12. to 9. Other to Mother

9. Psycho  

I've mostly tried to avoid the canonical favourites and given more recent entries a chance, but this is so classic, so iconic, so redolent of the genesis of slasher terror I couldn't ignore it. Dark, anxious, voyeuristic, and at times frightening in a way that's rarely if ever been equalled, here's creepy Norman Bates in all his Oedipal glory. Plus, uh, Janet Leigh, and "we're all in our own private traps." The first of many horror films to draw on notorious real-life serial killer, Ed Gein (Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs coming later), this set the bar extremely high. Then it decided to go in its own oddly claustrophobic and decidedly bittersweet direction. Goddamn it, this is one brilliant movie. The simultaneous birth of both slasher film and psychological horror.

10. Let the Right One In  

Sweden. Of all the films on my list, this is the one—had I been paranoid—I would have suspected as a personal dog whistle: externally cold, broad hints of inner warmth, unflinching, strangely loving, gender-confounding, drenched in a quiet yet creepy mood, and plain harrowing in its implications. I mean, in one sense, it's a story about a boy who's bullied and isolated who meets a girl who isn't what she seems, while the implied romanticism remains frozen beneath the (ice!) story that ultimately unfolds like icebergs slowly calving off from the greater mass. All of which, when you reassemble it, appears to comprise the bleakest of awful futures. Yeah, okay, and it's a vampire film. Sort of. Just watch it.

11. Funny Games  

I'm in the weird position of loving Michael Haneke's films yet loathing his judgmental attitude toward his audience. There are two versions of this film, both worthy contenders, and both filmed by Haneke (in 1997 and 2007), yet the "point" appears to be our insatiable lust for and expectations of vengeance, as dictated by some perceived tension between European art cinema and Hollywood convention. Whatever. Both films are worth our time, because aside from Haneke's moral hand-wringing, these films remain incredibly tense, visceral, violent, violating, and harrowing examples of home invasion horror, a la Straw Dogs, The Last House on the Left, and The Strangers. They are also elegant and beautiful in their way, juxtaposing the nihilistic immediacy of death metal with the baroque grace of Handel.

12. Oldboy 

South Korea. How do you begin to describe Park Chan-wook's singular, standout film? It's horror, sure; but it's also a thriller, a punishment and revenge tale, and a mystery. Who knew that, given the choice, protagonist Oh Dae-su would probably not choose to solve said mystery? It's a hyper-aware, brutally violent, unpredictable, anguished, mad, insectile, strange, appallingly human and damn near operatic horror film, and if you don't have some kind of emotional reaction to it, you are probably dead. In one sense, it's a seafood massacre. Hammerhead violence vies with live octopus consumption, while the eventual unfurling of the plot makes you wish you could recoil into your spiral shell until viral humans have danced their final dance and left the earth for good.