Horror is a diverse genre that holds varying levels of scares to elicit fear in its audience as entertainment. Scary movies often explore dark subjects, including monsters, apocalyptic events, and religious and folk beliefs.
Not everyone has the spine to endure the doom of devils revealed in the scariest horror movies. But, shhh, the spine-tingling, heart-stirring and most staggering best scary movies in Canada are on the way.
If you are searching for the best scary movies in Canada, you have come to the right place. We have gathered some of the best scary movies to stream and scream at. This list of movies has everything, from one of the best thriller movies in Canada to supernatural and paranormal activity.
Host (2020)
Director: Rob Savage
Writer: Gemma Hurley, Rob Savage, Jed Shepherd
Runtime: 55m
Cast: Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Web, Radina Drandova and Caroline Ward.
IMDB Rating: 6.5/10
Lo and behold, the supernatural invasion, featuring a group of six friends, held a spiritualistic meeting to receive spirit communication via zoom during Covid 19 pandemic lockdown.
When an evil spirit starts invading their homes, much like your friend who just can’t bring themselves to wear a mask spreads invisible disease.
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Saw (2004)
Director: James Wan
Writer: Leigh Whannell
Runtime: 1hr 43min
Cast: Ned Bellamy, Makenzie Vega, Michael Emerson, Dina Meyer, Monica Potter, Ken Leung, Shawnee Smith, Danny Glover, Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Tobin Bell, Benito Martinez
IMDB Rating:7.6/10
The saw is going to be a beguiling mystery from its beginning to the end. It’s an add-on to serial killer scary movies.
In the series’ narrative, Jhon, nicknamed “Jigsaw” after his suicidal attempt, found a new appreciation for his life and dedicated the rest of his life to inspiring the same appreciation in others by testing their will to live.
The “games” or “tests” given to victims are typically symbolic of what Jigsaw perceives as flaws in each person’s moral character or life.
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The Birds (1963)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Evan Hunter
Runtime: 1hr 59min
Cast: Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Tippi Hedren
IMDB Rating: 7.7/10
The Birds is an American natural horror film set in a world where nature has gone crazy. It’s based on actual events from a mass bird attack in the California seaside town of Capitola when locals awoke to a scene straight out of a horror movie.
Thousands of seabirds were diving-bombing their houses, colliding with cars, and splattering half-digested anchovies across lawns. Toxic algae were the true reason for the birds’ behavior, but this was unknown in the 1960s.
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Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero
Runtime: 2hr 7mins
Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross, Greg Nicotero, Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Webber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrel, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, Lindy Booth, Jane Eastwood.
IMDB Rating: 7.8/10
Its scary suspense content is brilliant enough to portray destructive, deadly creatures.
In the movie, a phenomenon of unidentified origin has caused the reanimation of the zombies, who prey on human flesh.
The outbreak survivors barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall amid the madness. Pay heed to this scary movie to witness the quest for survival.
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Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Director: Edgar Wright
Writer: Simon Pegg
Runtime: 1h 39m
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, and Penelope Wilton
IMDB Rating: 7.9/10
It is another inclusion of the zombie apocalypse. It’s a hilarious horror-comedy yet terrific and genuinely emotional zombie story in its own right. Packed together, the group joins to defend against the masses of the dead.
The movie is a parody of other zombie movies and the best scary movies in Canada, somehow like Scary Movies but not as campy and a lot funnier.
It is outrageous, silly but never stupid, fast-paced, and filled with cult scenes from start to end. A compulsory watch that gets better and better as you watch it repeatedly.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Wes Craven
Runtime: 1hr 31mins
Cast: Robert Englund, John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, and Johnny Depp.
IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
In this classic scary slasher movie, several teens fall victim to Freddy Krueger, a hideous midnight monster who preys on kids and kills them in their nightmares.
Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) believes that a terrible secret concealed by her friends and her friends’ parents may be the key to solving the riddle after exploring this nightmare phenomenon, but can Nancy and her lover stop the monster from their dreams, or it’s too late for them?
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Evil Dead 2 (1987)
Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Scott Spiegel
Runtime: 1hr 24mins
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Kassie Wesley, Denise Bixler, Snowy Winters, Richard Domeier, John Peaks, Lou Hancock, Ted Raimi, William Preston Robertson.
IMDB Rating: 7.7/10
One of the best horror scariest movies that never lets up, not for a single moment. Evil Dead II is a 1987 American comic scary movie.
It is a sequel to the 1981 horror film The Evil Dead. Ash Williams and his girlfriend, Linda, go on a romantic vacation and choose to spend it at a deserted cabin in the woods. In the cabin, Ash plays a recording owned by archaeologist Raymond Knowby, who owned the cabin previously.
