10 Most Unsettling Movies of All Time, Ranked

The topic here is unsettling movies. A film can be unsettling without necessarily being a horror movie — examples like Whiplash or Uncut Gems demonstrate that — but the most unsettling entries tend to be works of horror. This list ranks ten films that get under the skin in different ways.

Some choices lean slow-burn and atmospheric: Cure follows a detective investigating a string of murders in Japan, building mystery and mood at an unhurried pace. Others unsettle through concept and dread: Seconds imagines a procedure that lets people fake their deaths and assume new identities, and Angst confronts viewers with a visceral spree after a prison release.

The Vanishing turns a missing-person story into an increasingly paranoid nightmare. There are also classics that fuse psychological and supernatural terror. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining remains a finely crafted, deeply creepy film that divides opinions about adaptation but succeeds as horror.

Japan

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