The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012)
Ghost Story
Ghost story BBC mini-series adapted from a novel by horror writer James Herbert that unfolds between two different eras. With an amazing cast of Before They Were Famous names.
Hauntings and Ghost Stories
A ghost is a person whose spirit continues to live on following death in non-corporeal and insubstantial form (as opposed to other more physical forms of undead such as vampires and zombies). Hauntings refers to ghostly phenomena – films featuring ghosts and/or haunted houses and other places.
A common plot in a many ghosts stories is of the living investigating a haunted place to find who the ghost was and achieving a form of exorcism by aiding them in complete their Unfinished Business and depart.
The haunted house is a long-standing tradition and concerns the investigation of a large old gloomy mansions. More modern variants have tried numerous other form of dwelling from suburban houses to hotels, supermarkets, ships and submarines.
There is the misconception that the ghost story and haunted house film originated in the 1930s. The first Hollywood effort was not until well into the 1940s and the genre did not fully develop until the 1950s/60s, reaching a peak in the 1970s.
The 1980s brought the introduction of visual and makeup effects. The 1990s/2000s introduced the Found Footage investigation of the haunted house. In the 2000s onwards, the ghost story has become so prolific that it is rare to find efforts that stand out from the formula and cliches.
There is also the Asian ghost story – see Asian Horror – where hauntings tend to be less centred around dwellings and more about personal vengeance and the grievances.
The depiction of ghost stories is so numerous that this topic has been split between actual ghost stories (here) and those that depict ghosts in a comedic or other vein – for which see Ghosts in Light Fantasy
The Red Shoes (2005)
Haunted Shoes/Korean Ghost Story
South Korean horror film about a pair of high-heeled shoes that take over their owner. Some okay jumps in a standard K-horror ghost story
Reincarnation (2005)
Japanese Ghost Story
Takashi Shimizu, creator of the Ju-on/The Grudge series, makes a film about an actress who becomes haunted after taking a role based on a true-life murder
Return to Pontianak (2001)
Haunted Spirits in the Malaysian Jungle
Singaporean film about tourists experienced haunted spirits in the jungle, this owes much to The Blair Witch Project
Satan’s Slave (2017)
Indonesian Horror/Hauntings and the Occult
A horror film that was the biggest box-office hit ever in Indonesia as a family tragedy stirs up hauntings and the occult. A follow-up to an earlier 1970s film that has become a cult hit.
Scary Tales (2001)
Horror Anthology
A low-budget horror anthology that is rough around the edges but shows promise
Scary True Stories (1991-2)
Japanese Ghost Stories
A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories
Silent House (2011)
Haunted House
Haunted house film that comes with the novelty of being shot entirely in one take. This delivers some okay but never standout jumps but in the end you appreciate it more for its technical novelty than producing scares
Prison (1987)
Haunted Prison
An early film from Renny Harlin made for Charles Band concerning a haunted prison. Features an unknown Viggo Mortensen in one of his earliest roles
Soft for Digging (2001)
Backwoods Haunting
Film made without dialogue about haunted happenings at a cabin in the woods that attains quite a haunted atmosphere
The Three Investigators in the Secret of Terror Castle (2009)
Juvenile Detectives Investigate a Spooky Mansion
The Three Investigators books were an essential part of my youth. This does a fair job of remaining faithful to the stories, albeit with the addition of some grating modernisations, and creates reasonable atmosphere as they investigate a seemingly spooky mansion
Solaris (2002)
Enigmatic Alien Planet/Ghosts of Memory
Steven Soderbergh’s English-language remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic SF film. Soderbergh trims Tarkovsky’s long-windedness and makes the plot tighter, more intimate but this still emerges as a lesser version than the original
Stay (2005)
Deathdream
Marc Forster film that starts in with a beautifully filmed sense of disquiet mood and eerie reality disjuncts but loses it when it opts for another M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Strangler of the Swamp (1946)
Ghostly Retribution in the Swamps
A film from the famous poverty row studios of its era that has gained a certain cult reputation. The film transcends its cheapness to create an undeniable spooky atmosphere in its tale of a ghostly revenant, even if the cult has tended to overstate its effectiveness
Sweet Home (1989)
Gonzo Japanese Haunted House Film
