Credit: A Tale of Two Sisters/B.O.M. Film
As English-speaking fans of Japanese horror have known for decades, the genre exports itself particularly well. Scary movies are often built on shocking visuals, which means when done well, horror loses little power when it travels. And, just as often, horrifying tales unique to the residents of a particular country are just nightmares the rest of us haven’t had yet. (Before The Grudge and The Ring made their way to America, I thought long, black, wet hair was terrifying only in the sense that it might clog my drains. Now, however…)
Horror movies remind us that no matter what language we speak or the country of our origin, we’re all the same on the inside: red, squishy, and oh so vulnerable. But if you’re looking to explore new types of terror, you may need to look outside your cultural experience. Here are great horror movies that don’t happen to have been filmed in English, each bringing a distinct regional flavor of horror into your living room.
Audition (1999)
Language: Japanese
Director Takashi Miike made a name for himself as one the 21st century’s foremost horror directors, and Audition offers a perfect example of his squirmy, deeply disturbing style. Here, he follows widower Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi, who later appeared in the first two American Grudge movies) as he re-enters the dating world by concocting a fake film production and setting up auditions for the role of his new flame. Hitting it off with the quiet Asami, he pursues a relationship. It doesn’t go very well for him. At all.
Where to stream: Tubi, digital rental via Apple TV
Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)
Language: Spanish
Blending fantasy with horror, Mexican writer/director Issa López’s story of children displaced and orphaned by the Mexican Drug War deftly tells a story that’s heartbreakingly believable, even in our world, where the supernatural is less terrifying than the actions of greedy and heedless adults. Tenoch Huerta, later Namor in Wakanda Forever, plays an insidious crime boss.
Where to stream: Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
Language: Korean
Part of a wave of South Korean horror that terrified the world in the early 2000s, this Kim Jee-woon shocker is a visual stunner, even if the plot is a bit opaque. It’s the somber, Shakespearean tale of a South Korean teenager who reunites with her beloved sister following a stay in a mental hospital. Their father has a new wife, which creates an uncomfortable situation in the house, but not nearly so uncomfortable as the strange, horrific, and sometimes absurd events that plague the family. As with some of the best horror movies, it all comes back to the cruel family secrets that saw the sisters separated in the first place.
Where to stream: AMC+
Good Madam (2021)
Language: Xhosa
In need of a place to stay, Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) brings her daughter to live, temporarily, into the Cape Town house where her once-estranged mother Mavis (Nosipho Mtebe) has worked as a domestic for decades. The Good Madam of the title, an elderly white woman, is now bedridden and infirm, but Mavis remains entirely devoted—a reminder to Tsidi of her childhood, when she took a backseat to Madam’s family. Naturally, things get increasingly and disturbingly creepy in the house, the effective horror elements masking an examination of class and race in modern South Africa.
Where to stream: Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Language: French
The producers were eager to make a move into the horror market, but wanting to dodge problems with European and local censors, director Georges Franju was cautioned away from including all the blood and gore that the story might have otherwise called for. It’s just as well. The sly, suggestive tone of Eyes Without a Face stands in stark contrast to its lurid synopsis: Following his daughter’s disfiguring accident, a plastic surgeon is determined to provide her with a face transplant that will restore her to his idea of beauty. The problem, as you can imagine, is where to get the face. This could’ve been a schlocky Bela Lugosi movie, but Franju injects it with a poetic style that turns it into a work of art (it’s even a part of the Criterion Collection).
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Saloum (2021)
Languages: French and Wolof
At the start, Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot seems to be setting up an action movie; the story of mercenaries fleeing a coup looks for all the world like an American military thriller of the 1980s. Soon, however, it is revealed to be something distinctive, effortlessly blending genres and styles as things take a turn for the horrific when the band crash lands in a remote and eerie part of Senegal. The hunters become the hunted, but undergirding it all are interesting questions about power and possibility of redemption.
Where to stream: Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
Suspiria (1977)
Language: Italian
Dario Argento’s giallo masterpieces are almost all vibes, blending glossy filmmaking with buckets of blood until there’s not much different between beautiful and gruesome. Suspiria, likely the director’s masterwork, follows talented dancer Susie Bannion (Jessica Harper) who signs up as a student at a prestigious dance academy in Berlin, where she does great, at least until the accusations of witchcraft begin to flow. (The English remake, starring Tilda Swinton, is also worth a watch, but not until after you’ve digested the original.)
