Canadian Writers of Speculative Fiction Tell Us About their Favourite Scary Movies |

Canadian Writers of Speculative Fiction Tell Us About their Favourite Scary Movies

I put the call out to Canadian writers of Speculative Fiction: What is your favourite horror film? Do you remember the first time you watched it? The results were eclectic, fascinating, and feature a plethora of creative and scary films, both new and old. Read on, if you dare …

There’s nothing quite like a good, scary film, and this is the perfect time of the year to talk about it. I was curious what films my writer-colleagues find scary, and I want to thank them for participating in this article. Scary movies can be incredibly cathartic, and the entire point of my blog — Life After Gateway — is to highlight escapist entertainment and why I think it’s more important now than ever before. I always say, “A good story can heal the world,” and these are some wonderful examples for us leading up to Halloween. The results of my query feature actors that range from Bette Davis to Daniel Radcliffe, and directors from Spielberg to Carpenter and beyond. Here we go!

Our Scariest Movies

Robert J. Sawyer:

My favourite horror film is also one of my top three favourite science-fiction films: the 1967 Hammer Films version of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit, starring Andrew Keir as the controller of the British Experimental Rocket Group and James Donald as paleontologist Matthew Roney, who investigate the uncovering of a Martian spacecraft that’s been buried in London for five million years (hence the US title for the film, Five Million Years to Earth).

As the alien ship — and maybe its long-dead cargo of modified humans — come back to life, spooky things start happening, and they ramp up until there’s an actual encounter with, as Roney says, “The Devil. The horned Devil!”

As Quatermass, citing a human who has clearly been possessed by reviving Martian intellects, says to Roney: “You said these faculties may be in all of us. Poltergeist outbreaks, second sight — they’ve been recorded the world over, throughout the ages. Myths, magic, even witchcraft — perhaps they all came from there.” And that leads the female lead, Hammer mainstay Barbara Shelley, as scientist Barbara Judd, to declare, “So as far as anybody is, we’re the Martians now.” Yes, indeed.

Robert J. Sawyer, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Hominids and Quantum Night, was nominated for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for best short story of the year for his “Fallen Angel.” Find Robert here: https://sfwriter.com/

Michael Libling:

Watching the original Night of the Living Dead on a foggy night in a secluded, near empty drive-in theatre was plenty creepy. At times, we felt as if we were actually living that zombie apocalypse. Should someone walk by our car with a popcorn in hand, I tell you, we’d jump a mile. Still, the scariest movie that has remained in mind since first seeing it as a kid has to be Horrors of the Black Museum. While I can’t recall much about the plot or characters, the horror contained in the opening scene was enough to generate a month of nightmares for the young me. It wasn’t supernatural. It wasn’t fantasy. It was real life. And real-life horror is the only sort that has ever actually scared me. To describe the scene is unlikely to do it justice, so I recommend heading over to YouTube when done reading this. In a nutshell, it unspools as follows. A postman delivers an unexpected package to a young woman. She takes the package into her apartment, sharing her surprise with a visiting girlfriend. Excited, she quickly unwraps the gift, finding a pair of binoculars inside. The friend suggests she has a secret admirer who intends to take her to the races. Puzzled and delighted, the woman rushes to the window to give the binoculars a try. An instant later she stands screeching, hands over her bloodied eyes, before collapsing to the floor. The binoculars lie nearby, two blood-soaked spikes protruding from each of the eyecups. Like I said, horror grounded in reality is by far the scariest. And, yeah, I’ve never put binoculars anywhere near my eyes since without first turning the focus wheel.

Michael Libling is a World Fantasy Award finalist (2015) whose short fiction has appeared in a bunch of swell places, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and the anthology Welcome to Dystopia. His latest novel, The Serial Killer’s Son Takes a Wife, is an off-kilter thriller with elements of mystery, horror, and—dare it be said!—twisted romance. For reviews, click here. The book is from Kevin J. Anderson’s WordFire Press. Mike’s debut novel, Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels, is a coming-of-age mystery/fantasy based on true events and is available now from all the usual suspects. Learn more about Michael Libling at his website: https://www.michaellibling.com/

Michael Rowe:

I don’t remember where I first watched Bryan Bertino’s home psychological horror thriller The Strangers (2008) with Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, about a young couple trying to heal their fractured relationship by spending a quiet weekend in a friend’s secluded summer home. To me, there was something about the couple’s marital pain that added a layer of desolate vulnerability to their terrifying plight when the house is invaded by a Manson-esque trio of masked psychopaths. Home invasion horror is my genre Achilles heel—it violates the very core of my sense of safety and security in a way that werewolves or vampires simply don’t. And its portrayal in The Strangers is so authentic I’ve only been able to watch the film once.

