There are so many wonderful and significant reasons to like The Silence of the Lambs. It's a film with genuine power, one that depicts what it's like to be a female in the working place, one that delves deeply into the characters' psychoses, one that delivers thrills and goosebumps, intriguing camera work, redefined the close-up, and solidified Jonathan Demme's status as one of the best and most prolific American directors. That is just the top of the iceberg.

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This was not Dr. Lecter's first appearance on the silver screen. However, it was his most memorable. The Silence of the Lambs opened on Valentine's Day to a global total of $272.7 million on a budget of $19 million. That's a really tremendous value for money.

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Wikipedia reports that "The Silence of the Lambs is often considered as one of the world's most influential films by critics, film filmmakers, and moviegoers. It was placed 48th on Empire's list of the best films of all time. The United States Library of Congress has classified the film as 'culturally, historically, and aesthetically important,'. It was chosen for conservation in the Motion Picture Registry in 2011."

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Director: Jonathan Demme

Year of Release: 1991

IMDB Score: 8.6

Metascore: 85

What makes The Shining so powerful is Kubrick's and co-writer Diane Johnson's ability to bring us into Stephen King's story of domestic abuse. Even while Jack Nicholson tours the hotel, we are given signs that the couple's relationship is fraught with conflict. After the family moves there, the plot progresses on both supernatural and psychological levels concurrently and insidiously: we discover more about the history of both the family and the hotel itself.

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The movie is infinitely watchable because each scene can be seen from a variety of angles: through the naive eyes of the son, through Duvall's willing credulity, and through the blur of Nicholson's fragility and wrath. Although the film's renowned ending sequences are beautifully performed (in a sense), the real essence of The Shining is the pivotal scene in which Duvall approaches Nicholson on the staircase with a baseball bat. The sequence develops with painful intensity, owing to Kubrick and Johnson's ability to maintain tension between Duvall's ears.

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Although The Shining is not Kubrick's finest picture, it is his most flawless. This Halloween season, before you click on a lesser-known film, ask yourself whether you'll appreciate it more than you'll love watching The Shining again. Most likely not.

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Director: Stanley Kubrick

Year of Release: 1980

IMDB Score: 8.5

Metascore: 66

Cinema has been seen as a very effective medium for capturing paranoia. The sensation of doors closing in and having invisible ghosts observe you from afar could be tangibly conveyed via visual media. Blowup, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, effectively invented the thriller subgenre; it influenced subsequent classics such as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation or Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Throughout the 1970s, the widespread skepticism of the government in the aftermath of the Watergate affair inspired so many political conspiracy dramas, including Marathon Man, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor.

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Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski in 1968, has been hailed as one of the greatest, most dramatic film depictions of paranoia. Rosemary's Baby is a film adaptation of Ira Levin's book with the same name. It follows a pregnant woman who comes to fear that her husband, physicians, and neighbors are all plotting against herself and the baby.

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The paranoia in Rosemary's Baby resonates because her beliefs are not proven until the film's famous last moment. Thus, everyone thought the events in the film were all literal paranoia until the great surprise ending.

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Director: Roman Polanski

Year of Release: 1968

IMDB Score: 8

Metascore: 96

Get Out is a quite sleek Universal romp. It was as if the terrifying Alfred Hitchcock had, at last, considered the existential fear of race. Get Out is really a classic of Afrofuturism, the aesthetic and scientific foundation for interpreting race as a time-and-space-traveling technology.

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Jordan Peele's unapologetically Afrofuturist imagery depicts the thievery of the Black bodies. In the movie, the narrator Chris (by Daniel Kaluuya) scurries from the hypnosis of his lover's mother deep into the void of space, only able to gaze up at a two-dimensional perspective of his own life and rendered incapable of acting. The Black body taken by aliens is a recurring motif in Afrofuturism, serving as a metaphor for servitude in many ages and locations.

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Other recent films have shown the resilience of interracial partnerships (Loving, A United Kingdom). More audaciously, Get Out demonstrates the ways white people utilize — indeed, the ways white people must use and consume — Black people for their ongoing survival. Chris seems to be imitating Brock Peters, who was confronted with a lynch in 1962 masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird, rather than Sidney Poitier from the 1967 work Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.

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Director: Jordan Peele

Years of Release: 2017

IMDB Score: 7.7

Metascore: 85

The Conjuring franchise has been regarded as one of the greatest and most successful film series of the twenty-first century, generating up to $1 billion under the keen eye of horror director James Wan. However, horror films earning huge sums is not really a revolution in the business; what gets everyone buzzing is the sheer caliber of these pictures.

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The Conjuring franchise, based on the ghost sightings and possessions seen by real-life paranormal detectives Edward and Lorraine Warren, seem like some ambient, somewhat pleasant throwbacks to classic Hollywood horror flicks; their newest spin-off is no exception. Annabelle: Creation is a fictionalized account of the origins of one of The Conjuring's most prolific real-life cases. It is set in the 1960s United States, featuring a group of foster kids and a nun. These characters ran into a remote farmhouse to assist a doll maker in tending to his enigmatic, bedridden wife.

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While they are there, the girls become the victims of one of the most heinous dolls ever created. Following the minor hole in The Conjuring's shield with the first Annabelle-centric film, Annabelle: Creation is a true return to form, offering some really terrifying moments that will undoubtedly be sensed by scare-seeking fans when it releases today.

