The 10 Most Obscure Horror Movies That Will Scare The Pants Off You

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A South Korean film, The Wailing combines classic tropes of Eastern myths with the expectations of more modern horror movies, creating an eclectic stew that is nearly perfect on Rotten Tomatoes with a 99 percent fresh rating. Following an unexplained murder in a rural village, suspicion and hysteria take root as the tension slowly escalates into a shocking conclusion. What’s real and what’s in the minds of a panicked group of people is a question that eventually gets solved, but it’s a bloody journey to get there.

Made for the equivalent of $8 million, The Wailing continued to prove that relatively low-budget horror movies could find an audience, reaching $52 million at the box office. Given some of the highest praise available in the genre, the film has been compared to The Exorcist with a twist.

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The Invitation is a small-scale horror movie focused on a genuine fear held by millions of people: dinner parties. Starring Logan Marshall-Green, John Carroll Lynch, Tammy Blanchard, and Michael Huisman, the film takes place in one house as a reunion of friends slowly unravels throughout an evening. Eden and her new husband, David, invited their old friends and Eden’s ex over for dinner, complete with simple games and plenty of drinks.

Director Karyn Kusama wanted the film, as all good horror movies are, to be a stand-in for an emotion that’s hard to describe and pin down but is present almost every day in anxiety. That tiny voice in the back of your head that says everyone is out to get you. There are no demons, no ghosts, no invulnerable serial killers, but The Invitation is a terrifying party.

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The Blackcoat’s Daughter starring Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, Lauren Holly, and James Remar, plays with time and audience expectations. This is one of those horror movies that it’s best to go in blind with no knowledge of where the mystery is going to go. All that can be said is after the first viewing, go back and see it again to realize that, unlike The Snowman, this film really does leave all the clues out front for the audience to figure out.

Distributed by the horror movie maestros at A24, The Blackcoat’s Daughter never had a wide release before debuting on DirectTV Cinema, but this is one film worth tracking down.

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A found footage horror film about a documentary crew following Alzheimer’s patients, The Taking of Deborah Logan stars Jill Larson, Anne Ramsay, and Michelle Ang. Arriving long after the found-footage horror movies craze had run its course, this film does the genre right. Though it was panned by some critics upon release as adding nothing new to the horror canon, time has been kind to it, and now it’s regarded as a terrifying cult favorite with directorial decisions that amplify the horror and leave audiences questioning what it was they just saw.

Another one of the horror movies on this list that had limited distribution, The Taking of Deborah Logan used to only be available from one website, before eventually getting a DVD release.

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Like most other horror movies on this list, The Honeymoon is a small production with a limited cast, essentially just Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway as newlyweds, with the scares coming from the small things. A missed word, a forgotten memory, nothing truly sinister but insidious in the implications. Another couple, also isolated in the Canadian woods, seems to be having strange issues as well, so what’s going on?

The Honeymoon is not one of those horror movies that rely on jump scares, and in fact, it’s not scary in the traditional sense. What it does do, is similar to The Invitation, by preying upon the very basic foundation of human anxiety for a film that’s uneasy, unsettling, and yet satisfying when the credits start to roll.

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An Irish horror film, The Canal focuses on Rupert Evans as David, a man investigating the mysterious haunting of his house from a murder in 1902. The discovery of one murder soon spirals into a rash of unsolved homicides that took place in the area, seeming to center on a nearby canal. As a video archivist, David’s solution is to document his environment using old photography equipment and video surveillance, which of course, results in some truly terrifying moments as he catches the supernatural.

If the photo scene in Insidious terrifies you, The Canal is cut from the same cloth. As a small-scale Irish production, like the other horror movies on this list, it wasn’t widely distributed and can be hard to find today, but for anyone craving an old-school haunting film done right, it’s worth seeking out.

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Another of the small-scale horror movies on this list, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, takes place in a morgue with the father-son coroners, played by Brian Cox and Emilie Hirsch. Tasked with finding out how a young woman died under mysterious circumstances, the pair work late into the night as strange things occur, from hallucinations to missing corpses. Though it takes place in a large room, the film is claustrophobic as it ratchets up the tension, finally reaching a crescendo just as the mystery is solved.

With gore, jump scares, and a few legitimately laugh-out-loud moments, it’s no wonder Stephen King compared it to one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Alien.

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The Innkeepers stars Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, and Kelly McGillis as the staff of an inn that’s shutting down, so they decide to document all the hauntings on the property, and in the spirit of all classic horror movies, everything goes wrong. Madeline, a bride that was heartbroken after being left at the alter and allegedly killed herself on the property, is the story they want to prove above all others. Complicating the efforts is a psychic in town for a convention, and another guest, an elderly man.

Made for under $1 million, The Innkeepers was shot on 35mm film and mostly shot on location at an actual inn in Connecticut.

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Found at the intersection of science fiction and horror movies, The Endless examines cults, following two brothers raised in one before breaking free, but now they can’t agree about the cult’s nature. When they find a strange videocassette that shows other cult members are still alive, the pair trek out to the old location, where they are greeted as if no time has passed.

The Endless has a larger cast than some of the other films on this list, as the cult members are the source of the scares in this one. A trend in modern horror movies is playing with the anxiety of group interactions and generational trauma, two themes that the movie explores in depth.

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The Devil’s Candy is one of the shortest horror movies on this list at only 80 minutes, but it’s also the best, telling the tale of a man named Raymond Smilie, played by the underrated Pruitt Taylor Vince, that blocks out the voices in his head by playing very loud rock music on his favorite guitar. It’s clear from the beginning that something is very wrong with Ray, but what’s shocking as the film unfolds is just how far he’ll go to appease a voice that may or may not only exist in his mind.

Starring Ethan Embry, Shiri Appleby, and Kiara Glasco as the unfortunate family that moves into Ray’s old home, The Devil’s Candy starts intense and ends the same way. Unlike the other horror movies on this list, it’s influenced not by social trauma and anxiety, but metal. And just like the music genre, it gets loud and gruesome.