51 Directors’ Favorite Horror Movies: Bong Joon Ho, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, and More

Alexandre Aja, on “The Shining”

French director Alexandre Aja rose to fame with his 2003 horror movie “High Tension,” which kicked open doors for him in Hollywood that led to the 2006 “Hills Have Eyes Remake,” as well as “Piranha 3D,” “Horns,” and “Crawl.” Speaking to Rotten Tomatoes, Aja picked “The Shining” as one of his favorite movies ever because it was his “first cinematic shock.”

“I accidentally watched ‘The Shining’ at age seven and it was the most traumatic experience and maybe one of the reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing today,” Aja said. “Then, year after year, it’s that movie that I can watch again and again. I’m obsessed with every shot that they cut, every bit of dialogue, every emotion. I think there is a perfection for me in this movie. —ZS

Pedro Almodóvar, on “Rapture”

In naming the 13 Spanish films that inspired him most as a director, Pedro Almodóvar told the British Film Institute that Iván Zulueta’s 1979 horror movie “Rapture” was a no-brainer to include on the list. The movie centers around a horror film director who becomes consumed by directing itself while trying to record his consciousness during drug abuse. “It’s a fantastic tale of self-immolation, of dedication to both heroin and cinema as beginning and end of everything, and to the dark side as the only possibility for self-fulfilment and self-knowledge,” Almodóvar said. “‘Rapture’ is an ‘accursed’ film that nobody saw back then and which is now an absolute modern classic. Its actors would appear in some of my 1980s films.” —ZS

Ana Lily Amirpour, on “Antichrist”

Lars von Trier is known for making some of cinema’s most disturbing films, but with “Antichrist” the provocateur leaned heavily into the stylings of experimental horror. “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour told Criterion that “Antichrist” is one of her top five favorite movies ever made. “When this came out, the hysteria over the clit-scissors scene was all I heard about, and when I watched the film, that was the least shocking thing for me,” Amirpour said. “That scene with the crow in the foxhole and Dafoe beating on it trying to get it to die — that reminded me of an anxiety dream I’ve had, like a déjà vu from my own emotions. It’s comforting when someone else’s darkness mirrors your own. Lars is brave with how intimate he is in his films.” —ZS

Wes Anderson, on “Rosemary’s Baby”

“One movie that I often find myself going back to is ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’” Anderson once told Rotten Tomatoes about Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic, starring Mia Farrow as a woman who psychologically unravels after becoming convinced a cult is planning to steal her unborn child. “This has always been a big influence on me, or a source of ideas; and it’s always been one of my favorites. Mia Farrow gives a great, big performance in it, and I’ve read the script and it’s a terrific script.” —ZS

Ari Aster, on “Kwaidan”

In a list of the writer/director’s five favorite horror movies, penned for the Academy, Ari Aster wrote of 1964’s “Kwaidan”: “There are so many Japanese horror films that I felt compelled to include — from ‘Onibaba’ to ‘Ugetsu’ to ‘The Face of Another to Cure’ — but Kobayashi’s grand anthology might be the most breathtakingly beautiful horror film ever made. Adapted from four of Lafcadio Hearn’s remarkable ghost stories, ‘Kwaidan’ is ethereal and haunting and possessed of a totally devouring commitment to artifice.”

Also appearing on Aster’s list: “Possession,” “The Night of the Hunter,” “Don’t Look Now,” and “Carrie.” 

