Curse of the Nun (2019)
Ghostly Nun
A low-budget mockbuster that joins the horde of ghost nun films that were made following the success of The Nun. From the director of Clowntergeist.
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 Remains (2016)
Haunted House
The haunted house genre is one that has become thoroughly exhausted by overuse in recent years. This puts the elements together with a professional assemblage but is essentially no different to the 347 other haunted house films that this site has seen in the last twelve months
Curse of Mesopotamia (2015)
Iraqi Horror Film
This sold itself as the first Iraqi horror film, which it isn’t quite (more accurately a film made by an expatriate), although it is rooted in the mythology of the region
The Return (2006)
Haunting
Ghost story in which Sarah Michelle Gellar receives a series of mysterious visions as she travels across Texas
Ring 0: Birthdays (2000)
Haunting/Psychic Powers/Japanese Ghost Story
The third of the Japanese Ringu/Ring films. A new director means a different approach but what also becomes apparent is that the original was never intended as a series and the attempts to further draw it out result in a confusing mishmash of ideas
Contagion (1987)
Mysterious Backwoods Happenings/Ozploitation Film
Not a pandemic film despite the title, an obscure oddity from the great era of Ozploitation where a man undergoes a series of strange experiences as he is drawn to a mystery house in the backwoods
Ring Around the Rosie (2006)
Haunting/Reality Bender
This starts out as a seeming ghost story without creating much tension then features Tom Sizemore going psycho, before arriving at one of the most confusing of all attempts to conduct an M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
The Communion Girl (2022)
Cursed Doll
Spanish-made film that feels like a mash-up of Annabelle and The Nun about the communion doll belonging to a girl who went missing that appears and curse everyone it touches
Sadako (2019)
Ring Sequel
The thirteenth film in the Ring/Ringu franchise. The question is whether the return of original director Hideo Nakata to the franchise can revitalise the series
Sadako vs Kayako (2016)
Ring/Grudge Series Crossover
The two most popular Japanese horror franchises come together to fight it out. Both series work on the provision of intensely uncanny effect but brought together the result is diluted at best
Saint Ange (2004)
French Ghost Story
The first film from Pascal Laugier who has emerged as a leading French horror director since, a ghost story set at a girl’s boarding school, Laugier does produce some eerie jumps but the script is a frustrating tangle of narrative loose ends
Burnt Offerings (1976)
Parasitic House
A theatrical film directed by 1970s genre tv producer Dan Curtis. This has the intriguing idea of a house that acts as a psychic vampire. In all other respects, this plays out as a standard haunted house story
The Boogeyman (2023)
Stephen King Adaptation/Boogeyman
British director Rob Savage made a great splash in the early 2020s with Host and Dashcam. Here he turns his attentions to the adaptation of a Stephen King short story
The Bunker Game (2022)
LARPers Trapped in a Haunted Bunker
Horror film in which a group of LARPers (live-action role-players) use a wartime bunker as a location and are trapped where the bunker appears to be haunted
Voice from the Stone (2017)
Possible Haunting
Strongly reminiscent of The Innocents, Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones plays a nanny arriving at an estate to tend a boy who claims to hear his dead mother’s voice in the stone walls.
