A lot of people will tell you this isn’t a horror movie. Don’t be fooled. Silence Of The Lambs has two of the scariest monsters out there-serial killers Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill (played by the under-appreciated Ted Levine). They lead FBI agent Clarice Starling into a very dark world as she searches for the missing daughter of a U.S. Congresswoman. The last scene, with Clarice being stalked in the basement? It still gives me the shivers.

How to describe this film without giving it away? I won’t even try. What I will say is this film hits all the right buttons. It manages to be scary, smart, political and funny—all at the same time.

Jordan Peele won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Get Out.

He deserved it.

A modern horror classic.

Based on a Stephen King novella, The Mist is often overlooked, but it is one of the best adaptations of his work. The Mist tells the tale of a small New England town plagued by a mysterious fog. It is a mist that doesn’t behave in normal ways. As rumors of secret government experiments begin to circulate, the mist spreads, forcing residents to take refuge in a grocery store. I won’t tell you the rest, but they have good reason to be scared.

And the ending?

Absolutely devastating.

Some of my friends hate this movie. When I ask them why, they say it’s terrible science-fiction. But it’s not science-fiction. It’s horror. Lovecraft in outer space. A rescue crew is summoned to investigate Event Horizon, a spaceship that vanished into a black hole. Seven years later, it reappears orbiting Neptune. The original crew is missing and the ship…well, let’s just say there is something very wrong with the ship. The movie poses an interesting question. How do you escape from a haunted house when there is nowhere else to go?

A pair of paranormal investigators help a young family terrorized by a dark force in their home. Fairly straightforward stuff, but The Conjuring does it really, really well. What makes the story even better is that it is based on a true investigation conducted by Ed and Lorraine Warren.