The 10 Best Horror Films of 2003

2003 offered a few very bright moments, but in general, wasn’t all too impressive. We got the inaugural pic in a now popular franchise, and we got a noteworthy remake Rob Zombie put himself in the game and there’s a compelling true story in the mix as well. But, outside of the top seven or eight flicks, 2003 was pretty much a disaster.

Check out all of our annual coverage right here, and then jump back into the fold to see what earned the #1 position on our list!

10 Dead End

For the past 20 years, Frank Harrington has grudgingly driven his family to celebrate Christmas with his mother-in-law. This year, he takes a shortcut. It’s the biggest mistake of his life: The nightmare begins. A mysterious woman in white wanders through the forest, leaving death in her wake. A terrifying black car – its driver invisible – carries the victims into the heart of the night. Every road sign points to a destination they never reach. The survivors succumb to panic, to madness; deeply buried secrets burst to the surface, and Christmas turns into a living hell.

09 Final Destination 2

Clear Rivers has been living life in a mental hospital after the bizarre events that lead to the deaths of her friends. One day, she is approached by a girl named Kimberly who believes she had a premonition similar to her friend Alex who died. Clear has to either risk her life helping others, or stay inside the hospital the rest of her life waiting for her death to come. What will she do?

08 House of 1000 Corpses

In “House of 1000 Corpses”, two young couples take a misguided tour onto the back roads of America in search of a local legend known as Dr. Satan. Lost and stranded, they are set upon by a bizarre family of psychotics. Murder, cannibalism and satanic rituals are just a few of the 1000+ horrors that await.

07 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Driving through the backwoods of Texas, five youths pick up a traumatized hitchhiker, who shoots herself in their van. Shaken by the suicide, the group seeks help from the locals, but their situation becomes even more surreal when they knock on the door of a remote homestead. It’s quickly apparent the residents are a family of inbred psychopaths, and the unlucky youths suddenly find themselves running for their lives. In hot pursuit is a disfigured, chainsaw-wielding cannibal, Leatherface.

06 One Missed Call

People mysteriously start receiving voicemail messages from their future selves, in the form of the sound of them reacting to their own violent deaths, along with the exact date and time of their future death, listed on the message log. The plot thickens as the surviving characters pursue the answers to this mystery which could save their lives.

05 A Tale of Two Sisters

Two sisters who, after spending time in a mental institution, return to the home of their father and cruel stepmother. Once there, in addition to dealing with their stepmother’s obsessive and unbalanced ways, an interfering ghost also affects their recovery.

04 Wrong Turn

Chris Flynn is driving his car for a job interview in another city. However, an accident with a trunk transporting chemical products blocks the highway and Chris looks for an alternative route through the mountains of West Virginia to accomplish his schedule. Due to a lack of attention, he crashes another car parked in the middle of the road with flat tires. Chris meets a group of five friends, who intended to camp in the forest, and they decide to leave the couple Francine and Evan on the place, while Chris, Jessie, Carly and her fiancé Scott tries to find some help. They find a weird cabin in the middle of nowhere, where three violent cannibalistic mountain men with the appearance of monsters live. The two couples try to escape from the mountain men while chased by them.

03 Jeepers Creepers 2

Stranded on a lonely road, a schoolbus full of high school basketball players, their coaches, and cheerleaders must defend themselves from the Creeper – a flesh-eating ancient beast that resurfaces on the earth every 23 years to feed. Meanwhile, a farmer and his son set out on a personal mission to hunt the Creeper down.

02 Open Water

A couple on a holiday in the Caribbean decide to spend the day on a scuba diving trip. But was it the wrong decision? When a mis-count happens on the boat, Susan and Daniel are left behind in the middle of the ocean, the boat long gone. With all their hopes set on the boat coming back to rescue them, they try to keep themselves safe, especially when sharks start to appear.

01 Freddy vs Jason

It’s been nearly ten years since Freddy Krueger terrorized people in the dreams, and the towns folk want to keep him erased from their memory. Freddy still has one more plan on getting back to Elm Street. He resurrects Jason Voorhees and sends him off to kill. The more bodies which fall to the ground, the stronger in which Freddy becomes. This is until, Freddy realizes that Jason isn’t going to step aside easily, and must be taken down himself.