Creaky floors, mysterious cellars and things that go bump in the night. Here’s our list of the top five haunted house films of the 2010s (so far).
Do you go gaga for ghosts? Does nothing make you happier than watching people wandering around dark, dusty, houses in the middle of the night with candelabras? We feel you. And, friend, do we have the list for you.
5. We Are Still Here (2015)
A delightful video nasty, Ted Geoghegan channels Lucio Fulci for his directorial debut about a quiet New England country house that wants blood. There’s some rigamarole about a town curse and a secret society of local cultists who’ll kill for The Greater Good but, realistically, this is a movie where you’re just waiting for the special effects, gore, scenes and, oh boy, it does not disappoint. What We Are Still Here lacks in budget, or originality, it makes up for in sheer, bloody, exuberance.
4. The Innkeepers (2011)
Ti West supplants the English country manor with a rundown haunted hotel in Connecticut, and the innocent schoolmarm with Sara Paxton’s millennial in a dead-end job, and the results are quite interesting. The change in time and location doesn’t detract from this being a classic story of a bright young woman slowly going insane due to her lack of prospects in a big, creepy, house where she’s essentially a glorified maid. Filmed in the real paranormal hotspot, The Yankee Pedlar Inn, a grim, stripped-down, honesty is this film’s best quality.
3. The Conjuring (2013)
James Wan and co. spun a yarn so deep and dark that it couldn’t be contained by just one film. And it wasn’t, with a direct sequel and three spin-off films arriving over the course of the next five years with numerous others planned for the future. The so-called Conjuring Universe has realised Hollywood’s dream of an interconnected horror film franchise and it accomplished it all off of the back of how entertaining Wan made The Conjuring.
2. The Woman in Black (2012)
The bread and butter of the haunted house story, the salt of the earth. The first, big screen, adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 stars Daniel Radcliffe as he was undergoing a bit of a transformation. It was his first, onscreen, appearance since the final chapter in the film franchise which made his career and the first time film audiences were viewing him as an adult. In the face of a bereaved character who’s constantly beset by an array of jack-in-the-box frights, and jumps, he does quite admirably. Simple. But effective.
1. Crimson Peak (2015)
Two years before sweeping the Oscars with Best Picture, Director, Production Design and Original Score, Guillermo del Toro released, perhaps, the most visually stunning film he’s made to date in the form of his love letter to the old British ghost stories that so inspired The Woman in Black. The sets, literally, ooze menace. Literally. Like all of del Toro’s films, really, you’ll see the turns in the story coming a mile away but, if you get a kick out of great production design, you won’t be left unsatisfied.
Click here to check out our list of the Top 20 Horror Films of the 2010s (so far)
Click here to check out our list of the Top 10 Sci-Fi Horror Films of the 2010s (so far)
Click here to check out our list of the 10 Most Intense Horror Films of the 2010s (so far)
Click here to check out our list of the Top 20 Underrated Horror Films of All Time
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