Yes, Paul W. S Anderson’s film Event Horizon is far from perfect. In fact, it is very deeply flawed, especially because of its semi-lost, boundary-pushing torture scenes, dated character motifs, and a sense of humor that, tonally, does not feel a thousand percent well-balanced with the existential, hopeless tone. That being said, many of the negative reactions do not account for the pure nightmare fuel of this film at its core. Event Horizon might not be the greatest sci-fi horror film of all time (though I would personally say otherwise), but there is more than enough of a case for it being the most frightening.

The Hellish Premise That Makes Event Horizon So Terrifying

The film itself follows a group of scientists in the distant future looking for a lost ship – the “Event Horizon”. The ship, which was revolutionary in its ability to literally fold space time, poke a hole through it, and go through, went missing years ago, and had only just been discovered. As the crew boards the abandoned ship, the film plays out like a combination of cosmic terror, a haunted house/gothic aesthetic, and hopeless dread, as they discover the ship may have passed through Hell itself.

The Chaos Realm and the Fear of a Fate Worse Than Death

Probably the scariest existential concept introduced in Event Horizon is the concept of a fate worse than death. In addition to the haunted house horrors of visualized grief and deadly kills, the film vies for a more Hellraiser approach of inflicting brutal, unflinching nightmare fuel on its characters and audience. I am of course referring to the chaos realm, and how it completely derails any expectations of what the movie might have been.

So let’s say you go to a movie theater to see Event Horizon in the 1990s. It’s labeled as sci-fi horror. With Alien 4 scheduled to come out in a few months, and films such as The Arrival, 12 Monkeys, and other grunge science fiction outings filling the decades, one could assume the movie would be an alien, time travel, or other high sci-fi concept film. Soon, it shows itself as a haunted house story in space. Then, with one more twist, it becomes half Lovecraftian cosmic terror of the unknown, and half otherworldly torture. The ship passes through a Hellish torture realm; anyone who sees it becomes corrupted, and they might even participate in the infamous “blood orgy” scene. Seeing is not just believing-it is possession and corruption. This is Hellraiser in space.

Cosmic Horror and Lovecraftian Terror in Space

The concept of the chaos realm, as a demonic version of the zone from Annihilation, is partially scary because of the movie’s pacing, and how it takes a while to set up this twist of a concept. It is a festering, evil place we are dealing with. Even inanimate objects such as the ship itself, can become sentient demons in their own right. The movie, intelligently so, also does not overexplain this place. It is not quite Hell itself, but rather, a place of pure evil caught in between time and space, that people may have interpreted as Hell.

Sam Neill’s Dr. Weir Is an Underrated Horror Villain

Throughout the film, Sam Neill’s character, Dr. William Weir, makes a horrific transformation. Revealed to be the designer of the Event Horizon, visions of his dead wife led him to reach this chaos realm himself. On the Event Horizon, which had become a demon, William becomes a corrupted servant of the Hellish servants on the other side.

A potential factor in the lack of awareness of Event Horizon is that it came out in the 90s, not the 80s. If this film had premiered about ten years earlier, it almost definitely would have held Sam Neill’s character on the same pedestal as Pinhead, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers. However, in the late 90s, there was such a fatigue over slashers and high-concept antagonists that his character didn’t receive the cult status he should have.

Seriously…the bloody, scraped-in satanic symbols into the body? The blood-drenched skin? The cold, unloving attitude? He gives Pinhead a run for his money, and is a whole lot more sadistic than him. All the elements are there for an iconic horror villain, making his way into Funko Pop figures and T-shirts. However, he is not held on that pedestal as he should be. Maybe if there were a couple more sequels with him doing wacky kills and making puns? Sign me up for Event Horizon: The Dream Master.

The Gothic Design of the Event Horizon Ship

In addition to Sam Neill’s character, the ship itself should be as iconic as the Overlook Hotel or Amity Island. It is not a regular science-fiction designed thing, but rather more akin to a gothic Church. It gives the impression that it was destined for evil from its conception, and no one would have any control over where it went. Truly chilling-huge props (pun not intended) to production designer Joseph Bennett.

