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Greatest horror movie of all time: The Shining, Psycho or The Exorcist?

9 October 2026 · Movies

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Halloween falls on 31 October, and every year the same question comes back with it: what is the greatest horror movie ever made? Critics' polls tend to give the same handful of answers, but on GOATvs nobody fills in a ballot. Every film is picked or passed over one face-off at a time, by everyone, and the box above shows where the classics stand in the world's list today.

The favourite of many is The Shining. Stanley Kubrick adapted Stephen King's novel in 1980, and Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance slowly comes apart in the empty Overlook Hotel while Shelley Duvall and a young Danny Lloyd try to survive the winter with him. The twins in the corridor, the elevator of blood and the line "Here's Johnny!" are known even to people who have never seen the film. King himself famously disliked the adaptation, which only adds to its legend.

Twenty years earlier, Alfred Hitchcock changed the rules with Psycho. In 1960 nobody expected the star, Janet Leigh, to die before the film was half over, and the shower scene is still studied frame by frame. Anthony Perkins made Norman Bates the template for every quiet killer who came after him. Psycho is barely bloody by modern standards, yet it remains one of the most imitated horror films ever made.

Then there is The Exorcist. William Friedkin's 1973 film, written by William Peter Blatty from his own novel, became the first horror movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and it won Oscars for its screenplay and its sound. Newspapers at the time reported viewers fainting in cinemas. The Shining against The Exorcist is the purest version of the argument: slow dread in an empty hotel, or a direct fight with the devil in a girl's bedroom.

Horror also lives inside other genres. Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) put a creature designed by H. R. Giger aboard a cargo ship and made Sigourney Weaver's Ripley one of cinema's great heroes; "In space no one can hear you scream" may be the best tagline ever written. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), with Kurt Russell trapped at an Antarctic research station, was a failure on release and is now named alongside Alien whenever fans talk about creature horror. Carpenter had already shaped the slasher with Halloween in 1978, made on a small budget with Jamie Lee Curtis in her first film role.

The genre is not only about the classics. Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017) won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and showed that a horror film could also be sharp social satire. A year later, Ari Aster's Hereditary, with Toni Collette, gave a new generation its own nightmare about family and grief. Get Out against Hereditary is the modern face-off, and the answer often depends on whether you want to think or to be shaken.

And one film sits on the border. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is a thriller to some and horror to others, but if you count it as horror, it is the only horror film ever to win all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay. Anthony Hopkins is on screen for only a short part of it, and Hannibal Lecter still haunts the whole film.

Pick your side above: The Shining or The Exorcist, Alien or The Thing, Get Out or Hereditary. Then see the full Crime, Thriller & Horror Top 100, or where they all fall in the Movies Top 100, ranked by everyone.

Vote: The Shining vs The Exorcist

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