Summary

• Slow-burn horror movies require a delicate balance between revealing too much too early and keeping the audience waiting too long.
• Some of the best horror movies are slow-burn affairs that gradually build up tension and deliver stellar endings.
• The endings of slow-burn horror movies often provide shocking revelations that elevate the overall storytelling and leave a lasting impact.

While a lot of slow-burn horror movies receive rave reviews, only the sub-genre’s strongest efforts build up to a revelation that is worth the wait. Slow-burn horror is a tricky genre to pull off. If a horror movie foregrounds its supernatural elements too early, it will lose any ambiguity and no longer feel like a subtle story. Conversely, if a slow-burn horror movie keeps putting off its big reveal for too long, viewers will inevitably get their hopes too high, and the eventual revelation won't be worth the wait. This means a delicate balance must be struck.

However, the fact that some of the best horror movies of all time are slow-burn affairs shows that there is some merit to the risky storytelling strategy. Even among more recent releases, hits such as It Follows and Midsommar prove that viewers still enjoy a patiently-paced horror story as much as a more explosive scare fest. For every indie success like the gruesome slasher sequel Terrifier 2, there is a more ambiguous movie like Skinamarink that gets under the skin of viewers and critics alike. However, the best slow-burn horror movies feature truly stellar endings that elevate proceedings.

10 The Witch

This glacially paced period horror gradually ramps up tension

2016’s The Witch introduced viewers to Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred as its young puritan heroine, Thomasin. For most of the movie’s runtime, Thomasin seemed to be a victim of her father’s religious zealotry more than any supernatural threat, with her family’s sparse, miserable existence driving them to madness and illness. However, The Witch’s ending reveals Black Philip is the devil, the implied supernatural events have been real, and Thomasin is secretly in league with evil. This may simply be a delusion as Thomasin succumbs to psychosis, but it is still a haunting, unforgettable finale.

9 We Are Still Here

The seance horror’s big finale proves spectacularly gruesome

2015’s We Are Still Here sees a grieving couple slowly realize that their new home isn’t as ordinary as it seems. When a string of strange incidents leave them unsettled, they call their spiritualist friends to hold a seance to cleanse the cursed space. These relatively mundane events make up the first two-thirds of the movie, so it is a nasty, brutal shock when the house finally reveals its true nature and slaughters scores of local townspeople in the wild finale. Gruesome and utterly unexpected, We Are Still Here’s ending elevates the previously monotonous story.

8 The Invitation

This psychological horror uses ambiguity to unsettle

The Invitation sees a charismatic but troubled antihero attend a weird dinner party hosted by his ex-wife and her new beau. Throughout the evening, the protagonist picks up on plenty of red flags, but it is impossible to tell how much his judgment is clouded by bitterness and insecurity. That is until The Invitation’s ending reveals the entire dinner was a front for a death cult who planned to kill everyone with a poisoned toast after dessert. With this twist, proceedings suddenly turned unexpectedly gory and action-packed in the closing minutes.

7 Ravenous

A classic black horror comedy that relies on viewers getting complacent

Director Antonia Bird’s criminally underrated Ravenous sees Guy Pearce’s deserter sent to a remote outpost. While there, he helps his mismatched band of fellow soldiers rescue Robert Carlyle’s strange Colqhoun. Colqhoun claims his party was killed by snow, starvation, and a duplicitous fellow traveler named Ives, but something about his story doesn’t add up. It is a minor shock when Colqhoun turns out to be Ives, but it is a bigger, nastier, and more blackly comedic twist when Ives reveals cannibalism has given him superhuman strength, and he intends to convert the camp to his peculiar tastes.

6 The Orphanage

This tragic horror movie’s ending is a powerful gut punch

2007’s The Orphanage mostly focuses on a desperate mother searching for her lost son in the titular abandoned location. However, what starts as a tense tale of a missing child eventually becomes one of the best horror movies about grief ever made when she learns the terrible truth. While unbelievably bleak, this moving Gothic mystery is also poignant, tragic, and a great piece of slow-burn horror storytelling.

5 Possum

The terrifying British indie horror’s reveal is tough to top

2018’s indie horror Possum follows a disgraced children’s entertainer’s attempts to dump his old puppet when he returns to his desolate hometown. The entire movie simply sees him repeatedly throw away this puppet and argue with his grotesque uncle, only for the puppet to inevitably reappear. Somehow, the puppet’s disquieting design and two superb central performances make this simple conceit one of the most uniquely upsetting horror movies in recent memory, and that is before Possum’s ending finally reveals the puppet’s horrifying metaphorical significance.

4 Don’t Look Now

This iconic adaptation pays off its plot with a brutal punchline

By now, Don’t Look Now’s ending is almost more famous than the rest of the movie. However, even for viewers who see the twist coming, this moving meditation on grief is well worth a watch. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s devastating performances as a couple torn apart by grief are career-best turns, and director Nicholas Roeg's skillful filmmaking is so hypnotic that viewers could be forgiven for forgetting to anticipate the hilariously twisted conclusion.

3 The House Of The Devil

Ti West’s debut suddenly kicks into gear near the end

2009’s The House of the Devil was an impressive debut for horror legend Ti West, who went on to make 2022’s slasher homage X. This slower, subtler effort sees a babysitter unsettled by strange events as she looks after a child for a mysterious couple. The eventual revelation is easy to predict, but West manages to make the slow journey to an inevitable end incredibly chilling. To make matters worse, the abrupt action-toward tone of the finale leaves viewers convinced that the heroine might just make it out alive, only for these hopes to be dashed.

2 The Haunting (1963)

This Shirley Jackson adaptation ratchets up the unease slowly but surely

Before Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House and the laughably bad big-budget ‘90s adaptation of the same novel, Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece was brought to life onscreen as a slow-burn, subtle, and incredibly faithful 1963 horror movie. For most of its runtime, it isn’t clear whether The Haunting’s house is really haunted or if the heroine is just severely troubled. By the time the shocking twist ending occurs, it becomes clear that the answer never really mattered.

1 Hereditary

Ari Aster’s masterful horror lulls viewers into a false sense of security

2018’s Hereditary marked the feature debut of Ari Aster, and the horror movie was a huge hit upon release. The story of a family torn apart by the pain of losing a child, Hereditary follows both the teenage slacker Peter and his increasingly unhinged mother, Annie, as they unravel in the weeks following the death of Charlie, Peter’s younger sister. Until its final act, viewers could be forgiven for wondering whether Aster’s movie was more of a dark drama than a horror movie, but Hereditary’s utterly terrifying ending cleared any confusion right up.