Why Event Horizon Is a Sci-Fi Horror Masterpiece

Event Horizon is a masterwork of terror. Yes, it’s cheesy at times with dated effects, and yes, some of its corny jokes feel out of place when the rest of the movie is painstakingly serious, but at its core are some truly terrifying concepts.

Ending on a final factoid, the movie was famously cut down from its original length. Some of the cut scenes from the horrific torture sequences, which were shot on film, were actually found years later in a Transylvanian salt mine of all places. Imagine being the poor sucker who uncovers practically done torture scenes in a mine. Hopefully, one day we might have a Director’s cut that would somehow be even scarier. But for now, Event Horizon as is, could take the cake as the most frightening sci-fi-horror film of the 1990s.

Two of today’s most celebrated horror luminaries, Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger, launched their careers with sketch comedy. David Gordon Green directed big-budget comedies like Pineapple Express before polarizing fans with his Halloween reboot trilogy. And after John Krasinski played a beloved sitcom character for nine years before he made his directorial debut with A Quiet Place, kickstarting one of the genre’s most durable franchises.

It’s no wonder a slew of modern horror creators got their start in comedy. Horror and comedy are two sides of the same screaming mutant baby. Both genres deal in extremity. They both rely on the build-up and release of tension. They both inspire physical and often visceral reactions in viewers. Since the 2000s ’ American Psycho and 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, the horror comedy genre – once anathema to play-it-safe Hollywood executives – has exploded in popularity. Here are the best horror comedies of the last two decades, guaranteed to inspire shrieks of laughter and revulsion.

The Best Horror Comedies of the Last 20 Years

10. ​In Fabric (2018)

Peter Strickland’s giallo-inspired arthouse oddity about a killer dress is “every frame a painting” gorgeous – and totally bonkers. The first half follows Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whose charisma quotient grows the more she works to downplay it, as demure divorcee Sheila, who purchases a mysterious red dress that wreaks havoc on her humdrum middle-class existence.

In the second half, the dress falls into the possession of working class repairman Reg (Leo Bill), who possesses the odd ability to lull people into a trance whenever he drones on about washing machines. In Fabric is a droll yet unsettling send-up of fashion, consumerism, and how capitalism weaponizes desire. Like a flowing wrap dress and dazzling statement clutch, this movie perfectly pairs with this year’s fashion-fixated ghost tale, Mother Mary.

9. ​Drag Me To Hell (2009)

In terms of pure popcorn-munching thrills, this unhinged Sam Raimi yarn remains an undeniable banger. A wealth of horror comedies, including many on this list, code-switch between horror and comedy: funny scenes are funny, scary scenes are scary. The tonalities take turns politely. Drag Me to Hell is of the rare breed in which the horror and comedy are intertwined like DNA helices.

As Christine (Alison Lohman) finds herself under more and more extreme attacks from evil forces, Raimi’s signature Evil Dead-style frenetic direction – including coked-up camerawork, slam-bang edits, and gotcha-good haunted-house jump scares – are designed to leave viewers laughing while watching through splayed fingers. It all coalesces into one of the genre’s most stunning and sidesplitting finales.

8. ​Climax (2018)

This dance-driven horror excursion comes from the mind of Gaspar Noé, so you know it’s going to be unhinged. But is it a comedy? That depends on you. You might not find anything funny about a troupe of excitable dancers drinking from a punch bowl spiked with LSD during a rehearsal and inflicting total mayhem and brutality onto each other. But for the gleeful sadists and masochists out there, this experimental film isn’t not a comedy. There’s something mordantly witty about the way Noé first celebrates the art of dance (and by extension art) as the product of humans working in concert with each other to create magic… and then turns the equation on its head by reveling in nightmarish entropy brought on by unseen circumstances.

Climax perches itself on the blurred line between collaboration and chaos: it’s no coincidence that this en masse maniacal breakdown looks like one extended piece of bizarre modern dance in and of itself, inviting the viewer to ponder the film on a meta-textual level: how much of Climax’s comedy of grave errors was choreography, and how much of it truly was pure unplanned chaos?