As Above So Below (2014)
Found Footage/Gateway to Hell
The Brothers Dowdle made the standout The Poughkeepsie Tapes but this is a sub-Da Vinci Code archaeological mystery that is little more than a Halloween haunted house attraction in the Paris catacombs
The Unborn (2009)
Haunting/Possession
Scriptwriter David S. Goyer takes the director’s choice to make a possession film. The one distinction here is that Goyer draws from Jewish mythology, otherwise this feels like another canned teen horror film
The Unbroken (2012)
Ghost Story
Film about a woman who moves into a new apartment and is haunted by a little ghost boy. Follows the plotting for the ghost story genre to a completely tried and true formula and with wholly unremarkable results
Apartment 1303 (2007)
Japanese Ghost Story
Another J-horror on the bandwagon created by the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge films. Some promisingly initial scares traipse off into a dull mystery about investigating the past
… And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)
Haunted House/Supernatural Retribution
Amicus Films venture into the haunted house genre with a newlywed Stephanie Beacham haunted by a disembodied hand but atmosphere is weakened by the constant reaching for crude shock effect
Uninhabited (2010)
Haunted Island
A couple on a getaway to an uninhabited island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef find the island may be haunted
Amityville: The Awakening (2017)
Haunted House
No less than the twentieth film spun out around The Amityville Horror. This Blumhouse revival emerges as marginally better than most films with Amityville in the name
The Uninvited (2003)
South Korean Ghost Story
One of the spate of South Korean ghost stories that came out in 2000s. While made with undeniable directorial style, the two hour running time drags and the plot is often unclear what is happening
The Uninvited (2009)
Haunting/Asian Horror Remake
The Hollywood remake of the South Korean ghost story A Tale of Two Sisters that waters down and reduces the effectiveness of the original to generic shocks
The Amityville Horror (2005)
Haunted House/"True Story"
Remake of the 1979 film that still persists with the claim that the Amityville hoax was true. This embellishes the rather dull original with the baggage of trick effects of the modern horror film
Veronica (2017)
Haunting/"True Story"
Paco Plaza has become one of the premiere names in Spanish horror due to the [Rec] films. Here he attempts to follow in the footsteps of The Conjuring with a film based on a supposedly true supernatural incident in 90s Madrid but fails to make a terribly interesting work
V/H/S/2 (2013)
Anthology of Found Footage Horror Tales
Sequel to the modest success of V/H/S, an anthology of short Found Footage horror films featuring a different line-up of genre directors. The episodes are competent at best, none standout and mostly forgettable
The Amityville Harvest (2020)
Sinister House/Possible Vampire
Another film masquerading with some relevance to The Amityville Horror, although this extends no further than the title. This is an almost interesting effort where a film crew interview a possible vampire
Amityville 3-D (1983)
Haunted House
This was the third of the Amityville films, released amid the early 1980s 3D revival. Nothing more than the usual except for various things popping out of the screen
Twice Dead (1988)
Haunted House/Home Invasion
An 80s horror film that suffers a bizarre identity crisis and doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be a haunted house film, a home invasion film or a makeup effects vehicle
The Ward (2010)
Haunted Asylum
John Carpenter returned to the director’s chair after more than a decade but failed to light the world on fire. Carpenter makes what you could call a ghost story version of Girl, Interrupted. The scares are tame and the film is hamstrung by an improbable M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
Other-Dimensional Haunting
Problem ridden Disney ghost story with a science-fiction rationalisation that never quite comes together on screen
Altar (2014)
Haunted House
Nick Willing is a genre director who has consistently impressed. Here he ventures into the English ghost story where your expectation is that he is going to turn the genre on its head – only he doesn’t
White (2011)
Korean Ghost Story/Haunted Pop Song
Another South Korean copy of Ring with haunted pop songs instead of tv broadcasts. This offers interesting insight into the K-pop phenomenon but nothing particularly standout in the way of scares
