With Annabelle: Creation having hit theatres, the buzz online is about the scariest horror movie ever. Everyone’s got their list of hot favourites for a spooky film festival but here’s a look at Rotten Tomatoes’ ranking of the top 5 horror films of all time.
At the top, this list mainly goes for the older black and white classics without considering recent hair-raising flicks such as The Conjuring, Lights Out or films of the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity kind. But what’s interesting is that the top ranker currently is a 2017-released critical and commercial hit. Take a look:
5. Repulsion (1965)
This Roman Polanski film stars Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser and Yvonne Furneaux.
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian calls it “one of Roman Polanski's most brilliant films: a deeply disturbing, horribly convincing psychological thriller that is also that rarest of things: a scary movie in which a woman is permitted to do the killing.”
Repulsion has a 100% rating on RottenTomatoes.com.
4. Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922)
FW Murnau’s film Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror is considered one of the most influential horror movies of its age.
A Time-Out review by Tom Huddleston says, “Nosferatu remains deeply unsettling: Max Schreck’s contorted performance in the title role, not to mention that hideous, batlike make-up, may be the film’s most iconic image, but the plague-of-rats scene is deeply unnerving too – we can only imagine how it must have seemed to audiences emerging shattered from the Great War.”
Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror has a 97% rating on RottenTomatoes.com.
3. Psycho (1960)
Now widely considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films, Psycho opened to mixed reviews in 1960, until it became a box-office favourite.
In his review of Psycho, renowned critic Roger Ebert comments, “What makes Psycho immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.”
Psycho has 97% rating on RottenTomatoes.com.
2. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has forever been used as an example of German expressionist cinema at its best. This silent horror film’s visual styling has to be seen to be believed. The Guardian describes it as, "arguably the first successful attempt to show the workings of a highly disturbed and fractured mind”. This Robert Wiene masterpiece is considered to be the first film to have introduced the ‘twist ending’ and pretty much lay down the template for today’s noirs and psychological thrillers.
The film draws on the eerie, occult experience of early cinema itself, whose flickering ghostly images – such as Caligari’s cabinet, and all kinds of fashionable table-rapping and fortune-telling – were often to be presented in fairground tents. Caligari is a crazy black mass all on its own, a mute opera of fear.Peter Bradshaw, Film Critic (The Guardian)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has 100% rating on RottenTomatoes.com.
1. Get Out (2017)
Comedian Jordan Peele's race-based horror directorial Get Out blends race-savvy satire with horror to a potent effect. This mainstream Hollywood flick, made in a budget of US$ 4.5 Million earned a smashing US$ 252 Million at the box office. The satirical horror film is considered to be a mash up of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? and The Stepford Wives by many. Peele’s directorial debut throws unexpected boo! moments at you, making you laugh at yourself. But they don’t stop coming and you never learn, even till the very end.
What a watershed feat Peele has pulled off, delivering such a gloriously twisted thriller that simultaneously has so much to say about the state of affairs in post-Obama America. Get Out goes there, so to speak, and though one could argue that it crosses the line, the film’s subversive p.o.v. challenges the place of white privilege from which most pop culture is conceived. By revealing how the ruling majority gives freedoms, but they can also take them away, Peele seizes upon more than just a terrifying horror-movie premise; he exposes a reality in which African-Americans can never breathe easy.Peter Debruge, Film Critic (Variety)
Get Out has 99% rating on RottenTomatoes.com.
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