Anna Biller, on “Peeping Tom”

When Vulture asked “The Love Witch” director Anna Biller to name her favorite horror movie, the filmmaker picked Michael Powell’s 1960 psychological horror “Peeping Tom.” The film stars Carl Boehm as a serial killer who uses a film camera to record his murders. It’s a terrifying film, but what excited me most was how it captures the essence of cinema and reveals how we are all Peeping Toms when we go to see a movie — any movie,” Biller said. “The movie exposes the fetishism of filmmaking, how creepy it is that we pose bodies and wring out raw emotions from people we light and manipulate and record it all to experience later when we are alone, or give to others to watch in the dark.” —ZS

Bong Joon Ho, on “Midsommar”

“Parasite” Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho kicked off 2020 by including “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” writer-director Ari Aster on his list of the 20 directors who will shape the future of cinema. “Midsommar” was named one of Bong’s favorite movies of 2019 in a list filed to IndieWire, and he’d go on to pen an essay about Aster’s masterful grip of the horror genre included in A24’s screenplay book for “Hereditary.”

Bong noted that Aster’s debut “goes beyond the trappings of genre and delivers true, profound horror. A horror that is primal and inescapable. In order to survive this overwhelming horror, we cast a spell on ourselves. We hope that the gruesome moments we witnessed will eventually settle into a ‘neutral view of the accident, like an innocuous tableau made up of adorable miniature figures.” —ZS

Darren Lynn Bousman, on “Last House on the Left”

Darren Lynn Bousman is a household name in horror thanks to his work behind the camera of four “Saw” films: “Saw II,” “Saw III,” “Saw IV,” and “Spiral.” Listing his favorite horror films in a video interview for El Rey Network, the director picked Wes Craven’s 1972 exploitation horror movie “The Last House on the Left” as his favorite of the genre. The movie stars Sandra Peabody as a teenager who gets abducted and tortured by a family of fugitives on her 17th birthday, but the teenagers’ parents fight back against the captors. David A. Hess stars as the sadistic rapist Krug Stillo.

“Wes Craven is an idol and a hero of mine and many. It was one of those films that you just feel wrong watching,” Bousman said. “There’s a singular moment after Krug and his band of misfits get done torturing a girl. They stand up and they have regret on their face. It humanizes these killers. It’s a bold choice and it was the first time I remember as an audience member wanting to look up the director.” —ZS

Patrick Brice, on “Jacob’s Ladder”

Patrick Brice has made a name for himself in the horror world with his fan-favorite found footage movies “Creep” and “Creep 2,” both of which star Mark Duplass. When asked to name his favorite horror movie, Brice told Mental Floss that “Jacob’s Ladder” is “one of the undervalued gems of horror.” The 1990 psychological horror movie from director Adrian Lyne stars Tim Robbins as a Vietnam war veteran haunted by hallucinations. “There are moments in the film that use practical and in-camera effects to pull off scares that are beyond comprehension,” Brice said of the film. “I remember having to rewind certain moments asking myself how Adrian Lyne was able to pull them off, and it’s his only horror movie!” —ZS

Bo Burnham, on “Raw”

French director Julia Ducournau broke out onto the international film scene with her feature directorial debut “Raw,” a horror film about a young vegetarian who becomes flesh-obsessed after trying meat for the first time. “I watched it three times in theaters. I can’t believe that’s a debut,” Burnham told Rotten Tomatoes. “It only feels like seasoned masters are able to really manipulate an audience, beat to beat, to really feel like you are being so perfectly manipulated, and you’re just in the hands of someone who has complete control of you. It’s just unbelievable to have out of the gate.” —ZS

Tim Burton, on “The Wicker Man”

“It’s like a weird musical,” Tim Burton told Rotten Tomatoes about Robin Hardy’s legendary 1973 horror movie “The Wicker Man.” “That is actually one of Christopher Lee’s favorite movies that he did… It was not a very successful movie when it came out but it’s really quite a hypnotic and amazing film I think. It’s like a weird dream. Some of these films I can’t kind of watch over [again], because they play in your mind like a dream. It reminds me of growing up in Burbank. Things are quite normal on the surface but underneath they’re not quite what they seem. I found this film to be such a strange mixture; the elements are very odd.” —ZS

John Carpenter, on “The Exorcist”