Alone (2007)
Thai Ghost Story
Thai ghost story about a woman haunted by the ghost of her dead conjoined twin sister. This produces a mix of jumps that fall between the effective and routine but falls apart in a contrived twist ending
Winchester (2018)
Real-Life Haunted House
Winchester House with its eccentric designs and strange history is reputedly one of America’s most haunted locales. From Australia’s Spierig Brothers who made the likes of Daybreakers and Predestination, this attempts to tell its story but emerges as far less than it could have been
Witchboard 2 (1993)
Malevolent Spirit Conjured by an Ouija Board
Way back before Blumhouse’s Ouija and the subsequent cheap ouija-titled films, there was the 80s horror Witchboard, which proved popular enough that it produced two sequels starting with this
Witchery (1988)
Haunted Hotel/Retribution from Hell
Italian horror film featuring David Hasselhoff and Linda Blair that has little going for it bar some imaginatively gruesome deaths
The Woman in Black (1989)
Ghost Story
The revived Hammer Films had with the ghost story The Woman in Black. This is the original version of the story made as a movie for British tv with a script from Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale
The Woman in Black (2012)
Ghost Story
The revived Hammer Films visit the classic British ghost story tradition. This is impeccably mounted but the film offers nothing more than a series of disappointingly superficial boo moments of zero impact
The Woman in the Yard (2025)
Mystery Woman Outside the House
Blumhouse film with Danielle Deadwyler and family having to deal with the ominous threat of a mystery woman in black veil who simply sits in their yard
World Apartment Horror (1991)
Strange Apartment Building Comedy/Haunting
After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third
Wraiths of Roanoke (2007)
Unsolved Mystery/ Malevolent Phantoms
B-budget Syfy Channel outing that attempts to answer the true-life Unsolved Mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke. Unfortunately, the film’s answers are no more interesting than a bunch of Viking spirits, while the film generates little atmosphere or anything beyond rudimentary historical conviction
Twixt (2011)
Ghost Story/Vampire Film
Francis Ford Coppola makes what may be a ghost story or a vampire film but things are so confused you are never sure what. Less like the mature work of one of the great American filmmakers than an ingenue effort from director straight out of film school with a head full of muddled pretensions
Asylum (2008)
Sinister Former Asylum
From the director of Snakes on a Plane, a film about a co-ed university dormitory that used to be an asylum where students find that former horrors still lurk
Solstice (2008)
Haunting
Daniel Myrick, one of the co-directors of The Blair Witch Project, conducts a remake of a Danish-Swedish ghost story, relocating it to Lousiana. Myrick does nothing remarkable with the material, even at the twist ending, largely treading in the safety of antebellum cliches
Tales of Halloween (2015)
Anthology of Halloween Horror Stories
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
Supernatural Retribution/Stephen King Adaptation
Passable but slight tv movie adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a teacher facing undead pupils
Desecration (1999)
Catholic Nightmare
This is a surreal and plotless Catholic horror film from Dante Tomaselli that seems full of fairground horror house jumps and overloaded with tortured Catholic imagery but makes no real sense
The Spiral (1998)
Ring Sequel
The black sheep among the Japanese Ringu films. A sequel released the same time as the first film, this lacks the other’s uncanny atmosphere and was ignored
Spirit (2001)
Haunting
Banal ghost story mostly noted for starring a teenage Elisabeth Moss
The Spirit is Willing (1967)
Ghost Comedy
Here gimmick master William Castle turns his attention away from the usual into making a light fantasy comedy about a family who buy a house inhabited by ghosts
The St. Francisville Experiment (2000)
Haunted House/Found Footage
A blatant copy of The Blair Witch Project with a group of people armed with video cameras investigating a haunted house
Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)
Horror Spoof
Parody of the horror genre designed to highlight British comedian Kenny Everett. Some quite funny spoofs, some that aren’t. Vincent Price appears as the leader of a coven.
