The scariest horror movies to watch this Halloween

Anyone who has watched Wes Craven’s instalments of the Freddy Kruger mayhem knows why this nightmare lives not only in Elm Street, but in the back of our minds as well. In Craven’s classic slasher film, several teenagers fall prey to Freddy Krueger, a disfigured midnight villain who preys on the teenagers in their dreams – which, in turn, kills them in reality. After investigating, Nancy then begins to suspect that a dark secret kept by her friends and parents may be the key to unravelling the mystery. Can Nancy and her boyfriend Glen solve it all before it’s too late?

This thought-provoking movie encourages viewers to parse out just how it all fits together. This science fiction psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly focuses on a troubled teen, Donnie Darko, played by Jake Gyllenhaal starts hallucinating a horrific bunny rabbit that shares with him the dark forebodings about death and disaster in the future. He returns home the next morning with news that a jet engine has landed in his room. He then embarks on a journey to figure out what’s going on and try to stop the end of the word. This movie elicits some surprising genre thrills and powerful emotions grounded in human relationships.

Director Stanley Kubrick does know how to cripple the senses with effects and imagery in The Shining. The grim hidden meanings in the movie make it more truly horrific than any other scary movie. Aside from horror, it also raises questions about the dangers of alcoholism, isolation and paranoia. Kubrick has managed to weave relationships between men and women, parents and children in its intense horror setting. The film is so skewed in perception that many may find themselves discussing theories about the details and mysteries of the Overlook Hotel.

American diplomat Robert Thorn and his wife Katherine want nothing more than to have children. When Katharine has a stillborn child, Robert is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggests that they take a healthy newborn whose mother has just died in childbirth. After relocating to London, strange events began to occur - and warnings of a priest - leading him to believe that the child he adopted is an evil incarnate.

After being institutionalised in a mental hospital, Su-mi reunites with her beloved sister, Su-yeon, and they return to live at their country home. The girls' father has remarried, and the siblings are immediately resentful of his new wife, Eun-joo. As Su-mi and Su-yeon try to resume their regular lives, strange events plague the house that affects their recovery.

Laurie Strode comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night 40 years ago. Myers manages to escape from his institution when his bus transfer goes horribly wrong. Now, Strode faces a terrifying showdown when the masked killer returns to Haddonfield III, but this time, she’s ready.

The Silence of the Lambs is the stuff that nightmares are made of. Top student at FBI’s training academy Claire Starling is tasked by Jack Crawford to interview Dr Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath. Lecter has been serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and having Starling talking to him may just be the bait to draw him out.

Hell hath no fury like a Malay Mina(h) scorned – and back from the dead. Revenge of the Pontianak reimagines Southeast Asia’s horror icon through a contemporary lens as well as a narrative that provides her side of the story – after all, there are always two sides. The film reveals the origin story of Minah who returns to a small village as a pontianak, seeking vengeance on the man who murdered her years ago. Co-directed with Malaysian actor and director Gavin Yap, this marks Singaporean auteur Glen Goei’s return to the big screen since the release of his 2009 murder mystery The Blue Mansion. Read his guest editor takeover here.

Not a movie per se, but this six-part horror anthology takes you on a hellish ride across six Asian countries. Brave up for the superstitions and myths that haunt this side of the world – think pontianak, and its equivalents like the Javanese wewe gombel and Thai pob. “Many of the stories have been passed down hundreds of years but given an update – so there's something familiar but yet something new in each episode,” shares filmmaker Eric Khoo. Read our full interview with the local auteur here.

An alternative for the faint-hearted, this local horror-comedy flick sees the breakout of a mysterious virus that turns army boys into zombies. Stuck in an isolated army camp with nowhere to run, a lazy reservist soldier is forced to team up with his arch-rival and put all their military training to the test in order to survive, learning what it means to be real soldiers.

Before the clock strikes midnight, grab some popcorn for an army ghost story. This Singaporean-Malaysian horror film shines its torchlight in the dark corners of a remote jungle where a national service training camp is set up. At a minute before midnight, an army recruit is found dead, and a sort of evil is unleashed. Those bedtime ghost stories start to come to life when the gruesome incident reveals a terrifying secret, and the remaining soldiers have no choice but to confront their deepest fears.

Nothing gets the heart racing quite like Asian horror. This classic Thai scare fare – not to be confused with the Japanese remake – ropes you in with plenty of darkroom scenes and strange photographs. It all begins when a newlywed couple does a hit-and-run. They start experiencing horrifying events post-accident when they discover that the girl they run over is haunting them.

The stuff of nightmares – this horror flick unveils a household's very dark past. A family welcomes a new maid to care for the mentally disabled son, but her arrival is ill-timed as it's the seventh month of the year. It's believed that forces of the underworld are capable of unleashing their evil vibes during this period. As the newcomer begins her new job, she starts to find herself haunted by the sinister visions that reveal the fate of the family's previous maid.

The first one out of a horror series that follows real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, this one sees the duo visiting a family living in a farmhouse haunted by a malicious poltergeist. Based on a true story, the scare level here won’t have you clapping when credits roll.

If you want some bad romance, you’re in for a treat. Netflix’s new original reimagines the Daphne du Maurier’s beloved 1938 gothic novel Rebecca as an on-screen psychological thriller that follows a newly married young woman who arrives at her husband's imposing family estate on a windswept English coast. Instead of living her best married life in her swanky new digs, she finds herself battling the shadow of her husband’s first wife (aka Rebecca) whose haunting legacy is kept alive by the sinister housekeeper.

From one nightmare to another, a young refugee couple escapes war-torn South Sudan to start a new life in a small English town only to find another type of chaos – and we don’t mean Brexit. If life couldn’t be any harder, the couple is grieving at the loss of their daughter while struggling to adjust in their new home, discovering an unspeakable evil that lurks beneath the surface. Think of His House as a revitalised version of the haunted house subgenre.

A sequel to The Shining – a screamfest classic – Doctor Sleep takes place 30 years after the sinister events in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. Haunted by the memories of the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance’s hope for a peaceful existence soon shatters when he meets a teen who shares his extrasensory gift to “shine”. Joining forces, they team up to battle a cult that feeds off the shine of innocents to become immortal.