35 Best Gothic Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked (original) (raw)
Updated Oct 13, 2025, 4:15 PM EDT
Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.
The horror genre is so prevalent within cinema that the term "horror movie" hardly needs a definition. They're movies that are scary. They aim to unnerve viewers. But within the horror genre are various sub-genres, and each tends to have unique ways in which they attempt to scare, frighten, and unsettle audiences who feel brave enough to sit in the dark and watch them for two hours (on average).
Gothic horror is one of the most significant of these horror sub-genres, and indeed has its roots in literature that existed long before film was invented. Gothic horror tends to be rich with metaphors, complex villains, and landscapes that are more often than not shrouded in darkness and fog. Gothic horror can deal with the supernatural, but not exclusively; sometimes, man can be the real monster, after all. Gothic horror succeeds in being subtly creepy and unsettling, with the following titles exemplifying the sub-genre well within the medium of cinema.
35 'Dracula: Prince of Darkness' (1966)
Image via Warner-Pathé Distributors
If you’re talking about gothic horror and you don’t mention Dracula a handful of times, you're probably not talking about gothic horror properly. This film, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, marked one of many times Christopher Lee played the frequently killed (and frequently resurrected) count, serving as an honestly underrated sequel to the original Christopher Lee Dracula movie in 1958, which itself was followed by The Brides of Dracula, though Lee wasn’t in that one.
Anyway, Dracula: Prince of Darkness has some people coming across the ruined castle of Count Dracula, and then a series of events happen which lead to him returning to life, and then chaos ensues. It’s a bit of a slow-burn, even by the standards of 1960s horror, but Dracula: Prince of Darkness does eventually deliver the goods, and Christopher Lee is always fun to watch in this iconic role of his.
34 'I Walked with a Zombie' (1943)
Tom Conway as Paul Holland, Christine Gordon as Jessica Holland, and Frances Dee as Betsy Connell looking concerned in "I Walked With a Zombie"
Image via RKO Radio Pictures
Back in 1943, zombies didn’t mean – or represent – what they do now, in a post-George A. Romero world, and instead were tied with voodoo-related horror movies. That’s the case for I Walked with a Zombie, so you'll be disappointed if you want undead or infected creatures going after a group of survivors or something like that… but if you want a quietly creepy horror/mystery movie set in the Caribbean, then maybe you're in the right place.
Its plot is also partially based on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which isn't something you'd expect, but it’s mixed in well enough and proves interesting. And I Walked with a Zombie has a strong atmosphere going for it, of course, which is basically a necessity when you're making something with gothic horror undertones, and the brief runtime (a nice and breezy 69 minutes) means it never runs the risk of getting boring, either.
33 'The Pit and the Pendulum' (1961)
Image via American International Pictures
Roger Corman didn’t always direct and produce the best movies, but he was prolific and influential, not to mention capable of churning out some pretty good stuff every now and then. The best horror film by Roger Corman is probably X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, but that’s not even close to gothic horror, so instead, here’s a shout-out to The Pit and the Pendulum, which is one of numerous Corman movies based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
The plot here concerns a man (John Kerr) traveling to Spain in the 1500s to inquire about the death of his sister, and since the whole scenario involves a man played by Vincent Price (always sinister and entertaining to watch), you know straight away things won’t end well. The Pit and the Pendulum is limited by its budget and production, but makes the most of what it has, with just enough creepiness – and a typically committed Vincent Price – making it all function pretty well.
32 'The Masque of Red Death' (1964)
Vincent Price as Prince Prospero The Masque of the Red Death
Image via American International Pictures
To keep the Corman and Price thing going for a bit, here’s The Masque of Red Death, which is the best collaboration between the two for sure. Price plays a prince during the outbreak of a plague who clashes with the peasants in the area, all of whom want to use his castle as a place to take refuge. Once more, it’s based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, too.
Like The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of Red Death does sometimes feel like a B-movie in scope and production, but there are also plenty of moments where it goes above and beyond what you'd expect to see in a B-grade film. Things just click here in a way that’s very compelling, and Vincent Price – though always good – is especially great here in the extravagant central role.
31 'The Black Cat' (1934)
Bela Lugosi in The Black Cat
Image via Universal Pictures
Speaking of Dracula, Bela Lugosi is best known for playing the Count in some old Universal Monster movies, but he had other roles within that series, and was further prolific in the horror genre outside the films with recognizable monsters. The Black Cat, for example, pairs him with the similarly iconic Boris Karloff, with Lugosi playing a doctor and Karloff an architect, both of whom have some kind of shady past together.