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa has developed a reputation for his intensely uncanny and deeply unfathomable horror films. This is one of his earlier works, a much more straightforward haunted house film that in its more bizarre moments attains the whacked-out dementia of the cult Japanese film House
Re/Member (2022)
Timeloop Horror Film
A Japanese-made variant on the oft-used Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This pushes well into horror movie territory with a group of teenagers trapped in a typical school day and facing a monster figure pursuing them
Presence (2024)
Ghost Story
Steven Soderbergh is one of the foremost independent directors in the US. He has dipped into numerous different genres and here takes on the ghost story in a film shot from the ghost’s point-of-view
Lake Mungo (2008)
Australian Haunting Found Footage Film
An Australian Found Footage film about a haunting. Rather than the intense spookiness of Paranormal Activity, this is more a mockumentary that is constantly turning what we expect is going on on its head
The Vault (2017)
Bank Robbers Enter Haunted Vault
A film with a captivatingly original idea – bank robbers break into a bank vault, only to find they have stirred something supernatural imprisoned there. A film that builds a more than reasonable head of tension before losing it with a weak payoff
Legacy of Dracula: The Bloodthirsty Doll (1970)
Japanese Ghost Story/Vampire
The first of a trilogy of Japanese vampire films, although this does not feature Dracula despite the title and should be considered more of ghost story.
The Wailing (2016)
Korean Horror/Possession/Mysterious Stranger
South Korean horror film that generates a more than effectively creepy atmosphere. The downside is that you reached the end of the show with no clear idea what is going on and why things are happening
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
Erotica/Surreal Dreams and Hauntings
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired. On the other hand, the film is written with a randomness that makes it impossible to understand anything that is happening
The Marsh (2006)
Haunted House
Okay ghost story in which Gabrielle Anwar rents a haunted farmhouse. Forest Whitaker turns up as a neighbouring occult expert
The Mermaid: Lake of the Dead (2018)
Russian Dark Fantasy/Avenging Water Spirit
This is a Russian dark fantasy that has been misleadingly titled as a mermaid film in English release. It in fact concerns an avenging rusalka water spirit who haunts a small lake
The Mistress (2022)
Haunted House/Reality Bender
This starts out seeming like another haunted house film before developing some conceptual reversal twists of the first M. Night Shyamalan-esque order
Mr Vampire 1992 (1992)
Hong Kong Hopping Vampire Comedy
The last of the popular Hong Kong comedy series about hopping vampires. While the other sequels became very silly, this goes out on an inspired final note
The Presence (2010)
Ghost Story
Ghost story that does an excellent job in creating an incredibly haunted and unusual atmosphere. On the other hand, the film falls apart during the second half where it heads in another direction altogether and leaves one entirely unclear what is going on
The Night House (2020)
Haunting
Rebecca Hall gives a standout performance in an eerie ghost story about a woman possibly haunted and discovering disturbing things in the aftermath of her husband’s death
The Uninvited (1944)
Ghost Story
One of the earliest ghost stories made by Hollywood, a slow and old-fashioned effort where the scares are psychological
Noroi: The Curse (2005)
Japanese Found Footage/Paranormal Investigator
A Japanese Found Footage film made not long after The Blair Witch Project with a man investigating various paranormal incidents around Tokyo
100 Feet (2008)
Woman Confined on Home Detention in a Haunted Apartment
This lifts the premise of Disturbia – protagonist confined to home detention who spies a killer next door – but then asks what would happen if the space they were confined was haunted
Personal Shopper (2016)
Possible Ghost Story/Mystery Texter
Olivier Assayas’s high-profile but wildly critically divided work feels as though it has several competing plots circling around Kristen Stewart – a ghost story, one about a mystery texter and briefly a murder mystery – which feel incomplete and unfinished and only maybe intersecting with one another
Phenomena (2023)
True-Life Spanish Paranormal Investigators
In the same vein as The Conjuring films, a film about a true-life Spanish team of paranormal investigators
Pizza (2012)
Bollywood Ghost Story
A rare Indian venture into the horror film, this is a haunted house film of modest effect that suddenly becomes a whole lot more watchable when it pulls a major M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist on us
The Abandoned (2006)
Haunted Farmhouse
Spanish film about a woman travelling to her family home on the Russian steppes that creates a very haunted atmosphere. On the other hand, the twist ending has borrowed too much M. Night Shyamalan
