The 13 Best Scary Movies of the Past 13 Years

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Saw (2004)
The torture porn genre has definitely worn out its welcome, but who can deny the tight noir beats and nauseating twist ending that made Saw the franchise bread winner of Lionsgate Films? Rooted in Italy's giallo detective films, Saw's horrific imagery and hellish contraptions made the Jigsaw Killer this generation's new cinematic boogeyman.



The Others (2001)
Speaking of twist endings, this haunting drama from Alejandro Amenabar created a suffocating atmosphere of creepy dread with a careening plot. Nicole Kidman plays Grace Stewart, a struggling single mother in 1940s Jersey who must prevent her children from being exposed to sunlight due to a rare hereditary condition. What begins as a conventional haunted house tale warps into an unsettling rumination on the afterlife with clever psychological intrigue.



The Blair Witch Project (1999)
If the swirling hand-held cameras didn't make you sick to your stomach, this staged documentary of filmmakers stalked by a supernatural hag will keep you up for nights on end. While its lo-fi novelty was unprecedented for the time, the tangible desperation from it's 3-member cast still surpasses the bigger-budgeted imitations of movies like Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead.