10 Best Horror Satire Movies of All Time, Ranked

Trends in horror are always a reflection of the times, and because of this, horror is always political, whether the filmmakers intend to send a political message or not. Whenever writers and directors decide to make a horror movie that’s intentionally satirical, the results are always interesting. From institutional racism to mindless consumerism, the themes of satirical horror movies expose what frightens society the most.

Aside from making political and social commentary, though, horror also does a great job of criticizing itself. Creators and fans alike recognize that there’s something a bit odd about seeking scares for fun, especially when that “fun” involves watching characters getting tormented or hacked to pieces. Many horror comedies work as satires, taking aim at genre conventions and exploring the issues in society that can make horror feel so cathartic.

10 ‘Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon’ (2006)

Directed by Scott Glosserman

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernonworks as both a satire of tired slasher clichés and as a thrilling slasher film in its own right. A young journalist named Taylor (Angela Goethals) and her camera crew are shooting documentary footage of an aspiring killer named Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) as he prepares for his first killing spree. Leslie is self-aware of his place in the slasher canon; he’s been mentored by a “retired” spree killer, and he’s already picked out his ideal Final Girl, whom he hopes will survive until the end.

The movie has many laugh-out-loud moments, including a scene where Leslie opines to Taylor on the importance of cardio, pointing out that slashers always appear to be walking while their victims are sprinting away. The fast walk is key to the killer’s menacing vibe. The film is also populated by horror icons, such as Zelda Rubinstein, who famously played a medium in 1982’s Poltergeist, and Robert Englund, who is best known as Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film works because, despite the comedy, everyone is committed to playing their role with convincing earnestness.

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9 ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ (2014)

Directed by Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

The mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows is a brilliant send-up of the clichés of the vampire genre as well as the kind of roommate drama made popular by reality television shows. In the film, a documentary crew is following four vampires who all live together in a house in Wellington, New Zealand. The vampires have a series of adventures, eventually coming into conflict with a local pack of werewolves.

What makes the movie so much fun is seeing the way it contrasts the mundane, such as modern technology and weekly house meetings, with the extraordinary. Mockumentaries are usually made to create a sense of realism, but What We Do in the Shadowspushes the limits of the format by providing a window into a magical world. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi‘s film was modestly successful but gained enough of a cult following that it was later adapted into the popular television series What We Do in the Shadows with all new characters in a US setting.

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8 ‘Tucker & Dale vs. Evil’ (2010)

Directed by Eli Craig

The horror genre has long had a hicksploitation problem. In hicksploitation movies, characters from the city venture into rural areas and wind up getting terrorized by the local yokels, who are often depicted as hostile, inbred, and downright monstrous. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil turns these tropes upside-down, depicting its title characters as a couple of lovable rednecks whose actions keep getting interpreted as malicious by a group of horror-movie poisoned vacationers. The end result is complete carnage, mostly brought on by the campers’ panic as they get the wrong impression of Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine).

The movie smartly provides viewers with both perspectives. It’s easy to see why the campers might be intimidated by Dale’s imposing size and why they might interpret his awkward shyness as creepy menace. When a skinny-dipping girl spots Tucker and Dale in the wrong place at the wrong time, she assumes that they’re spying with intent to attack. Tucker & Dale vs. Evilhas plenty of gory fun with its escalating series of misunderstandings, but it’s also oddly heartwarming, as one of the campers, Allison (Katrina Bowden), recognizes that Tucker and Dale are the good guys, after all.

7 ‘American Psycho’ (2000)

Directed by Mary Harron

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) seems to have it all: a great career on Wall Street, a fiancée, and all the luxury items that money can buy. But as long as other men have more, Bateman will never be satisfied with his life. This emptiness inside him is manifested by his need to commit acts of savagery that he must hide to maintain his perfect image. Part of what makes American Psycho so disturbing is the choice to tell the story from the perspective of its charismatic villain.

American Psycho isn’t just a great horror satire; it’s one of the best satire films of all time. With Bale’s pitch-perfect performance, Patrick Bateman takes his place alongside such legendary horror villains as Hannibal Lecter and Jack Torrance. The film succeeds as satire because it confirms what many viewers have long suspected–that the cutthroat nature of corporate culture tends to reward those who have lost touch with their humanity and who are willing to exploit others for their own personal gain.

6 ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (2004)

Directed by Edgar Wright

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Edgar Wright’s classic horror comedy, Shaun of the Dead. When it was released in 2004, the resurgence in popularity of zombie movies was just beginning. Danny Boyle‘s 28 Days Later had come out two years earlier to great acclaim, and 2004 saw the release of Zack Snyder‘s Dawn of the Dead remake. Wright’s film, billed as a “zom-rom-com,” follows Shaun (Simon Pegg), who starts to realize that he’s stuck in a rut just as the zombie apocalypse descends on London. The outbreak forces him to break out of his natural passivity and become a romantic action hero.

