The 5 Absolute Scariest Movies To Watch For Halloween

If you're looking for the absolute scariest movies to watch for this year's spooky season, there are some factors you really need to consider. How many times does the movie make you jump out of your seat? How many people die in the movie? How scary is the script? These factors are important when making a scary movie. And they should be equally important for the watcher who is picking the scariest films. After all, Halloween is just one night. So we'd better make that time count.

Fortunately, experts at VIP Grinders did all the leg work and came up with the list of scariest films out there. All of which should be at your spooky Halloween movie night. For this list, the experts gathered data and ranked scary movies based on very important elements. Including the number of jump scares, the number of fear-related words in the script, and the number of deaths in the film.

Related: Nevada Is Officially The Most Halloween-Obsessed State

In addition to the research, the data analysts also gathered information from Scary Meter. Which is a website that asks horror movie fans to rank movies based on their scary factors. Viewers are given a scale of one to 10 and asked to rank each film based on how scary, gory, and jumpy they are. The rankings were analyzed based on a search of fear-related keywords to come up with the absolute scariest movies in existence.

Before we get into the top five, here are the movies that were ranked at numbers six through ten in the same study.

#10 - The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

#9 - "The Cleansing Hour" (2019)

#8 - "[Rec] 2" (2009)

If you've seen the first Rec, you might be surprised to see this in the top 10. With 20 deaths and 19 jump scares, it definitely outdid the first film. You might want to check it out.

#7 - Host (2020)

Leave it up to high school kids to start a seance with a hired medium. The best part? It's online, which feels to real to all of us these days. This movie has a total of 20 jump scares and scored very high on Scary Meter's "creepy", "gory" and "jumpy" categories.

#6 - "Scream" (1996)

If you think those five are scary, wait until you see this list of the top five scariest movies of all time. You might want to turn the lights on...

You know any movie based on a Stephen King novel is going to scare the crap out of you. Not only is "It" a scary freaking movie, it's a classic. So it really should be on your scary movie list even if it wasn't in the top five. But with 23 jump scares and 31 deaths, it certainly earned its spot.

The fact that this film made the top five when it was made in an era without CGI is pretty telling. The story itself is going to make you sleep with one eye open for the next twenty years. It has a total of 27 jump scares and scored 8 out of 10 on both the 'creepy' and 'gory' Scary Meter. And that's all packed in just 90 minutes long. 

If you're looking for a truly terrifying horror film, any movie in the Evil Dead franchise will do. The 2013 installment includes 20 jump scares and a 'gory' score of 9.2 out of 10 on the Scary Meter. You might want to have an extra pair of pants around.

If you're going for a scary movie marathon, why not do a back-to-back Evil Dead one? Especially since both the 2013 and 1981 movies are in the top five scariest movies list. This one has even more jump scares than the 2013 one. You can't go wrong with either, but both would be even better.

Bet you were waiting for a traditional scary film like Poltergeist or Psycho to be number one on this list. Nope. If you want truly terrifying, you have to watch Voces. This Spanish horror film might just be the most terrifying thing you'll see this Halloween. Voces racked up a total of 27 jumps scares AND scored a 10 out of 10 on all three of the Scary Meter categories. Watch it, if you dare.