Definitely check out The Witch (2015) if you haven’t already, it’s from the same director as The Lighthouse.

Candyman (1992) is one of the greatest gothic horror films of all time IMO. The premise makes it sound like a cheesy slasher movie but it’s actually quite beautiful and profound.

I’d also recommend the original Hellraiser (1987) and Possession (1981). Really I could go on, but I’ll keep the list short.

I really like It Follows.

Skinamarink was awful. Don’t fall for this, people. They’re trying to trick us into watching bad YouTube ARGs stretched out to feature length.

Of the bat I should say say my tastes are for the more surreal, psychological and Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror stuff.

• Possession - Zulawski. Massive content warning: extreme and disturbing violence. There is psychological and sexual violence in this film. That being said it’s one of my top movie experiences of all time. I definitely don’t recommend this if you struggle at all with those things in horror (or horror in general). If you are fine with this in art then best going in as blind as possible. Also very arthouse.

• On the Silver Globe - also by Zulawski. You wouldn’t know this has horror elements until you watch it. Alot of people wouldn’t call it horror but I think the horrific aspects struck me very strongly when I saw it recently. Again massive content warning as it is quite disturbing. Very surreal and difficult to follow (partly because the full version is not available as it was destroyed by the Polish government at the time).

Other Zulawski films with horror elements: Third Part of the Night, Devil. His films tend to be very surreal, with the emphasis on psychological and Lovecraftian or cosmic horror, expressed through more immediate, concrete, domestic or historical events.

• Twin Peaks - S1, S2, Fire Walk With Me, S3. A Masterpiece. Especially the ending of S2, FWWM and all of S3. David Lynch.
• Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet. All classics with dream-logic surrealism and Lovecraftian horror elements. All by Lynch.

For some weird British horror by Ken Russell (I can still scarcely believe that a straight man made these films), which also have some comedic elements:

• Gothic - hysterically camp psychological horror
• The Devils - hail Satan
• Lair of the White Worm - surreal comedic folk horror. Has a young Hugh Grant. Also I don’t care what you’re sexuality is but no way it couldn’t be affected by Amanda Donohoe in this.

Related to that is another Polish classic: Mother Joan of the Angels. This is actually about the same series of events as the Russell’s The Devils, but set in the aftermath of the event depicted in that film. That being said the films are also very different in tone. The Poles in general are excellent at horror for some reason.

Also there are honestly also a bunch of American horror classics:

• Alien - gets more terrifying to me the older I get.
• The Thing
• Nightmare on Elm street - I was pleasantly surprised by this once. Expected it to be trash.
• Rosemary’s Baby - by Polanski, just so you know. Hail Satan.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - I also also surprised by this. Also thought it would be garbage.
• Reanimator
• Carrie
• Beyond
• Prince of Darkness
• In the Mouth of Madness
• Dawn of the Dead
• Day of the Dead
• Psycho
• The Birds
• The Fly
• Videodrome
• Alice in Wonderland - yes the Disney one. This scared the bejeezus out of me as a child. There’s also a classic Soviet-Ukrainian version you can find on Dailymotion in two parts.
• The Love Witch - more a modern satire and homage than actual horror but worth the watch.

An interesting recent guy is obviously Robert Eggers, whose been revitalizing Folk Horror:

• The Witch
• The Lighthouse

The Brits are also low-key very good at Folk Horror:

• Blood on Satan’s Claw
• Witchfinder General
• The Wicker Man
• A Field in England
• Enys Men
• Penda’s Fen
• Werewolf in London

Another British classic:

• Peeping Tom

• Mystic’s in Bali for interesting non-Western stuff.

• Viy for Russian folk horror.

• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

• Let the Right one In

• Jonathan - a German Vampire film that makes clear the class-warfare angle on Vampires.

Also recomment Dario Argento. Suspiria is legit a classic. Just don’t think too hard about the plots. Also Lucio Fulci. See City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. Very gory.

Another very weird and gory one in the same ballpark at Fulci is the cult classic Messiah of Evil.

Also worth saying that some old classics like Nosferatu (1922) and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari are still worth a watch, especially if you’re interested in the evolution of cinema as an artform and aesthetic language. Still trippy.

The Herzog Nosferatu is also a classic imo. The Hammer Dracula films with Christopher Lee are very silly but I like them. Coppolo’s Dracula is an underrated classic and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.

There’s also several Japanese horror classics (obvs):

• Cure
• Pulse (Kairo) - both these are are Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Ringu
• Onibaba
• Keroneko
• Jigoku
• Hausu - this is so batshit insane it’s unbelievable.
• Kwaidan
• Horrors of Malformed Men - literally some of the craziest shit I’ve seen.
• Pandemonium
• Angel’s Egg
• Perfect Blue: content warning sexual violence.
• Vampire Hunter D
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
• Genocyber - content warning this is super gory.
• NInja Scroll: content warning sexual violence.
• Devilman: The Birth
• Devilman: Demon Bird Sirène

I am surprised no one mentioned my all time favorite: The Fly by David Cronenberg with Jeff Goldblum.

Most horror movies present you with an external threat. The good protagonist is threatened by external forces like zombies, murderers, psychopaths etc. The Fly is different in that there isn’t really a bad guy. You identify with the monster just as much as with their victim.

For me that makes a much more powerful horror experience, because in my day to day life I don’t have any meaningful external threats. Sure, there are thieves, murderers, angry mobs etc. in our world, but it’s not like I woke up hoping that today I wouldn’t meet one of them.

But this fear of losing control over yourself, lashing out at your children, saying something wrong at work or losing control in a very different way like finding out you have a tumor that has been growing inside of you for a long time - those threats are much more real to me.

I’d recommend

• REC
• The Babadook
• Saint Maud
• Barbarian
• The Descent
• The Changling (1981)
• The Platform
• You’re Next

Also what other people posted

House (1977)

The original Night of the Living Dead does so much with its limited resources, actors, and locations. I just rewatched it because of the recent Movie Mindset episode about it, and it’s still a gut punch of a movie. There’s a reason it’s the granddaddy of the zombie genre.

Annihilation, Event Horizon, Color out of Space, and on a lighter note: Glorious

Your namesake, Dumplings, was fun iirc. Lady makes age defying dumplings, hijinks ensue

Under the skin

In the most mainstream, I think that both Ari Aster and Jordan Peele are challenging the ruts the genre has gotten itself in to. Midsommar effected me for days.

A while back, I ran across Hagazussa. Its a difficult watch (content warning for extreme sexual violence and infanticide), but it also has that quality of reality unbound. Its slow, atmospheric, and terrible.

I rewatched The Descent last night. It’s very creepy and claustrophic.

The Descent (2005)

A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

To create the mood - there must have been some CGI and at times they surely were filming on sets but the direction, photography, and set design worked in concert. I really felt like I was underground with them.

My impression of horror as a genre is basically that the point is “here’s some bad stuff happening to some people. Sure does get the blood pumping to imagine it could happen to you!” Which is why I never watch horror because that just isn’t interesting or enjoyable for me at all. I like seeing good things happen to nice people who then live nice lives, as a general rule.

Am I missing something about horror or is that basically it?

I’ve enjoyed a little bit of horror, like certain Junji Ito works which seem less like “here’s some bad stuff happening to people” and more like “here’s some wacky shit happening to people and it’s unclear whether it could even be defined as good or bad all things considered” but even most of his are still “wow, this person’s life really sucks, wanna see it get even worse?”

Stalker may fit. It’s not a scary movie, but I think it could be considered existential horror - though not quite in a tragic or hopeless sense.