My Top Ten Foreign Language Horror Movies

I decided it was time to try to put together a bunch of “My Top Horror Movies” lists. I already did these two lists years ago:

My Top Ten Horror Comedies
My Top Ten Body Horror Movies

So I plan to post these the rest of this week:

My Top Horror Movies Pre-1970
My Top Horror Movies 1970-1999
My Top Horror Movies Of The 21st Century (I did a list for this here several years ago which I’ll update)

Then I might do an overall all-time My Top Horror Movies list (but the majority will be from the 1970-1999 list, I’m sure!).

I’ll probably call them all “Top Ten” to stay consistent with my other lists but, especially with this one, I was curious as to how much foreign horror I’ve seen & have listed everything I could think of. I will definitely be missing movies from these lists, though, and am sure I’ll be kicking myself for forgetting something.

I had to put some rules on this list:

1. It has to not be in English (not counting the silent films! Ha!). I disagree with the lists I saw online with The Babadook & loads of British horror listed as foreign. Not foreign to me.

2. I at first spent ages looking up each film on IMDb to see if “Horror” was one of the genres listed. It starts getting complicated as people may have different ideas of what makes a film a horror. If it’s horrific in any way, I usually consider it horror. But then there are other movies people consider horror which I never have (Jaws, a thriller and Alien/Aliens, sci-fi). So you can argue with my choices if you want. 🙂 But I did look up each for this one list & only one isn’t classified as horror on IMDb: M (1931). I’ve left out Battle Royale, though, which I had very high on this list at first then decided it’s not really horror. But M is a horror to me.

So here’s my ranked list counting down to My Top Ten Foreign Language Horror Movies:

Top Twenty:

20. Troll Hunter
19. Dead Snow
18. The Wailing
17. Tetsuo: The Iron Man
16. Audition
15. [REC]
14. The Platform
13. The Host
12. Eyes Without A Face
11. Les Diaboliques

Top Ten:

10. Ringu (but I could do with rewatching this)

9. The Orphanage

8. TIE: A Tale Of Two Sisters & Hausu

7. Let The Right One In

6. Nosferatu (1922)

5. M

4. Pan’s Labyrinth

3. TIE: Deep Red & Suspiria (Included these together but I really need to rewatch Suspiria, which I think looks & sounds great and is iconic, but I enjoyed Deep Red more)

2. The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari

1. Train To Busan

Honorable Mentions:
The Grudge (I remember liking this but really need to rewatch it. Same as with Ringu, although I did include it in the list as it’s so iconic)
Four Flies On Grey Velvet
Inferno
One Cut Of The Dead
Goodnight Mommy
Sputnik
Veronica
Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead
Ils

Some I Want To See (and I’d happily take more recommendations!):
Pulse
High Tension (aka Haute Tension aka Switchblade Romance)
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Ones I Need To Rewatch:
The Grudge & Ringu (as mentioned above)
The Devil’s Backbone (don’t remember at all)