Stephen King’s 10 favourite horror movies of all time
The great Stephen King has established himself as the second scariest writer of all time, ranking second only to the individual who writes the bailiff’s letters at my local council.
From The Shining to IT, he is a man who knows a thing or two about scares. Like the bailiff author, he simply knows what gives people a jolt, as he once wrote in Christine: “I guess you don’t know what scared is until one of your kids screams in the dark.”
Its the kind of line that sets out King as one of the arbiters of fear. Not simply satisfied with writing a whole ream of incredibly freaky novels, King has also facilitated many of those stories making their way to the big screen and, partly because of it and partly because he is simply just a fan, has taken it upon himself to deliver his verdict on scary movies in their totality from time to time.
This makes his view on the films that freak him out all the more interesting. Back in 1999, The Blair Witch Project revolutionised horror. Upon release, it was being touted as the most revolutionary moment in horror since The Exorcist. Three years earlier, the Coen brothers may have brilliantly led the masterpiece Fargo with the false claim that their fiction was, in fact, a true story, and The Blair Witch Project took that ball and ran with it, creating the illusion that the film was a real documentary gone awry in a horrifying manner.
This concept grabbed King by the cajones. “One thing about Blair Witch,” the horror writer explained, “the damn thing looks real. Another thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing feels real. And because it does, it’s like the worst nightmare you ever had, the one you woke from gasping and crying with relief because you thought you were buried alive, and it turned out the cat jumped up on your bed and went to sleep on your chest.”
However, when it comes to his own contributions to horror cinema, King cherishes Frank Darabont’s 2007 adaptation of his novella The Mist as one of his favourites. The writer poetically told Bloody Disgusting: “The ending will tear your heart out… but so will life, in the end.” King got the idea for the story when he ventured out to the local supermarket the day after the town was beset by a monumental thunderstorm. The eerie calm that followed the storm proved equally perturbing to King and was translated perfectly by Darabront.
When it comes to modern horror, King admires films that still utilise the old adage of ‘building the fear’. Discussing The Strangers with Best Life when running down his all-time favourite horrors, King noted: “It starts slowly and builds from unease to terror to horror,” he said. “Why is this happening? Just because it is. Like cancer, stroke, or someone going the wrong way on the turnpike at 110 miles an hour”. That sense of escalation truly turns the stomach and has rendered The Strangers one of the scariest films to come to the fore in recent times.
Also, while there might be an outward perception of King as a horror circus master purveying the surface spooks of ghouls and clowns, anyone who has truly read his oeuvre knows that he also delves deep into the psychology of true fear. This is evidenced by what he has to say about the 1980 psychological horror The Changeling. “There are no monsters bursting from chests,” he wrote. “Just a child’s ball bouncing down a flight of stairs was enough to scare the daylights out of me.”
We’ve compiled a list of the rest of the horrors he has heaped praise on over the years and in his official 22 favourite films to bring you the master of horror’s ten favourite scary films of all time. It is an essential list of scary movies for fans of the genre and a great starting point for anyone to scared to do their own research.
It’s not to say that these are the scariest movies ever made. These are simply the classic movies that Stephen King thinks rank among the best horror has to offer.
Stephen King’s 10 favourite horror movies:
- The Blair Witch Project (1999)
- The Mist (2007)
- The Strangers (2008)
- The Changeling (1980)
- Deep Blue Sea (1999)
- Crimson Peak (2015)
- The Descent (2005)
- Final Destination (2000)
- The Last House on the Left (2009)
- Night of the Demon (1957)
