Summary
- Elevated horror films challenge viewers and make them think, offering social commentary alongside scares. Critics praise them as some of the greatest horror movies of the 21st century.
- Movies like Suspiria and It Follows prove that elevated horror can deliver terror without relying heavily on jump scares. They explore unique concepts and create lasting, chilling fear.
- Directors like Jordan Peele and Ari Aster have made names for themselves in the elevated horror genre. Movies like Us and Hereditary combine true horror with elevated styles, earning critical acclaim and leaving lasting impressions on audiences.
Horror movies have been a mixed bag in terms of critical reception over the years, with everything from trashy slasher flicks to truly ingenious, critically beloved films being part of the huge genre that has often been thought of by some moviegoers as being only good for a quick scare.
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However, elevated horror is a relatively new shift away from the genre standard. Instead of being expressly created to inspire fear in audiences, elevated horror movies aim to challenge the viewers and make them think, often presenting social commentary in among the scares. Elevated horror films are often praised by critics and several of them have been named among the greatest horror movies of the 21st century.
10 Suspiria
IMDB Score: 6.7
- Release Year: 2018
- Director/s: Luca Guadagnino
This movie follows a young woman, played by Dakota Johnson, who enters a prestigious ballet school but soon finds out that mysterious forces are attempting to control the lives of the dancers. Inspired by the 1977 Dario Argento film of the same name, Suspiria feels like a high-class and legitimately trippy film.
The coven of witches behind the dark deeds at the school is fascinating and makes Suspiria all the more engaging. The terror that manages to permeate every inch of the runtime happens with a surprising lack of jump scares, and the trio of roles all played by Tilda Swinton make for a fascinating watch.
9 It Follows
IMDB Score: 6.8
- Release Year: 2015
- Director/s: David Robert Mitchell
An elevated horror that takes a commonly found concept and adds a twist, It Follows features a young woman who has sex with her boyfriend, only to discover that he has been cursed by a demonic entity that follows those who have the curse laid upon them. It turns out that she now has it, as the curse is passed on through sex.
The chilling way that It Follows managed to turn a standard paranormal entity into a fascinating allegory for STDs is impressive. In doing so, it created a truly chilling experience that managed to have some traditional jump scares in addition to some real, chilling, and lasting terror that had viewers looking over their shoulders when they left the cinema.
8 Us
IMDB Score: 6.8
- Release Year: 2019
- Director/s: Jordan Peele
Jordan Peele kicked off his career as a director in high gear, and it wasn’t long before he had audiences hugely excited about Us, a film about a family that encounters doppelgängers of themselves attempting to attack them and steal their lives.
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Us was a truly mind-bending experience that created an entire world of lore behind an idea that hasn’t been followed up on, but which could easily have gone further. Filled with never-ending tension and inspiring a true kind of chilling fear in audiences, Us will be remembered for a long time as a craft, and intelligent horror film.
7 The Killing Of A Sacred Deer
IMDB Score: 7.0
- Release Year: 2017
- Director/s: Yorgos Lanthimos
One of the more bizarre entries in the elevated horror genre, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is based on a family man & surgeon whose life is upended when a mysterious young man, blaming the surgeon for his father’s death, starts to somehow cause havoc among his family.
The surgeon, played by Colin Farrell, and the young man, played by Barry Keoghan in a star-making performance, play a strange sort of game that includes many shocking twists and turns. This is a great example of a modern horror film with almost no actual scares to it. Instead, it's just uncomfortable and built to make the audience squirm.
6 Barbarian
IMDB Score: 7.0
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- Release Year: 2022
- Director/s: Zach Cregger
One of the wilder releases in the horror genre last year, Barbarian is a film about a young woman who goes to her rental house and discovers a man already there. After they hesitantly decide to share the house for the night, the woman is surprised to find that something more sinister may be hiding in the basement.
Barbarian is a film that manages to contain outright terror, themes of sexual abuse, motherhood, and generational violence, all in a whirlwind film that doesn’t feel like it all makes a lot of sense until the very end. Once it clicks, it's a gut punch of a reveal.
5 The Witch
IMDB Score: 7.0
- Release Year: 2015
- Director/s: Robert Eggers
The first film by another recently acclaimed director, Robert Eggers, The Witch starred Anya Taylor-Joy in her first film role as a young woman whose family is banished from their Puritan settlement. Once alone in a secluded forest, strange things start happening to them, which they blame on witchcraft.
As the family is picked off and comes under the influence of the witch’s powers, they start to turn on one another. True horror and subtle terrors and tension are blended to create an unnerving atmosphere which, like the family themselves, never truly feels safe over the course of the film.
4 Midsommar
IMDB Score: 7.1
- Release Year: 2019
- Director/s: Ari Aster
One of the few films that could almost be considered a horror epic, Midsommar, at 148 minutes, is one of the longest horror movies ever. It stars Florence Pugh as a young woman whose sister kills herself and her parents, leaving her alone except for her boyfriend.
Together with his friends, they take a trip to a commune in rural Sweden, where they find many things unusual about the lives that the community members lead. Midsommar is a look into what can drive a person insane, and mixing true moments of outright terror with a horrific, stomach-churning feeling of uneasiness throughout, this epic will keep audiences glued to the screen.
3 Hereditary
IMDB Score: 7.3
- Release Year: 2018
- Director/s: Ari Aster
The debut film of Ari Aster before he created Midsommar was an absolute nightmare. Hereditary tells the story of a family whose strange grandmother dies, leading to her family being tormented by a demonic entity. Filled with true horror as well as an eerie, elevated style, Hereditary is an absolutely shocking experience.
With some incredible performances from the likes of Toni Collette and Alex Wolff, Hereditary put Ari Aster on the map, and he has proven it wasn’t a fluke, cementing himself as one of the biggest names in both modern horror and elevated horror. Hereditary has some of the most terrifying one-off scenes in recent history, in addition to a chilling style that lasts the length of the film, and remains with audiences long after it is finished.
2 The Lighthouse
IMDB Score: 7.4
- Release Year: 2019
- Director/s: Robert Eggers
Another film by Robert Eggers, this follow-up to The Witch was a very distinctive and unusual movie, which was both bold enough and thrilling enough to become a success. The Lighthouse stars Robert Pattinson as the new lighthouse keeper who is worked to the bone by the elder keeper, played by Willem Dafoe, on an isolated island.
Alone out there, Pattinson’s character slowly begins to lose his mind. The twisting and turning plot is terrifying and fascinating to watch. The black-and-white style and the difficulty viewers have had in defining this film help it feel all the more elevated. One thing that is inarguable about The Lighthouse is that it's an absolutely terrifying, thrilling, and truly great psychological horror.
1 Get Out
IMDB Score: 7.8
- Release Year: 2017
- Director/s: Jordan Peele
The pinnacle of modern horror films, Get Out proved that elevated horror doesn’t need to be a smaller indie movie. Get Out was hugely successful with audiences, critics, and everyone in between. Boasting a blackly comedic style in addition to some hugely important messages, and plenty of terrifying moments, Get Out managed to have the whole horror package, and some really fun quotes to boot.
Focused around a black man who visits his white girlfriend’s family for the first time, and finds some things intensely wrong with them, Get Out re-introduced comedian Jordan Peele as a horror director, and he has gone on to be one of the most acclaimed modern directors in the genre due to the incredible success of this directorial debut, which became one of the very best horror movies of the 21st Century.