Top 10 Horror Films Directed by Women

Since the dawn of storytelling, women have always played an important role in shaping how narratives are told, especially in the horror genre. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley famously penned, as a teenager mind you, one of the most iconic literary classics of all time, Frankenstein (1818). Lois Weber, the godmother of American cinema, changed the way films were made with her gripping 1913 film, Suspense, pioneering techniques that would later be used by German Expressionist directors in the 1920s with films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. In the 1970s, Debra Hill would change the face of horror forever by co-creating, along with John Carpenter, one of the most iconic film heroes of all time, Laurie Strode (Halloween).

In modern horror cinema, women have been creating nonstop, lending their natural perspective and artistic vision to the genre in a diverse swath of ways. From fun horror comedies like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Fran Rubel Kuzui) to gripping bloody thrillers like American Psycho (Mary Harron) to campy supernatural flicks like Pet Sematary (Mary Lambert), women filmmakers have left a steady, deep footprint in horror. So, in the spirit of celebrating that footprint, let’s take a look at some of best that women-directed horror has to offer. Enjoy!

The Babadook (2014)

Dir. Jennifer Kent

In Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s film debut, she explores what can truly happen when a mother’s grief and loss are left undealt with. Combine that with an emotionally distraught young child and a monster from a disturbing children’s book, and there you have The Babadook. The film centers around Amelia (Essie Davis), whose husband died violently in a car crash the day their son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman) was born. Now Samuel is six, and he’s a real pain in the ass, displaying behavior of an erratic and violent nature. At this point, Amelia is exhausted, concerned, in a way loving but resentful. After Samuel becomes obsessed with the monster in a creepy pop-up book titled Mister Babadook, events start to unfold that break the barrier between psychological and supernatural. In many ways it feels like an old horror movie, which I love, combining the moody aesthetics of 1920s gothic fantasies with the deliberate slow-burn pacing of 1970s thrillers.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Essie Davis’ powerful lead performance as Amelia
• The super unique, creepy and effective sound design
• The look and feel of the film, from cinematography to lighting to color (Kent cited Vampyr, Carnival of Souls and The Shining and as some of her main influences for The Babadook)

When this movie came out, William Friedkin said he had “never seen a more terrifying film.” While I don’t share quite the same sentiment, I do happily give this movie: 4 / 5 Pop-up Books

Blood Diner (1987)

Dir. Jackie Kong

Blood Diner is insane. Jackie Kong’s schlocky cult horror comedy is dripping with ridiculous lines, goofy characters, narrative non sequiturs and hearty helpings of gory makeup effects. It’s a loose remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1963 drive-in shocker, Blood Feast, and was initially conceived to be a sequel to that film. The film centers around two brothers aptly named Michael and George Tutman (Rick Burks and Carl Crew, respectively) who are coerced by their dead uncle into resurrecting an ancient Lumerian goddess named Sheetar. They also run a ‘50s-themed diner in Los Angeles. They kill various women in the neighborhood, steal their body parts and prepare a city-wide “blood buffet” in order to call forth Sheetar. What ensues is a cavalcade of carnage and mayhem, finishing off with a truly batshit rock n’ roll finale. It’s trash done right, and it’s fantastic.

HIGHLIGHTS

• A heckling brain in a jar who tries, somehow, to look up people’s skirts
• A rival diner owner whose only regular customer is a ventriloquist dummy
• A wrestling match between one of the Tutman brothers and a guy named Little Jimmy Hitler (he looks exactly how you think he would)

One of my favorite aspects of the movie, aside from the gross-out wackiness, is its delightfully ham-fisted commentary on Los Angeles’ obsession with health food and vegetarianism in the 1980s. I give this movie: 3 / 5 Perverted Killer Brains

Ghostwatch (1992)

Dir. Lesley Manning

Ghostwatch was a British television special that aired on the evening of Halloween, 1992. Conceived and written by Stephen Volk, the film was presented as a 90-minute live television event, despite having been filmed weeks earlier. The format bounces between a “live” documentary film crew following a family in a house, reportedly haunted, and a news studio featuring interviews and discussions regarding the spiritual and supernatural. The studio is even equipped with a call center to take viewer calls (even though everything was pre-recorded). Needless to say, things in the house go awry, then start to affect the studio in unexpected ways. The presenter in the studio was English broadcaster Michael Parkinson, and the correspondent in the field was children’s television personality, Sarah Greene. Mind you, these were two huge TV icons in the U.K. Imagine if, in the ‘90s, Johnny Carson and Shari Lewis did a live broadcast and got attacked, rather convincingly, by malevolent unseen forces. It would’ve been confusing and terrifying, and that’s exactly how a lot of viewers of Ghostwatch felt. The BBC was bombarded with tons of angry and hysterical calls from British viewers after it aired. Such a phenomenon would be near impossible to pull off today, so it’s worth appreciating such a culturally effective piece of film.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Lesley Manning’s brilliant camera direction and artistic choices regarding supernatural depictions
• Adults reciting children’s nursery rhymes in a really unsettling way
• The twisty grand finale. It’s great.

