As Oz Perkins’ Longlegs hits theaters, ComingSoon selects some of the best serial killer movies ever to grace the screen.
Horror has plenty of murderous monsters out there, but there’s something incredibly unsettling about serial killers. The raw reality of the cruelty and brutality of our fellow human beings hits a lot closer to home than undead behemoths or possessed dolls. or supernatural clowns. There’s plenty of evidence we can be horrifically depraved to one another, but it doesn’t make it any less shocking or oddly compelling to read about.
So here are ten of the best serial killer movies—a box set of the most depraved human monsters in cinema.
The House That Jack Built (2018)
Lars Von Trier loves to push buttons. From the infamous Antichrist to the fascinatingly lewd Nymphomaniac, the Danish filmmaker has a history of dragging things to the borders of good taste and punting them clear over it.
How well that works for the viewer is highly subjective, but there’s no denying Von Trier’s The House That Jack Built features one of the most coldly sadistic depictions of a serial killer ever to grace the screen.
Matt Dillon makes for an all-too-convincing psychopath as Jack, and Von Trier gives him plenty of brutal showings throughout the movie. What sells it is how each killing is part of some greater piece of art for Jack, and there’s something chilling about seeing a messed up passion displayed so coldly devoid of emotion.
Se7en (1995)
Seven (or Se7en, if you will) is a no-brainer for a list like this. Kevin Spacey’s serial killer uses the seven deadly sins as the template for some horribly inventive murders. As Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman’s detectives desperately try to stop him before he completes the set, we’re ”treated” to some gnarly murder scenes and an almost perpetually dark and dreary city.
Se7en could easily have been a cliche-ridden detective drama, but David Fincher ensures it’s a grim and gritty masterclass of murder investigation. To this day, it still makes the opening of any cardboard box a little bit dread-inducing.
I Saw the Devil (2010)
Is there any scene that puts so much danger into a scene of serene calm, quite like the opening to Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw The Devil?
Choi Min-sik’s brutal killer, Kyung-chul, makes a visceral statement in the snow that sets up a violent game of cat and mouse between cop and criminal.
After picking the wrong person to murder, the notorious serial killer seemingly meets his match in top secret agent Kim Soo-hyun, who hounds the murderer in an increasingly brutal fashion. Kyung-chul is only too happy to escalate, however.
It’s a fascinating spin on the revenge thriller, and the ever-reliable Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) is gruesomely compelling as a depraved monster.
Watcher (2022)
Before Maika Monroe had to deal with Nicholas Cage’s Longlegs, she encountered another possible serial killer in Chloe Okuno’s Watcher.
Monroe plays a young actress who moves to a new city with her husband. Unfortunately, they choose a time when a serial killer is stalking the city, and before long, she finds herself being watched by a man across the street.
After announcing her place in horror legend thanks to her role in It Follows, Monroe again shows she’s a perfect foil for unsettling stalkers.
Memories of Murder (2003)
Parasite director Bong Joon-ho brings a darkly comedic undertone to this serial killer hunt.
In South Korea, unused to the idea of such a brutal series of killings, it catches a nation off-guard. The police are frustrated and fumbling about finding a connection while striving to downplay the growing hysteria.
The bleak, twisty-turny plot rises above hokey melodrama thanks to Bong Joon-ho’s deft touch in handling humor, humanity, and grim reality. It features another excellent performance from the director’s frequently-used muse, Song Kang-ho.
The final 30 minutes of the movie take many different emotional directions but still manage to stitch them together for a wonderfully disheartening climax.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The Silence of the Lambs is probably the go-to in most people’s minds when asked to name a serial killer movie. It has two Oscar-winning performances (the film won The Big 5 in 1992) from Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, which have bled into pop culture in myriad ways and have become a touchstone for any serial killer movie since then.
While Hopkins and Foster earned the plaudits, only one was playing a killer, and he doesn’t do all that much killing for a good chunk of the movie. Ted Levine‘s Buffalo Bill is the real disturbed star of The Silence of the Lambs. He is a violent, eccentric monster who feels genuinely dangerous in that unsettling encounter with Foster’s fledgling FBI agent.
Zodiac (2007)
There’s a somewhat unhealthy obsession with real-life killers, but I get why. We feel the need to understand why people do the things they do, and when people do things as sick and depraved as serial killers, it’s a lot harder to understand, which can lead to an endless search for answers.
This is what makes the Zodiac Killer especially fascinating. It’s America’s Jack the Ripper because it’s a killer who has remained elusive and bogged down in an avalanche of conspiracy theories in the years since. What we don’t know makes it more compelling than any gory details.
David Fincher‘s film on the grim phenomenon gets at the heart of the madness as a group of people investigate the mysterious Bay Area killer. Three men, in particular, turn their lives upside down in an obsessive pursuit of the truth. It’s a powerhouse that pulls off the serial killer movie atmosphere without giving us a concrete answer.
Cure (1997)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s depiction of the mundane in murder is deliciously captivating. A wave of gruesome murders is sweeping Tokyo, each connected by the carving of an X into the neck of the victims. What is surprising is that these are seemingly not the work of one person as each murder comes with the murderer still at the scene with no memory of what they’ve done.
A detective and a psychologist team up to figure out this grisly phenomenon. They won’t like what they find.
Every drab, weather-beaten location in Cure is beautifully presented, which helps capture the oppressive, haunting tone of the story. The lack of musical score allows a palpable sense of dread to breed in the dull hum and thump of background noise, and further drives home the feeling of being in a morbidly fascinating decaying city.
Psycho (1960)
Osgood Perkins making serial killer movies seems too perfect given his father is one of the most famous onscreen killers in pop culture history.
The good-natured, quirky, slightly awkward boy next door facade of Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates remains a fine disarming trick. No matter how often I’ve watched Psycho, Bates’ weirdo charm takes me off guard. That makes it such an effective performance here and in the belated sequels. The very real notion that we don’t truly know anyone’s true self.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Tobe Hooper’s First Family of bloodthirsty maniacs remains one of the most striking sets of killers onscreen because they aren’t hiding in the traditional sense, nor are they hunting for victims. Their shabby farmhouse-adjacent homestead is like a dilapidated beacon in the great expanse of the Texas wilderness. It’s just waiting for victims, inexplicably luring them in.
Their home is evidence enough that they’ve been getting away with this for some time, and the 80 or so minutes we spend in the company of them and their latest victims is enough to show they’re extremely good at killing despite their limited intelligence.
