Are you in the mood for a slow burn? Not that kind of slow burn, you horny Booktoker, you! I mean the sort of slow burn that doesn’t end with a kiss, but a kill! While some horror movies come jumpscaring right out the gate, other more subtle titles rely on dread to really wrack up the tension. When it comes to love and horror, both are better taken slow. If you intend to make it through these snail-paced screamers, you’ll need to cultivate other virtues besides patience. Like the virtue of knowing when to walk away – far away from that spooky mansion house that the creepy caretaker swears isn’t haunted. If you need a little practice, you can start with these 10 slow burn horror films that go from zero to sixty in hours, not seconds. But trust me, once they get going, there’s no slowing down.
House of The Devil
Ti West’s House of The Devil feels a bit like slow burn horror hallmark Suspiria (we’ll get to her) if the protagonist was a little bit less paranoid. Sadly for flat broke college student Samantha Hughes, a healthy sense of suspicion was something that they didn’t teach at her alma mater. After showing up at a creepy old mansion in response to what was supposed to be a babysitting job, Samantha is informed by the proprietor Mr. Ulman that the gig actually involves looking after his elderly mother. Samantha chalks this up as a simple miscommunication, and agree to spend the night in the eerie house all alone… or so she thinks. The scariest part of this movie? Nothing. No, really. There are so many shots where you think something is going to happen, you’re certain some monster lurking down a shadowy hallway will gobble up young Samantha, but the film fakes you out again and again. Nothing happens. Until the climax, when everything does.
The Shining
A slow burn horror classic, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is adapted from the equally slow paced Stephen King horror novel of the same name. The pop-culturally famous plot concerns Jack, a down on his luck author who makes the poor carer decision to serve as a haunted hotel’s caretaker with his family in tow. The dread is palpable throughout. Jack’s young son Danny tricycling down endless hotel halls whose layout defies architectural logic. Jack’s aching descent into paranoia and madness as the hotel’s ghosts sink their teeth in to his mind. Jack’s wife Wendy’s creeping transformation from soft spoken housewife to baseball bat swinging scream queen – it’s all the stuff of horror legend. And who could forget the slow-mo elevator full of blood? A sloth would be fast enough to escape it, but too frozen in fear to try.
The Babadook
Jennifer Kent’s The Bababook is a slow burn story of one of the longest lingering emotions in the human heart: grief. While Amelia Vanek was in labor with her son Samuel, her husband was killed in a car accident driving them to the hospital. Six years later, Amelia is an exhausted single mother harboring a secret resentment towards her emotionally volatile child. After reading her son a strange storybook called The Babadook that one day appeared in her house (not the best decision) she finds herself haunted by the top hat wearing queer icon himself. The Babadook only appears a handful of times, for only a few moments – and yet each of his bite-sized appearances is lightyears more horrifying than the last. Like grief itself, this movie’s horror lays dormant for a while – and then bubbles up all at once.
The Wailing
Directed by Na Hong-jin, The Wailing is a South Korean horror film about a policeman who is investigating a string of unexplained murders in a quiet rural town. In his quest to untangle the mystery behind the killings, he hopes to also get to the bottom of his daughter’s mysterious illness – an illness that is slowly spreading. As the sickness causes its sufferers to commit acts of violence that could make Leatherface clutch his pearls, the townsfolk begin to whisper that a newly arrived, enigmatic foreigner is the culprit behind the disease. The film itself feels like a long, slow and brutal battle with terminal illness – the conclusion was inevitable, but the result still comes as a shock.
The Blair Witch Project
One of the most profoundly influential horror titles ever made, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’ The Blair Witch Project is a masterclass in slow burn, lo-fi suspense. The plot follows a group of college-aged film makers who journey into a section of Maryland wilderness said to be haunted by a witch. Hopeful to capture a glimpse of the horror on camcorder, the filmmakers slowly begin to lose hope when all they find is trees. Wait, wasn’t that the same tree they passed by earlier? Are they going in circles? What happened to the map? Who decided to make a stack of burial rocks at the campsite? C’mon guys, this isn’t funny anymore! While we never see her directly, it’s the Blair Witch herself who has the last laugh.
Creep
A low-budget, found footage horror film that follows in Blaire Witch‘s muddy footsteps, Creep is the story of cash-strapped videographer Aaron, who finds himself at a remote cabin in the woods after answering a Craigslist ad. At the cabin, he meets his client Josef – who explains that he has an inoperable brain tumor and hired Aaron to record a video diary for his unborn son. As Josef’s “diary entries” become increasingly unhinged and contradictory, Aaron begins to wonder if his client is really the man he says he is – too little too late. Like a slow burn toxic romance, this film is about pretending not to see the red flags until they’re waving right in your face, dripping blood.
Lake Mungo
Equal parts terrifying and devastating, Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo is the story of the Palmers – emotionally torn to pieces by the drowning death of their sixteen year old daughter Alice. After burying their child, their surviving son begins to find unexplained bruises on his body – as baffling as the eerie noises that the family has begun hearing in their home. The grieving trio begins to wonder if the bloated body that was pulled up from the water was actually their daughter or not, and if it is was, if she is still trying to contact them from the other side. While many horror movies can shock, only a few are able to truly disturb – Lake Mungo is one of those few. Slow and quiet as ripples on a lake, and just as darkly deep.
Pulse
Known as Kairo in Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse is a little known but well-feared film about the dead invading the living world through the internet. Told across parallel plot-lines that eventually intersect, the film follows a group of plant shop employees who begin experiencing digital hauntings. Distorted phone calls, creepy computer videos, these tech-savvy ghosts have obviously adapted to the modern era. The haunting sequences themselves are devastatingly drawn out affairs – one of which (the hallway scene) is often regarded as the single scariest ghost scene of all time. These ghosts are so mortifying that their victims are rendered emotionally traumatized, falling into deep depressions that often lead to suicide. These specters don’t kill outright, they leave psychological wounds that slowly fester.
Suspiria
A 70’s classic, Suspiria is an Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento. The plot follows a young ballerina named Suzy Bannion, who left America to study at the prestigious Tanz Akademie located in the German wilderness. Like many of the protagonists on this list, she ignores the red flags – the first of which started waving the moment Suzy watched a student run screaming from the building the night she arrived. The other red flags? German Shepard attacks. Rooms full of razor wire. Maggots falling from the ceiling – the list goes on. While we the audience knew something was wrong from the jump, the true slow burn terror of this film comes from watching poor Suzy figure it out for herself.
The Others
Often hailed as one of the greatest horror films ever made, Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others is the story of Grace Stewart – who lives on a small British island with her two young children. One may think he her mid-century life sounds quaint – one would be wrong. Her children have an unusual sensitivity to light, and must be kept in the darkness at all times. As it turns out, there may be other things lurking in the shadows as well. Grace’s children begin to claim that they are hearing voices in the dimness, and Grace herself swears she saw the piano playing on its own. This is a slow burn haunted house classic with all the fixin’s: creepy kids, bumps in the night, buried secrets – culminating in a devastating twist ending that nobody saw coming. How could you? It’s pitch black in there.
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