Where to stream: Kanopy
Ring (1998)
Language: Japanese
Hideo Nakata’s original Ring film, an adaptation of the Koji Suzuki novel, was the movie that brought J-horror roaring back, kicking off a franchise that now spans continents and decades (including eight Japanese films, two television series, three American remakes, a Korean remake, and a couple of video games). Though the thrill has dimmed, a bit, with repetition and endless parodies, there’s no question that Sadako’s image—climbing from her well and through the TV screen—remains indelible. The movie itself is a clever, spooky supernatural mystery punctuated by some truly “holy shit!” moments of fright.
Where to stream: Kanopy
Funny Games (1997)
Language: German and French
Austrian and German directors developed a reputation for extreme horror during the 1980s and 1990s (see movies like Nekromantik, or Violent Shit), which I’m sure says something about European cultural upheaval in the wake of the fall of the iron curtain. Maybe. Here, director Michael Haneke tells the story of a couple on a lakeside holiday who are terrorized and sadistically tortured by a couple of thoroughly deranged young men, one of whom winks at the camera and occasionally narrates the film as a way of reminding us, the audience, that we’re here to witness the depravity, not the quiet holiday.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
The Dead Lands (2017)
Language: Māori
Heavy on the action, New Zealand-born director Toa Fraser’s film depicts pre-colonial Māori in the story of a teenager who pursues the chief responsible for the slaughter of his tribe into the titular “dead lands,” an area believed to be protected by a Taniwha that will kill anyone who ventures into the area.
Where to stream: Tubi, Crackle, digital rental
The Lure (2015)
Language: Polish
Agnieszka Smoczyńska directs this thoroughly bizarre and wildly entertaining rock opera about a couple of mermaids who leave the water and get jobs at a Warsaw nightclub. If someone in your life is mad about Disney’s new race-bent Little Mermaid, show them this bloody, sexually charged version.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Stranger by the Lake (2013)
Language: French
A serial killer movie in the style of erotic thrillers of yore, Stranger stars Pierre Deladonchamps as Franck, a regular visitor to a nude beach and the surrounding woods, both popular cruising spots. Franck begins a passionate relationship (meaning: lots of fairly explicit sex in the woods) with Michel (Christophe Paou), who Franck later spots drowning someone in the lake. Franck’s obsession with Michel makes him hesitate to reveal what he knows to the police—increasingly a problem given that the murder he saw will not be the last.
Where to scream: Digital rental
The Wailing (2016)
Languages: Korean and Japanese
The elevator pitch is that The Wailing is about a rage-inducing extraterrestrial plague that impacts a remote village, triggering zombie-adjacent symptoms in the locals. Sounds like the kind of thing we’ve seen before, but director Na Hong-jin manages such deft and wild shifts in tones that it feels little like any other movie. Starting out as a police procedural involving a somewhat bumbling country cop, it quickly gives way to something far more evocative, before becoming genuinely disturbing.
Where to stream: Netflix, Tubi, Peacock
Baskin (2015)
Language: Turkish
With old-school Italian-style giallo flair, Turkish writer-director Can Evrenol builds to a surreal, nightmarish, and bloody third act from a sly and deliberately paced opening. A group of police officers are drawn to a small town (full of locals who try to warn them off), and to a building in the middle of nowhere, where things get truly weird. The movie’s gradual shift in tone is so subtle that we hardly realize that we’ve been drawn into a bloody, gory trap.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Ravenous (2017)
Language: French
It’s a foreign film! From Canada! Director Robin Aubert does the zombie genre proud by injecting a fair bit of George Romero-style social commentary into his story of a small Quebec town under siege. Here, the zombies have a society and culture of their own, and the threat they pose speaks to regional history and a variety of cross-cultural issues. Even without that specific context, it’s a smart and effective survival thriller.
Where to stream: Digital rental
Verónica (2017)
Language: Spanish
Loosely based on purportedly true events, the import from Spain is all spooky atmosphere and old-school chills in its story of a young woman who conjures up evil demons following some ill-conceived Ouija-play. Nothing here reinvents the wheel, but the creepy fundamentals are sound, and there are plenty of solid scares.