John Carpenter’s “Halloween” was a pioneer in the slasher-film subgenre, and when it comes to the horror director’s own favorite scary movies he often singles out William Friedkin’s classic “The Exorcist.” As Carpenter told The Fader, “You know what’s scary about ‘The Exorcist’? Everyone knows what’s scary about that movie. It’s the devil. The first time I saw it, I thought, in order to be really effective, this movie requires a belief in a higher power. But since then I’ve come to appreciate it just for what it is. I watched it again recently and was surprised by how intense it is. The things that they did back then, with this little girl, they broke a bunch of taboos, my god. It’s pretty damn good.” —ZS

David Cronenberg, on “Don’t Look Now”

“This was a movie that really stunned me. I was really very impressed by it,” body-horror legend David Cronenberg said of cinematographer-turned-director Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” in a 2022 interview on the Konbini YouTube channel. Adapted from a 1971 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, the 1973 thriller is about grieving parents who are given reason to believe their late daughter isn’t really gone.

“Just a very, very strong movie,” Cronenberg continued. “Very strange. Very much about death, but at first you’re not aware that that’s really the subject matter. It’s really a love story, but it’s really a love story about love and death. Just recently someone said, ‘Tell me a movie that is one of your favorite movies,’ which is very hard to do because there are hundreds of movies that I love. But I did say ‘Don’t Look Now.’” —AF

Nia DaCosta, on “Under the Skin”

Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” defies classification in the way it mixes science-fiction and horror elements to create something wholly original and unnerving. Nia DiCosta, who is set to become a major name in horror with the 2021 release of her Jordan Peele-produced “Candyman” reimagining, considers Glazer’s film one of the most influential movies on her own career.

“It’s unlike anything I’d seen before and could remain opaque without being rudderless,” DiCosta told IonCinema. “Incredibly moving and disturbing. Inspiring because it makes me feel as though, in film, one could do anything.” —ZS

Josephine Decker, on Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria”

Remaking Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic “Suspiria” sounded like a bad idea to many genre fans, but Luca Guadagnino pulled off something completely original and utterly terrifying in his 2018 adaptation of the witchy story. “Its mystery is physical,” Josephine Decker told IndieWire about the movie. “Its dance is political. It goes one million different directions, and after months I can’t stop thinking about it — [as with] any film that does not ‘end’ when the movie ends.” —ZS

Greta Gerwig, on “The 39 Steps”

Speaking with IndieWire and Movies on Demand in 2016, Academy Award nominee Greta Gerwig named a slew of her favorite films — “Jeanne Dielman,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Red River,” and “Rio Bravo” among them — but singled out Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” as “maybe one of the most perfect movies ever made.” She praised his attention to detail in the suspenseful saga about a man who is framed for murder and suddenly thrust into the fraught innerworkings of an international spy syndicate. —AF

Guillermo del Toro, on “Eyes Without a Face”

Georges Franju’s 1960 French-Italian horror film “Eyes Without a Face” stars Pierre Brasseur as a plastic surgeon obsessed with performing a face transplant on his daughter after she survives a terrible car crash. IndieWire named “Eyes Without a Face” one of the best horror movies ever made and the title has long been a favorite of Guillermo del Toro’s. “[The main character is] like an undead Audrey Hepburn. It influenced me a lot with the contrast between beauty and brutality,” del Toro once told Criterion about the film. “The clash of haunting and enchanting imagery has seldom been more powerful. ‘Eyes Without a Face’ boasts an extraordinary soundtrack [by Maurice Jarre] too!” —ZS

Julia Ducournau, on “Dead Ringers”

French filmmaker Julia Ducournau delivered a contemporary body horror classic with “Raw,” so it’s only fitting she considers body horror master David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” to be one of her favorite horror movies. As she told Fandom during the “Raw” press tour, “The way he filmed bodies and the themes he tackles — with mortality and the human condition, and identity as well — are themes that I have always been interested in and that I treat in my own work I think as a filmmaker ‘Dead Ringers’ would be my favorite one because for me it’s like his opera. It is an opera in five acts. It’s a Greek tragedy.” —ZS