Still Small Voices (2006)
Ghostly 911 Calls
TV movie in which Catherine Bell is a 911 operator who receives calls from a ghostly child
Stir of Echoes: The Awakening (2007)
Gulf War Vet Receives Visions
Stir of Echoes was a spookily effective film. Alas in this sequel, we go from Kevin Bacon as a medium to Rob Lowe as a haunted Iraq War veteran amid a series of routine pop-up scares
The Strange Case of Angelica (2010)
Haunting
From the world’s oldest living director ( Manoel de Oliveira who turned 102 when this was released) comes a ghost story that remains soporifically dull and never seems to get started
Blair Witch (2016)
Found Footage/Backwoods Haunting
The Blair Witch Project was genuinely innovative. It is a surprise that we never saw a string of sequels. Adam Wingard finally does here but at a time when the Found Footage genre feels played out of moves
Stree (2018)
Bollywood Horror/Folk Boogeywoman
An Indian horror film about a folk tale of a witch spirit the Stree, this was a popular success that was then built out into an Indian version of The Conjuring Universe
Suburban Gothic (2014)
Middle-Class Satire/Haunting
From the director of Excision, another film that satirically digs its claws into middle-class values but there is the feeling we have seen all of this before and the film fails to provide anything funny. Added to this is a barely scary ghost plot the film occasionally remembers to get back to
The Banishing (2020)
Haunted House
Christopher Smith seemed one of the most promising genre directors of the 2000s with films like Triangle and Black Death. Here he returns with a venture into the English ghost story
The Turn of the Screw (1992)
Psychological Ghost Story
Another version of Henry James’ classic psychological ghost story updated to the 1960s where the subtleties of the original are rendered in terms of crude effects
Temple (2017)
Haunted Japanese Temple
The kaidan eiga or Japanese ghost story has a fine tradition on screen and there are some excellent films. The Western-made Japanese ghost story is a far less successful prospect. This is one effort concerning three tourists who travel to a haunted Japanese temple
Bangkok Haunted (2001)
Anthology of Thai Ghost Stories
Early effort from one of the Pang Brothers Oxide, who only directs one of the episodes in this trio of Thai ghost stories. The other director’s grasp of horror effect is often crude and amateurish
Things Heard & Seen (2021)
Ghost Story
Ghost story that seems to be intended to play to a more literary level than most of its contemporaries
Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
Haunted House
After the success of their remake of House on Haunted Hill, Dark Castle Entertainment remade another William Castle film here, expanding it with a full arsenal of visual and makeup effects
The 3rd Floor (2007)
Haunted Apartment Building
A low-budget ingenue effort by three friends about a tenant who discovers that the third floor of his apartment building contains the ghosts of dead asylum inmates
13 Ghosts (1960)
Haunted House
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending and was sold with the gimmick of Ghost Viewer glasses. Later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
Bag of Bones (2011)
Stephen King Adaptation/Ghost Story
The perpetually terrible Mick Garris is allowed loose on another Stephen King book where he promptly reduces a subtle, ambiguous ghost story to a series of lunging pop-up scares without any concept of atmosphere or nuance
Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)
High School Detention Horror Film
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
Titanic 666 (2022)
Ghosts of the Titanic
An offering from The Asylum where a replica of the Titanic sets sail only to be beset by the ghosts of those who sank aboard the original ship
The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation/Haunting
The eighth and last of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Some claim this tale of possession by a late wife is the best but it feels an uninspired rehash of the plot elements from Corman’s other Poe films.
Tormented (1960)
Haunting
Bert I. Gordon, a director known for his cheapo 1950s giant bug film, here ventures into the ghost story but delivers it in terms crude and absurdly heavy-handed pop-up effects
Totem (2017)
Haunting
I was very impressed with director Marcel Sarmiento on the basis of the perversely twisted Deadgirl. Here Sarminento turns his hand to making a ghost story
Trick ‘R Treat (2008)
Halloween Horror Anthology
Disappointing Bryan Singer produced horror anthology set around Halloween where its potential is frequently dragged down by over-emphatic direction
Asylum of Fear (2018)
Haunted Abandoned Asylum
A crew of reality tv paranormal investigators are hired to investigate a haunted abandoned asylum. This sort of film has been done numerous time before.
