Essentials: 20 Of The Best Ghost Movies

“The Fog” (1980)
A vaporous horror that dwells deep within the confines of a sentencing atmosphere of a small California coastal town, ‘The Fog’ embraces the idea of ​​a misty veil that comes and brings death with the stamp of John Carpenter’s signature sadism. While not as revolutionary as ‘Halloween,’ Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ draws inspiration from the impending fear brought by Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” as what seems to be a harmless presence of a marine layer turns out to be an enveloping paranormal evil out for bloody vengeance. ‘The Fog,’ is an impenetrable and evocative horror flick determined by Carpenter’s usual tension progression and its supernatural entities suspended in apprehension — it is, in its intentions, a film brimming with sheer suspense as Carpenter builds upon it by concealing the leper mariner’s ghosts while banking on a menacing score that has provided audiences chills in the past. ‘Til this day Carpenter’s most underrated film prevails as ‘The Fog,’ an eerie supernatural gem destined to blanket its viewers with a foreboding cloud of terror.

“Crimson Peak” (2015)
A divisive film upon its release and one that’s built a steady, eager following since then, I still can’t help but wonder just how better Guillermo del Toro’s gothic “Crimson Peak” would’ve fared had it been a silent film. This isn’t fully a knock but an acknowledgement that the visual artistry on hand tells the story as well as the screenplay. The photography is unsurprisingly lush, Jessica Chastain is delightfully unhinged and Tom Hiddleston darkly charismatic but the story that involves the physical manifestations of the ghosts never clicks like the idea of them. Instead, it’s the macabre nature of the castle, the atmospheric edge of unease and eerie prickling that something is not well when the characters arrive that make it such a joyous romp. It’s scary in what it infers, not what it presents. Del Toro has always been a master of mood cinema and “Crimson Peak” is no different, offering up a film much different than the one the trailers and marketing team promised and instead of a horror story about ghosts it’s an old fashioned gothic romance with ghosts.

“Carnival of Souls” (1962)
Named as a significant influence by both David Lynch and George A. Romero, Herk Harvey’s ghoulish masterwork “Carnival of Souls” earned a cult following on late-night television following its release in 1962. Produced, co-written, and directed by Harvey on a shoestring budget, this exercise in existential horror comes in at a scant but eerily effective 84 minutes, heavily relying on its striking locations and haunting score to tell the story of a young Kansan woman who is haunted by a strange apparition that compels her to an abandoned lakeside pavilion. It’s hard not to see the effect this film had on the aforementioned auteurs: lingering camera shots, stylized acting, and the distortion of time and perception all play a pivotal role in Harvey’s B-movie classic. Filmed in crisp black and white (the colorized version is also available) and filled with plenty of hallucinatory, nightmare-inducing imagery, “Carnival of Souls” is a must for horror aficionados and admirers of the macabre.

“The Changeling” (1980)
It’s uncommon to experience a film where grief and the supernatural converge in meritable fashion, yet Peter Medak’s ‘The Changeling’ melds both with cryptic shrewdness to spook even the most desensitized horror film buff. While most ghost stories gradually expose the presence and ability of its spirit, Madek compels his audience to instead, ponder his ghost’s abilities, desires and disquieting presence; where there are no shadowy figures or CGI’d monstrosities, just old-fashioned, haunted-house scares and flares. While ‘The Changeling’ exploits numerous, standard haunted house tropes and shenanigans, the film prescribes the material, candor — an eerie craftsmanship luring viewers into the story’s underlying mystery. George C. Scott, who portrays the film’s protagonist John Russell, paints a jarring picture of an individual who is so deeply affected by his own personal tragedy (death of wife and daughter), he shockingly embraces the presence of evil spirits with docile aloofness, an odd decision with even stranger results. Scott is such an impenetrable stoic that when he actually does become unhinged by the paranormal activity, the viewer is caught off balance as much as he is — a rupturing testament to how unnecessary blood and other shocking visuals are to the ghost/haunted house storyline.

“Curse of the Cat People” (1944)
Only sort of a sequel to the 1942 Jacques Tournier classic horror, “Curse of the Cat People” sets its focus on the drama associated with reconciling the tragedies of the past in the eyes of the innocent. Tournier is gone at the helm, but Val Lewton, the production team, and the cast all stay on and make this one of the rare sequels that might just be better than its predecessors. Kent Smith and Jane Randolph reprise their roles from the original, but it is newcomer Ann Carter who steals the show as their lonely daughter. With the events of the first film kept from her, she is visited by the ghost of Simone Simon’s original Cat Person who emerges from the snow like a Disney princess. With Carter’s naturalistic performance in tow, the film bravely tackles grief from a child’s perspective, balancing her imagination with the stark reality of her parents. Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, a highlight of the original film, returns, contributing beautiful imagery and expressionistic shadowplay, now in service of a more fairytale-esque presentation.