Best Supernatural Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of supernatural cinema — measured across 6,112 indexed frames from 86 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Supernatural films over-index on teeth, candle and blood — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Stephen HopkinsDP Peter LevyIMDb 5.0TMDB 5.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Alice, having survived the previous installment of the Nightmare series, finds the deadly dreams of Freddy Krueger starting once again. This time, the taunting murderer is striking through the sleeping mind of Alice's unborn child. His intention is to be "born again" into the real world. The only one who can stop Freddy is his dead mother, but can Alice free her spirit in time to save her own son?
- 2
The Nun (2018)
Corin HardyDP Maxime AlexandreIMDb 5.4TMDB 5.9See in full on FrameThrower →
When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order's unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in 'The Conjuring 2,' as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.
- 3
Hellraiser (1987)
Clive BarkerDP Robin VidgeonIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
When Kirsty's father, Larry, and stepmother, Julia, move into Larry's childhood home, Kirsty and her boyfriend take a room nearby. Unfortunately for all involved, Larry's house is already occupied: before the family's arrival, Larry's disreputable brother, Frank, used a supernatural puzzle box to summon a gang of other-dimensional demon sadists. Now, Frank requires a series of blood sacrifices to escape the clutches of Pinhead and the cenobites.
- 4
Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
James WanDP John R. LeonettiIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
How deep into the darkness will you go to discover the truth? The terrifying sequel to Insidious follows the haunted Lambert family as they seek to uncover the mysterious childhood secret that has left them dangerously connected to the spirit world. They must rely on familiar allies to exile the demons that follow them and unearth the secret before the evil continues its deadly rampage.
- 5
Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
Mike FlanaganDP Michael FimognariIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1967 Los Angeles, a young widow named Alice Zander works out of her suburban home as a spiritual medium, accompanied by her daughters, 15-year-old Paulina "Lina" and 9-year old Doris. The family is still reeling over the recent death of Roger, Alice's husband and the kids' father. At Lina's suggestion, Alice incorporates a Ouija board into her readings. While trying out the board, she unknowingly contacts a spirit named Marcus that begins to possess Doris. Alice receives a notice that the bank intends to foreclose on their home. Doris contacts the board for help, believing she is communicating with her dead father. The spirit leads her to a secret compartment behind the basement wall containing a pouch of cash. When she gives the money to her mother, the family has an Ouija session, believing they can contact Roger. When the board answers a question only Roger would know the answer to, a thrilled Alice begins believing that they are in contact with her dead husband..
- 6
His House (2020)
Remi WeekesDP Jo WillemsIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísùas Bol Majur
Wunmi Mosakuas Rial Majur- Malaika Wakoli-Abigabaas Nyagak
After making a harrowing escape from war-torn South Sudan, a young refugee couple struggle to adjust to their new life in a small English town that has an unspeakable evil lurking beneath the surface.
- 7
The Crow (1994)
Alex ProyasDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
A poetic guitarist Eric Draven is brought back to life by a crow a year after he and his fiancée are murdered. The crow guides him through the land of the living, and leads him to his killers: knife thrower Tin-tin, drugetic Funboy, car buff T-Bird, and the unsophisticated Skank. One by one, Eric gives these thugs a taste of their own medicine. However their leader Top-Dollar, a world-class crime lord who will dispatch his enemies with a Japanese sword and joke about it later, will soon learn the legend of the crow and the secret to the vigilante's invincibility.
- 8
Bring Her Back (2025)
Michael Philippou, Danny PhilippouDP Aaron McLiskyIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
With death further strengthening their bond, step-siblings Andy and Piper find themselves hastily placed into the foster care system following a tragic home accident. After all, Andy is not yet of legal age to apply for guardianship; he must wait three long months before they move into their new place. Until then, the troubled youth must behave himself as Laura, an empathetic foster mum coping with silent grief, offers to adopt them both into her secluded home in the woods. However, there is something off about the artificially benevolent guardian. Without a doubt, Laura wants something so bad she can taste it. The problem is, she must never bend the rules or break the circle. But just how far is she willing to go to bring her back?
- 9
Lights Out (2016)
David F. SandbergDP Marc SpicerIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
A man called Paul is working after hours and is murdered by a supernatural entity in the shadow. When his son, the boy Martin, is frightened by the same creature, he sees his mother Sophie talking to an imaginary friend called Diana in the shadow of her room. Martin does not sleep anymore during the night. His older step sister Rebecca who lives alone is summoned by the social assistant. She brings Martin home and recalls her own experience with Diana years ago when she was young. Rebecca and her boyfriend Bret investigate the connection of Sophie with Diana and come up to a scary revelation about their past.
- 10
David LynchDP Ronald Víctor GarcíaIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Essentially a prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's earlier TV series "Twin Peaks". The first half-hour or so concerns the investigation by FBI Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) and his partner Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) into the murder of night-shift waitress Teresa Banks in the small Washington state town of Deer Meadow. When Desmond finds a mysterious clue to the murder, he inexplicably disappears. The film then cuts to one year later in the nearby town of Twin Peaks and follows the events during the last week in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) a troubled teenage girl with two boyfriends; the hot-tempered rebel Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and quiet biker James Hurley (James Marshall), her drug addiction, and her relationship with her difficult (and possible schizophrenic) father Leland (Ray Wise), a story in which her violent murder was later to motivate much of the TV series. Contains a considerable amount of sex, drugs, violence, very loud music and inexplicable imagery.
What supernatural films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a supernatural frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — teeth is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- teeth2.6×
- candle2.1×
- blood2.0×
- eyes2.0×
- shadow1.9×
- girl1.9×
- doorway1.7×
- door1.7×
How supernatural films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate supernatural from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 26%dayvs 42% baseline
- 27%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 60%low keyvs 40% baseline
- 61%nightvs 43% baseline
- 27%closeupvs 21% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Eternals (2021) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 6,112 frames from 86 films carrying the supernatural label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/supernatural
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