In the early scenes, the zombie outbreak plays like a satire on the mindlessness of routine and the boredom of everyday life. Shaun is shown shuffling through his day on auto-pilot–much like a zombie–which is why he fails to notice the first signs that his neighbors are turning into braindead monsters. Shaun of the Dead is notable for being genuinely funny while also having effective scares. It’s rare for horror and humor to be married so successfully.

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5 ‘Get Out’ (2017)

Directed by Jordan Peele

Get Out is such a terrific horror comedy that it’s almost hard to believe that it was director Jordan Peele‘s first feature film. The story about wealthy white suburbanites transplanting their consciousness into young Black bodies is a powerful commentary on the not-so-subtle racism that still exists in white, liberal “colorblind” circles. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) stumbles upon evidence of this body-stealing conspiracy while he’s visiting the childhood home of his white girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams).

One thing that makes Get Out great is the way it calls back to other classics of the psychological thriller genre, such as The Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which also deal with themes of social control and loss of identity. The movie walks the line between horror and science fiction, and while it has great moments of comedy, it also offers an unflinching exploration of the dark and painful history of the US that ripples through the present day. Come for the piercing satire of American culture, stay for the performances by Kaluuya and the rest of the strong cast.

4 ‘An American Werewolf in London’ (1981)

Directed by John Landis

Even before his terrifying transformation into a werewolf, American backpacker David (David Naughton) is caught between two worlds: the US and England. The opening scenes of An American Werewolf in London show how David and his buddy Jack (Griffin Dunne) are out of their element as they get a hostile reception from the patrons of a village pub and end up wandering the moors at night. After a werewolf attack leaves Jack dead, an injured David is transferred to a London hospital, where he begins a romance with his nurse, Alex (Jenny Agutter).

In the film, the werewolf becomes a metaphor for being a fish out of water. Werewolves are necessarily outsiders because of the danger they pose to their communities, but as an American abroad, David already felt like an outsider. The film can also be seen as a commentary on the uneasy relationship between England and America. Despite some cultural similarities and a shared history, they are still very different countries, and these differences lead to misunderstandings within the film. An American Werewolf in London‘s mixture of horror, humor, and incredible practical effects made the film an instant classic.

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3 ‘Scream’ (1996)

Directed by Wes Craven

The Scream movies are as much whodunnits as they are slashers. Part of the fun is guessing which unlikely suspect is hiding behind the Ghostface mask. High school student Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), one of the great final girls of horror, is already grieving her mother’s death when her classmates start dying at the hands of a mysterious killer. Things go from bad to worse when the killer starts calling Sidney and taunting her, and she teams up with a deputy sheriff and an investigative journalist to take Ghostface down.

One thing that can be frustrating about watching horror movies is seeing the characters make foolish decisions in times of crisis. After the horror boom of the ’70s and ’80s, it makes sense that characters in the ’90s would be aware of horror movie tropes and react accordingly. While not a straight-up comedy, Scream never takes itself too seriously. The self-aware humor in the movie was famously parodied in Scary Movie and was also influential on a wave of meta-horror and horror comedies, including Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and Cabin in the Woods.

2 ‘Cabin in the Woods’ (2011)

Directed by Drew Goddard

While movies like Scream and Shaun of the Dead satirize specific horror subgenres, Cabin in the Woods ambitiously takes on horror as a whole. The opening scenes feel like the set-up for a classic slasher movie, with a group of college students heading to the cabin of the title, even stopping at a gas station where the attendant delivers the expected warnings about going into the woods. However, once the group gets settled in the cabin, the narrative starts to go in interesting new directions, bringing in elements from folk horror, cosmic horror, zombie movies, and more.

Aside from skewering common horror movie tropes, the film also provides some interesting commentary on harmful traditions that are upheld by the older authorities and enforced upon the young. The characters in Cabin in the Woods are horrified when they find out that they’re being offered up as a sacrifice, and they desperately try to escape from the roles that have been imposed on them. The movie succeeds at being clever, funny, and frightening at the same time.

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1 ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1978)

Directed by George A. Romero

Zombies are pretty much the perfect vehicle for social commentary. The great shuffling masses of mindless undead are like a blank canvas onto which almost any idea can be projected, and George A. Romero is well known for taking advantage of this canvas. His 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, the follow up to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, follows a group of zombie apocalypse survivors who seek refuge in a shopping mall. As the world outside the mall dies, tensions within threaten the uneasy alliance.

The American shopping mall was relatively new in the 1970s when Romero made Dawn of the Dead, so the film’s criticism of consumer culture has more bite considering the context of its time. At first glance, scenes of customers flocking to the large shopping complexes aren’t so different from movie scenes of zombies flocking to their living victims. The ’70s were a strong decade for horror, and even so, Dawn of the Dead stands out for its smart message, trend-setting make-up, and novel setting.

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