Where to stream: Netflix
Rec (2017)
Language: Spanish
A thoroughly effective found footage film (one of the best, really), Rec follows a reporter doing a by-the-numbers ride-along with a Barcelona fire crew as they respond to a call that takes them to an apartment building where odd things are happening. It’s a zombie-style movie involving demonic possession, but the real draw here is the deft camerawork and the sense of geography and place that draws us into this building and leaves us feeling as trapped and frightened as the residents.
Where to stream: Tubi, digital rental
Noroi: The Curse (2005)
Language: Japanese
What looks like a found footage horror movie is more precisely a faux-documentary dealing with a paranormal researcher and her investigation into a series of supernatural occurrences in different parts of Japan. The movie proceeds methodically through the investigation, weaving a tapestry of curses, ghosts, and demons that could compete with The X-Files for complexity. That’s part of the trick, though: by the final act, it feels like a trap has been sprung that we never really had a way out of.
Where to stream: Hoopla
Kuroneko (1968)
Language: Japanese
A horrific and eerie story sees two women, a mother and her daughter-in-law, raped and murdered by a troop of samurai, only to rise from the dead (with the help of a black cat) with the goal of taking brutal revenge on any samurai foolish enough to be taken in by their charms. Catching on, a young warrior is assigned the task of destroying the spirits: a man who, as fate would have it, is the son and husband of the two murdered women.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel
Martyrs (2008)
Language: French
Bloody torture-fest or meditation on the inescapable scars of trauma and abuse? Almost any film in what’s been called the New French Extremity movement (see also: High Tension) invite those kinds of questions. Here, a young woman who was tortured by an apparently normal family seeks revenge as an adult, joined by her friend, Anna, who discovers that the Belfond family are using torture to discover the true nature of the afterlife (or something). Not for the faint of heart or stomach, it’s still a classic of extreme violence.
Where to stream: Tubi, digital rental via Apple TV
Train to Busan (2016)
Language: Korean
South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho’s zombies-on-an-unstoppable-train story never misses an emotional beat despite its bloody action movie identity. Amid all the violence, its emotional core lies in the story of a workaholic father and his daughter attempting to reconnect following a divorce—you know, while also staying alive amid a flesh-munching apocalypse. The movie would work just fine if its human story took a backseat, but instead, it’s a horror/action masterpiece.
Where to stream: Peacock, Tubi, digital rental
Let the Right One In (2008)
Language: Swedish
This Swedish film, based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, was instantly a classic unpon its release in 2006, when it made clear that there are still new stories to tell when it comes to cinematic vampires. Here, bullied kid Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) forms a friendship with neighbor Eli (Lina Leandersson), whose connection to a string of local murders quickly becomes obvious. Disturbing, but somehow impressively heartfelt.
Where to stream: Prime Video, Peacock, Tubi, digital rental
Under the Shadow (2016)
Language: Persian
A woman estranged from her husband during the Iran-Iraq War is forced to protect her child from mysterious supernatural forces as the bombs continue to fall. Writer/director Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow invokes the jinn as a way to process the strife and turmoil of war and political conflict, as well as about the anxieties of women in oppressive societies. The atmospheric film plays simultaneously as the story of a haunting, and also as one about women and civilians in times of war; each element has its own terrors.
Where to stream: Netflix, digital rental
When Evil Lurks (2023)
Language: Spanish
A wonderfully gnarly Argentinian production from writer/director Demián Rugna, When Evil Lurks takes place in a world where demonic possession is common, and very contagious. It’s brutally effective in its practical gore effects, but also works by humanizing its main characters so that when the hammer falls, it absolutely rips your guts out. Not for the squeamish.
Where to stream: Hulu, Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
Kwaidan (1964)
Language: Japanese
I love a good horror anthology, and this is a sensuous and atmospheric classic of that sub-genre. Director Masaki Kobayashi weaves color into each of the stories, whether it’s blood on snow, the earth tones of a haunted tea house, or the jet black hair that never portends anything good in a Japanese tale.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
Language: Spanish
An early triumph from Guillermo del Toro, and a taste of things to come, this Spanish/Mexican co-production tells a story of childhood shattered by conflict (it’s set during the Spanish Civil War—but that’s a sadly evergreen story), while also being an effectively chilling ghost story set in an orphanage.