When the verses from the book of the dead are read aloud, a demonic force is unleashed.
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The Babadook (2014)
Director: Jennifer Kent
Writer: Jennifer Kent
Runtime: 1hr 34mins
Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West, and Ben Winspear.
IMDB Rating: 6.8/10
The Babadook is a 2014 Australian psychological, scary movie. It is based on Kent’s 2005 short film Monster, which follows a single mother who must confront her son’s fear of a monster in their home.
She soon discovers a book titled “The Babadook”, not knowing how it got there, and realizes that this book character may be a sinister presence lurking around her home.
She attempts to get rid of the book, even burning it, but it keeps coming back, along with the hallucinations. Soon, she is taken over by this entity, but will she ever come back?
The cabin in the woods (2011)
Director: Drew Goddard
Writer: Whedon and Goddard.
Runtime: 1hr 35mins
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Bradley Whitford, Jesse Williams, and Richard Jenkins.
IMDB Rating: 7/10
It is one of those best scary movies in Canada that would steer the rollercoaster of your fright. So hold on tightly and pay heed to this masterpiece. Five friends are staying in a forest cabin for a vacation, but things go wrong into an equally theatrical one when they unknowingly summon a family of murderous zombies.
This scary movie wonderfully reflects the ancient concept of using doorways to transport creatures between worlds and has a rich, highly magical atmosphere. In the movie, the most frightful creature is man himself, but as the body count rises, there is yet more at work than meets the eye.
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A Quiet Place (2018)
Director: John Krasinski
Writer: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck
Runtime: 1hr 30mins
Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Leon Russom
IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
This scary movie features a family’s struggles for survival in a world where blind but noise-sensitive creatures have killed most humans. They are forced to communicate in sign language to keep the creatures at bay. It is the first of its kind within the modern horror genre of how little spoken dialogue it has.
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Paranormal Activity (2007)
Director: Oren Peli
Writer: Oren Peli
Runtime: 1hr 26mins
Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat as Micah, Mark Fredrichs, Amber Armstrong, Ashley Palmer
IMDB Rating: 6.3/10
If you visit the scariest horror movies website, you’ve probably already watched Paranormal Activity (2007)… who hasn’t, really? If you didn’t – well, no need to read further; sit on your couch and enjoy.
It revolves around a young couple who move into a suburban residence and feel the presence of evil forces. So they install cameras that capture all the incidents, noises, and bad occurrences in the house.
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Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Director: Roman Polanski
Writer: Ira Levin
Runtime: 2hrs 16mins
Cast: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, Angela Dorian, Clay Tanner.
IMDB Rating: 8/10
You wouldn’t believe that a movie made in 1968 can still be so staggering and heart-stirring in 2022. The film follows a young, pregnant wife in Manhattan who suspects that her elderly neighbors are members of a Satanic cult and are grooming her to use her baby for their rituals.
It is widely regarded as one of the scariest horror movies of all time. So make out why is everyone so conveniently eager to help? And why is Guy, her husband allowing it?
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero and John Russo
Runtime: 1hrs 36mins
Cast: Karl Hardman, Judith O’Dea, Duane Jones, Marilyn Eastman, Bill Cardille, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Bill Hinzman, Kyra Schon, and Russell Streiner.
IMDB Rating: 7.8/10
One of the first ‘modern’ zombie scary movies and a very influential horror one. It is a deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating demons.
It would reveal tense, taut, and terrifying from its opening scenes all the way to its shocking and disturbing end, as hungry undead cannibals rise from their graves to feed on the flesh of the living.
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Writer: Thomas Harris and Ted Tally
Runtime: 1hrs 59mins
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Anthony Heald
IMDB Rating: 8.6/10
This psychological thriller and full of suspense, the scary movie will surely keep you enticed from beginning to its end. Clarice Starling, a young F.B.I agent, must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to apprehend another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.
To enter the mind of a killer, she must challenge the mind of a madman. It shows how heartless the killer is and how he’d kill so many people simply to dress as a woman.
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Aliens (1986)
Director: James Cameron
Writer: James Cameron, David Giler
Runtime: 2 hrs 17mins
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn
IMDB Rating: 8.4/10
It could be an entertaining ride if alien invasion and science fiction movies are your things. But, just when you think the movie is over, Cameron comes back with another piece of action more daring than the last.
While Aliens has more than its share of special effects, the heart of the film’s success is its intense, tireless and spectacular action.