There’s also a married couple (David Manners and Julie Bishop) who get wrapped up in the whole thing, with The Black Cat emphasizing atmosphere and moving slowly but confidently while working as a mystery and horror film. It’s another quick and digestible one, being just over an hour long, but it gets the job done and holds up pretty well, considering it’s now more than nine decades old.
30 'Nosferatu' (2024)
Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) has great knowledge of the occult in Nosferatu (2024).
Image via Focus Features
There have been plenty of Nosferatu movies, with 2024’s Nosferatu being the most recent of the bunch. For better or worse, it’s what you'd expect a Robert Eggers-directed take on Nosferatu to be, taking the same core story from the 1922 original and doing a few interesting things with it… and that film, in itself, did familiar things with the original Dracula story/film.
Eggers knows how to make a movie that'll get under your skin, and it’s when Nosferatu is at its creepiest that it’s also at its best. You might get a feeling of déjà vu, at times, when watching it, but the feel of the film, and its overall atmosphere, make it worthwhile. It’s also just such a good story, at its core, that most horror fans will likely be fine getting a new take on Nosferatu every few decades or so.
29 'Vampyr' (1932)
Image via Vereinigte Star-Film
Though it’s called Vampyr, those expecting lots of in-your-face vampire-related scares might feel a little underwhelmed by this one, but it thankfully also has plenty else to offer. It’s also an impressive film considering its age. Even with it being more than nine decades old, there are sequences and individual shots here that still prove – perhaps timelessly – eerie.
As for what Vampyr is actually about, it largely centers on various strange supernatural occurrences happening in and around a small village, and an individual’s increasingly desperate attempts to get to the bottom of what’s behind it all. Vampyr keeps a feeling of mystery persistent throughout the film’s entire runtime, and it’s easy to view it as an overall quintessential gothic horror movie; one that likely influenced many in various ways throughout the following decades.
28 'Shadow of the Vampire' (2000)
Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire
Image Via Lions Gate Films
Though it’s not technically a Nosferatu movie, Shadow of the Vampire is linked to the original movie of that name, seeing as it’s a fictionalized story about the making of the iconic silent horror film. It’s also neat that Willem Dafoe stars in this as Max Schreck, who originally played Count Orlok, and then Dafoe went on to play a different role in the aforementioned 2024 version of Nosferatu.
In a sense, this movie about the making of an iconic gothic horror movie also works, in its own right, as a gothic horror movie, especially because it breaks from reality and has an inventive supernatural spin to things, growing more prominent as the film progresses. Tonally, it’s a bit of an odd film, but oddness can be a good thing to see every now and then, and Shadow of the Vampire is the right kind of odd.
27 'The Haunting of Julia' (1977)
Image via Astral Films
Sometimes known as Full Circle, The Haunting of Julia is a bit of an underrated gothic horror film, and though not a perfect one by any means, it has a decent amount to offer to those who like this kind of horror movie. Admittedly, you also have to be okay with things being bleak to appreciate this one, since it starts with the death of a child, and then deals with the grief the parents feel throughout the rest of the runtime.
As a drama, The Haunting of Julia is pretty effective, and then when it starts to lean into horror a little more in its second half, it’s also generally successful. There have been better horror movies that focus on grief, sure, but this one’s still very interesting, and boasts a compelling central performance by the ever-reliable Mia Farrow.
26 'Only Lovers Left Alive' (2013)
Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston hugging in Only Lovers Left Alive.
Image via Sony Pictures Classics
Jim Jarmusch is prominently known for his work within the arthouse sphere, but that doesn’t mean he’s against making a horror film every now and then. Sometimes, he misses a little, as was the case with The Dead Don’t Die, but then at other times, you get something like Only Lovers Left Alive, which ended up feeling like a genuinely fresh take on vampires and the gothic horror genre more broadly.
It's perhaps even more of a romantic drama than it is a full-on horror film, but Only Lovers Left Alive is still being counted here for present purposes because the lead characters are vampires. They’ve fallen in and out of love, and said love has lasted centuries, with the film thereby having interesting things to say about the nature of love, the way it has its ups and downs, and what it can really mean to tell someone you want to be with them “forever.”