7. ​Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Time has been merciful to Jennifer’s Body, despite the emo aesthetics, pop culture references, and presence of Adam Brody as a would-be teen heartthrob, all of which plant this horror comedy firmly in the late 2000s. A box-office bomb castigated by viewers and critics upon release, it’s since gained cult status as a seminal text in the modern queer horror canon. Writer Diablo Cody regards the central relationship between Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and Jennifer (Megan Fox) as seriously as a devil’s pact. As their friendship descends into its inevitable breakdown, the horror lies not so much in the newly demon-possessed Jennifer ripping her unsuspecting paramours to shreds – that’s just good-natured fun!

The true terror lies in how Needy’s world destabilizes as she works to decipher how once-bestie Jennifer now codes in her life: Friend in need? Social threat? Object of desire? The movie might be named after Jennifer’s body, but the real thrill ride here is Needy’s mind – and these two actresses do wonders in embodying this tender and toxic friendship. Seyfried is heartbreaking with every uncertain glance and stutter, and Fox loads her performance with a captivating undercurrent of guilt and quiet woe.

6. ​You’re Next (2011)

A wealthy family gathers at a cabin in the woods, where they’re besieged by masked intruders wielding crossbows and gnarly booby traps galore. You’re Next doesn’t spend too much time pausing the blood-soaked action to hit the viewer with didactic satire, unlike future “eat the rich” horror narratives such as The Menu. Instead, director Adam Wingard relies on his nimble improv-forward cast to deliver grounded performances that both humanize and skewer these characters to killer effect. Sharni Vinson commands every moment as fish-out-of-water Erin, who must endure a tense first meeting with her boyfriend’s family.

Genre icon Barbara Crampton is a hoot as the family’s wound-up matriarch. The stalwart supporting cast also includes mumblecore auteur Joe Swanberg and horror favorite Ti West.  Some Letterboxd reviewers mistakenly believe You’re Next has nothing to say, that the story ends without ramping up to a “point.” Those critics may do well to consider: perpetrators don’t always need to write on the wall for us to understand their motives. Consider this movie as a sort of pre-Succession romp, with amplified bloodshed. The humor and horror lie in poisoned family dynamics that mutate cutthroat behavior into literal cut throats.

5. ​The Substance (2023)

Jordan Peele nabbing the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Get Out punched desperately needed holes in the Academy’s historical exclusion of horror comedies. The Substance made those holes even bigger as it poured through them like a wild, unstoppable geyser, with Demi Moore leading a fiery Best Actress campaign (ultimately losing to Mikey Madison) and the effects team picking up a statue for Best Makeup thanks to the film’s crowning achievement, the beautiful abomination Monstro Elisasue. Coralie Fargeat’s ribald exegesis on aging subverts the “fountain of youth” trope. The story’s cardinal sin (for every great horror narrative is built around sin) isn’t Elisabeth Sparkle’s obsession with youth, but that of a broken culture that debases anyone who falls outside its cruel and unusual beauty standards.

The psychological horror of Elisabeth waging war on her own self has serious resonance in today’s modern society that leaves us toggling between fractured selves (online self vs. IRL self, work self vs. home self). But this movie’s true miracle is how it managed to garner accolades from the Academy, despite its gut-busting finale that mocks the timeworn ritual of media professionals dressing up in spiffy formalwear to gather and self-congratulate.

4. ​Obsession (2026)

Horror comedy’s newest buzzy darling on the block is also one of the subgenre’s best. Curry Barker’s debut feature doesn’t necessarily dazzle on its premise alone: the idea of wishing a crush into reciprocating romantic feelings against their will has been explored everywhere from The Twilight Zone to Buffy to The Fairly OddParents. Yet similar to The Substance (see above), Barker’s crackerjack script interrogates the insidious implications of the narrative “magic bean” that fulfills the protagonist’s greatest desire. Lead actor Michael Johnston has the unenviable task of embodying a main character whose demise many in the audience will clamor for – but he fulfills the assignment with aplomb.