Michael Rowe is the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of three novels and two books of essays. They live in Toronto. Rowe’s essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in magazines and newspapers across North America and Europe, including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Ottawa Citizen, The Huffington Post, SHARP, The Boston Globe, and others. Between 2001 and 2009, they were a contributing writer to The Advocate. Rowe is also the author of a book of interviews and the editor of four anthologies of short fiction. They are the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award, the Spectrum Award, the New York Publishing Triangle Award, and the New Millennium Writing Award, and a finalist for the National Magazine Award and the GLAAD Media Award. Website.

Douglas Smith:

If you’re talking disturbing scary movies, meaning ones that I found truly frightening, I’d go with Bring Her Back, an Australian film from last year, starring the wonderful Sally Hawkins and a small cast of unknown (to me) Aussie actors. It involves an orphaned brother and sister who find themselves sent to a foster home (Hawkins’) where their foster mother’s odd behaviour is slowly revealed to be tied to an occult ritual she believes will bring back her dead daughter into the body of the young girl now under her care. The movie is incredibly well done, including Hawkins’ performance as she comes to realize too late what she is doing. It is intense, to the extent that, although I admire the craft in its making, it’s one I don’t ever plan to watch again. The most disturbing aspects are the flashes of “found footage” of the ritual that Hawkin’s character is trying to reproduce. I saw this in our local theatre with my youngest son, who is also a horror fan.

… I like my horror with a mix of dark humour. My go to is still American Werewolf in London, but I’d add the Final Destination movies, too, at least the first two and the most recent.

Douglas Smith — Multi-award-winning writer described by Library Journal as “one of Canada’s most original writers of speculative fiction.” Website, Linktree

Arlene F. Marks:

I’ve seen many horror films over the years and they were all pretty scary at the time, but there are a few that I cannot bear to rewatch, and three that I couldn’t watch all the way through the first time. Back in the 1960s when my husband and I had just begun dating, we went to see a double feature of psychological thrillers at a local cinema in Toronto. One of these was about a woman scheming with an unscrupulous doctor to drive her cousin insane so they could steal her money. Murder was involved, so there was violence and some gore. The movie was titled Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. The second one was Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, which was in the same vein as the first (pun intended) except the two women were sisters, and the one who wasn’t criminally insane was in a wheelchair. In retrospect, the horror films of that era were pretty tame compared with what’s on offer these days. Nonetheless, they were shocking, and I spent a good chunk of each movie with my face buried in my date’s shoulder, unable to look at the screen. (The third film, by the way, was Jaws. I sent my husband to the theatre to preview it so that he could tell me when to shut my eyes when we watched it together.)

Arlene F. Marks has been writing since forever, turning out series of novels in multiple genres for lovers of space opera (Sic Transit Terra), urban horror (The Nash’terel), paranormal mystery (The Groverton Hauntings), and coming out soon, literary slipstream (The Many-Storied Man). Website

Krista Wallace:

There are two films I would call my scariest. 1) The Exorcist. Why? Because I was only about nine when I saw it. This is obviously way too young, but my brother and I were at home alone, and I was supposed to have gone to bed. He started watching it and I happened to come downstairs for some reason right near the start. I was hooked, and then I was too scared to go back upstairs by myself. I did not sleep well for many days. 2) The Blair Witch Project. Not being a huge fan of scary films (perhaps I was turned off of them at age nine??) my husband and I opted to watch this movie at home with lots of lights on. We even took the opportunity to hit Pause every now and again. The scariest thing about this movie is the fact that you NEVER SEE the thing you’re scared of. Like, why oh why is a bundle of *sticks* so freakin’ terrifying?? And that image of someone standing in a corner with their nose against the wall…[shudder]. Still, we got excellent mileage on Halloween that year by putting a little bundle of stick on our doorstep, and a stick figure hanging just outside. The little kids thought nothing of it, but boy howdy, the teenagers shrieked when they came around the corner!

Krista Wallace is a fantasy writer, jazz & rock musician, audiobook narrator, actor, podcaster, mother, Gran, a lover of pie, dark chocolate, and fine single malt scotch, who hails from Port Coquitlam, BC. Learn more at https://kristawallace.com/

Allan Weiss:

The scariest movie I ever saw was the original The Haunting (1963). What made it frightening was that the viewer doesn’t see anything; the ghosts are off-screen or behind the door or wall. By making you use your imagination, director Robert Wise made you scare yourself. I first saw it as a child, watching it with my mother in the basement of our house, and when she went upstairs during the commercials I followed. I couldn’t stay down there alone.

Allan Weiss is the author of three story collections — Living Room, Making the Rounds, and Telescope— and the historical novel Bread and Stone, as well as The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature. He lives in Toronto and teaches at York University.

Barbara A Denz:

At age eleven in 1958, I endeavoured to watch The House on Haunted Hill during Christmas season. With a childhood background in “radio theatre,” I thought I knew what I was in for. I did not. I agreed to go with a friend and not tell my parents where I was going. For the entire show, I stood behind the curtains at the entry to the balcony seats, plugged my ears and saw nothing. I never did see that film. But I certainly heard it.

Barbara A Denz is a fantasy writer with a history of short stories in 1980s-90s anthologies until she broke away from fiction writing to pursue technical writing and editing to have a pension when all was done. As a retiree, she is working on a 5-book fantasy series. She has written and directed Reader’s Theatre productions for fun, and had the pleasure of a co-editing with Bill Howell a short session of the CBC Nightfall episode The Repossession which, oddly enough, is an influence for one of the characters in her current book series.

Noah Chinn:

So this is a harder question for me to answer than you might think. Because I don’t watch a lot of horror, but when I do, I don’t actively think of myself as being “scared” at any point. So I went through the IMDB top 100 scary movies and wanted to see if any gave me a visceral reaction. A lot of them I remember as being fun, exciting or cool more than scary. However, some made me instantly think “yeah, that disturbed me” on some level. 28 Days Later was one. I think it affected me more than other zombie movies, because I think the nature of the infection was more disturbing.

Oddly enough, I’d also put Misery up there. I saw it in a drive-In in Australia way back when it first came out. At that time, I had just written my first novel, had only one printed copy of it, and it was stored on a single floppy disk that could have been taken out by any magnet. So you can imagine how I felt when THAT scene came on. Forget the hobbling scene everyone remembers. Having to put the only copy of a book you worked so hard on to the flame? AUUUUGH!!!!!!

Noah Chinn was born in Oshawa, Ontario, and has never really forgiven it for that. After university he moved to Japan for three years, where he taught English yet managed not to learn a word of Japanese (an oversight he’s now trying to correct). His work has been published in Amazing Stories magazine, Knights of the Dinner Table magazine, The Globe and Mail, and others. He’s had novels published under a small press, but more recently has been trying to find success in self-publishing. He, his wife, and their ferret now live in Vancouver. He wears a hat. Check out his work at: noahchinnbooks.com

Nina Munteanu:

I was 25 and on a first date. We went to see Ridley Scott’s iconic Alien. The theatre was packed, but we found seats in the front row. The movie was great incentive for holding hands and I was sitting literally on the edge of my seat pretty much the whole time. But when that creature burst through Kane’s chest, and the whole audience jumped, my date screamed like a girl. That cut the tension for me and I couldn’t help laughing.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist, novelist and award-winning short story author of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. Her latest book Gaia’s Revolution is a climate-thriller released by Dragon Moon Press in 2026. Her eco-novel Thalweg will be released by Inanna Publications in Spring 2027. www.NinaMunteanu.me

J.J. Martin:

The scariest films are the ones that hit close to home … the ones that are rooted in reality or in true events. The ones that lean into hopelessness. 1984 and Schindler’s List immediately spring to mind. However, if we’re talking about a film I saw as a kid that scared the hell out of me, it’d be Poltergeist. The 1980s Spielberg style and the iconic jump scares get me every time.

J.J. Martin is the author of Father Sweet and is one half of the writing team Martin+Stonefish, whose novel Pervercity comes out in May 2027. He was born in Manitoba and grew up Catholic in Ontario. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Ottawa in Anthropology of Religion. His business writing has appeared in a variety of online and print publications. In his debut novel, Father Sweet, J.J. Martin puts a name to the hardship of abuse, sharing its dark soul, hoping history does not repeat. Find J.J. at his website: https://www.chezmartin.com/

Candas Jane Dorsey:

You’ve Got Mail is a contender for scariest horror movie. I watched it while housesitting for a friend — it was a movie she had gotten free with a pizza. On the surface a harmless rom-com, it is the story of an overbearing sociopath who drives a woman out of a generational-family business, persuades her to work in his big box store instead, and then romances her. At the end she is fully subjugated to his gaslighting that has her believing he loves her and that she loves him back. The horror is subtle — there’s no gore and there are no jump-scares: it is all about evil social engineering.

Candas Jane Dorsey is a well-known Canadian speculative, crime, and literary fiction writer. Website: https://candasjanedorsey.ca/

Susan Forest:

The Friday night cheap movie was Night of the Living Dead. I took it seriously and was truly petrified. But also irritated by everyone around me laughing —

Susan Forest is the author of Award-winners Bursts of Fire and Flights of Marigold, as well as Gathering of Ghosts. She has written 25+ internationally-published short stories. Book one of her new series, Rivers of Ivy, is a romcom heist set in the same world. https://speculative-fiction.ca

Geoff Hart:

84 Charlie MoPic. Context is necessary: I was sleepless in the middle of the night in Sault Ste. Marie, and browsing the TV Guide (yes, I’m that old), came across a movie whose blurb said basically “documentary about embedded cameramen in Vietnam making a documentary during the war”. I entirely missed the fact that this was a fictional film about a fictional documentary, not a documentary. I plead insomnia. Anyway, the more I watched, the more people died and the more I saw insomnia recede as I began to believe I was watching a snuff film that somehow slipped past the censors. Only after about an hour did something cue me to look more carefully at the film description. It was a sufficiently horrific experience that I didn’t watch another war movie for decades. Still haven’t seen Private Ryan.

Web: www.geoff-hart.com; blog: http://blatherskite.dreamwidth.org ; Twitter: @diaskeuasis; My books: http://geoff-hart.com/books/index.htm

Cait Gordon:

I used to watch “scary” films all the time and remained unfazed, even giggled at what was supposed to be frightening. But the one film that had me leap ten feet out of my seat was the first Jurassic Park. I was with my spouse in a packed theatre in Montréal, and I think everyone hit the ceiling at the same time, then collectively laughed at ourselves. Nothing like a prehistoric jump-scare, eh?

Cait Gordon is a Canadian autistic, disabled, and queer writer of works that celebrate diverse bodyminds. Cait authored the award-winning, disability-hopepunk adventure, Season One: Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space! She also co-edited the award-nominated Nothing Without Us and the award-winning Nothing Without Us Too disability fiction anthologies. You can find Cait on most socials as @caitgauthor.

Graham J. Darling:

The Vanishing / Spoorloos (1988, not the 1993 remake) seems at first a somewhat plodding study of both a man searching for his missing girlfriend and another guy who’s responsible for that disappearance. And then it comes together in a scene at the very end that’s like a punch in the gut for the pure evil it reveals — Rotten Tomatoes rates the film “96% Fresh” and agrees with me it indeed has “one of the scariest endings of all time,” while Stanley Kubrick (The Shining, 1980) thought it the most terrifying film he had seen. No SFX to admire or ketchup to laugh at. No hi-tek or fantasy elements to speak of. It’s scary because it’s true. It was the English-dubbed version I saw on a library DVD and I was alone at the time in my bedroom in a Burnaby basement. I don’t think I could bear watching even the start of it again, knowing that final horror to come.

Graham J. Darling of Outer Ottawa Canada designs molecules such as the universe has never seen and demonstrates medieval technology to passers-by; his singular hybrids of disruptive Science Fiction, mythopoeic Fantasy and unearthly Horror have lately escaped through The Daily Tomorrow, parABnormal and Strange Tales of Space and Time (ed. Stephen Rhoades, Burial Books) — residents are advised to lock their doors and windows, then tune in for survival tips to https://fiction.grahamjdarling.com/

Lorina Stephens:

The Woman in Black: excellent actors, good screenplay. While the film did play on a number of known tropes, the characterization and settings were such that it brought a freshness to the concept of an evil and retributive haunting. And in the end, had a very human and tragic scene which resulted, for me, in a shattering moment of tears and grief. There is one particular scene in it (a face in the window) which, while expected, still scares the living stuffing out of me. It’s that device of leading a viewer or reader into a known fear, and then releasing it with sudden, shattering effect. Like the knowledge you should never go down to the basement. Never. Because there’s going to be every kind of evil down there, because it’s underground, where the dead live, and those who rule the dead.

