Halloween is coming up and at my house it has always been celebrated by renting scary movies.  After trick-or-treating, it is a tradition to curl up with a plastic pumpkin, overflowing with candy and being scared by a movie.  AllMovie.com defines a horror movie as a film “made to frighten or shock the viewer through the means of the macabre, fantastic or supernatural.”  The website also adds that horror overlaps sometimes with the Science Fiction genre.

Horror movies in general are constantly disrespected and dismissed as invaluable.  Scary movies are valuable because they force you to confront the reality of death—in a controlled environment of course. During the normal course of the day the thought of death is not usually discussed or confronted.  We spend most of our time trying to avoid thinking about the ultimate end that we all face. Horror movies force us to confront this reality and ask ourselves how we would face death in the form of a serial killer or a more metaphorical presentation like a zombie or monster. Being scared and facing your fears can be a cleansing and enlightening experience.  Here are a few recent films that are viscerally frightening and intellectually engaging that can add to your Halloween this year.

Here are 6 movies from 2000-2010 that would make for the best Halloween viewing to truly be scared.

6. Trick ‘r Treat

Trick ‘r Treat is quite an anomaly. It is a film that had a very limited theatrical release and was dumped onto home video, which is actually fantastic. It’s set on a Halloween night and features overlapping stories that all tie up together in a surprising way. This is the least scary movie on my list. The movie has a few frightening moments but really excels in its storytelling and setting.  The plot is complex and involves a homicidal principal, a town secret, vampires, and best of all a creepy little pumpkin-headed ghoul.  The film deals with that age-old question of guilt and the supernatural punishment for their sins.  Trick ‘r Treat is to Halloween as Christmas Vacation is to Christmas.  It is sure to become a yearly favorite.

5. Frailty

Bill “Twister” Paxton directs and stars in Frailty as a man who begins to receive visions of angels telling him that he must kill evil people.  He claims that he can sense evil and ropes his two sons into helping him commit grisly murders in the name of God. While not exactly a traditional scary movie, Frailty is scary in that it makes you realize that the truly frightening possibility of a vengeful God’s existence.

4. The Descent

Neil Marshall’s The Descent is a fantastic film that powerfully depicts the two-fold horror of being trapped in a cave with no escape and the possibility that something else might be in there with you. The Descent is also great because the all-female cast have fully developed characters and are not rendered as sex objects but powerful, smart, and resourceful heroines. The Descent would be unnerving and brilliant even without the monsters. Be sure to check out the unrated version, which features a more logical and frightening ending.

3. Imprint

Takashi Miike’s Imprint was created as an hour-long episode of the Showtime series Masters of Horror but was deemed by the show’s producers to be too extreme for late night Showtime. Basically, any twisted act that a horror movie could pull off is featured within Imprint‘s hour runtime.  It’s set in Japan in the 1800s and is probably the most repulsive film I have ever seen (and I have seen Salo). Watch it, if you dare: Netflix even has it on Instant Play!

2. The Mist

One of the two horror masterpieces made in the past ten years is Frank Darabont’s The Mist.  Like Kubrick before him, Darabont takes a Stephen King novella and turns it into a horrifying and bleak film that is a must-see. The Mist stars Thomas “Hung” Jane as a father who is trapped with his son in a local grocery store when a deadly fog rolls in. The ending is one of the most shocking and amazing of all time.

1. 28 Days Later

This is my pick for the best horror movie of the past decade.  Not only is it the best zombie movie in recent years, I think it is a more relevant and frightening film than “Night of the Living Dead.” Cillian “Scarecrow” Murphy stars as Jim who wakes up from a coma, only to find that London is deserted due to an outbreak of a “rage” virus that turns the infected person into mindless, fast zombies. 28 Days Later excels in every possible way from storyline to acting and direction. The film captures anxiety about technology and our present society.  It is also profound as it depicts an attempt to rebuild society on flawed human nature.