Best Horror Anthology Movies
The anthology is horror's tasting menu: five stories, five chances at a perfect sting, and a wraparound that always knows more than it says. The format is as old as Dead of Night and as current as the V/H/S series.
This list crosses the canon: EC Comics energy, Amicus gothics, Asian extremity and found-footage tapes that should never be played.
Watch these free right now
Short-form fear, feature-length dread
Creepshow remains the format's high mark because Romero and King loved the pulp they were imitating: every segment lands its EC Comics sting. Trick 'r Treat proved the stories could interlock into something bigger, and Kwaidan proved the form could be gorgeous.
As a short-film platform, we hold anthology cinema close: it is the feature-length argument for what a story can do in twenty minutes.
The films on this list
Creepshow 1982
Romero and King honour EC Comics instead of parodying it: panel wipes, saturated gels, five stings that all land. The Crate is the best segment, and King's own mossy hillbilly turn is the worst-best thing here.
Black Sabbath 1963
Bava's three-panel gothic, and the ranking is not controversial: The Drop of Water is one of the great colour ghost sequences, all green light and a dead woman's grin. Karloff's Wurdalak brings the family rot.
Dead of Night 1945
The film that invented the form's grammar, and its wraparound is still the best ever written: an architect trapped in a dream that keeps restarting. Cavalcanti's ventriloquist segment, Michael Redgrave unravelling, is the standout.
Tales from the Crypt 1972
Amicus at its most efficient: five morality tales and Ralph Richardson's Crypt Keeper handing down sentences. And All Through the House is the famous one, but Peter Cushing's Poetic Justice is the segment that hurts.
Three... Extremes 2004
Three directors, three registers, one clear winner: Fruit Chan's Dumplings turns rejuvenation into a supply chain and Bai Ling plays the cook as a sales rep. Miike's Box is the most beautiful, Park's Cut the most theatrical.
Kwaidan 1965
Kobayashi shoots ghost stories as painted theatre: hand-made skies, Takemitsu's score built out of silence and wood. Hoichi the Earless is the summit, a blind musician performing for a drowned army in a graveyard.
Tales from the Hood 1995
Cundieff aims the EC template at American racism: police murder, domestic abuse, a senator and the dolls of the enslaved. Boys Do Get Bruised lands hardest, and Clarence Williams III's mortician is a great host.
V/H/S 2012
The one that made found footage an anthology device, each tape a different excuse for a camera. Bruckner's Amateur Night is why people remember it; the Tape 56 wraparound is why people complain.
Body Bags 1993
Made for television and worth it for one reason: Carpenter as a cackling coroner in the wraparound, plainly having the best night of his career. Hooper's Eye segment with Mark Hamill is the strongest story.
Cat's Eye 1985
King adapting his own three stories with a stray cat doing the stitching. Quitters Inc., James Woods tortured off cigarettes by a mob agency, is the good one; the troll finale is where the film stops pretending to be for adults.
The Mortuary Collection 2020
The rare anthology where the wraparound is the best segment: Clancy Brown's mortician tells his stories in a house designed like a Gorey drawing, and the frame turns out to have a story of its own.
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie 1990
The feature spin-off, held together by Deborah Harry as a suburban cannibal fattening up her captive storyteller. Cat from Hell, Romero adapting King, is the mean one; Lover's Vow is the one that stays.
Southbound 2015
The anthology as a loop: five stories on one desert highway, each handing off mid-motion so there is no wraparound at all. Bruckner's The Accident, an amateur surgery guided by a phone dispatcher, is unbearable in the right way.
Holidays 2016
Eight holidays, eight directors, and the spread you would expect. Nicholas McCarthy's Easter is the keeper, a child meeting a crucified rabbit-Christ hybrid; Kevin Smith's Halloween is the one to skip without guilt.
V/H/S/2 2013
Better than the first because it commits to gimmick cameras: a GoPro zombie outbreak, an eye implant that sees the dead. Safe Haven, Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto inside an Indonesian cult compound, is the peak of either film.
Scare Package 2019
Horror comedy about horror tropes, run out of Rad Chad's video store, which is both the wraparound and the thesis. Emily Hagins's Cold Open, about the guy whose job is setting up the tropes, is the smartest thing in it.
Twilight Zone: The Movie 1983
George Miller's Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, John Lithgow sweating through a fuselage, is the reason to watch; Spielberg's segment is the reason to fast-forward. Landis's prologue is inseparable from the deaths it caused on set.
The ABCs of Death 2013
Twenty-six directors, one letter each, and a hit rate exactly as brutal as that sounds. Sarmiento's D is for Dogfight is genuinely beautiful, Cattet and Forzani's O is for Orgasm is pure Amer, and the rest is a lottery.
ABCs of Death 2 2014
The sequel curates harder and it shows: fewer dares, more finished shorts. Robert Morgan's stop-motion D is for Deloused is the nightmare that sticks, and Bustillo and Maury's X is for Xylophone is the cruelest gag.
A Christmas Horror Story 2015
Four Christmas stories braided rather than stacked, with William Shatner drinking his way through a radio shift as the connective tissue. Santa fighting zombie elves is the quoted bit; the changeling story is the one that works.
More shorts to watch
