This Is the Best Horror Movie of All Time

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 18, 7:30AM EDT

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“Le Manoir du Diable” (1896) has often been acknowledged as the first horror movie, although it was only two and a half minutes long. Since then, Hollywood and filmmakers all over the world have made thousands of horror movies, and the genre has become a mainstay of the industry. Some of the best-known horror flicks have been based on novels. “Frankenstein,” based on the novel by English author Mary Shelley, is probably the best known. 24/7 Tempo conducted an analysis of the top movies in the category and picked the best one.

Now there are more horror films than ever. Streaming services have given indie and subgenre horror movies a platform they never had. Most theaters do not run small-budget horror movies, and before streaming, films that went straight to TV or DVD were considered lower quality. Today, horror fans have a plethora of first-rate, fear-inducing options at their fingertips.

To identify the best horror movie ever made, 24/7 Tempo developed an index of ratings on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon, and audience and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator. The films represent every decade from the 1920s to the present day and from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 nature-gone-wild thriller “The Birds” to slasher classic “A Nightmare on Elm Street” to experimental indie cult film “Eraserhead,” with an occasional horror comedy along the way.

Ratings are as of mid-March 2021. All three measures were weighted equally. Only films with at least 4,500 reviews on IMDb, a “horror” genre classification on IMDb, and a runtime greater than one hour were considered. Data on domestic box office came from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services. Cast information comes from IMDb.
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While there have always been scary films, 2017 saw something of a horror renaissance. Both the supernatural horror film “It,” based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, and Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning “Get Out” were released that year. “It” went on to gross over $700 million worldwide and set a record for playing in 4,103 theaters, more than any other R-rated movie ever.

“Psycho” (1960) is the best horror movie ever made. Here are some of the details:

Combined score: 2.81 (50th highest out of movies in all genres)
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Genres: Horror, mystery, thriller

Click here to see which are the 50 best horror movies ever made.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.