As his character Bear caves deeper into his own cowardice, his regrettable actions come off as disturbingly human.  But the real star is Inde Navarrette as Nikki. Her swing-for-the-fences performance is akin to a modern-day conjuring of Isabelle Adjani’s epic turn in Possession. See this one with an audience for the complete horror comedy experience: you’ll likely witness the crowd’s nervous laughter growing more raucous as the story grows more disturbing. Obsession pulls no punches as it forces viewers to contend with what we really want out of our partners – and how much we’re willing to take from them to get it.

3. ​Get Out (2016)

View Jordan Peele’s contemporary classic from one angle, and there’s not much funny about it. The movie doesn’t play this hellish meet-the-parents scenario for overt laughs. Once Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris discovers the terrible secrets of his partner’s family the Armitages, the movie coaxes the viewer into his mounting dread, starting with an unnerving (and visually arresting) depiction of the so-called Sunken Place, followed by his encounters with the Armitages’ other victims (all displays of brilliant work from the supporting cast), and eventually his heartpounding effort to escape from the Armitages’ secluded property. Yet in a grim gallows-humor kind of way, Get Out is a laugh a minute – and not only because of its scenes of comic relief from Lil Rel Howery as Chris’s exuberant buddy Rod.

Get Out is one of the most rollicking social satires of the 21st century. Ten years on, the phrase “would have voted Obama for a third term” remains in our cultural lexicon as a wry bit of shorthand for a well-to-do white liberal who over-fancies themselves “one of the good ones” – perhaps the most potent sign of this movie’s enduring legacy. Too many filmmakers have since tried and failed to play in the “social horror” subgenre popularized by this movie; their hearts might be in the right place, but they lack Peele’s deft understanding of how to build tension – and humor – with visual composition, editing, and especially music to bring horrific social satire to bear.

2. ​Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Drew Goddard’s send-up of the horror genre itself is a stuffed cornucopia for horror comedy lovers: with fierce wit and so-clever-it-hurts story machinations, Cabin in the Woods embraces and explodes shopworn horror tropes before throwing everything into the kitchen sink and burning everything down in a blaze of glory. Five years before Bradley Whitford’s turn as the sinister patriarch in Get Out, he leads a winning cast here as a project manager with corny “corporate dad” swagger who has to deliver results – or the whole world will pay the price.

15 years after its release, the genre commentary of Cabin in the Woods doesn’t feel dated: in fact, it feels prescient. Goddard’s pristine script argues that horror will remain forever essential to culture, but creators mustn’t be afraid to discard shortsighted cliches in favor of bold new storytelling ventures. A mere three years after this movie’s release, the genre did indeed experience a kind of evolution with the simultaneous rise of prestige horror, social horror, and horror comedy – proving that the genre has power beyond stories about horny teenagers getting hacked to pieces at a cabin in the woods.

1. ​Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Since the rise of horror’s mainstream popularity, researchers have been fascinated with the unlikely role the genre plays in allaying viewers’ anxiety. Coltan Scrivner, a psychologist at Arizona State University, writes in a review paper on the subject: “Horror entertainment content allows people to experience fear in a safe, controlled environment, providing an opportunity to practice cognitive reappraisal.” Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid feels like a valentine to horror’s most loyal audience: those with debilitating anxiety. Joaquin Phoenix’s perpetual worrywart Beau is all but crippled by fears and phobias, and the movie revels in his warped vision of the world: he’s plagued with threats bursting from all corners, from spiders to knife-wielding assailants to missed appointments to guilt-inducing calls from Mom.

The nightmarish absurdism, pushed to delirious heights, both mocks and sympathizes with Beau’s anxiety, making for an unforgettable first 40 minutes. Then the movie relaxes into a strange and picaresque character study of Beau, which may alienate viewers who wish that Aster had simply kept the frenzied train rolling. But in switching gears to explore Aster’s deeper fears around belonging, desire, and family, the film takes a sincere dive into what makes Beau’s fears so terrifying – and funny. Even as the movie trolls Beau, it resists dehumanizing him. In fact, despite all the terror, guilt, and shame that Beau endures, Beau Is Afraid likely takes the prize for most humane horror comedy of the 21st century.