Features and Columns · Lists · Movies

35 Best Haunted House Movies

Haunted house movies make up over half of all horror films, probably, so we decided to rank the 35 best. Here they are!
Best Haunted House Movies
By  · Published on October 31st, 2022

10. Beetlejuice (1988)

Beetlejuice

For adults who love Halloween but don’t like being scared, there aren’t a ton of movie options out there. Most of the not-so-scary seasonal flicks are kid-friendly, which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes you want to feel like a grown-up when you’re watching Halloween movies with the lights on, dammit! That’s where Beetlejuice comes in. Despite somehow garnering a PG rating, the Tim Burton flick about a bio-exorcist hired to haunt the living out of a ghost couple’s home is a delightfully nasty bit of work, full of creative gore and pervy humor. Plus, with his pinstriped suit, grimy face, and unrecognizable voice, Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse is an instantly memorable – and hilariously off-putting – ghoul. Musical, whimsical, gross, and darkly funny, Beetlejuice is among the best of both his and Burton’s careers. (Valerie Ettenhofer)


9. The Conjuring (2013)

The Conjuring

The Conjuring is a horror movie so good we would give it a huge round of applause if the film hadn’t scared us off of clapping for the foreseeable future. The film opens with the Perron family committing a cardinal horror sin: moving their kids into a new house. (Super)naturally, it doesn’t take long for strange happenings to begin. That’s when they consult the real stars of the show: Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). Though experienced demonologists, the Warrens soon realize that whatever has taken ahold of this seemingly normal farmhouse is beyond anything they’ve experienced before. While malevolent energy lurks around every corner, director James Wan pulls off not only a masterful command of tension, but some of the most impressive jump scares the genre has ever seen. We don’t say this lightly, but The Conjuring is scary. Actually scary. Every detail the film gives us pays off and makes The Conjuring as ingenious as it is frightening. (Anna Swanson)


8. The Legend of Hell House (1973)

The Legend Of Hell House

We’re finally at the top ten, so you know what that means: it’s time to sing the praises of “the Mount Everest of haunted houses.” Directed by John Hough and written by the great Richard Matheson, adapting his own novel, The Legend of Hell House begins with a contract: a small fortune in exchange for concrete proof of “survival after death.” And so: a physicist, his wife, a mental medium, and a physical medium lock themselves inside the Belasco House, a den of sin and the site of all manner of deaths, debauchery, insanity, and ghostly shenanigans. There are certain films that I make a point of watching every year during the spooky season. And The Legend of Hell House is one of them. It just doesn’t feel like Halloween until a flaming chandelier tries to end Clive Revill’s petty little life. Colorful, atmospheric, and featuring some truly deranged cinematography from Alan Hume (the same man behind Lifeforce, Return of the Jedi, and Runaway Train), the film also features eerie electronic tunes by Delia Derbyshire. Eroticism, ectoplasm, and a palpable sense of dread (hilariously undercut by one of the most bananas final twists in the horror genre): The Legend of Hell House is not to be ignored! (Meg Shields)


7. The Innocents (1961)

The Innocents

Bly manor is a vast, hollow estate. Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) wanders its halls and rooms in a daze. The moment she takes the job of watching over the two children who reside within, she stumbles through its cavernous embrace, which tightens with every footstep. The Innocents is a spooky flick while you watch it, but its true power only takes hold after you’ve pressed stop. You’ll find yourself years later on a staircase, and the film will rush back into you. Director Jack Clayton captures the shivery, latching quality of the Henry James short story that the film is based on. You never try to shake the movie. If anything, when the film inevitably rises to the forefront of your imagination, you desperately attempt to hold on. The creeps it plants inside you have that Halloween magic, a safe fright that sharpens the senses, preparing you for whatever haunted mansion shenanigans you might find yourself partaking in. (Brad Gullickson)


6. The Haunting (1963)

The Haunting

Robert Wise’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is an unusually smart work of 60s horror. It takes the themes of Jackson’s rather introspective novel and turns them just outward enough to scare audiences, all while maintaining the deep dread and psychological terror of the source material. The film follows a group of would-be paranormal investigators brought together by Dr. John Markaway (Richard Johnson), a researcher who wants to know more about what in the home could have led several past residents to die tragically. Among his recruits are psychic Theodora (Claire Bloom), the house’s heir Luke (Russ Tamblyn), and Nell (Julie Harris), who endured poltergeist activity as a child. The Haunting works well thanks to Wise’s sharp and visually interesting direction but also thanks to its central ghost story, which is told through a rather skeptical lens. It’s an early and excellent example not only of psychological horror and queer horror but also of “ghosts” that may be of our own design. (Valerie Ettenhofer)