Despite the cult following Ghostwatch gained throughout the years, the BBC has never aired the special since its premiere and even placed a decade-long ban on its television reproduction. I wholeheartedly give this movie: 4 / 5 Disembodied Voices

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour

In her triumphant debut, writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, is a wonderful piece of cinema. Dubbed as the “first Iranian vampire Western,” the story takes place in the fictional Iranian town known as “Bad City” and centers around a young man, named Arash (Arash Marandi). Arash lives meagerly from job to job, takes care of his junky father and randomly meets a strange young woman (simply credited as “The Girl”) with whom he falls in love. The Girl (Sheila Vand) is a vampire, and well, her relationship with Arash gets complicated, to say the least. It’s a surprisingly sweet film and does a fantastic job of balancing the perspectives of both characters, illustrating a twisted romantic connection that emanates through the bleak industrial backdrop. When I was watching, I couldn’t help but be reminded of early Jim Jarmusch films, particularly Stranger Than Paradise, only with a vampiric flavor. It’s very cool.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The beautiful black and white cinematography
• The fantastic soundtrack
• Nightclub scene where “Dracula” gets high on ecstasy

One of the coolest things about watching this movie is that you can tell a lot of effort was put into making it. It’s seemingly an amalgam of everything that Amirpour loves about filmmaking, and it’s inspiring. I give it: 5 / 5 Exposed Necks

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Dir. Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino was an incredibly prolific actor and performer of the 1930s and ‘40s. By the time the ‘50s emerged, she broke the mold and became the first woman of the era within the Hollywood system to direct and produce films. In her nearly half-a-century career, she acted in 59 films and directed eight of her own. One of those was The Hitch-Hiker. This movie revolves around two men who go on a fishing trip on the Gulf of California. They pick up a hitchhiker who, as it turns out, is a wanted murderer named Emmett (William Talman). Emmett takes control of the situation, and we end up following the anxious trio throughout Mexico. Honestly, this film probably falls under “thriller” more than it does “horror,” but a psychopathic killer holding two people desperately hostage sounds pretty horrific to me. Plus, the pacing of the film lends itself to the horror genre. Slow, deliberate, minimalistic and captivating, The Hitch-Hiker explores our societal fear of strangers and the idea that anyone, in a mere moment, could change our lives for ill.

HIGHLIGHTS

• William Talman’s excellent performance as the unpredictable, paranoid Emmett
• The intelligent pacing and editing of the film, alternating between the victim’s scenario and the rescue team’s scenario
• The gorgeous sandy setting of Baja California

When this film was released, The New York Times wrote that the plot of The Hitch-Hiker seemed to be predictable. I say it doesn’t matter if the execution is solid, and it was. I give this movie: 4 / 5 Sabotaged Vehicles

Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

Dir. Barbara Peeters

Humanoids from the Deep is a thoroughly entertaining, wacky film. It’s what you get when you take Jaws and Creature from the Black Lagoon and make it into a low-budget 1980s shlock fest complete with more blood, sexual assault and societal chaos. The film was released by New World Pictures, Roger Corman’s production company, so it has that delightfully trashy, silly quality to it. Though the trash is fun, director Barbara Peeters definitely lent some class to the picture. The characters are well fleshed out and entertaining to watch, and each death scene is filmed brilliantly. The movie takes place in a Northern California fishing town called Noyo. A company called Canco has been researching methods of increasing the size and population of salmon in order to boost the local fishing industry. And what do you get when you introduce salmon to experimental growth hormones? Why, depraved, flesh-hungry mutants, of course! The residents start to encounter these monsters, who are dead set on breeding quickly, and things ultimately get chaotic, culminating in an all-out battle between the townspeople and the “humanoids.”

HIGHLIGHTS

• An awesome score by James Horner (his first feature-length film score ever)
• The fantastically campy creature costumes by brilliant makeup artist, Rob Bottin
• The oddly poignant commentary on native peoples’ clash with the modern fishing industry, followed swiftly by faces being ripped open

Corman wanted this movie to “kill all the men and rape all the women,” and ended up firing Peeters for refusing to film more rape scenes. When all was said and done, those additional scenes (which ended up being filmed anyway by another director) were cut from the final edit, and thankfully Peeters received full directing credit. I give this film: 3 / 5 Sex-hungry Mutants

The Invitation (2015)

Dir. Karyn Kusama

Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation is a solid horror thriller. It’s a fascinating commentary on the modern, widespread Western obsession of spiritualism and New Age pseudoscience, particularly in the area of Los Angeles, CA. The setting revolves around a group of old friends having a reunion dinner party at a house in the Hollywood Hills. We follow the story from the perspective of a man named Will (Logan Marshall-Green), who is highly suspicious of the dinner hostess’ intention for bringing everyone back together after being in the wind for over two years. Will vacillates between being reserved and quiet and bursting into fits of paranoid hostility while we, the viewer, aren’t sure whether or not Will is losing his mind. Honestly, to say any more would give away too much, and the way the film unfolds by slowly revealing new bits of information makes it a very captivating watch.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Logan Marshall-Green’s performance is great. It really makes us unsure if we should trust his character’s instincts.
• The way the film tackles loss and the human desire to conquer depression by whatever means necessary, even if that battle can be furtherly detrimental
• The ending is fantastic and in its own way, darkly funny.

