The 10 Very Best Bloodless Horror Films

One of the earliest examples of horror on screen was this German Expressionist tale of a madman who hypnotizes a sleepwalker to commit murders at his command.

Its distinctive visuals, featuring stark black-and-white sets full of sharp, off-kilter angles, influenced everyone from Tim Burton to Rob Zombie, and the story—with its Shyamalan-worthy twist—still manages to make skin crawl more than 100 years later.

One of the most famous vampires in film history managed to make his mark(s) in this initial screen adaptation with basically no blood spilled whatsoever.

In fact, Bela Lugosi’s dapper Count doesn’t even have any fangs.

But with the spiderweb-strewn stone steps of his decaying castle, a trio of silent brides who glide towards their victims with funereal elegance, and a stare that paralyzes the fair young maids of London with its unabashed intensity, does he really need them?

Also called Horror Hotel, this Christopher Lee-starring tale of a college student who travels to a small Massachusetts town to research their local legends of witchcraft and Satanism is full to the brim with an eerie atmosphere, and no blood to speak of.

In its place, expect plenty of evil covens, creepy locals, fog-choked graveyards, and gore-free human sacrifice. 

Based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, this one will burrow under your skin and stay there if you let it. Deborah Kerr plays a deeply repressed governess charged with the care of two young children who she suspects are possessed by the ghosts of two former servants whose torrid love affair ended in their deaths.

Are the children really possessed, or is she losing her mind? If you like the whole “women in nightgowns carrying candles through the shadowy corridors of Gothic mansions” vibe, this is the movie for you.

A young woman survives a car accident and moves to a new city, where she feels profoundly out of place and unable to make even the most basic human connections with the people she meets.

At the same time, a mysterious, dark-eyed stranger is following her, and she keeps seeing strange visions at an abandoned lakeside carnival.

This nightmarish movie is quiet and understated, ideal viewing for anyone who’s ever been haunted by the specter of loneliness.

Before it (loosely) inspired the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson’s novel was adapted for the screen by director Robert Wise, just two years before he would make a very different kind of classic movie with The Sound of Music.

Like the previous two entries on this list, The Haunting is about a lonely woman losing her grip on reality as she encounters supernatural forces beyond her understanding.

Whether you believe there is an actual haunting at Hill House or not, this remains one of the scariest blood-free movies of all time.

George C. Scott stars as a man grieving the violent loss of his wife and young daughter in an accident when he moves into a shadowy old house haunted by the ghost of a young boy.

Instead of chainsaws and meathooks, this film relies on seemingly innocuous items like an antique wheelchair and a child’s red ball for its biggest scares.

This movie launched an entire subgenre—found footage—when it came out at the tail end of the ‘90s, and it managed to do so without the blood and gore that would come to dominate horror just a few years later with the advent of Saw.

Detractors say this is a quintessential example of “nothing happens” horror: Characters wander around, lose their map, bicker, ask the camera, “What was that?!” and so on. There are very few concrete explanations about what, exactly, the central trio of aspiring documentarians find in the forest.

But if it works for you, it really works, and the last five minutes — if you can use your imagination and really surrender to the story — just might be some of the most genuinely chilling in cinematic history.

A great companion piece to The Innocents, Nicole Kidman anchors this early twenty-first-century take on the “woman (possibly) losing her mind while caring for children in an isolated mansion” trope.

This time, however, the children are her own, and they suffer from a life-threatening sensitivity to light. When mysterious new servants arrive, she suspects they may be behind the supernatural phenomena plaguing her house — and corrupting her children.

Can she save them, or is something else at play?

Almost a decade after Blair Witch, this simple tale of a couple who set up a camera to record them while they sleep in order to get to the bottom of the strange activity in their suburban California home breathed new life into found footage and launched an unlikely franchise that currently numbers seven films and counting.

And, apart from a stain on one character’s shirt, it did it all without relying on blood and guts.