The beauty of the horror genre is that it’s a big, wide spectrum that can encompass a near-limitless number of styles and tones, ensuring the definition really comes down to whatever a filmmaker would prefer. While the following ten movies would certainly not be traditionally deemed horror films, they do offer up such soul-shaking, nerve-rattling terror that they basically feel like horror movies regardless.
So, inspired by this recent Reddit thread on the very subject, here are the ten scariest movies ever made that actually aren’t horror movies. From stomach-knottingly tense thrillers to brutally disturbing war films, existential dramas, and even a certain Steven Spielberg-directed blockbuster, these non-horror movies gave us all nightmares regardless of their label.
It’s a tough thread to needle, and in a few cases some might even argue that the filmmakers went too far in hammering the horror home, but there’s a blunt effectiveness to each of these movies and their no-nonsense approach to provocative subject matter.
Again, they’re not horror movies in any official capacity, but considering how they left us all feeling when the end credits finally, mercifully rolled, they might as well have been…
Tonally and stylistically, Lynne Ramsay’s masterful We Need to Talk About Kevin tap-dances on the fringes of horror throughout, even if it’s officially a psychological thriller-slash-drama.
Ramsay’s movie is basically every parent’s worst nightmare, as Tilda Swinton’s Eva struggles to reckon with her inability to bond with her son Kevin (Ezra Miller), and come to terms with the subsequent heinous act he commits as a teenager.
Tripwire-tense, awash in the colour red, and leaving enough ambiguity hanging in the air to haunt viewers long after the credits roll, We Need to Talk About Kevin broaches an extremely difficult subject with both tact and honesty.
A young Miller is remarkably chilling as the title character, and, in an era where explosive acts of violence are commonplace across America, its messaging feels only more vital than it did back in 2011. It’s not an easy sit, but it is a refreshingly confronting piece of work about a subject many simply don’t want to discuss – how psychopaths are made.