Dark Signal (2016)
Haunted Radio Signal
The intriguing idea of a haunted radio signal. A ghost story that does something different telling an ambitious double-stranded story even if it fails to pull it off with complete satisfaction
The Carpenter (1988)
Ghostly Handyman
Odd effort that features Wings Hauser as a polite and charming ghostly handyman who romances the heroine while despatching the people around her. Not a great film but Hauser has never been better
Crimson Peak (2015)
Ghost Story
Guillermo Del Toro takes on the Victorian ghost story. What we get is the most gorgeously designed and costumed haunted house film ever but where the excess scenography actually distracts from producing any boo moment
The Ghost of Yotsuya [Parts 1 and II] (1949)
Japanese Ghost Story
One of a number of films based on the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories. This is a adaptation made in the neo-realist style of the period that was released in two parts
The Avenging Conscience or “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (1914)
Silent Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation
The first full length Edgar Allan Poe film from D.W. Griffith of The Birth of a Nation fame. Rather than Roger Corman’s brooding Gothicism, Griffith waters Poe’s melancholia down to a banal Christian morality play
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Haunting/Possession/"True Story"
If you want a genuinely scary spook show that will make you jump out of your seat, you would not go wrong with this. On the other hand, the Conjuring films with their claims to true stories of peddle superstition and fabricate most of their so-called facts
Haunted (1995)
Haunting
An old fashioned Victorian ghost story based on a James Herbert novel, this suffers a very laidback pace but is redeemed by its left field twist ending. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola
Gogol: The Beginning (2017)
Occult Investigator
The first in a trilogy of Russian dark fantasy films featuring the real-life horror writer Nikolai Gogol as an occult detective investigating a series of supernatural mysteries
Flight 666 (2018)
Haunted Plane Flight
A halfway reasonable film from The Asylum where passengers in the midst of a plane trip realise part way through that their flight is haunted
The Conjuring (2013)
Haunting/Possession/"True Story"
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
The Dogs (2025)
Ghost Story
Canadian actress Valerie Buhagiar directs a film about a mother and son fleeing an abusive relationship. The surprise is beyond the film’s arthouse ambitions is that it is a regular ghost story
A Chinese Ghost Story III (1991)
Hong Kong Supernatural Fantasy/Ghost Romance
The second sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story, a slighter effort too reliant on the plot beats of the original. Where it does work is in the enormous degree of slapstick energy with which proceedings are conducted
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)
Malevolent Clock
The sixth film based around The Amityville Horror, although by now connections to the original are minimal and this only concerns a mysterious clock taken from the house
The Forgotten One (1989)
Ghost Story
An often subtle ghost story where widower Terry O’Quinn moves into a new house where he becomes involved with the ghost of the woman who lived there
ABCs of Death 2 (2014)
Horror Anthology
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Bones (2001)
Ghetto Gangster's Supernatural Retribution
Blaxploitation homage designed as a vehicle for Snoop Dogg. Essentially a version of A Nightmare on Elm Street with Snoop as a pimp come back to haunt those who killed him
The Girl in a Swing (1988)
Haunting
A cryptic ghost story based on a novel by Watership Down author Richard Adams, featuring Meg Tilly as a newlywed bride who is haunted by events from her past
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (2003)
Malevolent House
TV movie prequel to the Stephen King tv mini-series Rose Red that tells the story of the building of the house. A lesser work but not without moments of interest
Book of Blood (2009)
Haunted House/Clive Barker Adaptation
A Clive Barker adaptation taken from the name of his story collection. While not uninteresting, it emerges as a haunted house story that eschews genre cliches for an everyday approach and never quite delivers its punches
Girl on the Third Floor (2019)
Malevolent House
Wrestler C.M. Punk does a halfway reasonable job of branching out as an actor, playing a regular guy engaged in home renovation who has to deal with a malevolent house
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Blair Witch Project Sequel
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
The Canal (2014)
Possible Haunting
Ghost story that does an effective job of generating dread and eerieness while also existing in a place that leaves you unsure whether it is all not just occurring inside the lead character’s fraying sanity
