Haunted House Movies Where Nobody Just Leaves

The house says get out. Everyone stays for the second act.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A camcorder on a tripod at the foot of a bed in a dark bedroom, the bedroom door standing open to a black hallway.

    10. Paranormal Activity

    Oren Peli · 2007

    Katie and Micah stay because the psychic says the demon is attached to Katie, not the house, so leaving solves nothing. Micah's plan is to keep filming. It was shot for $15,000 and grossed $194 million, the best return on a tripod in history.

  2. A boxy scientific machine with dials and cables sitting in the middle of a dark mansion hall, a chandelier swinging overhead.

    09. The Legend of Hell House

    John Hough · 1973

    Four researchers are paid to spend a week in Belasco House to prove whether anything survives death. Richard Matheson adapted his own novel. The score is by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, so even the walls sound wrong.

  3. A skeleton dangling from a wire over rows of empty theater seats, a stack of banknotes on the stage below.

    08. House on Haunted Hill

    William Castle · 1959

    Vincent Price offers five strangers $10,000 each to survive one night, then bars the windows. Staying is the business model. In theaters, William Castle flew a plastic skeleton over the audience on a wire and called it Emergo. It made about $3 million on under $200,000.

  4. A small rubber ball bouncing down a grand mansion staircase toward an empty antique wheelchair at the bottom.

    07. The Changeling

    Peter Medak · 1980

    George C. Scott, grieving his wife and daughter, rents a Seattle mansion far too big for one composer and a piano. A child's ball bounces down the stairs on its own, an empty wheelchair gives chase, and he stays to investigate. Scorsese called it one of the scariest ever.

  5. A Dutch Colonial house at night with two quarter-circle attic windows glowing like eyes, a swarm of flies at the front door.

    06. The Amityville Horror

    Stuart Rosenberg · 1979

    A house that tells a priest to get out, out loud, and the family stays anyway. The real Lutzes lasted 28 days and left their belongings behind. It was the second-biggest movie of 1979 after Kramer vs. Kramer. Eddie Murphy's Delirious bit about it is better than it.

  6. A wall clock stopped at three o'clock above a cellar door left ajar in an old farmhouse kitchen, a music box sitting on the table.

    05. The Conjuring

    James Wan · 2013

    The Perrons buy a Rhode Island farmhouse, the dog refuses to go inside, and the clocks stop at 3:07. The movie's answer to why they stay: the entity is attached to the family, so leaving won't help. Convenient. It made $319 million on $20 million and spawned a universe.

  7. A huge stone manor in thick fog, every window covered by heavy drawn curtains except one, and a ring of iron keys hanging on the gate.

    04. The Others

    Alejandro Amenábar · 2001

    Jersey, 1945. Nicole Kidman keeps her light-sensitive children behind curtains and locked doors, then hires servants who know the house better than she does. Why nobody leaves is the whole movie, so no spoilers. It won Best Film at the Goyas with no Spanish dialogue.

  8. A heavy carved wooden door bulging inward in a dark hallway, cracks of light spilling around its frame and the doorknob turning.

    03. The Haunting

    Robert Wise · 1963

    Eleanor spent her adult life nursing her mother and has nowhere else to go, so Hill House feels like an invitation. Robert Wise shot it on a wide-angle lens so unfinished he signed a memo accepting its flaws. You never see a ghost. You hear the walls. Worse.

  9. A glowing static-filled television on a low stand in a dark suburban living room, a tree's gnarled branches pressed against the window behind it.

    02. Poltergeist

    Tobe Hooper · 1982

    The ghosts take the youngest through the TV, so the Freelings stay to get her back: the one good excuse here. The developer moved the headstones, not the bodies. JoBeth Williams later learned the pool skeletons were real. Their first act after escaping: removing a motel TV.

  10. A red hedge maze buried in snow at night, a single tricycle abandoned at its entrance and a hotel's lit windows behind.

    01. The Shining

    Stanley Kubrick · 1980

    Jack takes a winter caretaker job at a closed Colorado hotel, then wrecks the radio and the snowcat so nobody can leave, which is cheating. Kubrick changed Room 217 to 237 to keep the real hotel happy. Stephen King hated it enough to remake it himself.

Honorable mentions

  • A striped sandworm curling out of a desert dune on an alien moon, a tidy white front door standing alone in the sand.

    Beetlejuice

    Tim Burton · 1988

    The ghosts are the ones stuck: step out the front door and the Maitlands land on Saturn's moon Titan among giant sandworms. The living family won't leave either, which is how you get a dinner party sung to Harry Belafonte. It won the Oscar for makeup.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A blank wooden real estate signpost leaning in front of a gothic mansion in a thunderstorm, a car with its doors open in the driveway.

    The Haunted Mansion

    Rob Minkoff · 2003

    Eddie Murphy, who explained in Delirious that he would never stay in a haunted house, plays a real estate agent who stays in a haunted house. A storm traps his family overnight. Critics found it neither scary nor funny; 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. Delirious Eddie was right.

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