Chills in the Sunshine: 5 Terrifying Spring Break Horror Movies

This 2008 movie, based on the 2006 Scott B. Smith novel of the same name, follows two young couples on a Mexican Getaway.

Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jenna Malone), Eric (Shawn Ashmore), and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) get it wrong pretty early on when they make friends with a German tourist, Mathias, who came to Mexico to find his brother who has gone missing while on an archaeological dig at Mayan ruin. 

The group decides to go with Mathias to check out the ruin while he looks for his brother, and upon arrival, they realize the error of their ways.

The locals are hostile and do not want them there. However, when the group flees to the ruins to take cover. The locals stop their pursuit.

And for good reason. Jeff, Amy, Eric, and Stacy will unfortunately, find out that the ruins are inhabited by flesh-eating vines that will terrorize them far more than any of the locals could. 

So perhaps the moral of the story in this 2002 classic spring break horror movie is be careful who you trust because when a flesh-eating virus starts to ruin your vacation, your friend who accidentally shot someone and didn’t tell you might be the one to blame.

Cabin Fever follows a group of college students who have rented a remote cabin to blow off steam. That is until some weird shit starts to go down.

One strange grifter and a vagrant vomiting blood later, the group begins to discover wounds on themselves, and it’s not long after that that all hell breaks loose. 

Pro tip: if there’s a highly contagious virus circling about, maybe don’t have sex, and it’s also probably not the best time to shave your legs (IYKYK).

So technically, the plot of Bodies, Bodies, Bodies unfolds during a hurricane party and not during an official spring break, but it ultimately achieves the same effect.

And following the logic of this movie, should you ever be invited to spend your vacation at the home of a wealthy friend of a friend, DON’T GO.

In Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, working-class Bee (Maria Bakalova) is invited to stay at her best friend Sophie’s (Amandla Stenberg) best friend David’s (Pete Davidson) house during an incoming storm, and when the thrill of party drugs and dancing wears off, the group decides to play a viral murder mystery game called, you guessed it: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies.

But as it often goes when your best friend has another best friend and that best friend is wealthy enough to be surrounded by clout chasers, there is major tension.

And it takes almost nothing for a simple misunderstanding to snowball into something horribly and hysterically wrong.

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies is a horror and a comedy, but don’t let the laughs trick you into letting down your guard. 

If you’re unlucky enough to spend your spring break driving through the Florida countryside with your little brother, just keep driving.

In this 2001 horror staple, Trish (Gina Phillips) and Darry (Justin Long), are tailgated by an aggressive driver in a strange truck that matches the details of an old urban legend that just so happened to take place on the road where they’re driving.

A bit later, after your standard dose of sibling bickering, when they stop to go to the bathroom on the side of the road (horrible idea), they notice the truck again near an abandoned church. And it’s right about here where they screw themselves. 

Because Trish and Darry have made themselves morbidly curious by discussing the urban legend during their drive, they hang around until they see the truck’s owner.

Little do they know the driver is not a man, but some sort of carnivore cryptid who goes on a twenty-three-day killing spree to feed himself every twenty-three years. 

Yum.

Again, this one is a bit of a technicality because it’s a summer break movie, and not a spring break movie, but it offers an ever-salient reminder that it’s a bad idea to vacation with pretentious boys. 

Midsommar follows Dani Ardor (Florence Pugh), who has just lost her entire family in a murder-suicide, as she tags along on her boyfriend’s boys' trip to visit the home of their friend Pelle, who is an exchange student from a place called Hälsingland.

Dani’s boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends are graduate students studying anthropology, and when they arrive to find out Pelle was raised by a reclusive community with some really strange traditions, there’s a fight over who gets to use it as a thesis topic. 

Unfortunately, the thing about reclusive communities with strange traditions is that they’re often cults, and in this case, the crew hit the motherload.

The Harga, the name of the people from which Pelle descends, are not just any cult—they’re a death cult. Could you imagine a better way to spend vacation?

So, watch one, watch ‘em all, and by the time you’re done, if your only plans for spring break or summer vacation were to bust a chill on the couch, you probably won’t even mind anymore.

You're welcome. 

Featured still from “The Ruins” via DreamWorks