The Best Horror Movies of the 2000s

Tomas Alfredson's Swedish vampire picture took just $11 million worldwide in 2008 and still tops most rankings of the decade's horror. Oskar, a bullied twelve-year-old, meets Eli in a snowy Stockholm courtyard, and the film keeps its violence patient until the swimming pool finale, shot from underwater as legs and quiet chaos drift past the boy holding his breath. Nothing else this decade balanced tenderness and menace so exactly.

Six women go caving in the Appalachians, and for a long first stretch the cave itself is the only monster. Neil Marshall's 2005 film took $57 million worldwide, and its best jolt is the night-vision camcorder shot where a crawler rises silently at the edge of frame behind the group. Marshall frames the rock squeezes so tight you check your own breathing; the creatures almost feel like a bonus.

Empty London sells the premise in one sequence: Cillian Murphy's Jim wanders a deserted Westminster Bridge at dawn, calling hello at nobody. Danny Boyle's film opened in the UK in November 2002 and took about $75 million worldwide, dragging the zombie picture into a sprinting new register — infected, technically, and that distinction still fuels arguments. The soldier-house last act divides people; the opening twenty minutes are untouchable.

Alejandro Amenábar wrote, directed and scored this 2001 ghost story, which crept to $210 million worldwide on candlelight and closed curtains. Nicole Kidman plays Grace at a pitch of brittle certainty, and the scare that lasts is the communion-veil scene: her daughter's small figure turns, and an old woman's voice answers from under the white lace. Everybody knows the twist by now; it works anyway on a rewatch, which is the real test.

Barcelona, one apartment building, one TV camera that never stops rolling. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's 2007 Spanish original — this link is [REC], not its 2008 American remake Quarantine — took $32 million worldwide and ends in a night-vision penthouse where the reporter is dragged out of frame into the dark. Found footage was everywhere that decade; this is the one where the gimmick and the terror are the same thing.

Edgar Wright plays the zombies straight even when the jokes aren't, which is why his 2004 rom-zom-com belongs on a horror list. The jukebox beatdown at the Winchester — pool cues swinging in rhythm while the record refuses to die — is cut with more precision than most straight horror manages. About $32 million worldwide from a modest British budget, and the late scene with Shaun's mother is genuinely upsetting.

Gore Verbinski's American remake is the version this decade window admits: Hideo Nakata's Ringu misses the cut by two years, and this link is the 2002 film. A $249 million worldwide gross turned J-horror remakes into a Hollywood production line, and none of the imitators matched Samara's climb out of the television, staged with juddering, missing-frame movement. Naomi Watts sells every beat of the seven-days countdown.

J. A. Bayona's Spanish-language ghost story took $78 million worldwide in 2007, enormous for a subtitled horror release. A mother plays one, two, three, knock on the wall in her dead-quiet former orphanage, and the game ends with a sack-masked child standing where nobody was. Grief is the engine: the haunting escalates because she refuses to stop searching for her son, and the ending lands like a punch you watched coming.

Takashi Shimizu had already made two direct-to-video Ju-on films before this 2002 theatrical version, and he went on to direct the 2004 American remake himself — this link is the Japanese original. Nothing in the remake matches Kayako's descent down the staircase, croaking, joints bending wrong, filmed in one slow unbroken approach. The fractured chapter structure means the curse itself, not any character, is the protagonist.

James Wan's breakout feature opened in October 2004 and took $104 million worldwide against a tiny budget, then got blamed for everything torture porn did afterwards — unfairly, since most of its violence happens offscreen. The reverse bear trap sequence, a timer ticking against a locked headpiece, is still the franchise's best engineering. Two chained men, one grimy bathroom, one hacksaw: the premise is a stage play with tetanus.

Zack Snyder's first feature is the rare horror remake that justifies the exercise — George Romero's 1978 original sits outside this window on year, and this link is the 2004 film. Its opening ten minutes, a quiet suburb collapsing into chaos before the title card, hit like a slammed door. The mall siege afterwards trades Romero's satire for velocity, and $102 million worldwide said audiences took the deal.

Frank Darabont changed the ending of Stephen King's novella for this 2007 adaptation, and King approved so hard he joked that anyone who spoils it deserves hanging. No details here, then — only that the final five minutes recut everything before them into tragedy. Inside the supermarket, Marcia Gay Harden's Mrs. Carmody shows how fast frightened shoppers become a congregation. The creature effects wobble in places; the human behavior never does.

Kim Jee-woon's 2003 Korean film dresses a family tragedy as a haunted house and hides the seams until a second viewing rearranges the first. Mid-film comes the dinner-party scene: a guest convulses on the floor while something pale watches from under the kitchen sink, and neither gets explained for another hour. Floral wallpaper and a stepmother too bright to trust do half the frightening; the final reveal is sorrow, not shock.

Sam Raimi returned to horror in 2009 and took $90 million worldwide with a curse picture that runs a lean 99 minutes. Loan officer Christine Brown denies one mortgage extension; Lorna Raver's Mrs. Ganush answers in a parking garage, staple gun against gummed dentures, the nastiest and funniest fight of the decade. Every gross-out is a punchline and every punchline hurts — Evil Dead slapstick, sharpened.

Oren Peli's bedroom-camera experiment premiered at Screamfest in 2007, opened limited in September 2009 and went wide that October, whereupon $193 million worldwide rewired studio horror economics for a decade. Its best image costs nothing: a timelapse of Katie Featherston standing motionless beside the bed for hours while the clock counter blurs past. Honest knock — the jolts fade once you have mapped them — which is why it anchors this list's bottom slot instead of its top.