One of the earliest scary films for me, and which remains so, to the point I will never watch it again because of the months’ long trauma it caused, was The Exorcist. Good the gods for months I was terrified to have a shower because the sound of water gurgling down the drain sounded like the growl of the devil. Of course, the film played upon my personal fears from adolescence wherein I’d, foolishly, been deeply involved with an evangelical group and witnessed laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, in short every hysteria you could imagine. So, The Exorcist is one of those: Here there be dragons psychological map-markers.

Lorina Stephens is the author of: And the Angels Sang; Caliban; Dreams of the Earth, Dreams of the Moon; From Mountains of Ice; Memories, Mother and a Christmas Addiction; The Rose Guardian; Shadow Song; co-editor Tesseracts 22: Alchemy and Artifacts; co-author The Giant’s Rib: Touring the Niagara Escarpment; Credit River Valley; Stonehouse Cooks. Find Lorina here: lorinastephens.com

Su J Sokol:

One of the scariest that I ever watched was The Omen (1976 version). The movie was about a five-year-old child named Damien who is actually the antichrist. I was a kid when I saw it and it left quite an impression. To this day, I associate the name Damien with something evil and frightening. The detail from the film that impressed me the most was when a character who is a photographer sees photos of people who were or would be Damien’s victims. As he develops the photos, he sees a dark shadow that, when looking at subsequent photos, gradually reveals itself to be a spear that pierces their hearts. Then he sees a photo of the same spear going through his own heart, presaging his death.

Su J Sokol is a social rights activist and the author of four novels. Xyr debut novel was longlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, optioned for a film, and republished in 2025 under the title Invisible Line along with its sequel, Five Points on an Invisible Line. Sokol’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Sokol immigrated to Montréal/Tiohtià:ke and has made a home there for more than twenty years. Website: www.sujsokol.com ; Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sujsokol/ ; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susan.sokol.18

Stephen Michell:

While picking the scariest move of all time might be too difficult for me, I can remember the first movie that ever really gave me the scares: Scream 2. It came out in 1997 (so I was 7 years old), we watched it at a cottage, and I couldn’t sleep. There is a particular scene when one of the heroes is murdered that truly terrified me. He was the character that I think I related to the most. The one who thinks he knows what’s going on, the guy who’s watched scary movies, who knows the tropes, but even he isn’t safe … I won’t say exactly what happens, but I will say I’ll never hang around in front of a white van. Especially not if I’m talking to ghost face on a cell-phone.

Stephen Michell is an author of novels, short stories, and children’s books. He has an MA in English Literature from the University of Guelph, where he focused on short stories in Southwestern Ontario. In 2020, his short story As Worlds Collide was featured on the storytelling podcast LeVar Burton Reads. His first novel, Only the Devil is Here, was long-listed for a 2018 ReLit Award. Website: https://stephenmichell.com ; Only the Devil is Here. The Gardener’s Tales (newest book)

Sandra Kasturi:

I was a huge fan of Ridley Scott’s original Alien, which did things with both horror and science fiction that we hadn’t seen before. So I was thrilled that there would be a sequel. I saw Aliens on the huge screen at the Cinesphere, and it scared the ever-living snot out of me. Often hilarious with its camaraderie amongst the Colonial Marines, the film has you on the edge of your seat the whole running time and manages to up the ante of the original. Where Alien is a haunted house movie, Aliens is more of a war movie. I loved every second of it, and even when Ripley finally defeats the Alien Queen (surely I don’t have to say spoiler alert at this point?), I wasn’t convinced the movie was over until the final credit rolled. I still dream sequels to these two movies on a fairly regular basis, which makes for a pretty hair-raising night. And I still rewatch Aliens every year and it remains just about perfect. Well, except the director’s cut. That sucks. Theatrical release only! Accept no substitutes.