Originally, The Invitation was intended to star Luke Wilson, Zachary Quinto, Topher Grace and Johnny Galecki, but the cast they settled on was fantastic, and I really couldn’t see it any other way. I give this movie: 4 / 5 Red Lanterns

Near Dark (1987)

Dir. Kathryn Bigelow

Before Kathryn Bigelow successfully leapt onto the action movie scene with Point Break, and certainly before she became the first female Oscar winner for Best Director (The Hurt Locker), she made the bizarre, subversive vampire film, Near Dark. This one is a different kind of horror movie. Spiced with a neo-western flavor and set in a small rural town, Near Dark perfectly blends classically bizarre ‘80s characters with an almost post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-ian environment. The story centers around a boy named Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) who gets caught up with an outlaw gang of anarchic vampires. Aliens veterans Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein reunite as the psychotic undead gangsters who travel around in an RV stealing, maiming and killing at will. It’s interesting to see vampires illustrated in this way on film. It cleverly deals with questions of mortality and purpose. How boring would it really be to live for hundreds of years? Does life lose its value after too many years of consciousness?

HIGHLIGHTS

• The overall fresh take on vampires. In this movie, they’re not attractive or clean or classy. They’re dirty, mean and dangerous.
• The burning flesh effects are unique and very well-executed.
• 1980s Bill Paxton being 1980s Bill Paxton, as a vampire

Near Dark definitely has replay value, as it does have a goofy, off-putting vibe when you first watch it. It has an unclean, almost sinister feel to it, but it’s also funny and has some great action set pieces. I give it: 3 / 5 Blood Transfusions

Raw (2016)

Dir. Julia Ducournau

French writer-director Julia Ducournau’s feature-length debut is an impressive film. Raw metaphorically explores what it’s like for a young woman experiencing her budding sexuality for the first time. College freshman Justine (Garance Marillier) leaves for her first semester at veterinary school. She was raised by militant vegetarian parents and has never tasted any meat as a result. After an awful hazing initiation where Justine is splattered with blood and forced to eat raw rabbit kidneys, she starts to develop a taste for flesh. As you might’ve guessed, this appetite gets out of hand and starts affecting her collegiate and social life in dark and twisted ways. It’s a movie that addresses how girls, especially those culturally oppressed, explore their newfound womanhood. Raw portrays how the id reigns over young people, and how trying to achieve self-actualization as a teenager can leave a wake of human debris. It’s smart, painful and very well crafted.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The absolutely masterful makeup effects, which are very brutal, graphic and unforgiving
• The deliberate, beautiful cinematography which exploits every scene to its fullest potential without getting too self-indulgent
• The fun and shocking twist ending

Ducournau is brilliant at directing the young women in this cast. The dialogue is natural, and every character’s motivations are realistic and well thought out. For a coming-of-age film, this one’s a real doozy. I give Raw: 4 / 5 Severed Fingers

Visible Secret (2001)

Dir. Ann Hui

Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s peculiar horror-comedy, Visible Secret, is a quirky piece of cinema. It’s frantic, moody, bizarre, spooky and even confusing at times, and I absolutely love it. The plot of this movie is a bit difficult to explain without going into specific detail, so I’ll keep it simple. A hairdresser named Peter (Eason Chan) meets a nurse named June (Qi Shu) one night at a disco. The two exchange odd and funny dialogue, quickly fall for each other and start dating soon thereafter. June has the reluctant ability to see ghosts, and Peter starts to develop visions of his own. During the film, their connection is strengthened, weakened, twisted and tried and ultimately builds up to a strange and tense finale. During viewing, there are times when you find yourself wondering how everything you’re seeing exists within the same movie. And while that sounds like a detriment, Hui pulls it off in a charmingly idiosyncratic way. Think Wes Anderson meets Park Chan-wook meets something entirely its own. It’s fantastic.

HIGHLIGHTS

• An almost schlocky ghost depiction that drastically contrasts in quality with a genuinely frightening possession sequence
• The abrupt changes in tone that occasionally occur, which add a levity to the strange and terrifying series of events
• The odd but endearing love story between Peter and June. It’s a rollercoaster.

Hui is a prominent filmmaker in the Hong Kong New Wave movement, and she is known for tackling social issues specific to Hong Kong. Visible Secret is a remarkably unique film, and there are a multitude of themes that are explored including loss, solitude and the importance of human connection. It’s a lot to unpack, but it’s definitely worth it. I give this film: 5 / 5 Headless Ghosts

In the internet-age, women filmmakers seem to be underappreciated, or at the very least under-mentioned. That seems weird, considering women have been writing, producing, editing, shooting and directing films for over 100 years. Though we may not hear about it on a regular basis, there are thousands of movies and television shows that illustrate just how diverse in quality, content and influence women-driven art is. And when it comes to horror, there is so much to enjoy and talk about. I watched over 30 films in preparation for this post, and I saw the good, the bad and the ugly. It was a wonderful experience, and I do hope this list, albeit relatively brief, turns you on to some new viewing experiences this Halloween season and beyond.

– Lou