’t seen from the list include – It (2017), Pi (is this horror?), Thirst, Don’t Breathe and The Bad Seed.
Looking at my movie files I have 718 different theatrical movies in the horror genre, only my sci-fi collection surpasses it with 798 movies.
Good stuff. Vote Up!