Sandra Kasturi is a mixed-race poet, fiction writer, book reviewer and former publisher. Her poetry collections are  The Animal Bridegroom  and  Come Late to the Love of Birds  (both from Tightrope Books), and  Snake Handling for Beginners  (Exile Editions, December 2026). She was a finalist for the National Poetry Series (2024), and a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize (2025). Sandra recently tied for first place in the First Page Cage Match at  Pulp Literature  for an excerpt from her novel,  Medusa Gorgon, Lady Detective. Most recently, she was a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize for her poem, “Gynecological Instruments for Working on Mutant Women.”

C.M. Forest:

Under the Skin scared the hell out of me! Listen, I like my mask-wearing psychopaths as much as the next person, but there is something truly chilling about the uncaring protagonist (played perfectly by Scarlett Johansson) in Jonathan Glazer’s cosmic horror masterpiece that frightens me far more than the Freddys and Jasons of the cinematic world ever could. The Female (as Johansson’s character is called) is purely, deeply, horrifyingly unhuman. She is alien in the truest sense of the word. Her motivations are beyond our understanding. She watches impassively as she leads her victims into a literal black, goopy void. There is a scene, somewhere around mid-movie, which finds The Female staring on as a toddler is left alone on a rocky beach. That moment has lived rent-free inside my head ever since. Thrumming beneath it all is one of the most haunting soundtracks I’ve ever heard (courtesy of Mica Levi). It is weird, and stark, and unforgettable.

C.M. Forest, also known as Christian Laforet, is the author of the Benjamin Franklin award winning novel Infested, the novellas We All Fall Before the Harvest, and Einstein’s Children, as well as the short story collection The Roots Run Deep. His short fiction has been featured in dozens of anthologies. A self-proclaimed horror movie expert, he spent an embarrassing amount of his youth watching scary movies. He lives in Ontario, Canada with his wife, kids, four cats and a pandemic dog named Sully who has an ongoing love affair with a blanket. Website: www.christianlaforet.com ; Insta: @christianlaforet ; FB: Author C.M. Forest (@authorchristianlaforet)

Timothy S. Johnston:

John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness is the scariest film I’ve seen. I still have trouble watching it by myself. When a priest passes away, leaving behind a religious artifact hidden for centuries, it plunges the movie’s characters into a weekend of terror and an end-of-humanity dilemma. Prince of Darkness is an incredible combination of science, religion, and horror. I was sixteen years old when I went to the Huron Marketplace Cinemas in London, Ontario’s east end to see it. The theatre was packed and it was an experience I’ll never forget. What a film.

Timothy S. Johnston is the author of Science Fiction/Thrillers The War Beneath, The Savage Deeps, Fatal Depth, The Shadow of War, A Blanket of Steel, The Furnace, The Freezer, and The Void, and he has won the GLOBAL THRILLER Award Grand Prize, the EPIC Award, the CYGNUS Science Fiction Award Grand Prize, as well as the CLUE Award. Timothy is a full-time writer and lives in London, Ontario, Canada. Website: www.timothysjohnston.com; Blog: www.timothysjohnston.com/blog ; Facebook: @TSJAuthor ; Instagram: @TSJ_Author

To Conclude

And there you have it! It’s an eclectic and interesting list from many different eras of film. I originally reached out to other writers because I was curious what films inspired my fellow creatives. The connection to horror seemed obvious because of the time of year. Some authors made their picks based on their very first experience seeing the film. Those choices — during each writers’ early creative-formative years — may have left lasting impressions and perhaps influenced their writing later in life.

Perhaps some chose based on who they were with at the time. Some picked films that tickled their brains, or ones that triggered emotional responses, ones they connected with because of concurrent events in their own lives, or movies that touched on some deep-seated psychological fear.

If I were going to mention great scary movies that might currently be impacting the younger generation — and those creatives who could very well be writing our great speculative fiction twenty years from now — they might be movies like Hereditary, Midsommar, Backrooms, or Weapons.

I’m sure Aunt Gladys is currently haunting some youngsters’ minds at this very moment …

And we’ll be reaping the benefits of that years from now, when we finally read the words that Amy Madigan’s terrifying character inspires in our writers of the future.

I’d like to thank all the writers who took time out of their days to write about their favourite scary films. Enjoy this week, and have a great Halloween. And remember — a great story has great power to heal the world.

— Timothy S. Johnston, 26 October 2026

Tell me what you think of these films in the comment section at the bottom of the page:

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