15 Best Supernatural Horror Movies Of All Time, Ranked

What exactly is a supernatural horror film? The defining word there, supernatural, refers to things and events beyond our scientific understanding, but that's far broader a definition than it might sound. Vampires and werewolves, zombies and witches, cursed objects and nightmares bleeding into the real world — they're all beyond our grasp and therefore supernatural. Heck, all eight "Leprechaun" movies and all but the first two "Friday the 13th" films fit the bill, too.

Narrowing down the best supernatural horror films becomes a daunting task given that lens, so we're going to drill down a little deeper. For our purposes here, we're going to focus on a more generally accepted view of the supernatural, namely, things that are attributable to an ethereal source and mostly unseen. Think ghosts, demonic entities, vengeful spirits, and the like. Of course, even this slimmer definition leaves the door wide open with literally hundreds of worthy contenders, but we're going to highlight fifteen of the best that the subgenre has to offer.

Now keep reading for a look at the best supernatural horror films.

Father and son coroners is already such a satisfying setup, one worthy of a long running television series, but "The Autopsy of Jane Doe" ups the ante further with the pairing of Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch in the roles. The two find themselves working late at night on a recently delivered corpse, but as their scalpels come out, so do long-buried truths and grim realities. It seems this is no ordinary unidentified body — this was a woman with immense power. And maybe she still is...

Director Andre Ovredal delivers a slick and frequently scary film here that unfolds almost entirely inside the morgue. It's a sterile, streamlined environment, but the film breathes life into it and finds legitimately frightening beats in every corner of the small space — if you won't take my word for it, maybe you'll listen to Stephen King's thoughts on its scares. The woman's secrets speak to pain and suffering, assaults that seem destined to be paid back in full against those who find themselves in her presence. Its ending might not be as strong as everything that comes before, but the slow unspooling of its dark supernatural truths still makes for a highly effective piece of horror.

Religious horror is a subgenre that itself consists of several smaller subgenres. Some are distinguished by the wide variety of the world's religions, but others stand out through how they choose to explore the familiar. While far too many horror movies touch on the Christian faith through narrow stories of possession, 1977's "The Sentinel" takes a more original approach with a protagonist who finds herself sitting atop a gate to hell itself.

Unlike Lucio Fulci's grotesquely gothic masterpiece, "The Beyond," Michael Winner's film finds less nihilism over the gate and more hope. Of course, this being Christian horror, that hope comes with guilt and sacrifice, and that's where the movie's dramatic and thematic weight comes from. It's a fascinating reveal, one that comes after a steadily grotesque and violent slow burn build, and there's power in its emotional weight. A creepy atmosphere, even creepier neighbors, and a truth that threatens the world all stem from that collision between the supernatural and the human.

Hideo Nakata's 1998 original, "Ring," can't be discounted as it still sits as a moody slow burn well worth your time, but Gore Verbinski's 2002 remake, "The Ring," surpasses it in both power and style. Like the original, Verbinski's film finds life and death in the tangible, haunted reminders of our past. An innocuous VHS tape, itself a ghost of yesterday, is home to an ethereal rage that quite literally crawls out of your television to do you harm.

The curiously grim aspect at play here sees only those unable to pull themselves away from the images being targeted. It's simple — don't watch the tape, and you'll be fine, but for some people that's like asking them to stop breathing. Today's equivalent would be trying to pry people off social media or their cell phones, but there's something far more satisfying in seeing the intangible anger of the dead infect us through the clicks, hisses, and whirring of a machine prone to displaying the lies we pass off as entertainment.

Some will think that William Friedkin's highly acclaimed adaptation of William Peter Blatty's bestselling novel deserves a higher spot on this list, but it's worth repeating that all of the film here are fantastic pieces of supernatural horror. "The Exorcist" is the clear inspiration for hundreds of possession films that followed, and while its various beats have grown more familiar and cliched over the years, its execution remains masterful from beginning to end.

It's a tale of good versus evil, innocence versus the monstrous, and ultimately the power of faith over doubt. Two priests descend on the home of a young girl possessed by a malevolent demon, and it's their faith being put to the ultimate test. From Friedkin's visuals and Dick Smith's makeup effects to Jack Nitzsche's unforgettable score and Jason Miller's haunted, embattled performance, the film takes hold and encases you its evolving nightmare of devilish intent for the full two hours.

Possession films that approach things from a fresh angle will always beat those that follow the expected path — someone's possessed, bring in a priest, spiritual battle, the end — and Sean Byrne's second feature finds success as one of the former. "The Devil's Candy" sees a family of three move into a new home only to discover two things. A satanic presence hovers in the air like the stench of the dead, and the man who used to live there really, really wants his house back. Oh, and the guy has also fully given himself over to the dark side, too.