Apparition (2015)
Vengeful Ghost Girlfriend
This seems a generic ghost story. The second half has the protagonist’s dead girlfriend trying to stop him seeing another woman and becomes a descent into obsession that works rather well
The Coffin (2008)
Thai Ghost Story
Thai entry in the Asian horror fad. A film that has a premise but little beyond that. It feels like it is being too nice to push its audience in any way with all the supernatural manifestations eventually blurring into a sameness
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
Stories Come to Life to Kill People
Based on the popular series of children’s horror tales, this Guillermo Del Toro written/produced effort borrows the idea from the Goosebumps film of having the stories come to life and the idea from Stranger Things and It with a group children fighting against them. On screen, the finished result never quite seems as much as it promises to be
Clowntergeist (2017)
Supernatural Killer Clown
There is a heap of crappy low-budget killer clown films. However, I couldn’t quite bring myself to entirely dislike this entry about a supernatural killer clown, which does produce a number of jumps
Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
Ghostbusting Team/Cartoon in Live-Action
Sequel to the live-action Scooby-Doo, this is at least a better film than its predecessor, being more polished in its slapstick and effects but still has no more ambition beyond being a silly no-brain film
Screamtime (1983)
Horror Anthology
A British horror anthology made up of three stories from director Michael Armstrong. As always the episodes are variable but the episode with the killer Punch and Judy dolls stands out
You’ll Find Out (1940)
Old Dark House Comedy
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre
Seance (2021)
Girls’ Boarding School Ghost Story
Adam Wingard’s regular scriptwriter Simon Barrett directs a revival of the girls’ boarding school ghost story. I had very high expectations of this
The Child’s Eye (2010)
Haunted Hotel
The Pang Brothers were for a time some the best directors in the horror genre. This is one of their slighter efforts, a misguided venture into 3D. Seen flat, it still holds an undeniable amount of the eerie atmosphere they specialise in
Separation (2021)
Haunting
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, returns with a ghost story where a widower and daughter are haunted by his ex-wife
7 Below (2012)
Haunted Happenings
Modest name cast, including a highly entertaining Val Kilmer, in a film about a group of strangers brought together at a mysterious backwoods house
Seven Mummies (2006)
Western Ghost Town
Horror film where escaped convicts wander into a Western ghost town where a gold treasure is guarded by mummies
The Chair (1989)
Haunted Prison
One of a spate of killers returned from the electric chair films that came out around the time of Wes Craven’s Shocker. The film is all build-up and almost no delivery, although is enlivened by an undeniable sense of humour
Cello (2005)
South Korean Ghost Story
The huge success of J-horror films like Ringu and Ju-on: The Grudge in the 2000s was copied right around the Asian region. This was one of several K-horror (South Korean) ghost stories produced during this period
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
French New Wave/Mysterious House
Vastly over-praised French New Wave film that is a ghost story of sorts. Three hours plus of tediously protracted happenings that don’t seem to be about anything at all
Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman (2007)
Boogeywoman from Japanese Urban Legend
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
Sinister (2012)
Hauntings and Ritual Killings
Scott Derrickson film that is badly underwritten in terms of proper explanatory rationale. That said, you cannot deny that Derrickson manages to produce the scary goods on a number of occasions
Sinister 2 (2015)
Hauntings and Ritual Killings
The original had some undeniably effective jumps but suffered from a lack of explanatory rationale but this makes for a shaky house of cards when the same arbitrary happenings are extended for a sequel
Candyman: Day of the Dead (1999)
Boogey Man
The second and so far final of the Candyman sequels, a routine entry with Baywatch starlet Donna D’Errico as a descendant of Candyman who is pursued by Tony Todd
Candyman (2021)
Boogey Man
A Jordan Peele-written/produced revival of the Candyman series. Director Nia DaCosta lights it up with a new contemporary social relevance but fails to recapture the eerie horror the original held
Slit Mouth Woman in L.A. (2014)
Japanese Horror Anthology
Another version of the popular figure from Japanese urban legend, which has appeared in a number of films. This is an anthology where four Japanese directors have come to L.A. to shoot a series of strictly average short horror tales, not all of which feature the Slit Mouth Woman