Demons (2017)
Possession Film
Miles Doleac is better known as an actor but also has a number of credits as a director. Here he both directs and stars as a former priest haunted by an exorcism gone wrong
Dark Remains (2005)
Ghost Story
A low-budget independent film that is making a clear effort to spook an audience. On the other side, it is also mining the ghost story, a genre that feels like it has run out of anything original in its tired and formulaic plot possibilities
Ghost Ship (2002)
Haunted Ship
This was a big-budget revival of the ghost ship theme by Dark Castle Entertainment about a salvage crew encountering a ghost vessel. Visual effects tend to trump spooky atmosphere
The Eye (2008)
Woman Sees the Dead
An English-language remake of the ghost story from the Pang Brothers follows the other film faithfully but in terms of atmosphere is a pallid copy of the original
Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
Paranormal Investigation
After two fairly good initial entries, the Insidious series began its downward slide. Here new director Adam Robitel’s clumsy jumpshocks are a far cry from the eerie effects James Wan pulled off
Insidious Chapter 3 (2015)
Haunting/Possession
This doesn’t have James Wan directing and is a far less interesting ghost story before doing a repeat venture into the beyond. On the plus side, incoming director Leigh Whannell does generate a fair degree of eerie tension
Flatliners (1990)
Exploring the Afterlife/Haunting
A film about med students stopping their hearts so as to explore the afterlife. This aims for big ideas but befalls director Joel Schumacher who delivers pretty visuals but finds nothing any more profound than a figurative group hug
Mekong Hotel (2012)
Thai Ghosts/Reincarnated Lovers
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a festival favourite and one genre director whose work is least categorised as such. As with any of Weerasethakul’s films, this has some intensely haunted moments but is severely lacking in plot or any kind of dramatic inertia
Gothika (2003)
Asylum Haunting
Halle Berry is a psychiatrist who comes around to find she has been incarcerated in her own asylum only to then find it is haunted. An improbably contrived set up with some jumps
Fertile Ground (2011)
Haunted House
Adam Gierasch, known for his gore-drenched horror films like Autopsy and Night of the Demons, takes a change of direction into the haunted house genre
The Messengers (2007)
Haunting
The Pang Brothers, two of the most exciting genre directors in the world, have their distinctive style swallowed up in their bland US mainstream debut produced by Sam Raimi
Grave Encounters (2011)
Found Footage/Haunted Asylum
Another Found Footage horror film with a reality tv ghostbusting team investigating a haunted asylum. The Found Footage genre quickly became exhausted and this only treads where others have gone before
The Gravedancers (2006)
Haunting
Mike Mendez has gained a reasonable name as a genre director since the early 2000s. This is one of his earlier works, a venture into the ghost story where three friends are haunted after drunkenly dancing on a grave
Mirrors (2008)
Haunted Mirrors
Alexandre Aja film about haunted mirrors. Aja is more a director of physical horror and seems less attuned to the supernatural mood
Greystone Park (2012)
Found Footage/Haunted Asylum
Oliver Stone’s son Sean makes a Found Footage horror film. The haunted asylum has become a thoroughly overused cliche. That said, Sean Stone wrings some undeniably spooky jumps out of the material
Into the Mirror (2003)
Korean Ghost Story/Haunted Mirrors
A South Korean entry in the fad for Asian ghost stories that were popular in the 2000s following the successes of Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge. This later underwent remake as Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors
The Grudge 2 (2006)
Haunting
Follow-up to The Grudge, the English-language remake of the Japanese horror film. Although original Japanese director Takashi Shimizu is present, this is one of the weaker Ju-on/Grudge films
The Eye 10 (2005)
Thai Ghost Story
The third and weakest of the Pang Brothers’ The Eye films, this has occasional moments of spookiness but mostly feels made up of leftover ideas that didn’t make it to the other films
Housebound (2014)
New Zealand Haunted House Comedy
An NZ-made haunted house comedy that runs through a frenzied array of genre plot devices, a couple of minor jumps and some easy middle-of-the-road laughs leaving you feeling there should have been more to it
The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)
Japan-Set Ghost Story
US-made ghost story set in Japan with a couple moved into a house haunted by a dead samurai, his wife and her lover. Not a patch on any of the classic Japanese kaidan eiga
The House That Would Not Die (1970)
Haunted House
A routine haunted house film that was made as a tv movie,. One of the several early genre works made by celebrated tv producer Aaron Spelling.
Mr Vampire III (1987)
Hong Kong Ghost Comedy
Third in the popular series of Hong Kong hopping vampire films. As in the previous entry, a frenetic slapstick element dominates
Mr Wrong (1985)
Haunted Car/Stalker
New Zealand-made ghost story where Heather Bolton buys a second-hand car only to find it is haunted
Nails (2017)
Haunted Hospital
Film that takes place with the heroine confined to a hospital bed unable to move as a malevolent ghost enters her room