Robert Eggers, on “Nosferatu”

“It was an indie horror in its day, a bit rough around the edges yet it’s one of the greatest and most haunting films ever made,” Robert Eggers told Shudder about F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror film classic. “The newly restored color tinted versions are really impressive, but I still prefer the poor black and white versions made from scraps of 16mm prints. Those grimy versions have an uncanny mystery to them and helped build the myth of Max Shreck being a real vampire.” —ZS

Coralie Fargeat, on “I Saw the Devil”

Coralie Fargeat’s blood-soaked horror thriller “Revenge” was one of the major genre breakouts of 2017, and the filmmaker took inspiration from bloody South Korean films such as Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” and Kim Jee-woon’s 2010 action-horror movie “I Saw the Devil.” “The bloody scenes [in these films] are so excessive that they become absurd and poetic,” Fargeat told Financial Times. “I’m interested in when blood and flesh create something that becomes baroque and operatic. [Quentin] Tarantino does that in ‘Kill Bill.'” —ZS

Mike Flanagan, on “The Blackcoat’s Daughter”

Mike Flanagan has emerged as one of the contemporary masters of horror thanks to his films “Oculus,” “Hush,” “Ouija: Origins of Evil,” “Gerald’s Game,” and “Doctor Sleep,” plus his Netflix horror hits “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor.” Which recent horror films are Flanagan’s favorites? A list the director compiled for Rotten Tomatoes included “The Invitation,” “Cargo,” and Osgood Perkins’ “The Blackcoat’s Daughter.”

“Oz Perkins’ chilling and meditative puzzler is one of my favorites,” Flanagan said. “Great performances across the board, what appears at first to be a story about girls encountering a supernatural force when left behind at their boarding school is revealed to be something even deeper by the end. I love this movie for a lot of reasons, but particularly because of how it touches on an unexplored facet of possession stories.” —ZS

William Friedkin, on “Funny Games”

In discussing his 13 favorite horror movies with Entertainment Weekly, “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin singled out Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” as being the most terrifying. ”It’s probably the scariest film on the list because it involves two young punks in a rural village terrorizing a family in their home,” Friedkin said. “It’s the kind of thing you see on the news very often today. There is the possibility of this actually happening. It’s brilliantly done.” —ZS

Alex Garland, on “Alien”

Alex Garland is one of the most essential names working in film and television science-fiction today (see “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation,” and “Devs” for examples), but you can tell he’s a writer-director who loves horror, as all of his movies have traces of the genre in their DNA. Who can forget the “Annihilation” mutant bear attack? The extended tension and gruesome payoff feels like a cousin to Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” so it’s no wonder Garland considers the 1979 horror movie one of his biggest inspirations. As he told IGN, “I think ‘Alien’ is an immaculate film. It’s smart and really, really scary and really beautifully made. I remember it coming out…it felt incredibly fresh and re-invented all sorts of things. It taught me what re-invention is like.” —ZS

Luca Guadagnino, on “The Fly”

Speaking to Vulture in December 2018, “Suspiria” filmmaker Luca Guadagnino hailed David Cronenberg’s body horror classic “The Fly” an “all-time masterpiece.” “The horror of it for me is at the end when you realize that the character of Jeff Goldblum and the character of Geena Davis desperately love each other, but they’re not going to be together,” the filmmaker said. “The ultimate horror of that movie was the impossibility of the love between the two of them.” —ZS

James Gunn, on “Green Room”

“Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Slither” director James Gunn published a list of his 50 favorite horror movies on Twitter in 2017. While the list was topped by Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” Jeremy Saulnier’s 2015 horror-thriller “Green Room” had a strong showing by cracking the top 10 in the number six position. “Green Room” stars the late Anton Yelchin as the leader of a punk band who become the targets of ruthless neo-Nazis. Patrick Stewart plays thrillingly against type as the leader of the racist skinhead group. —ZS