Heavy metal music, intense violence, and the brash, caustic artwork of a father dancing on the edge of the devil's pitchfork collide into a family drama that delivers genuine scares. A big reason for its success comes down to Byrne's pairing of supernatural threats with a family we truly come to care about. Ethan Embry, Shiri Appleby, and Kiara Glasco earn a spot in our hearts, and the evil on their doorstep leaves us genuinely fearing for their sanity and lives.

Creepy kid movies really hit their peak in the '70s and '80s, and while we've seen plenty since then, they've really gone downhill in their effectiveness as they too often feel self-aware and played almost for laughs. Richard Donner's 1976 chiller, "The Omen," is played straight and remains a thrilling, frightening look at the devil's intrusion onto the earthly plane. A U.S. diplomat and his wife unknowingly adopt Satan's spawn, and that truth only comes clear as the boy's childhood becomes fraught with death and unexplainable occurrences.

Donner wisely balances the supernatural premise with a classy, A-list cast including Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as the unwitting parents and a haunting score by Jerry Goldsmith. There's something clearly off with the kid, and the arrival of a suspicious nanny and terrifying guard dog dial the threat even higher, but the horror is infused with humanity in the form of Peck's character. He's traumatized by the devilish truth here, but he's hurt even more by the realization that he'll have to do something terrible to stop this evil, something no parent can calmly envision.

Emotional suffering and pain are frequent elements in supernatural horror, particularly ghost stories. Ghost themselves are reminders of the past, and they're often hanging around due to an unresolved sadness or cruelty from when they were still alive. One of the many beautiful things about Joel Anderson's "Lake Mungo" is that its ghost isn't seeking to scare people or find retribution — she ultimately wants only to help her loved ones see her, understand her, and let her go.

Anderson frames his film as a faux documentary of sorts as the drowning death of a teenager leaves her parents and brother in disarray. Unexplained noises and sightings raise questions, and the answers, when they come, are as hauntingly creepy as they are devastatingly bittersweet. Like the best work from Mike Flanagan and James Wan, the film finds its biggest scares in its quieter moments with terrifying images tucked to the side of the frame, waiting for viewers to catch it unprepared. It all makes for a haunting experience with an ending that will also leave you affected by its exploration of grief.

Haunted house movies are a mainstay of supernatural horror, but while most aim to tick off many of the same boxes, Nobuhiko Obayashi's "House" goes rogue in the best and weirdest of ways. Seven friends arrive at a remote house owned by one of their aunt's, but they discover almost immediately that the house has little time for the young and the restless. This is a home built on sadness and loss, but like the house itself, Obayashi is a trickster concealing his dark themes beneath a fountain of folly and wacky antics.

Taken out of context, the film's visuals and death scenes might seem silly and cartoonish as there's definitely a streak of fun, wildly creative sequences complete with unabashedly homemade optical effects. Watched as a whole, though, the film reveals an anger built on past pain and lost love that's taken out on younger generations disrespectful to the suffering that endured by those who came before. It's goofy, bright, bloody, and childlike in its surrealistic approach, but it's also an endlessly sad acknowledgment of loss in post-war Japan. So heavy, so light, so undeniably unique.

Ari Aster's "Hereditary" is the kind of feature debut that most filmmakers would kill for as it takes modern sensibilities and styles and blends them beautifully with brutally dark themes and events found more frequently in films from the '70s. Lineage and fate play a role here as a family gathers to mourn the death of their matriarch only to discover the evil coursing through their veins and in the air around them. Events are in motion, and there's no escape.

The film finds life in variety as a gory accident paves the way for messy seance shenanigans, cursed books, and possession. It's that last bit delivers big by never feeling even remotely familiar, and it instead avoids possession tropes by having different reactions — where one possession is sedate, the next is terrifying as it makes a woman hunt her own child with a bloodlust in her eyes. There's a nihilistic inevitability here, one captured with sharp cinematography and oppressive score, leading to an ending that leaves you drained and gobsmacked by evil.

John Carpenter's filmography features a few gems worthy of inclusion on a list of the best supernatural horrors including "Christine," "Prince of Darkness," and "In the Mouth of Madness," but it's "The Fog" that ultimately earns the spot. Ghost stories just hit different when they're being told by an old man with a British accent in front of a campfire. Carpenter unspools a wonderfully eerie tale of death, legend, and justice from beyond the grave, inspired by the films of Val Lewton, and it feels like a wholly satisfying pairing of the old-fashioned and the new.

