Cover Your Eyes: The 10 Scariest Horror Movies of the 2000s

What are the scariest horror movies of the 2000s?

If the ’90s were all about deconstructing the horror movie with slasher self-awareness, the next millennium focused on establishing new iconography out of those disassembled parts. Which is a fancy way of saying, “Meta was out and monsters were back in.” The scariest horror films of the 2000s reinvented creature features of old — including zombies, vampires, ghosts, demons and cannibals — but dropped most of the meta humor and playfulness. These movies meant business.

28 Days Later (2002)

The zombie movie can now be defined by two eras: those before director Danny Boyle’s low-tech masterpiece and those after. It had that kind of cinematic impact. After the Rage Virus takes over England, Cillian Murphy tries to stay one step ahead of the infected and runs straight into the clutches of a corrupt military unit. A legit horror show that redefined all the zombie rules, “28 Days Later” starts at a full sprint and never lets up.

Boyle’s zombies don’t shuffle through the countryside waiting for you to reload. They fucking run! Shot on a prosumer home video format that makes everything feel more dangerous, the film eventually circles back to the familiar theme Romero instilled in all his zombie movies as well: zombies aren’t the real problem … it’s us.

[REC] (2007)

Plenty of filmmakers adopted the new zombie playbook, but no other movie took the baton and ran with it quite like “[REC]”. This Spanish found-footage entry turns the typical undead attack into a terrifying first-person shooter. Quarantined inside an apartment building (“Quarantine” was the title of the American remake, by the way), a TV reporter and her cameraman team up with the residents to break the story—and break the fuck out!

It’s 78 minutes of real-time chaos in tight quarters that never lets you catch your breath. And the sequels playfully weave their stories between the first attack, making a binge watch extra entertaining. But the original remains a perfectly engineered panic attack and, arguably, the best use of found footage the genre has ever produced.

The Descent (2005)

Taking a deep dive into all the monster movie cliches of the past 75 years, director Neil Marshall’s nasty little creature feature comes out on top thanks to its focus on character over carnage. Although, rest assured, there’s plenty of both. Six friends take a spelunking trip in an unexplored tunnel system and wind up as a buffet line for carnivorous cave dwellers. But by the time the “crawlers” arrive, some of our characters are already at each other’s throats.

The film isn’t just a trigger for claustrophobia; you can add nyctophobia (fear of the dark) and anthropophagophobia (fear of being eaten alive) in there too. With an all-female cast you’ve essentially got a countdown to see who’ll wind up the “final girl” against an army of blind cryptids. Maybe just go for the traditional spa day next time instead.

The Others (2001)

Embracing the dusty tropes of Gothic literature like “The Turn of the Screw,” director Alejandro Amenabar’s classy chiller proves there’s no expiration date on a good ghost story. Nicole Kidman plays a war widow with two children clinging to a precarious existence inside her country estate. But her suspicion of a haunting turns out to only be one side of the story.

If you’ve avoided the twist in this one for the last 25 years, I’m certainly not going to be the one to spoil it. And even without that final revelation, the film is a masterclass in how to design and deliver a perfectly timed scare. While the rest of the decade was about how much further horror could push the envelope, “The Others” is comfort food for fans of the understated.

The Strangers (2008)

There’s something inherently terrifying about someone knocking on your door at 2 a.m. But could you build a whole movie around that? “The Strangers” proves you most certainly can. By leaving out almost all the extraneous nonsense that slashers had piled on in the ’90s, director Bryan Bertino creates a waking nightmare out of a relationship already on the edge of collapse.

There’s no backstory. No creepy cult. No elaborate mythology. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are targeted simply “because you were home.” And that random cruelty, combined with the film’s brutally simplistic approach, is what makes it so absolutely goddamn terrifying.

Final Destination (2000)

Really more of a holdover from the teen mash-up movies of the ’90s, this aborted “X-Files” episode still fits the bill thanks to its clever reimagining of the serial killer scenario. After a handful of students bail on an ill-fated trip to France, death comes for them in the form of elaborate “accidents” that take them out in the order they would have died in the plane crash.

The first feature from “X-Files” veterans James Wong and Glen Morgan, there’s a sick sort of pleasure in watching Stifler get decapitated by a train. But it’s the film’s commitment to toying with the audience’s expectations that makes it (and the five sequels since) so enjoyable. Every dripping faucet, loose wire or “World’s Best Dad” coffee mug has the same menace as Freddy’s razor blade fingers. Apparently, death isn’t just impatient; he has a sick sense of humor too.

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Sam Raimi’s return to the genre has aged better than most. Instead of Bruce Campbell taking the abuse this time it’s Alison Lohman who’s under a gypsy curse that leaves her with three days to get an evil Lamia off her back. Leave it to the director of “Evil Dead 2” to put the puns back into purgatory. “Drag Me to Hell” can get nasty (especially that ending!) but it’s more silly than serious, existing in the same comic Deadite universe as the old cabin in the woods routine.

Raimi certainly hasn’t lost his appetite for abusing his actors either, sliming Lohman with all manner of demonic goo and dental appliances. Arriving at the end of a decade defined more by torture porn and grim nihilism, “Drag Me to Hell” proves there was still some room for a good old-fashioned eye poke amidst the bloodletting.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Director Tomas Alfredson’s icy Swedish vampire coming-of-age story beautifully illustrates that all the trauma and sexual confusion we deal with as adults are even more frightening when you’re just 12 years old. Oskar is a bullied, lonely kid living in a snowbound apartment complex who befriends Eli, the strange girl next door. She looks twelve. She is most definitely not twelve. And she’s not even a girl.

The sweetness to their friendship makes the sudden bursts of violence hit even harder. “Let the Right One In” is a quiet and melancholy fairy tale that builds toward one of the most satisfying pool-side payoffs in horror history. The American remake wasn’t bad, but the original plays with themes of gender identity and prepubescent relationships that Hollywood wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot stake.

High Tension (2003)

The French didn’t invent brutal horror in the 2000s, but they certainly put the rest of the world on notice. Alexandre Aja’s “High Tension” was the first of the so-called “French Extremity” films to stick its foot in the door overseas. It’s a sweat-soaked exercise in pure survival horror, with every creaky floorboard and dark hallway feeling like a trap waiting to spring shut. Yes, there’s a twist that only gets more ridiculous with age. But this is one of those rare cases where the trip is so carefully mapped out you don’t mind being led around by the nose…or ear…or whatever body part winds up hacked off.

Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

Before American studios turned every Japanese ghost movie into a blue-filtered remake starring somebody from the WB, Takashi Shimizu’s “Ju-On: The Grudge” was already old news in its home country. The premise is simple enough: a violent death leaves behind a curse, and anybody who gets tangled up in it is pretty much screwed.

Unlike most haunted-house movies, “Ju-On” doesn’t build toward one big scare: it jumps between characters, timelines and doomed households like a deck of cursed tarot cards. And just when you think you’ve guessed the next hand, a Kabuki-faced ghost peeks out from under the sheets, a black-haired woman drops from the ceiling or that creepy little kid starts meowing like a cat. It might seem a tad predictable now. But that’s only because it was so influential then!