Horror Icons Share Their Personal Horror Movie Recommendations

In 2017, Stephen King tweeted about his admiration for the André Øvredal-directed horror film The Autopsy of Jane Doe, calling it a "visceral horror to rival ALIEN and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone.”

While writing for Entertainment Weekly, King also praised the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left, referring to the original 1972 version as a “crapfest.” Regarding the 2009 version, King wrote:

This beautifully photographed - but hard to watch - movie is the standard by which all horror/suspense films should be judged.

He went so far as to say it was comparable to The Silence of the Lambs.

In an interview with IndieWire about Halloween Ends, John Carpenter discussed recent horror films that he enjoyed. Carpenter made a point of singling out the 2008 Swedish horror film Let the Right One In.

According to Carpenter:

I thought that was a movie that reinvents the vampire genre - it really does - and I admire it for that.

In 2022, actor Devon Sawa of Casper and Final Destination fame tweeted about his excitement over the Scott Derrickson-directed movie The Black Phone, stating:

 The Black Phone is a fucking masterpiece. God damn it, put more films like this in theaters!! That was my f*cking jam!

When asked to share her pick for a good horror film to watch on Halloween, American Psycho director Mary Harron enthusiastically recommended Natalia Erika James's directorial debut, Relic.

Harron told Entertainment Weekly:

I was really impressed. That again is female-centered. It’s a woman, her daughter, her mother. So, grandmother-mother-daughter. And crazy things happen inside a house, lot of amazing visual effects. It’s a bit like The Babadook, it’s kind of a domestic horror.

Harron also noted that The Cabin in the Woods was another favorite of hers.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mike Flanagan, director of Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, wrote an extensive list of horror movies to watch while on lockdown. One of Flanagan's favorites to make the list was 2014's The Taking of Deborah Logan.

Flanagan wrote:

Adam Robitel’s found-footage shocker functions just as well as an exploration of dementia and its effects on a family as it does a terrifying story of possession. Performances are stellar across the board, but it is the fearless turn by Jill Larson as the titular victim of demonic activity that lingers with you after the credits have rolled … well, that and the shot. If you’ve seen it, you know the one.

Jordan Peele, the acclaimed director behind Get Out, Us, and Nope, listed a number of horror films as being among his favorites in a 2022 interview; however, he cited Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives as two of the most influential films for him as a filmmaker.

Peele noted that the plots of both films embrace “this very delicate tightrope walk that sort of honored the protagonist in a way that you rarely see in the genre these days.”

Peele described both films' female protagonists as being “smart, and they're investigative, and they're on the trail.”