A small coastal town sees itself visited by ghostly apparitions hellbent on revenge, and Carpenter builds genuinely suspenseful and frightening set pieces out of their slow, fog-shrouded approach. The cast is fully onboard for the scary good times with fun turns by Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lanet Leigh, Adrienne Barbeau, and Hal Holbrook, and the director's own score finds just the right beat for the horrors. It's a simple tale, something that works in its favor as we're able to just sit back and enjoy the spook show.

Like "Lake Mungo" above, Koji Shiraishi's "Noroi: The Curse" frames its supernatural horrors in the form of a faux documentary, but that's where the similarities end. Where the former is a slow burn built on ghostly images and grief, this Japanese gem doles out all manner of horrifying teases that ultimately coalesce into an increasingly mad descent into hell. The documentary we're watching was made by a filmmaker who subsequently disappeared, and we're about to see why.

Strange deaths, only some of which were accidental, leads a documentarian to discover even stranger things including a girl with psychic abilities, the sound of phantom baby cries, an ancient demon, stolen fetuses, possession, and more. It's an evolving tale, and while there's various supernatural terrors throughout, it's the knowledge that our guide is destined to disappear that hangs over the watch — it's the horror of knowing what our protagonist doesn't, and by the time his wife is done immolating herself we're left traumatized by what our eyes have been made to witness. These are visuals that will stick with you.

Ed and Lorraine Warren may have been a couple of hucksters making quick money off people's desperate need to believe, but there's no denying the terrifyingly good entertainment that filmmaker James Wan has crafted from their lives. 2013's "The Conjuring" kicked things off, and it was soon followed by two direct sequels (soon to be three) and six spinoffs. The quality of the films varies throughout the franchise, but Wan's "The Conjuring 2" remains a high point.

The film sees the Warrens head to England to see if a family's claims of possession merit any truth, and there are plenty of scares sharing the screen with moments of genuine warmth between characters. We get our first look at the demonic nun, Valek, in this movie, and Wan makes her arrival genuinely terrifying, which in turn makes it understandable why the character landed two spinoffs of her own. Possession, ghostly remnants, demonic presences, and deadly premonitions all come into play here as Wan marries slick filmmaking with old-school scares.

Stephen King is on record as being very unhappy with Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining," but while his complaints are understandable, those of us who didn't write the novel are left with a beautifully crafted haunted house film about one man's alcohol-fueled descent into ghostly madness. Addiction and abuse are kept as underlying themes while the Overlook Hotel's ghostly influence infects a weak man with murderous intentions leaving his family forced into a nightmarish game of hide and seek.

Kubrick's film does a fantastic job capturing how supernatural horrors like ghosts and haunting premonitions can infuse both buildings and characters with added depth and meaning. The hotel's isolation makes it ideal for the slow creep of madness that injects itself into Jack Torrance, and while Jack Nicholson's performance makes him feel slightly off from the very start, his decline is still both evident and frightening. It's a big, artfully done slow burn — think A24's horror best before that was even a thing — and it's one of the greatest horror movies, period.

Haunted house movies can sometimes feel more than a little familiar, but Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist" succeeds by twisting the formula just a bit and dropping a loveable family into its suburban nightmare. The Freelings are a family of five who move into their new home in a new suburb but quickly discover they're sitting atop old sins. Spooky events culminate in their youngest daughter being sucked into a ghostly dimension.

Various elements of this have become iconic from the creepy television set to the terrifying clown to the swimming pool filled with corpses, and the horrors build to include parapsychologists, goopy portals, and optical effects. Through all the scares, Hooper and producer Steven Spielberg keep the family relatable, the spookiness high, and the feeling of fun ever present. This is a ghost story as big summer entertainment, and it leaves you smiling even as you're sinking into your chair with a playful fear.

Our number one pick might surprise some people, both because of the film itself and because it's landing ahead of some mighty big classics, but "The Entity" deserves this spot on our list of the best supernatural horror films. Ignore its "based on a true story" trappings, and instead just settle in for a simple film about a woman being haunted by an unseen spirit. Now replace the word haunted with others like assaulted, brutalized, and terrorized. Lots of ghost movies are creepy — "The Entity" is legitimately terrifying.

Barbara Hershey gives a fully committed performance as the woman targeted by the malicious spirit, and director Sidney Furie captures them with a starkly ferocious energy. No one believes her, of course, but the attacks continue even after she's moved to an observation room, and even under the lights and scientific scrutiny, it's still scary as hell. It's another slow burn, but themes of victimhood, misogyny, and more are given time to simmer between attacks that grow more frequent and frightening, and it all leads to both a big confrontation and a sad truth.