Hello, America—what’s your favorite scary movie? Wait. We already asked 7,500 of you that question in a survey tied to our Thrillternship Halloween dream job. We also queried about your favorite horror franchises and subgenres to further feel out America’s horror fandom.
So, what’s America’s favorite scary movie? Well, from what I’ve already said, you might guess it’s Wes Craven’s navel-gazing, meta-slasher comedy Scream. Haha, nope! Red herring. Try again. Or I’ll just tell you (keep reading).
America’s favorite horror movie: Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s seminal slasher Halloween (1978) emerged from the darkness as America’s favorite freaky flick. This is compelling if you consider the competition.
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) are arguably scarier than Halloween. Ditto Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981), Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), and Andy Muschietti’s IT (2017).
But while there’s flashier, freakier, gorier stuff out there, there’s something to be said for atmosphere. Carpenter’s dark, spooky Halloween (1978)—propelled by his iconic, urgent score and glacially moving, stonefaced, persistent villain Michael Myers—delivers masterful scares that still rattle new viewers nearly 50 years after its debut.
America’s favorite horror franchise: Halloween
Americans appear to love Halloween so much that, in our survey, the 13-film series is also the country’s favorite horror franchise, despite it being a continuity-and-quality nightmare that John Carpenter hasn’t seriously touched since Halloween II (1981).
That’s not to say there’s a perfect franchise out there—there’s not one. But it has us wondering if name recognition/holiday association and franchise size helped Halloween in the survey.
America’s favorite horror subgenre: Slashers
The top five horror movies and horror franchises in our survey are all slashers. So it follows that Americans’ preferred horror subgenre is slashers.
So what does it all mean? It’s easy to parse that data: Americans like to watch people die brutally and creatively at the hands of hulking, often masked, supernatural killing machines. But at least we can say we like a little atmosphere, a touch of class, with our senseless violence.
America’s favorite horror movies (full results)
How did your horror favorites rank in our survey?
| Rank | America’s Favorite Horror Movies | America’s Favorite Horror Franchises | America’s Favorite Horror Subgenres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Halloween (1978) | Halloween | Slasher |
| 2 | Scream (1996) | Scream | Paranormal/supernatural |
| 3 | A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) | A Nightmare on Elm Street | Psychological horror |
| 4 | Friday the 13th (1980) | Friday the 13th | Gore/body horror |
| 5 | The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) | The Texas Chainsaw Massacre | Found footage |
| 6 | The Exorcist (1973) | Child’s Play | — |
| 7 | IT (2017) | The Conjuring | — |
| 8 | Child’s Play (1988) | Terrifier | — |
| 9 | The Conjuring (2013) | Saw | — |
| 10 | The Shining (1980) | The Evil Dead | — |
| 11 | Terrifier (2016) | Insidious | — |
| 12 | Saw (2004) | — | — |
| 13 | Sinister (2012) | — | — |
| 14 | The Evil Dead (1981) | — | — |
| 15 | Hereditary (2018) | — | — |
| 16 | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | — | — |
| 17 | Insidious (2010) | — | — |
| 18 | Pet Sematary (1989) | — | — |
| 19 | Poltergeist (1982) | — | — |
| 20 | Jaws (1975) | — | — |
Methodology
The data in this piece comes from over 7,500 responses to CableTV.com’s 2025 Thrillternship application survey. Rankings for movies and franchises were determined by counting mentions of a specific film, its associated franchise, or its iconic characters (e.g., Michael Myers for Halloween). For horror subgenres, we counted mentions, the frequency of their appearance, and the popularity of films within that category.