Where to stream: Peacock, digital rental
Diabolique (1955)
Language: French
Blending horror elements and Hitchcock-style thrills (director Henri-Georges Clouzot was inspired by Hitchcock, who, in turn, made Psycho to top this film), Diabolique involves a married woman and her husband’s mistress, who both conspire to murder the man and to conceal his death. He’d been headmaster of a gossipy boarding school, and the two are pressed to keep things on the down low through a deliciously twisty-turny plot.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
May the Devil Take You (2018)
Language: Indonesian
A pretty straight-up, but nonetheless freakily effective, story of demonic possession and being-very-careful-what-you-wish-for involving a man who sells his soul for wealth and success, only to release a demonic presence that plans to take it out on the guy’s loved ones in some exceptionally gruesome ways. If you like demons and body horror, this is going to be for you. The 2020 sequel, May the Devil Take You Too, is very nearly as good.
Where to stream: Netflix
Cure (1997)
Language: Japanese
Beginning as a Seven-esque serial killer procedural, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure builds patiently into something far more ambiguous and disturbing. Cinematically directed and intelligently scripted, the movie crystallized the J-horror boom that was to come.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)
Language: Korean
Found footage shocker Gonjiam was incredibly popular in South Korea, and deservedly so: the format is familiar, but it’s a particularly effective and well-made example of the sub-genre. The key here, as in real estate, is location, location, location: director Jung Bum-shik and the rest of the filmmakers meticulously recreated the real-life Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital in Gwangju—by reputation, one of the most haunted locations in Korea. It’s an incredibly freaky setting for the inevitable undoing of the film’s doomed web series crew.
Where to stream: Peacock, Tubi, Shudder, Prime Video
Terrified (2017)
Language: Spanish
In a perfectly normal, average Gran Buenos Aires neighborhood, some very strange shit is afoot. It starts with strange voices coming from the sink, but escalates quickly into a full-scale incursion from a supernatural realm. That synopsis is fairly stock, but Terrified blends an elevated-horror visual style with utter relentlessness of some of the grittiest horror you’ve ever seen. The ingredients aren’t necessarily unique, but they’re blended so skillfully here that Terrified became a mini phenomenon upon its release, scaring the hell out of unsuspecting viewers.
Where to stream: Shutter, AMC+, digital rental
Viy (1967)
Language: Russian
One of the only horror films to come out of the Soviet Union, Viy is all atmosphere, an unnerving and disorienting experience that blends moments of quiet creepiness with some genuinely nightmarish imagery and impressive practical effects. Several seminary students go drunkenly wandering the countryside, only to stumble upon and murder someone they believe to be a witch. Khoma, who did the deed, is warned of dire consequences if he refuses to make amends by guarding the body from evil spirits for three nights. It goes about as smoothly as you’d expect.
Where to stream: Tubi
Dream Home (2010)
Language: Cantonese
What could possibly be more horrific than the housing market? Even among the world’s major cities, Hong Kong is a particularly tough place to buy real estate, and HK director Pang Ho-cheung has some fun with that idea in the story of a young woman, Lai-sheung (Josie Ho) whose dreams of affordable living are thwarted again and again. When she finally gets close to her dream apartment, stock speculators throw the stock market and send prices rising further: at which point she snaps. Can you blame her?
Where to stream: Digital rental via Apple TV
La Llorona (2019)
Language: Spanish
Not to be confused with the (amusing but unspectacular) Curse of La Llorona, this Guatemalan film places the legendary weeping woman in the context of the family of a barely fictionalized dictator, the man responsible for the native Mayan genocide of the early 1980s, whose family is haunted by vengeful spirits.
Where to stream: Shudder, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
M (1931)
Language: German
M was director Fritz Lang’s first sound film, and he dives right in. Other early talkie filmmakers dipped their toes in by using sound effects and dialogue sparingly—but Lang isn’t playing around here, and it’s effective. There’s not a police procedural nor serial killer drama that doesn’t owe M a bit of a debt, but this one has something that they don’t: Peter Lorre, so brilliant as a killer who’s made more frightening by virtue of his mundane, sometimes pathetic life.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