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Halloween (1978)
Director: John Carpenter,
Writer: John Carpenter and Debra Hill,
Runtime: 1 hrs 31mins
Cast: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles and Nancy Kyes
IMDB Rating: 7.7/10
Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film. It is considered one of the best Halloween movies for families and the most influential and scariest horror movie ever made. The plot centers around a person with a mental health condition Michael Myers who murdered his babysitting teenage sister on Halloween night when he was six years old.
He was sentenced and locked up. Fifteen years later, he escapes and returns to his hometown, where he follows a female babysitter and her friends while under pursuit by his psychiatrist.
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Freaks (1932)
Director: Tod Browning
Writer: Clarence Aaron, Tod Robbins, Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon
Runtime: 1hr 4 mins
Cast: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Henry Victor, Harry Earles, Daisy Earles, Daisy and Violet Hilton, Schlitzie, Josephine Joseph, Johnny Eck, Frances O’Connor, Peter Robinson, Olga Roderick and Roscoe Ates.
IMDB Rating: 7.9/10
The story focuses on Cleopatra, a “beautiful” circus trapeze artist who plots with her wrestler lover to marry a dwarf, Hans, for his money. The movie revolves around all the odd outcasts hired in a circus.
It’s one of the most influential films ever made about the need for humanity and solidarity in the face of cruelty. But his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance. How will they stop his oppression?
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Let the Right One In (2008)
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Writer: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Runtime: 1hr 54mins
Cast: Kare Hedebrant , Lina Leandersson , Elif Ceylan , Susanne Ruben, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist , Peter Carlberg ,Ika Nord, Mikael Rahm, Karl Robert Lindgren, Anders T. Peedu, Pale Olofsson, Cayetano Ruiz , Patrik Rydmark
IMDB Rating: 7.9/10
It mirrors the evil and innocence of romance, aggression versus passivity. Lessons on what you must do to survive in life. Swedish masterpiece that tells an original version of vampires from a modern pre-teen viewpoint.
Beautifully filmed some brilliant observations on the difficulties of being that age at home and school in a small-town environment. It’s not every day you get to see a present-day romantic vampire movie, so don’t miss the opportunity.
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Hereditary (2018)
Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster
Runtime: 2hr 7 mins
Cast: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, and Gabriel Byrne
IMDB Rating: 7.3/10
If you would rather watch a more raw, natural, and psychological horror movie, see Hereditary (2018). It revolves around the family haunted by a mysterious presence after the death of their secretive mother.
Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you more about it. Just experience the story on your own. The deeper that “Hereditary” would pull you in, the more jittery you would be after watching it.
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It Follows (2015)
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Runtime: 1hr 40mins
Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Bailey spry, Debbie Williams, Ruby Harris
IMDB Rating: 6.8/10
Maika Monroe as Jay, a young woman, stalked by a terrible, sexually transmitted curse. Jake Weary plays the man who passes the fatal curse on to her.
While you’re cursed, you will be stalked mercilessly by an entity that can take any form, including that of someone you love, and will stop at nothing to grab you and violently murder you. Of course, you can walk or run away from it easily. You can even drive away at top speed.
But all that will do is buy you time. It will keep walking and keep walking. And it will catch you.
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The Lighthouse (2019)
Director: Robert Eggers
Writer: Robert Eggers, Max Eggers
Runtime: 1hr 50 mins
Cast: Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, Valeriia Karaman, Logan Hawkes
IMDB Rating: 7.4/10
Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
For the following four weeks of back-breaking work and unfavorable conditions, the tight-lipped men will have no one else for company except for each other, forced to endure irritating mannerism, bottled-up resentment, and growing hatred.
This movie feels like watching someone else’s nightmare, and it’s not going to end well.
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The Conjuring (2013)
Director: James Wan
Writer: Chad Hayes; Carey W. Hayes
Runtime: 1hr 52mins
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Joey King, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell, Shannon Kook, Hayley McFarland, John Brotherton, Mackenzie Foy, and Kyla Deaver.
IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
When a family man Roger Perron and his wife, Carolyn, move to an old farmhouse in Rhode Island with their daughters. The family finds a hidden basement where the entrance is locked with planks. Haunted by an ancient malevolent force, the inhabitants find themselves up against the true face of evil.
They take help from the famous paranormal investigator’s Ed Warren and Loraine to stop this evil. But, who will have to call upon all their skills and spiritual strength to defeat this spectral menace at its source that threatens to destroy everyone involved?
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Director: Samuel Bayer,
Writer: Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer
Runtime: 1hr 35mins
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Rooney Mara, and Katie Cassidy.
IMDB Rating: 5.2/10
It is a remake of Wes Craven’s 1984 film of the same name in the” Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise.