Mary Harron, on “Relic”

Mary Harron will forever be associated with her directorial feature “American Psycho,” but she did return to the horror genre in 2020 with the Quibi horror series “The Expecting.” During a press tour for the series, Harron stopped by Entertainment Weekly to champion Natalie Erika James’ directorial debut “Relic” as one of the most exciting new horror movies in years. “That was fantastic, I thought,” Harron said. “It’s by a young Australian director. I was really impressed. That again is female-centered. It’s a woman, her daughter, her mother. So, grandmother-mother-daughter. And crazy things happen inside a house, lot of amazing visual effects. It’s a bit like ‘The Babadook,’ it’s kind of a domestic horror. Otherwise, I would always say ‘Cabin in the Woods’ — the one that’s about all horror movies.” —ZS

Natalie Erika James, on “Ringu”

IndieWire listed Natalie Erika James’ feature directorial debut “Relic” as one of the scariest movies of 2020, and she told us over the summer amid the “Relic” release that Japanese and Korean horror films like the original “Ringu” were a driving influence behind her own directorial project.

“[The film] always had that empathetic view of the menace, which I think a lot of Asian horror does as well,” James said. “If you think about the ghosts in these Japanese and Korean horror films, they’re often the wronged woman who is acting out as revenge or wrath. A lot of it ends in an act of empathy, or you have to put them to rest in some way, so I think it’s in the vein of those kinds of films. —ZS

Leigh Janiak, on “Scream”

Leigh Janiak is one of the biggest names in horror this year thanks to the release of her R-rated “Fear Street” trilogy on Netflix. The director is hoping the success of the movies launches an MCU-style horror universe on the streaming giant. “Fear Street” fans shouldn’t be too surprised to learn Wes Craven’s “Scream” is one of the director’s favorite horror movies, as the first “Fear Street” movie opens in a very “Scream”-style way with the death of a high profile actress (in this case, Maya Hawke).

“I can’t even count the amount of times that I’ve seen that movie, let alone the opening sequence of it,” Janiak told Rotten Tomatoes about Craven’s iconic meta-slasher. “It’s just so brilliant. I’m getting off topic, but every time I watch it, it’s that thing when you feel, ‘Oh, f–k. That’s so good it stresses me out.’ The script, and the way it’s shot, and the scares, and the fun. Anyway, obviously I love that movie. So, when we were shooting [‘Fear Street’], I wanted to very much be sending that love letter, and immediately orienting the audience into, ‘Okay, this is it. This is creepy, this is scary.’ But again, there’s the funny quality of Heather (Hawke) getting scared by the mask when she’s in the gag joke store, all of those things.” —ZS

Jim Jarmusch, on “American Psycho.”

In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, indie icon Jim Jarmusch hailed Mary Harron’s “American Pyscho” as his favorite movie ever made. “A masterful adaptation of words to cinema by Mary Harron, an important American director, and writer,” the director said. “This is adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel that was set in the 1980s. And I think that the film resonates even more now than when it was made almost 20 years ago. Though at the time it was called sexist filth by some. Christian Bale’s performance is brutally riveting, and the entire cast — Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, and Jared Leto — are all just really good.” —ZS

Jennifer Kent, on “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”

“I look at an earlier film like ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ the original, and that’s a masterpiece,” Jennifer Kent told Shutterstock when discussing her favorite horror movies. “It’s saying something deeper about humanity. For me, it’s like how an animal must feel at the slaughter. Some people identify with Leatherface, but I identify with the victims in that one…There’s something so rough and coarse in a really great way running through that film. It’s a genius film. It’s still shocking. There’s an energy to it, whereas last night, the Friday the 13th remake was on TV and I felt like I was watching a shampoo commercial.” —ZS

Karyn Kusama, on “Habit”

