Ever See a Horror Movie That’s So Bad It’s Good? These Are the Best-Worst of Them.
For all the weirdos out there who want to watch something bad—but not so bad that it’s boring and not so good that it’s no longer fun.
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These days, there is no shortage of amazing horror movies out there. If you want your horror with a mix of cultural commentary, Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice has you covered. If you dig a good ol’ fashioned slasher with a high body count, you’ll love Evil Dead Rise. These films and many others have been described as elevated or prestige horror, taking an often under-appreciated genre to critical acclaim.
Sometimes your TikTok-addled brain can’t lock in enough to watch a good movie. What about those of us who take sick pleasure in watching something truly bad? I’m talking about movies that critics look down their noses at. But a bad scary movie can’t be just plain bad, because that’s boring. The best underrated horror films are the ones that are so bad that they’re memorable. They hit such depths of camp that they actually become masterpieces. These movies have special effects that are so ridiculous that you simply have to laugh, a plot so stupid that you don’t bother following it, and dialogue so damn cringey that you have to ruthlessly mock it.
This is also important: There’s nuance in the so bad it’s good scary movie. It can’t be flat-out bad like many of the Halloween sequels and not a campy cult classic like Evil Dead 2. This mystical, proverbial film is something that most people would cast aside as trash—but if you keep your mind open, you’ll discover more to it. So if you’re in the mood to throw popcorn at the screen and go on a wild ride, check out this list. Heckle away, people.
Jason X
I know what you’re thinking: How can Jason Voorhees come back again? I thought we’d sent him to hell in the last one?!? Well, the Friday the 13th franchise’s tenth installment goes where no Jason has gone before. He’s like a pair of Doc Martens, always coming back just when you least expect it. After you’ve killed him a million ways to Sunday, what’s left to do? Send him to space, of course!
It sounds ridiculous, unbelievable, and downright silly. And it is! The premise of this 2001 sequel is that Jason has been captured and held at a government research facility. But the immortal killer escapes when military commanders arrive to experiment on his ability to regenerate. Jason winds up cryogenically frozen; he’s discovered by a group of students in the year 2455. This all happens within the first twenty minutes. Turns out Jason is as much of a menace in space as he is at Camp Crystal Lake. With a lot of unhinged futuristic updates, Jason X is like an Alien movie meets Scooby-Doo. It’s worth watching just to see the high jinks he gets into on a spaceship.
Cursed
Rightfully named Cursed, this Wes Craven film suffered from producer interference and studio edits. But Craven persisted and made an altogether original and funny film about teen werewolves. Even though the director himself was disappointed with how the film turned out, looking back on the 2005 horror-comedy, we should appreciate his vision. Not to mention that the cast is as star-studded as it gets, featuring Jesse Eisenberg (pre-Zuckerberg casting), Christina Ricci at her scream-queen best, Judy Greer, Milo Ventimiglia, and even Lance Bass! Ricci and Eisenberg play siblings who cross paths with a monstrous creature that curses them to turn into werewolves. There are enough hilarious one-liners, bizarre wolf behavior, and teenage antics to keep this film on your spooky-season rotation.
Alligator
As a southerner, I’m partial to creature features that star my favorite swamp animal, the alligator. But Alligator has tons of merits besides its eponymous supersized antagonist. The story begins with a childhood event that is familiar to some—a pet is flushed down the toilet. In this case, it’s a baby alligator, and wouldn’t you know, it comes into contact with illegal experimental growth hormones that have been dumped into the sewer. Naturally, this turns the little gator into a thirty-six-foot-tall man-eating menace.
The best part of Alligator—besides the adorable alligator model that was created for the film—is the weird chemistry between the gator-hunting cop (Robert Forster) and the herpetologist (Robin Riker) who’s a gator expert. It’s a Woody Allen rom-com with a terrifying reptile thrown into the mix. It shouldn’t work, but it really does.
Saw VI
The many sequels of Saw have tried to reach the depraved heights of tension and dread of the original but usually end up flopping on the bathroom floor. Then Saw VI kicked the franchise back into gear. What makes this sequel stand out? This time, Jigsaw’s victims actually deserve the trials they must endure. A corrupt health-insurance executive who withholds coverage from desperate people has the bad luck of denying John Kramer. In doing so, he earns himself a starring role in Jigsaw’s new game. The formula may feel familiar, but thanks to the gnarly traps and earnest social commentary, this Saw sequel is a gem.
