Le Manoir du Diable

The first recounted horror film, Le Manoir du Diable, was made in 1896 by Georges Mèliès. A rather simple affair, the nearly two minute film shows a man in cursed house fighting with ghosts and then with devil, who disappears in a cloud of smoke when our hero brandishes a cross. And since then the desire to not only imagine the unimaginable but invite our greatest fears to materialize before us has become a mainstay of the entertainment industry. The results can be as gruesome as the most frightening torture porn horror or as whimsical as Coraline. But which films are the scariest? To find out, we asked five contemporary horror writers which movies kept them shaking under the sheets long into the night.

Our writers span the horror world. Rick R. Reed has been described as the "Stephen King of gay horror.” Kim Newman not only authored BFI Companion to Horror and Horror: 100 Best Books, but his novel Anno Dracula was a critical success, with the Independent commenting, “A marvelous marriage of political satire, melodramatic intrigue, gothic horror, and alternative history." For three years running, Sarah Langan has won the Bram Stoker award for her work: 2006 for her first novel, The Keeper; 2007 for The Missing; 2008 for The Lost (in Short Fiction). Joe R. Lansdale is a writer and martial arts expert, acclaimed for his comic books and horror stories alike. Tananarive P. Due weaves together African-American history and supernatural and horror elements to come up with an original perspective on old genre. Patrick McGrath, a master of psychological horror, has had two of his novels, Spider and Asylum, adapted into movies, by directors David Cronenberg and David Mackenzie respectively.