“The Invitation” filmmaker Karyn Kusama told Nylon that Larry Fessenden’s 1997 vampire movie “Habit” is one of her favorite horror movies. “I remember seeing this film when it first came out in the mid-’90’s, and being struck by its twin narrative threads: the story of a man possibly entangled in a romance with a vampire, and, more profoundly, the story of a man spiraling into catastrophic alcoholism,” Kusama said. “The film is an incredible thematic companion piece to Abel Ferrara’s ‘The Addiction,’ and is a grimy, vivid portrayal of a life getting very out of control.” —ZS

David Lowery, on “Hereditary”

“Ari Aster’s debut is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen,” indie favorite David Lowery told IndieWire in 2018. “I caught it at an advance screening in Vancouver, and had to sleep with the hotel lights on afterwards — something I haven’t had to do since 2002. I was traumatized. I wondered if the movie might be too brutal. The only way to find out, of course, was to drag as many friends as I could to see it when it opened a few weeks later. Maybe it was thanks to my loudly screaming chums, but this time around I couldn’t stop laughing. What a wicked movie. I can’t wait to rewatch it every October for the rest of my life.” —ZS

Andy Muschietti, on “Near Dark”

Andy Muschietti has become one of the top horror directors in Hollywood after helming Warner Bros.’ two-part “It” saga, the first of which is the highest-grossing horror film ever released worldwide. In a discussion with Shortlist about his favorite horror movies, Muschietti named Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark” his favorite vampire movie. “It was such a breakthrough,” the director said, “These are like trash vampires, going around in an RV, and that blend of Americana, and Western underbelly and, shitty, trashy vampires was just mind-blowing for me. I had never seen anything like that. And there’s a lot of very dark and obscure humor in it…The way [the vampires] play with their victims is so terrifying.” —ZS

Gaspar Noé, on “Un Chien Andalou”

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s “Un Chien Andalou” is a surrealist short film with horror undertones that have long rattled numerous filmmakers, including French provocateur Gaspar Noé. “The opening scene of the movie, of the short film, with Buñuel cutting the eye of a woman — even if the close-up, they replaced the eye of the woman by the eye of a cow — is so shocking that I wish I could have been in the audience, if I could not be behind Bunuel,” Noé told Rotten Tomatoes. “If I could see the reaction, I’m sure there’s never people turning more crazy in the history of cinema, than the first audience that that movie had.” —ZS

Christopher Nolan, on “Alien”

Along with Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott was a filmmaker who left a big impression on Christopher Nolan during his coming-of-age years. As Nolan once told Media Company, “The director I have always been a huge fan of… Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. ‘Alien,’ ‘Blade Runner’ just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive.” —ZS

André Øvredal, on “Poltergeist”

Norwegian filmmaker André Øvredal has emerged as one of the brightest new voices in horror thanks to “Trollhunters,” “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” and this summer’s box office hit “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” In an interview with Mental Floss, Øvredal named “Poltergiest” his favorite horror movie ever made. “It has a philosophy on its own subjects, not just trying to milk the opportunities for a scare,” the director said. “It’s also extremely close to the characters. You get to know and care for them, so you quickly fear for them. I think the filmmaking is really clever, visually stimulating, and tells the story with a surprising amount of humor, that only adds to the horror and sense of reality.” —ZS

Jordan Peele, on “Misery”

“’Misery’ is a movie where the unlikely villain turns out to be the scariest,” Peele told USA Today about Rob Reiner’s 1990 Stephen King adaptation. Kathy Bates won the Oscar for Best Actress thanks to her performance as Annie Wilkes, whose obsession with famous author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) has disturbing results. “It’s also a movie where the acting and the performance and the script and the dialogue is where the fear in the movie lies,” Peele said. “I love that kind of technique.” —ZS

Osgood Perkins, on “The Strangers”