House II
House II is definitely one of those sequels where it does not matter if you haven’t seen the first one. In fact, it’s probably advisable that you don’t watch the original so that you don’t come to House II with any preconceived notions. Is this a haunted-house film, a B-movie, or a really bad comedy? In the land of So-Bad-It’s-Good, it can be all three and more!
House II follows a couple of yuppies as they move into an inherited house. The first thing they do? Dig up an ancestor buried in the backyard! Said great-great-grandfather is actually not dead—he’s undead. Plus, the house is home to various time portals, which will take you back to prehistoric times or Aztec civilizations. Just strap yourself in for the ride, because even the most discerning bad-horror-movie fan won’t guess where this one’s going.
Dead Silence
James Wan’s 2007 feature film, Dead Silence, is an unexpected follow-up to his success with 2004’s Saw. What did Wan do with that Saw goodwill? He made a movie about haunted puppets, of course! But this is no Slappy from Goosebumps. We watch Jamie Ashen as his life is torn apart by the arrival of a ventriloquist dummy that brutally murders his wife. This prompts Jamie to return to his extremely creepy hometown, where a gothic mystery unfolds. The secrets that haunt the town can be traced back to a dollmaker who handmade more than a hundred (!) dolls. Wow, lady—that might have been disturbing back in the day, but today it would be a booming side hustle on Etsy. Critics and horror fans alike have scoffed at Dead Silence as unoriginal and downright nonsensical, but its dedication to being a weirdo creepfest—with some truly unhinged plot twists—makes it worth a watch.
Idle Hands
Idle Hands is an underrated Halloween-themed comedy. Devon Sawa really amps up the charm and hilarity as a teenage boy whose right hand becomes possessed by evil. He struggles with his homicidal hand like he just graduated from the Evil Dead school of possessed body parts. This movie is stuffed to the seams with zany bits, such as a lifesaving bong, zombie Seth Green microwaving a frozen burrito, and the Offspring’s Dexter Holland getting scalped while playing at a high school dance. Idle Hands may have bombed at the box office, but it’s a horror comedy that’s genuinely amusing and creative—with quality (and fun!) effects.
Society
Ever wonder if your family is secretly a bunch of aliens who want to feast on your insides? You have a lot in common with the protagonist of this movie! Both ambitious and disgusting, it has some serious social commentary, exploring classism, corruption, and the all-consuming exploitation of the elite. But Society also has lots of crazy, cool body horror...and a finale that might make you a bit queasy.
House of Wax
This underrated film was written by the same people who penned The Conjuring. House of Wax features a group of high school friends about to go their separate ways after graduating. When their car breaks down, they follow a stranger to a nearby ghost town to buy auto parts. There they find a set of twins with sinister intentions—and a wax museum that’s a little too lifelike. I’ve always had a fear of wax museums, and this movie does not hold back on exploiting the inherent creepiness of wax figures. Although House of Wax was dismissed by many, especially for Paris Hilton’s performance, it's a creative story with truly scary and interesting set pieces.
Castle Freak
As you may have guessed from the title: Yes, there is a castle and, yes, there is definitely a freak as well. This may very well be my favorite entry on this list. From the twisted mind of Stuart Gordon, who directed the cult classic Re-Animator, comes Castle Freak, which also stars Jeffrey Combs. Here Combs plays an alcohol-addicted, grieving father who has inherited a twelfth-century castle that he moves his wife and daughter into. Things get freaky as the family is stalked by the freak in the castle, and people start dying and freaking out. How many times can I say freak in this blurb? If you’re into scary castles, dark family secrets, and an absolutely manic Jeffrey Combs, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this bizarre gothic tale.
Frankenhooker
What’s Frankenhooker, you ask? Why, it’s a Frankenstein hooker! This movie starts off innocently enough, with a young man who has failed out of medical school, is really into mad science, and invents a remote-controlled lawnmower.