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Director: James Wan

Years of Release: 2013

IMDB Score: 7.5

Metascore: 68

Ari Aster's breakthrough horror debut, "Hereditary," was bolstered by skeleton bones in his closet (no, none of this is your business; Aster would want to maintain it that way for the time being. Do not question). Aster slithers away from any queries regarding the plot's personal beginnings. The director of one of the scariest films in history has shocked viewers since its Sundance debut with its depiction of a family devastated by dark forces.

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"I'm not comfortable being specific about it," he added, repeating a remark that has become an interview cliché. "It's simpler for me to refuse to elaborate. I was more influenced by emotions than by realities." However, "Hereditary," which A24 developed for less than $10 million and was launched on thousands of screens, thrusts spectators into the director's mental turmoil.

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While Aster's film achieved immediate success, the plot of "Hereditary" took years to build and developed out of profound emotional scars. This is hardly your typical summer blockbuster, but we are living in unexpected times. Since Aster penned the first draft of "Hereditary" eight years ago, the autobiographical background has been a central theme. Danny DeVito, who took part in producing an initial version of the script, believed Aster's utilization of his own personality has elevated "Hereditary."

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Director: Ari Aster

Year of Release: 2018

IMDB Score: 7.3

Metascore: 87

Midsommar may polarize viewers, yet it has received largely good reviews. Ari Aster's highly anticipated sequel to his breakthrough horror masterpiece Hereditary has premiered to amazing accolades. Hereditary announced the emergence of a new vision in horror when it launched at the 2018 Film Festival, and filmmaker Aster enjoyed the benefits of what was largely hailed as the year's most horrific film.

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Midsommar, Aster's second attempt, is another horror film, but with a dash of dark humor for what Aster has dubbed his "break-up film." Dani (Florence Pugh) is a university student who has endured immense hardship. When Christian (Jack Reynor) attempts to abandon her in order to attend a strange midsummer ceremony in Sweden that occurs only once every ninety years, she feels rejected, until he clumsily invites her along with his dismissive pals. The weird celebration features psychedelic substances, horrific rituals, and unfathomable sacrifices.

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Director: Ari Aster

Year of Release: 2019

IMDB Score: 7.1

Metascore: 72

Us may not make its societal allegory as explicit as Get Out. Still, it is just as ingrained in the concept. Peele said at the SXSW post-premiere Q&A that the film is primarily about America's mistaken fear of foreigners. "This film is about this nation," he said plainly. "We're living in a period when we dread the other - whether it's the strange invader who we believe is coming to murder us and steal our jobs, or the people we do not live near, those voted differently than we did. We are entirely focused on pointing the finger. And I meant to imply that maybe the demon we truly need to confront wears our face. Perhaps the poison is ourselves."

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However, while that metaphor is literal - as the protagonist Adelaide and her kinship encounter warped identical copies of themselves - another powerful metaphor arises from Us: a message about wealth inequality and how easy it is to be unaware of one’s own privilege and comfort, while others are suffering. They are blind to the extent of the pain occurring not far off, among those who are very identical to them save for their birth circumstances.

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Director: Jordan Peele

Year of Release: 2019

IMDB Score: 6.8

Metascore: 81

Insidious, a humble little horror film directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannel, was released in 2011. The film, which stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, follows a family that moves into a cursed mansion... only to discover that it is not the mansion that's cursed.

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The picture was a smashing success. It was the highest-grossing movie of 2011 and generated a whole series chronicling the background of the protagonists and the universe introduced in the original film. It pushed mainstream horror to a new level in the minds of viewers and subtly altered the contemporary genre. Indeed, these changes were so delicate that you may have missed it entirely.

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Not long ago, horror was seen as a childish genre. Except for high school kids searching for fun things to do on a Sunday night, the genre seemed very much like it lacked an audience. That changed with Insidious. It was the very first scary movie in a long time that seemed as if it appealed to a broader crowd. The film's solid family dynamic and maturity make it as appealing for adults seeking horror with substance as it is for the younger viewers.

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Director: James Wan

Year of Release: 2011

IMDB Score: 6.8

Metascore: 52

"The Lighthouse" takes place in a realm of stale cigarettes, flatulence, and commodes in cramped quarters, of terrible breath and dirty undergarments; a nineteenth-century society where toothbrushes have still not been created and there is no time traveler with a tube of Listerine. It's a rare film that leaves you feeling like you could actually smell the characters.

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"The Lighthouse," created and directed by Robert Eggers, was quite perfect in its entirety. To accentuate the sense of confinement, its aspect ratios are near to that of a cube. It's filmed in lustrous black and white hues, which lends the movie a detached feel, allowing magnificent use of light and darkness, and elevates the legendary, archetypal roles portrayed by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe to mythic status. It throws two men against one another in a tough setting and forces them to engage in a psychological combat.

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All of these premises are beneficial — or might have been beneficial. However, after meticulously bringing a setting to life and immersing us in its reality, Eggers fails to provide the one thing that may have kept an audience's attention over the duration of 109 torturous minutes: a compelling tale. He provides us with nothing even resembling one. Hence, this piece just barely made it into the list.

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Director: Robert Eggers

Year of Release: 2019

IMDB Score: 7.5

Metascore: 83