Osgood Perkins is the son of “Psycho” icon Anthony Perkins, and he’s carved out a strong horror following thanks to directorial efforts such as “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House,” and “Gretel and Hansel.” Speaking to Consequence of Sound earlier this year, Perkins offered his list of favorite horror films, saying, “‘Let the Right One In,’ ‘Don’t Look Now,’ ‘Eyes Without a Face,’ ‘Eraserhead,’ ‘Cat People… There’s a couple I always need to say that I always don’t say them cause I completely forget them. ‘The Strangers.’ I love ‘The Strangers.'” —ZS

Sam Raimi, on “Night of the Living Dead”

“I really had never been so terrified in my life,” Sam Raimi told Den of Geek this year about watching George A. Romero’s zombie classic. “I was screaming and shrieking, begging my sister to take me home, and she was trying to shut me up. I’d never experienced horror like that before. It felt so real, like a docu-horror. I had never seen a black-and-white movie in a movie theatre before; it looked like a documentary. There was nothing Hollywood about it — it was just unrelenting and complete madness and very upsetting for me.” —ZS

Jennifer Reeder, on “You Were Never Really Here”

For IndieWire’s Seven Days of Scream Queens, “Knives and Skin” director Jennifer Reeder listed 13 of her favorite scary movies. Among them was Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as a mercenary tasked with rescuing a senator’s daughter from a human trafficking ring. Reeder wrote: “This is a brutal portrait of a very particular kind of man which Ramsay gazes at with a decidedly feminine lens. This film will take your breath away over and over.” —AF

Eli Roth, on “Creepshow”

For Eli Roth, the 1982 horror classic “Creepshow” was so special because it brought together three titans of the genre: Director George A. Romero, writer Stephen King, and special effects makeup artist Tom Savini. “The movie, told in five stories, is designed to look like a comic book, but it is creepy. And disgusting. And really, really fun,” Roth once told “Today.” ‘Plus it’s an anthology so you don’t really have to pay attention, and if you’re not that into the story, a new one will be on in 10 minutes… An amazing cast, incredible script, brilliant makeup effects, and nonstop fun. A very underrated horror movie that’s a guaranteed good time.” —ZS

Josh Safdie, on “Videodrome”

Among Josh Safdie’s favorite horror movies, as discussed in 2017 for an interview with the folks at Criterion Collection, is “Videodrome”: David Cronenberg’s mind-bending 1983 body horror about a sweeping mind-control conspiracy.

“’Videodrome’ to me is one of the best films ever made, it really is,” Safdie said. “And the prophecy element, especially now looking back, it’s deep, it’s a very deep movie. And it’s unbelievably scary. And James Woods in that movie! James Woods is one of my favorite actors, but to see that movie and think of who he is [now] and how he’s kind of shifted into this kind of political figure — you can imagine that character, Max Renn, you can imagine him like kind of having a Twitter account after going through that and seeing the true colors of society. And I don’t know, there’s something so twisted and eerie.” —AF

Martin Scorsese, on “The Innocents”

Jack Clayton’s 1961 psychological horror film “The Innocents” is often regarded as one of the most terrifying movies ever made, and Martin Scorsese agrees. The filmmaker has called “The Innocents” one of his favorite horror films, writing, “This Jack Clayton adaptation of ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is one of the rare pictures that does justice to Henry James. It’s beautifully crafted and acted, immaculately shot (by Freddie Francis), and very scary.” The movie is also a favorite of fellow directors such as Guillermo del Toro. a

Domee Shi, on “Shaun of the Dead”

“Bao” and “Turning Red” director Domee Shi revealed her top five favorite films to Rotten Tomatoes in March 2022, citing animated classics “Spirited Away” and “The Lion King” as well as live-action darlings “Mean Girls” and “Shaolin Soccer.” The only horror title to make the cut? Edgar Wright’s apocalyptic zom-buddy comedy “Shaun of the Dead.”