Unfortunately, the lawnmower mows down his beloved girlfriend. The grief kind of goes to the guy’s head! Er, to her head as well, since he’s storing it in some sort of cranium-preserving juice. The logical next thing to do is find a prostitute whose body is suitable for her dead head so that he can resurrect his girlfriend Frankenstein-style, right?
The Boy
The Boy was easily brushed off, with critics calling it formulaic and forgettable. If you ask me, I say the story’s twists and turns have a pretty neat payoff at the end. The Walking Dead's Lauren Cohan takes her turn as a scream queen, playing a young woman escaping from an abusive relationship who takes a job as a nanny...to a doll that an older couple treat as their deceased son. Of course, the film dives into the haunted-doll trope for some scares, but the nanny starts bonding with the haunted toy. The actual big bad turns out not to be some unholy doll but something much more human.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Sure, this “teens did something bad and get hunted down by a killer” movie might have been turned into the butt of many jokes. Give it another watch. You’ll find that I Know What You Did Last Summer is full of legit suspense, tense chase scenes, and great dynamics between the characters. Plus, Jennifer Love-Hewitt’s iconic “What are you waiting for, huh???” scene still hits quite hard today.
Final Destination (The Whole Series)
Yes, I do mean all five movies! Although the Final Destination franchise never reaches the heights of other prestigious slasher movies like Scream and Halloween, it has left an undeniable imprint on the horror genre. These movies were quickly dismissed as uninspired. But if you sit through any Final Destination flick, you'll be entertained by the endless supply of over-the-top, campy death scenes and some pretty impressive plot twists.
Put on a marathon of all the sequels, which are on HBO Max, and hype yourself up about how you’d totally cheat death in these insane scenarios.
C.H.U.D.
This one’s a no-brainer. C.H.U.D. stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. As if the subway could get any scarier, now you can picture C.H.U.D. chasing you through the tunnels. The premise: What if the government dumped toxic waste into the sewers and that toxic waste turned homeless people forced to live underground into mutants craving human flesh? In our messed-up world, this doesn’t seem that unbelievable. While the ghouls in this film are more silly than scary, C.H.U.D. is a creature feature everyone should see at least once.
The Visit
This M. Night Shyamalan flick is a strange one, even for M. Night Shyamalan. Is The Visit a comedy? Is it a cautionary tale about the effects of aging? Is it a thoughtful reflection on abandonment? It might be all of that, sure! But most important, it's so bad that it's good. The frights here involve a lot of adult diapers, naked grandmas, and dirty child-sized ovens. If you can stomach some gross-out poopy scares, you’ll be in for a laugh-out-loud, crazy-ass time.
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
Is it feminist for a female director to shoot a slasher movie where women get violently butchered and are topless half the time? That’s tough to say. But it does make for a surprisingly fresh entry in the slasher genre. There’s a driller killer on the loose on the eve of a slumber party. From there, we get plenty of visual gags, creative editing, and even girls eating cold pizza from a dead pizza guy. If you want your gnarly kills to be paired with a side of jokes, fire this one up on your next movie night.
Motel Hell
After all the blood-splattering in seventies exploitation movies, you’d think the eighties would be different. Nope. Motel Hell takes B-movie tropes head-on, making for a hell of a strange story. Vincent and Ida, our antagonists, create sausage out of human meat that they “harvest” in their garden. If that doesn’t already sound wild enough for you, there’s a fight scene at the end that’ll make your jaw drop.
Leprechaun in the Hood
Ever thought that Ice-T should be in a movie with a rapping leprechaun on a killing spree? That’s no longer a fever dream—it’s a reality. Want to see a leprechaun murder someone with an Afro pick and groupie girls smoke four-leaf-clover weed? You’re in luck. It’s full of laughs, terrible repetitive raps, and sincere protagonists you can root for.
Troll
Do you love Gremlins? If so, you’ll hate Troll. It has weird little monsters hiding in laundry rooms, ratburgers, and two protagonists named Harry Potter. (Did J.K. Rowling watch this movie?) Things get downright trippy in this movie about a family who moves into an apartment building...which is also a passageway into an alternate troll universe. You'll enjoy watching a possessed little girl imbued with supernatural troll strength beat up her older brother like he’s a sack of flour! Oh, and there’s a truly strange cameo from Julia Louis-Dreyfus in her first-ever film role.
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