5. Lake Mungo (2008)

Lake Mungo

The house is haunted. No, it’s not. It’s a hoax. There’s a restless spirit. Everyone is just seeing what they want to see. It’s grief. It’s a premonition. It’s the inevitable. Defining Lake Mungo as just one thing is impossible. But one clear thing is that when teenager Alice accidentally drowns while swimming, she leaves her family with a lot to reconcile. As secrets come to light, so too do more questions. When Alice’s brother sets up cameras in the house, he begins to suspect that the ghostly images he catches aren’t just glitches or coincidences. But this comes with a grain of salt, and Lake Mungo expertly keeps us unsure about whether we can believe what we’re seeing. As Alice’s brother and parents attempt to deal with their sorrow, each finds different coping methods while searching for the unknown. But if Alice is there, what does she want? What really happened in the months leading up to her death? And what would really be worse, that she can’t move on or that her family can’t? (Anna Swanson)


4. Ghostwatch (1992)

Ghostwatch

As an otherwise straightforward reinterpretation of the Enfield Poltergeist, Ghostwatch is a success. It carefully remixes the core elements of the ripped-from-the-tabloids tale into an effective, if not familiar, ghost story. However, it’s not the narrative that makes this film so captivating – it’s the presentation. Ghostwatch is set up as a live television call-in program hosted by the friendly face of beloved BBC broadcaster Michael Parkinson, where viewers at home could watch paranormal investigators in real time attempting to catch a glimpse of the house’s central malevolent spirit: Pipes. While the “found footage” subgenre ostensibly got its start in the 1970s with Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust, before being given a sharp shot of adrenaline with The MacPherson Tape in 1989, Ghostwatch is arguably when this approach to horror storytelling came into its own. It managed to accomplish exactly what Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds did decades before: cause a panic by making audiences believe everything they were hearing was real. And once the horror story begins to seep off the screen and infect viewers at home, the brilliance of Ghostwatch is illuminated. The film becomes an immersive experience that made the terror feel dangerously real. In fact, viewers were so profoundly terrified that the BBC has never broadcast the film again, a feat few horror movies can say they’ve accomplished. (Jacob Trussell)


3. The Changeling (1980)

The Changeling

John Russell (George C. Scott) is a composer from New York that relocates to Seattle after his wife and daughter die in a terrible accident. He rents a historic mansion that has been vacant for twelve years, and soon after, things start to get very weird. Moody and atmospheric are terms that are often overused when discussing films about old scary houses, but in the case of The Changeling, they couldn’t be more apt. Peter Medak‘s Canadian classic is one of the eeriest and most effective ghost stories ever put to film. If you plan on watching this one at night with the lights off, don’t. And if you live in a giant house alone and a ball mysteriously comes bouncy down the stairs, don’t investigate. Just leave. (Chris Coffel)


2. Poltergeist (1982)

Poltergeist

NIMBYs beware, you’re in for a scare. The skeletons in suburbia’s closet refuse to stay buried in Tobe Hooper’s 1982 film about a family who finds their new home overwhelmed with noisy, perturbed ghosts. Real estate agent Steve Freeling made the terrible decision to shit where he eats by living in a planned community created by his company. Ghosts and dimensional rifts be damned, Stevie: the colonialist call is coming from inside your subdivision! Simultaneously terrifying and one of Hooper’s warmer and most accessible offerings, Poltergeist’s scares thrive on the relatability of the family at its center (parents who smoke pot and stub their toes on their kids’ stray toys? In this Reagan-omy?). Cheesy, spooky, and cozy despite (or because) of all its nightmare clowns, Poltergeist is a must on any self-respecting haunted house list. Come for the gratuitous atmospheric Star Wars merch. Stay for one of the best face-sloughing-off scenes in history. (Meg Shields)


1. House (1977)

House Horror

If you’ve seen Nobuhiko Obayashi‘s 1977 masterpiece, then you know it was really our only choice for the top spot on a list of the best haunted house movies. If you haven’t seen it, well, just know that it came about after Toho Studios asked Obayashi to make a movie “like Jaws,” and now go watch it without reading anything else. It’s as far from straight-up horror as you can get while still being an inarguable nightmare. Seven teens head to an old woman’s house for the summer break, but the house has thoughts of its own on their presence. Magical horrors unfold as heads are lopped, behinds are bitten, and a hangry piano satisfies itself. Obayashi’s use of optical effects and atypical styles results in a film that is utterly strange, endlessly entertaining, and wonderfully weird. It’s horror, it’s comedy, it will leave you both in awe and in stitches, and it features characters named Gorgeous, Kung Fu, Prof, Mac, Melody, Fantasy, and Sweet. For all its silliness, though, the horrors spill out from an emotional place leading to an ending that hits harder than you’re expecting. It’s unlike anything else you’ve seen. (Rob Hunter)


 Another year down, thank you so much for joining us once again on this annual endeavor! Now go back and read more 31 Days of Horror Lists!

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Related Topics:

Rob Hunter has been writing for Film School Rejects since before you were born, which is weird seeing as he's so damn young. He's our Chief Film Critic and Associate Editor and lists 'Broadcast News' as his favorite film of all time. Feel free to say hi if you see him on Twitter @FakeRobHunter.