Every good horror movie needs a juicy premise to hook in audiences and generate scares. Some premises, like George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and John Carpenter’s Halloween, are so great that they become entire subgenres of horror.
The horror movies of the 2000s were a mixed bag. The Saw and Hostel franchises made “torture porn” the horror trend of the decade. But the ‘00s brought such strong horror premises as a found-footage kaiju movie and a carsploitation slasher about a murderous stunt driver.
10 The Strangers (2008)
In Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers, a young couple’s trip to a vacation home in the middle of nowhere is interrupted by a trio of masked criminals who break in. The script was inspired by a handful of eerie real-life events.
The home invasion thriller is nothing new, but this particular scenario is hauntingly plausible. The revelation that the couple is being terrorized simply “because you were home” makes The Strangers uniquely unsettling – just being at home could get someone killed.
9 Drag Me To Hell (2009)
Sam Raimi returned to the horror genre after completing his Spider-Man trilogy with the delightfully high-concept supernatural thriller Drag Me to Hell. Alison Lohman stars as a loan officer who finds herself cursed after denying a mortgage extension to a mysterious older lady.
The deceptively simplistic setup was the perfect vehicle for Raimi’s gonzo, gross-out vision of horror. Drag Me to Hell isn’t as groundbreaking as The Evil Dead, but it’s a fiercely effective paranormal horror gem with a doozy of a final twist.
8 Saw (2004)
“I want to play a game.” James Wan’s Saw may have inspired the slew of “torture porn” movies that marred 2000s horror cinema, but the original movie is a sharp, twisty thriller with minimal on-screen gore. The beauty of the premise is its simplicity: two strangers wake up chained to a filthy bathroom and have to figure out who put them there and what they want.
The grisly subject matter pushes the boundaries of the genre, but the mystery narrative is engaging and well-written, building to a genuinely shocking twist reveal.
7 Cloverfield (2008)
After the success of The Blair Witch Project, “found footage” became a subgenre of horror cinema that could be intense and engaging in the hands of great filmmakers, but painfully dull in the hands of lazy filmmakers. In the hands of Matt Reeves, Cloverfield is an example of the former.
Rather than focusing on a paranormal investigation like countless other found-footage movies, Cloverfield is a found-footage take on a kaiju movie in which a video of a going-away party becomes a chronicle of a giant monster’s attack on New York City.
6 Ichi The Killer (2001)
From Audition director Takashi Miike, Ichi the Killer follows a sadistic yakuza enforcer seeking his missing boss. Along the way, he encounters a psychotic murderer who may be capable of inflicting levels of physical agony that he’s only dreamed of.
This movie is wildly controversial for its cruel, violent content, but its thought-provoking premise makes it a self-aware study of sadomasochism as opposed to a standard horror movie basking in it.
5 Open Water (2003)
Based on true events, Open Water follows a young couple who get left behind on a scuba diving trip in shark-infested waters, thanks to an inaccurate headcount.
In the wake of Jaws’ blockbuster success, there have been a bunch of derivative shark thrillers. By taking inspiration from real events – and the behavior of real sharks – Open Water offers a subversively realistic take on a shark thriller. The sharks don’t attack right away; they ominously circle the protagonists for hours, occasionally taking little nips out of them.
4 Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead is primarily a spoof of zombie movies, but it also holds up as one of the genre’s greatest entries. The script masterfully transplants the classic Romero zombie movie structure into a suburban British setting to make a well-worn formula feel fresh.
Wright told The Guardian how he pitched the idea to his stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: “We should make our own zombie movie, a horror-comedy. It would be from the point of view of two bit-players, two idiots who were the last to know what was going on, after waking up hungover on a Sunday morning.”
3 Final Destination (2000)
At the beginning of Final Destination, a high schooler has a premonition of his plane crashing and gets off the plane along with a handful of freaked-out classmates. When the plane crashes, they think they’ve escaped death – but then they start being picked off by the Grim Reaper.
Teenagers being killed one by one is a pretty standard setup for a slasher, but the fact that the villain is Death itself makes Final Destination a wholly unique take on the genre.
2 Death Proof (2007)
Quentin Tarantino’s half of the double-feature Grindhouse, Death Proof, stars Kurt Russell as a sadistic stunt driver who uses his “death-proof” stunt car to kill young women in gruesome car wrecks.
While it’s generally considered to be one of Tarantino’s weakest films, Death Proof’s premise is the perfect intersection between a car chase movie and a slasher movie: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets Gone in 60 Seconds.
1 The Descent (2005)
Neil Marshall’s The Descent begins with a group of friends on an expedition of some uncharted caves who get stuck in a cave-in. Then, they discover a race of super-strong cave-dwelling mutants that want to mutilate and devour them.
The beauty of this premise is that a cave-in is terrifying enough – the protagonists are trapped underground with no hope of ever being saved – and that’s before the bloodthirsty monsters show up.
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