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Genre Spoof
Fourth of the Scary Movie films and the usual crude inanity, although under David Zucker the movie parodies have expanded well beyond what can be labelled scary movies any longer
The Complex (2013)
Japanese Ghost Story/Haunted Apartment
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
Coffin Homes (2021)
Haunted Apartments
From director Fruit Chan, director of the great Dumplings, a film that takes a satiric jab at Hong Kong’s rental shortage crisis and concerns haunted apartments
Pulse 2 (2008)
Soul-Sucking Creatures from the Internet
This was the first of two sequels to the Wes Craven scripted Pulse, the English language version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intensely spooky film about ghosts from the internet
Death Ship (1980)
Ghost Ship
Film about a ghost ship haunted by Nazi atrocities. This gives the impression it was made to highlight a series of novelty deaths styled after the then-recent hit of The Omen
The Dead Room (2015)
New Zealand Haunted House Film
New Zealand-made film about a trio of parapsychologists investigating a reputedly haunted farmhouse. This treads very familiar ground and ultimately suffers from a sedate approach
Pizza (2014)
Bollywood Ghost Story
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
Dead Friend (2004)
Korean Ghost Story
South Korean ghost story that has borrowed most of its moves from the J-horror cycle – Ring, The Grudge et al. A relatively anodyne treatment is enlivened by a twist ending that draws heavily on The Sixth Sense
Poltergeist (2015)
Haunting
It has become an overused phrase in this site’s critical arsenal to say “yet another 70s/80s remake that is inferior to the original”. The 1982 Poltergeist was one of the great ghost stories of the era; this hits all the beats and with bigger effects but fails to find any of the haunted mood of the original
Poltergeist III (1988)
Haunting
The third of the Poltergeist sequels, which moves the locale to an apartment building and is better than its predecessor thanks to a series of eerie mirror effects
Dead Dudes in the House (1989)
Sinister House
Known under various titles including Dead Dudes in the House and The House on Tombstone Hill, a film about a group of young people who go to renovate a house but find themselves trapped inside being killed
The Dawn (2019)
Catholic Horrors/Haunting and Possession
A passable variant on the usual haunting and possession cliches overloaded with Catholic imagery before becoming a surprise unofficial prequel to a classic horror series
Darkness (2002)
Haunted House/Occult Conspiracy
From Jaume Balaguero, a film that assembles a decent cast and broods with suggestions of a haunted house and occult conspiracies but never does much to let it pay off
Darker Than Night (1975)
Mexican Haunted House Film
A Mexican entry in the haunted house genre, featuring a group of girls who inherit a place haunted by an aunt and her black cat. Strikingly rich in terms of set design
Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990)
Haunting/Campy Horror
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Dark Water (2005)
Japanese Ghost Story Remake/Haunted Apartment
The English-language remake of Hideo Nakata’s ghost story made by Walter Salles. This version is surprisingly faithful to the original but entirely miscues Nakata’s jolt ending
Pulse (2006)
Soul-Sucking Creatures from the Internet
As part of the mid-00s fad for English-language remakes of Japanese horror films, Kiyoshi Kuroawa’s unfathomable but undeniably creepy internet horror is reworked as a standard teen film
Dark Summer (2015)
Teen Confined on Home Detention in a Haunted Home
Director Paul Solet made an incredibly creepy debut film Grace. His follow-up has Keir Gilchrist imprisoned on home detention with an ankle bracelet only to find the house is haunted
Coming Soon (2008)
Thai Horror Film/Haunted Movie
Thai horror film with the interesting idea of ghosts emerging out of a movie screen. This has a couple of undeniably spooky moments but is still just another of the numerous copies of the basics of Ring
The Raven (1915)
Edgar Allan Poe Biopic
Silent movie based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Today we’d call it a biopic, although it readily departs into fantasy with Poe having drunken visions of the raven, ghosts and the afterlife
The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
Haunted House/"True Story"
Another supposed true-life ghost story, an early case by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The film exists as a progression of pop-up scares that through the need to keep producing effect produces no effect at all.
Realms (2017)
Thai Haunted House
Two Americans fleeing an armed bank robbery with hostages take refuge at a house that they discover it is haunted. A vy the numbers effort before arriving at a confused twist ending.