“‘Shaun of the Dead’ was my first Edgar Wright film and I’ve just been so inspired by his filmmaking and his sense of humor,” Shi said. “And I just love how, in that movie, he blends horror, drama, and comedy so effortlessly. I always rewatch it every Halloween.”

Peter Strickland, on “Climax”

“The Duke of Burgundy” director Peter Strickland delivered his own winning horror film last year with the A24 release “In Fabric,” and in an interview with IndieWire he reflected on his love for Gaspar Noe’s dance floor nightmare “Climax.”

“I’m a huge Gaspar Noé fan and loved submitting to his latest assault,” Strickland said. “I was caught off guard with ‘Climax’ given how the reviews centered on how much fun it was. It’s incredibly distressing and disturbing in places and unlike with ‘Irreversible’, I wasn’t prepared for it…The dance scenes are extraordinary and as it becomes increasingly deranged and warped, the film lapses into a dimension that evokes the altered physical space of Ernie Gehr’s structuralist film ‘Serene Velocity.’” —ZS

Quentin Tarantino, on “Audition”

Takashi Miike’s 1999 horror movie “Audition” is often cited as one of the most disturbing films ever made. Ryo Ishibashi stars as a widow named Shigeharu Aoyama who stages auditions for men in hopes of meeting a new husband or life partner. Aoyama falls for Asami (Eihi Shiina), but her dark past has unexpected and brutal consequences. Tarantino called the movie one of his favorites since he’s been a director, referring to it as a “true masterpiece” in a 2009 interview. —ZS

James Wan, on “The Others” 

The Nicole Kidman-starring horror movie “The Others” features one of the best twists in movie history, and it made a big impression on “Insidious” and “The Conjuring” director James Wan. “Alejandro Amenabar’s movie with Nicole Kidman is exquisitely photographed, crafted, and old school,” Wan told The Hollywood Reporter when asked about the horror films that inspired him “It’s truly one of the finest ‘bump in the night’ Victorian ghost stories ever committed to film.” —ZS

Ti West, on “The Shining”

“The House of the Devil” director Ti West once told Rotten Tomatoes that “The Shining” was not just his favorite horror movie ever made but one of his favorite movies, period. “It was the first movie that I saw when I was a kid that, like, really traumatized me,” the director said. “What I think’s great about it is that it’s not only a horror movie, it’s more a movie about an alcoholic man who hates his family, and then it’s a horror movie. To me, all the best horror movies are a regular movie first and then they’re a horror movie.” —ZS

Ben Wheatley, on “Eraserhead”

“The dark lord of midnight movies,” Ben Wheatley once told Criterion about David Lynch. “Lynch films are scary in a way that modern horror films seldom are. He talks directly to my inner child, to the nightmares of my seven-year-old self. It’s a singular cinematic experience. I remember watching this whenever it was on in London — ‘Eraserhead’ and ‘Blue Velvet’…double bills…mmm.” —ZS

Edgar Wright, “Dead of Night”

Edgar Wright famously released a list of his 100 favorite horror movies in October 2017. One entry that is also a favorite of Martin Scorsese’s is “Dead of Night,” a horror anthology movie consisting of four short films directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, and Basil Dearden. Scorsese once told The Daily Beast of the movie: “A British classic: four tales told by four strangers mysteriously gathered in a country house, each one extremely disquieting, climaxing with a montage in which elements from all the stories converge into a crescendo of madness.” —ZS

Rob Zombie, on “28 Days Later”

“House of 1000 Corpses” mastermind Rob Zombie has a soft spot for Danny Boyle’s beloved zombie horror “28 Days Later,” telling Vice, “I thought it was great. I like the fact that, I don’t know how much credit [Danny Boyle] gets for it, but the zombiemania that’s going on with everyone, no one could really figure out what to do with zombie movies. Everyone was just sort of retreading what George Romero was doing. And he was the first person to come along with a fresh take on it, which came along in kind of a stagnant genre, and I never really thought of it of being stagnant until I saw that film.” —ZS