While it’s not a Halloween movie per se, 1973’s The Exorcist should top your spooky streaming list on the holiday — according to experts, it is the scariest movie ever made.
The website Study Finds pored through reviews of dozens of scary movies from film experts at 10 publications and websites, from Teen Vogue to Rolling Stone to Rotten Tomatoes, and William Friedkin‘s classic came out on top. The fans apparently think so, too: In 2018, a Vudu survey put the film on top of the viewers’ go-to movies for cinematic scares.
The Study Finds compilation put 1978 classic Halloween in second place, with Time Out saying of the Jamie Lee Curtis-led movie, “almost four decades later, it’s still close to flawless.”
2007’s Paranormal Activity was third on the list. The movie that launched a hit franchise was praised for delivering the scares on a low budget. The film “turns a simple haunted house story into 90 minutes of relentless suspense,” according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining ranked fourth, with the 1980 movie praised for both its scary visuals and also its rich symbolism, which is still being analyzed to this day.
Rounding out the top five was the 2014 sequel It Follows. The movie ushered in “the era of what is now called ‘elevated horror,"” according to Vulture, which called the movie “an unforgettable genre flick.”
Survey questions, methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.
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