The best jump scare movies are the ones that don’t feel cheap to the audience, building up each scenario carefully and methodically over long periods of time to earn the scare, so to speak.
It Follows (2014)
Available to stream on Netflix
It Follows is a high-concept horror movie that’s driven by very simple–yet very effective–scares. The premise is that a curse transmitted through sexual intercourse dooms a person to be followed for the rest of their lives by a slow-moving, but constantly-pursuing, entity that will kill them when it catches up to them.
The best jump scare movies have a never-ending sense of unease to them and, like the main character, the audience never feels safe from this petrifying monster as it can take the form of anyone and appear at just about any moment.
Sinister (2012)
Available to stream on Peacock
An experiment conducted in 2020 found that Sinister was the scariest horror movie of all time due to its ability to raise the heart rate of viewers, and it’s fairly easy to why that was the case.
The plot sees an author discover a box of old home movies in the attic of his new home that show various gruesome murders. As the audience is forced to watch each of the movies with him, and unravel the disturbing mystery behind them, it becomes impossible to look away from the pulse-pounding horror on display.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
Paranormal Activity centers on a young couple who are haunted by a supernatural presence in their home. In an attempt to capture the haunting on film, they set up cameras to document the strange occurrences.
Grainy home video footage might seem like it would minimize the impact of a horror movie, but it actually does the opposite as the audience is always looking out for the tiniest movement or listening out for the smallest noise right before the movie delivers a loud shock out of nowhere.
The Conjuring (2013)
Available to stream on HBO Max
The Conjuring is a 2013 supernatural horror film that’s deeply chilling despite its relative simplicity. After a family is terrorized by a dark entity in their secluded Rhode Island home, they look to paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren to shed some light on what they’re dealing with.
While it may not be much of a unique storyline in terms of horror movies, there’s a lot of creativity behind each shock, with each sudden appearance of a ghostly figure outdoing the last.
Creep (2014)
Creep is a found footage horror film that shows the footage of a videographer named Aaron who agrees to work for Josef, a terminally ill man who says that he wants to make a series of videos for his unborn son.
As their day of filming progresses though, Josef becomes increasingly unsettling in his behavior, and it soon becomes clear that his main aim is scare Aaron, whose perspective the viewer is always forced to look through.
Hush (2016)
Total silence makes jump scares in horror movies all the more frightening, which Hush capitalizes on to the extreme as the film follows a deaf woman who finds herself being hunted like prey in the middle of nowhere by a masked killer.
There are several times when the main character remains completely oblivious to the fact that the killer is right behind her but tenser still are the moments when she enacts her plans to fight back, with the audience never quite knowing where the movie is going to go next.
The Babadook (2014)
Available to stream on Pluto TV, Shudder, and AMC+
The Babadook’s story may seem simple enough at first: a widowed mother named Amelia reads a mysterious pop-up storybook called Mister Babadook to her son, who soon becomes convinced that Mister Babadook is real, with the eerie figure invading their lives.
As the movie develops, however, it becomes clear that the true horror lies within Amelia’s own subconscious as her struggles with her grief and her trials as a single parent begin to overwhelm her. It’s true psychological horror that forces Amelia, and the audience along with her, to face horrific thoughts that burst into her life at the worst–and sometimes most unexpected–moments.
Insidious (2010)
Insidious, directed by James Wan, is the first installment in the Insidious franchise and the third in terms of series chronology. In the film, a couples’ son falls into a coma and becomes a vessel for ghosts who want to inhabit his body.
Things get progressively darker and darker throughout the plot, and the unexpected twists and turns, particularly at the end, guarantee non-stop shocks until the credits roll.
Scream (1996)
Available to stream on Paramount+
Scream is both a seminal slasher film and one of the best jump scare horror movies ever made. The movie follows the life of high school student Sidney Prescott as she becomes the target of an elusive masked killer.
Though effectively a parody of the slasher genre, Scream won over horror movie fans by analyzing and subverting tropes like jump scares rather than just making fun of them or recreating them. As a result, even seasoned horror fans can be left clueless as to what’s going to happen next.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Silence makes jump scares all the more effective, and few horror movies are as quiet as A Quiet Place. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the plot revolves around a family coping with life now that humanity is constantly hunted by alien creatures that hunt by sound. Any sound the family makes, however small, can be detected by the creatures from great distances, so their silence is crucial to their survival.
As all horror enthusiasts know, the secret to a good jump scare is tension, and this movie is positively fraught with it.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Available to stream on Pluto TV, HBO Max, Peacock, Hulu, and Paramount+
The Blair Witch Project tells the fictional story of three student filmmakers who set out on a hiking expedition to film a documentary about a rural legend known as the Blair Witch.
Like most many of the best horror movies of all time, the constant feeling of dread throughout is what really primes the viewers for a good jump scare. Whether it’s the snapping of a twig in the darkness or an unexpected scream, viewers of the film become just as hyper-sensitive as the characters.
Brightburn (2019)
Available to stream on fuboTV
Exploring the idea of an evil Superman-type figure, Brightburn not only comes with an exciting and original premise, but it comes with a hefty collection of jump scares as well, not to mention one of the highest horror movie kill counts of all time.
The movie’s villain has no need for machetes, hatchets, or elaborate traps to bring the terror, all he needs is a well-aimed gaze. Mighty and merciless, Brightburn is certainly one superhero that won’t be joining the Avengers Initiative any time soon and can offer a unique kind of scare to fans of the MCU or DCEU.
Evil Dead II (1987)
Available to stream on MovieSphere
When it comes to jump scares, there are few who rack up the numbers as often or as much as the legendary Sam Raimi. With his Evil Dead series, Raimi effectively became the undisputed king of intense and in-your-face horror movies.
While his first film in the series was revolutionary for the horror genre, it’s the second one that truly earns its place as one of the best jump scare movies ever. Though it’s generally remembered for its wild sense of humor, Evil Dead II never forgets that it’s a horror movie first.
Drag Me To Hell (2009)
After the huge mainstream success of his Spider-Man movies, Sam Raimi returned to his roots and delivered up one of the most acclaimed horror movies of the past 20 years with Drag Me To Hell, a story about a woman who is cursed to be tormented by a demon for 3 days before it comes to take her to Hell.
The sound design in the movie goes a long way in making each jump scare powerful enough to really rattle the audience, especially as the demon remains mostly unseen throughout, but its malevolent presence is still felt very strongly.
It (2017)
Available to stream on HBO Max and Netflix
Adapted from Stephen King’s iconic novel if the same name, It depicts the horrifying ordeal of a group of children living in a small town in Maine during the 1980s as they are mercilessly terrorized by a murderous entity that appears in the form of a clown named Pennywise.
Pennywise’s appearances throughout the movie in his many unsettling forms put the viewer constantly on edge, with the opening scene establishing that nobody is safe from this horror movie monster.
