Top 10 Horror Movies for People Too Scared to Watch Horror Movies

If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t have a great tolerance for horror movies. Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes are maybe the limit of your horror threshold, and even then, that Groundskeeper Willie episode traumatized you for weeks. While other kids might have been unsettled by the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Fantasia, you couldn’t get past the dinosaur part.

And you know what? Eleven months out of twelve, you’re fine with that. You don’t like scary movies, and you don’t watch them. Simple as that.

But then October comes around. The month that all your friends insist on getting together and watching scary films. Films with words like “Nightmare of” and “They Came From” in the title. Films that have vicious murderers and possessed demons and dolls that collect body parts so that they can become human. Needless to say, films you’d rather avoid.

For those of you who don’t want to spend October pretending to be sick to avoid these get-togethers, here are a list of some horror movies you can suggest to your group of friends. These are movies that technically count as horror, yet are tame enough that even the most milquetoast of viewers will be able to stomach them… for the most part.

Note: It’s hard to get people to completely agree what constitutes a proper horror film, so for this list I’m going off of films that are listed as “horror” on IMDB. It’s also for this reason you won’t find some other seemingly obvious choices like Nightmare Before Christmas, Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Casper, or Hocus Pocus (none of them are listed as horror).

10. The Strangers (2008)

The Strangers stars Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple who are staying in a vacation home that becomes the site of a deadly home invasion. As scary as that sounds, the film is more creepy than terrifying, as the invaders seem to be more concerned with toying with the couple than the ultra violence. It’s also a noteworthy horror film because the main characters are refreshingly sensible and resourceful. They often behave in believable ways – even going so far as spending much of the night with their back to the wall and a shotgun pointed to the one entrance to the room.

Ultimately, the movie probably won’t terrify you, but it WILL make you uncomfortable, especially if you’re going to spend the rest of the night in a house by yourself.

Cover your eyes moments: There’s an I-think-the-person-I’m-hiding-from-is-gone-I’ll-just-peek-my-head-out-oh-no-there-he-is scare near the end of the film, and the final scene isn’t particularly pleasant.

 

9. Gremlins 2 The New Batch (1990)

You’re probably familiar with the concept: adorable fuzzy creatures turn into vicious monsters and cause mayhem and destruction. While the first movie was a comedy for the most part, it still had some very dark moments (including Phoebe Cates’ monologue about finding her father’s rotting corpse after he fell and broke his neck climbing down the family’s chimney dressed as Santa Claus).

Not so with the sequel. The gremlins in this film are more madcap than murderous. In The New Batch, the movie essentially became a parody of itself, lampooning not only its concept but the very nature of sequels and franchises. It’s a film that’s not afraid to push its ridiculousness to eleven, culminating in a scene where the gremlins break the projection booth the movie itself is being shown on, and end up confronting Hulk Hogan (in the VHS version, they engage in a shootout with John Wayne).

Cover your eyes moments: Very few. A jump scare here and there. One gremlin gets put through a document shredder. Yuck.

 

8. Scream (1996)

Like Cabin in the Woods (which is a smidge too scary to make it to this list), Scream is a film that is a genre satire that simultaneously celebrates the genre it’s satirizing. It pokes fun at many of the conventions of the slasher film, while still being legitimately scary. That being said, the violence rarely gets out of hand, and you’ll spend more time being amused than disturbed. As a bonus, if you’ve seen the film Scary Movie, that film pretty much copied Scream’s entire plot while claiming to be a parody (which is kind of bullshit, since Scream itself was a parody), so you won’t have any unpleasant surprises.

Cover your eyes moments: While most of the violence is pretty tame, the opening scene is comparatively gory. After that you’re pretty much in the clear.

 

7. Zombieland (2009)

Even though Zombieland takes place in a world overrun by the walking dead, its focus on the relationships between the quirky main characters make this film feel less like 28 Days Later and more like Little Miss Sunshine. The main characters all have such fun chemistry and you’ll probably be too delighted to remember to be scared. Also, there’s a great cameo in the film that’s probably already been spoiled for you by now, but it’s worth watching for that alone.

Cover your eyes moments: There’s some gore in the opening scene, but it’s brief. The scene where Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg) reminisces about his first encounter with a zombie in his dorm may be too intense for some, and might be a good time to excuse yourself for a bathroom break.

