The 1,000 Greatest Horror Films
INTRODUCTION to the 1,000 Greatest Horror Films
Current Version: May 2025 (10th edition)
Welcome to the 2025 (10th edition) of They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?. This year’s edition has had a little bit of a shake-up as I’ve made some changes to how things are calculated once again. I have done reassessments of the current weighting systems, upped the minimum number of lists to be ‘officially’ ranked and I have added a little post-processing after running the Kemeny-Young program. This will allow the list to be a little more dynamic with recent films as they get penalized a little too harshly by a system that is there to make sure they don’t take over the list.
For example, if that system is not in place the top 250 gets overwhelmed by random films from the last 10-15 years because of how many ‘best films of X year’ type of lists there are from the last couple of decades. But since ‘all time’ lists are kind of rare and aren’t updated very often the Top 1000 gets a little stagnant. So this just slightly reduces some of the dampening effect to give them a chance without letting them overwhelm the list.
So, this edition sees 173 new additions to the list including 36 films from the 2020s (previously there were only 4).
There is also a Facebook page for this site in case anyone wishes to keep updated through Facebook. I now have a Google sheet with a master list, all previous editions and a more comprehensive list of sources. A full list of all films can also be found on IMDb.
There are 173 new additions to the 2025 edition of the list.
2025 Edition Stats:
Decades
1910s: 3
1920s: 18
1930s: 35
1940s: 29
1950s: 42
1960s: 79
1970s: 146
1980s: 189
1990s: 130
2000s: 129
2010s: 164
2020s: 36
Regions
USA/Canada: 630
Europe: 267
Asia: 61
Australia/New Zealand: 30
South America: 12
Africa: 1
Top 10 Highest New Entries
348. You Better Watch Out (1980)
360. Idi i smotri (1985)
372. Next of Kin (1982)
461. Spring (2014)
464. Body Snatchers (1993)
468. Yeogo goedam (1998)
503. February (2015)
512. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
519. Il profumo della signora in nero (1974)
520. Housebound (2014)
Currently 4,094 lists have been compiled into the final result. Weighting each list based on its type and source and using a few formulas, I’ve managed to narrow down 9,425 films into possibly the most definitive guide to the best horror films. As with any consensus list, it’s never going to be perfect and it’s always going to be partly a popularity contest but hopefully this list will help to guide your horror diet and discover some new films. This list can also be found on iCheckMovies, IMDb and Letterboxd. This site also uses information taken directly from IMDb, including the use of original titles. Please note that this list and website is not affiliated with Bill Georgaris’ ‘They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They’, but that the title, website design and compiling methods were inspired by it.
If you want some extra viewing, check out the Hidden Horrors list. The 21st Century list can also be found on iCheckMovies. These lists will be updated on the website at a later time.
I’m always on the lookout for new lists, so if you find a list that you think could be useful, please share them!
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