Best International Horror Movies: A Beginner’s Guide

Fear is the universal language. Terror is, as we have sadly seen so often, a global phenomenon. And monsters inhabit every crevice of this small world, from the deepest recesses of the South Pacific to the most remote peaks of the North Pole. So it should hardly be a surprise that horror films are and have been a component of cinema in just about every country that embraced the art form. Along with love, fear is the most profound human emotion, and any art — especially filmmaking — is the way in which we express those feelings to the rest of the world.

While the U.S., Canada and the U.K. (along with other primarily English-language nations like Australia and New Zealand) have produced healthy shares of the world’s catalog of horror movies, there is a vast, deep, diverse library of genre output that spans the world from Mexico to Malaysia, from the earliest days of the silents to last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Many of these movies reflect both modern concerns and deep-rooted myths, often in the same story, while delivering the kind of raw terror and emotional toll that the best horror films are remembered for.