 

6. Session 9 (2001)

Session 9 is about a cleaning crew tasked with cleaning out the asbestos from an abandoned insane asylum. As they delve deeper into the asylum’s depths, they learn more and more about some of the patients’ darker secrets, tensions among the group begin to fray, especially when some of the members start disappearing.

This is a movie that deals with some disturbing subject matter to be sure, but for the most part opts to be implicit rather than explicit. The darkest moments are always off screen or implied. It’s more like listening to a scary book on tape. Creepy, but never terrifying.

Cover your eyes moments: Very little. Some brief violence towards the end that’s definitely unnerving. It’s not quite in-your-face gore, but you still might want to turn away.

 

5. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

A send-up of the “crazed hillbillies pick off co-eds one by one” horror sub-genre, Tucker and Dale are two loveable hillbillies who just bought their vacation home. Unfortunately, things get out of hand once they encounter a group of young adults on a camping trip, and the co-eds let their fears get the better of them. Pretty soon, bodies start piling up around the oblivious duo faster than you can say “the hills have eyes”.

Cover your eyes moments: For all the violent deaths (and they can be pretty violent), its light comedic tones keep the film from ever being frightening. If you can handle the more violent deaths in Monty Python movies, you can probably handle this one.

 

4. Army of Darkness (1992)

Like the Gremlins films, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead sequel embraced the absurd and veered away from the horrific and towards the comedic. Army of Darkness, the third entry in the series, veered even further, to the point that it’s barely recognizable as the same series. It’s more a dark fantasy film than a horror film. If you cringe, it’ll be more likely from the over-the-top dialogue and one-liners than from any scare.

Cover your eyes moments: A jump scare when someone turns out to not be dead, and the main villain’s face is gross but not horrific (think a particularly ugly Uruk-Hai).

 

3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, alien spores drift to Earth and begin the slow process of taking over the world. Their method? Absorbing human DNA, then growing into clones of people as they sleep.

Though there are plenty of aliens-invade-Earth-by-looking-just-like-us films, the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is probably your best bet for a movie in the genre that’s scary without being too scary.

While some may prefer the original 1956 version, the 1978 remake has Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, AND Leonard Nimoy, making it far superior by default. Whichever version you prefer, I think we can all agree that the Nicole Kidman remake The Invasion is best avoided. Not because it’s scary. It’s just not very good.

Cover your eyes moments: There’s a (brief) moment of violence when Donald Sutherland destroys a half-formed pod person with a shovel. The revelation of what happens to people after they’re “copied” isn’t terrifying, but it’s not very pleasant, either.

 

2. Let the Right One In (2008)

The story of an unsettling relationship between a lonely young boy and his new neighbour, a young girl who is revealed to be a vampire. It’s a very dark film to be sure, but worry not. The film is more unsettling than terrifying, the horror being in its disturbing themes. Director Tomas Alfredson sets a very slow and methodical pace, so that the blood, scares, and mayhem is few and far between (it’s got about as much violence and gore as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has action scenes). It’s a film that will stay with you – it just won’t scare you.

Cover your eyes moments: Most of the violence is just out of view, though there’s a glimpse of someone whose face has been very badly burnt with acid.

 

1. Alien (1979)

Alien is perhaps the holy grail of horror films for people who hate horror, in that over the past 35 years it’s held up in pretty much every way except for being scary. The setting and atmosphere? Still amazing. The monster design? Still one of the best of all time. The scares? Meh.

In case you’re somehow unfamiliar with the film, Alien takes place on a space vessel Nostromo. Its crew members investigate a distress call on an uncharted planet and end up bringing an alien life form into space with them – one that begins picking them off one by one.

Alien is a monster movie that’s been copied so many times by lesser films, anyone watching this film these days will be able to spot the scares coming from a mile away. Still, it’s absolutely worth watching for the craft and atmosphere alone, and you might even get a cool plot twist or two.

Cover your eyes moments: The violence in this film is mostly too brief to be terrifying (a quick cut of blood here and there), but there are a few jump scares, pretty much all involving the cat, Jonesie. Also, um, when John Hurt starts having stomach aches you might want to turn away until the screaming stops.

 

And there you have it. Hopefully by now you’ve been able to prove to your friends that you’re not too scared to enjoy a horror movie (though if they’re really your friends, they’ll accept you for who you are). If you were able to handle these ten relatively tame horror films, and are looking to inch a little deeper into the horror genre, movies like The Thing, Cabin in the Woods, and Shaun of the Dead are all worth a watch.