The film is set in a fictitious town in Ohio and centers around a group of eagerness living on one street who are stalked and murdered in their dreams by a disfigured man named Freddy Krueger.
The teenagers discover that they all share a common link from their childhood, making them targets for Krueger.
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Creep (2014)
Director: Patrick Brice
Writer: Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass.
Runtime: 1hr 22mins
Cast: Mark Duplass as Josef and Patrick Brice as Aaron
IMDB Rating: 6.3/10
If you favor a slightly more slick and character-driven film, go for “Creep”. It’s a found footage film where Aaron answers a classified ad to film Josef for one day. Josef starts the day of filming off with Aaron filming him in the tub while pretending to bathe his son; the day gets infinitely more weird from there.
Creep is clever and well-acted enough to keep viewers on the edges of their seats.
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Midnight Mass (2021)
Director: Mike Flanagan
Writer: Mike Flanagan, Jamie Flanagan, Joyce Sherrí, Teresa Sutherland, Elan Gale, Jeff Howard, Dani Parker
Runtime: 7hrs 30mins
Cast: Zach Gilford, Kate Siegel, Hamish Linklater, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Kristin Lehman and Henry Thomas
IMDB Rating: 7.7/10
“Midnight Mass” addresses racism, classism, abuse, small-town gossip, struggles with faith, etc. It’s an American supernatural horror streaming television miniseries. A young man serves four years in prison for killing someone in a drunk-driving accident.
Upon his release, he returns to Crockett Island to start his life afresh. His arrival co indices with the arrival of an enigmatic and charming new priest who intends to renew the faith of the townspeople.
But the priest’s actions speak otherwise as he becomes the cause of conflicts within the community and strange things start to happen in the town.
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The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Director: Mike Flanagan
Writer: Mike Flanagan
Runtime: 1 season
Cast: Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Henry Thomas, Paxton Singleton, Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Julian Hilliard, Kate Siegel and Mckenna Grace, Victoria Pedretti and Violet McGraw.
IMDB Rating: 8.6/10
The Haunting of Hill House is an American supernatural horror drama streaming television miniseries. It sounds eerie the first time you hear it, but it only gets more frightening every time you think about it.
And the movie goes out of its way to give you reasons to think about just how horrifying it would be for this to play out in real life. A family with strained relationships starts to face unsettling flashbacks of their previous house and the horrific events that led them to leave it.
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His House (2020)
Director: Remi Weekes
Writer: Remi Weekes, Felicity Evans, Toby Venables
Runtime: 1hr 33mins
Cast: Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu and Matt Smith, Javier Botet Cornell John and Emily Taaffe.
IMDB Rating: 6.5/10
If you’re looking for the spookiest and scariest horror movie, this one’s for you. The movie tells the story of a refugee couple from South Sudan, struggling to adjust to their new life in an English town with evil hiding in their house.
The wife, Wunmi Mosaku, insists the spirits need to be alleviated so they should return home, but the war-torn circumstances of home don’t offer any salvation.
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Raw (2016)
Director: Julia Ducournau
Writer: Julia Ducournau
Runtime: 1hr 39mins
Cast: Garance Marillier , Ella Rumpf ,Rabah Naït Oufella ,Laurent Lucas, Joana Preiss,Bouli Lanners ,Marion Vernoux ,Jean-Louis Sbille.
IMDB Rating: 7/10
Creepy beyond belief, “Raw” is one of the best scary movies in Canada. Garance Millier stars as Justine, a lifelong vegetarian who begins her first year at veterinary school. She’s then thrown into a week-long hazing ritual where students must take part in degrading traditions and vicious initiations.
When one of the traditions sees Justine forced to eat raw rabbit kidneys, she descends into a hidden world of animalistic tendencies and horrifying cravings.
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The Exorcist (1973)
Director: William Friedkin
Writer: William Peter Blatty
Runtime: 2hrs 2mins
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Jason Miller and Linda Blair.
IMDB Rating: 8.1/10
It revolves around a visiting actress in Washington, D.C., who notices dramatic and dangerous changes in the behavior and physical make-up of her 12-year-old daughter.
Meanwhile, a young priest at nearby Georgetown University begins to doubt his faith while dealing with his mother’s terminal sickness. And a frail, elderly priest recognizes the necessity for a show-down with an old demonic enemy.
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Conclusion
Even though the horror movie genre is designed to make the viewer experience the negative emotions, spine-smashing terror, and gobsmacking fright. Still, most people enjoy them because of the adrenaline rush that they receive from watching spooky scariest horror movies.
This list of best scary movies in Canada that we have meticulously combined for you will please the scary movie enthusiasts and help them to plan a spooky movie night with friends and family.