The 18 Best Low-Budget Horror Movies That Aren’t Terror 3
Art the Clown isn’t the only game in town if you’re looking for a cheap thrill. In fact, the increasingly successful Horror series has been going high-profile at least since its humble $35,000 origins: the last film in the demon-slasher series cost about $2 million—still cheap, but far from first days. And few would say it wasn’t worth the extra investment: the third installment opened in first place at the US box office , taking the ax to the wildly disappointing Joker: Folie á Deux . The film cost around $200 million and dropped to fourth place in just its second weekend. Money isn’t everything, even in movies, and horror films have a long and venerable history of being able to do a lot for little money. Resourceful filmmakers with access to a bucket or two of fake blood have been able to create unsettling and/or horrifying stories with only a few thousand dollars and sometimes the willingness to abandon actors to their fate.
In honor of Art’s triumph over the combined might of the Joker and Harley Quinn, here are 18 other films that did a lot of horror for little money.
Creep (2014)
I’ve seen speculation that The Creep’s budget was only $500, which seems impossible, but the found footage film certainly wasn’t expensive and helped build the career of director and co-star Patrick Brice, as well as co-writer. and his co-star Mark Duplass. Videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice) shows up at a cabin in the middle of the desert to help Josef (Duplass) create a video diary for his unborn child—he’s dying, he says. And it’s very touching until Aaron’s car keys go missing and Josef becomes increasingly strange, at first in an awkward, uncomfortable way that becomes increasingly sinister. It’s a simple format, done well and in an unsettling style – sort of like a two-handed piece done in the style of a horror film. The sequel is just as successful and made with the same micro-budget.
Where to watch: Netflix, digital rental.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The budget for the original Chainsaw film was $60,000, but various estimates put it higher than that, suggesting that the film was ultimately made somewhere in the range of $140,000—not nothing, especially in 1974, but everything still firmly on the cheap side. Part of the reason it works is because audiences come away from the film feeling like they’ve seen something much gorier than they actually are; the gritty, dusty and dirty confines of the Leatherface family estate seeps into your psyche before the closing credits. Of course, the low budget comes with some compromises, including the safety of the actors: Tobe Hooper talked about how every actor suffered some form of injury, and one actor even had his finger cut when the stage blood just didn’t work. Perhaps plausibility has gone too far.
Where to watch: Tubi, Peacock , Prime Video
Skinamirink (2022)
No plot, just whimsical atmosphere in the feature debut of writer-director Kyle Edward Ball. An ode to childhood nightmares, it was created for a dream price of $15,000, starting life as a YouTube channel dedicated to recreating user-submitted childhood nightmares. The story involves a four-year-old child named Kevin who hurts himself while home alone with his six-year-old sister Kaylee. There’s little narrative logic going forward, and it’s quite easy to see why the film has polarized audiences who are understandably waiting for something to happen. The film manages, and brilliantly, to recreate the feeling of a child’s twilight world, in which even a familiar house can seem strange, unsettling and frightening under certain circumstances. Ball takes his time creating this mood, and opens doors of childhood perception that you might think were closed forever.
Where to watch: Hulu , AMC+, Shudder, digital rental.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
Whatever you think of the series as a whole after about 80 sequels and spin-offs, the first one was a legitimate one, and it had me, a horror movie junkie, staring at my bedroom door half the night. Cheap? Certainly. Effective? Absolutely. Shot for approximately $15,000 with two actors and static cameras, the film documents the hauntings of a typical San Diego home involving a couple in their twenties. There is no blood, just creepy events and strange things happening while you sleep. The original budget was supplemented by about $200,000 for upscaling and reshoots when the studio took it over, but that’s still an alarmingly tiny budget for a film that went on to gross about $200 million.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock was at the height of his popularity and directorial powers, and studios were still reluctant to touch Psycho , which was considered dark and cheesy, and executives at Paramount (Hitchcock’s then home base) were worried in particular about what would happen to it . associated with such a project will damage the reputation of their star director. Determined, Hitchcock struck a deal to film at Universal using the crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, while forgoing his typical fee in lieu of a share of the profits. $800,000 wasn’t chump change in 1960, but it was as small as any budget he had worked with in his then 20 years in Hollywood; by comparison, his previous film , North by Northwest , cost $4.5 million. No matter: Psycho, with its dead bodies, cross-dressing serial killer and Oedipal subtext, was one of the biggest hits of Hitch’s career, and that profit-sharing deal made him very, very rich.
Where to watch: Netflix, digital rental.
Carnival of Souls (1962)
Producer and director of those educational and industrial films we often made fun of back in the days of MST3K, Herc Harvey spotted an old abandoned resort pavilion and was able to rent it for $50. The story of a woman (Candace Hilligoss) who finds herself at a mysterious carnival after a car accident, Carnival of Souls is filled with brilliantly eerie atmosphere and existential angst, a little reminiscent of a Jean Cocteau film… made for about $30,000. It doesn’t look expensive, but it feels rich: predating George Romero’s low-budget opus Night of the Living Dead by six years.
Where to watch: Max , AMC+, Tubi, Shudder, Crackle, the Criterion Channel, Prime Video.
Spider Baby (1967)
“This cannibal orgy,” the introduction says, “is strange to see in the craziest story ever told.” Spider-Baby is a cult classic of Southern gothic trash (it’s free) featuring the caretaker (Lon Chaney Jr.) of three siblings suffering from a fictional disease that causes them to regress back down the evolutionary ladder when they reach puberty maturity. Ralph is naive, but desperately and aggressively excited; Virginia is obsessed with spiders, occasionally killing unsuspecting visitors by trapping them in webs of her own making; Elizabeth is the least cruel of the three, but helps cover up the crimes of the rest of the family. Poor Bruno is just trying to keep order, a task made more difficult when distant relatives show up to lay claim to the family home. Although the film was made three years before its release, it was one of Lon Chaney Jr.’s last films; With his health already failing, the actor took the job for just $2,500, one of the film’s many cost-saving innovations.
Where to watch: The Criterion Channel, Prime Video.
Open Water (2003)
Hard-working couple Daniel and Susan just want to spend some time together, and a scuba diving trip seems like just the thing. Until they leave and the boat leaves them behind. In the ocean. Full of jellyfish and sharks. It’s a brilliantly elegant idea, made more believable and much more intense by the use of real sharks (which take up most of the film’s relatively small budget). The dynamic between the central couple isn’t very compelling, but don’t get too attached to them anyway.
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
Halloween (1978)
Halloween, a collaboration between director John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill, is an indie filmmaker’s dream: Inspired by Carpenter’s previous film Assault on Precinct 13 (made for just $100,000), producer Irwin Yablans and financier Mustafa Akkad were ready give the director a chance. in a slightly higher budget film, but only if it was a stalker horror film in the style of Black Christmas . The rest is history: with Carpenter in the scary sequences and Hill writing believable teenagers, the film was a surprise box office success and an even more unexpected success with critics. It remains one of the most profitable independent films ever, even without the endless sequels and reboots.
Where to watch: AMC+, Shudder, digital rental.
Friday the 13th (1980)
A little more expensive to make than Halloween , although you won’t find it worth watching, Friday the 13th rode the slasher wave that the Carpenter/Hill film started off big box office receipts and franchise fame. Of course, it won’t be until the second film in the series that our beloved Jason becomes a threat, but no matter: Sean S. Cunningham’s summer camp slasher is a lean, no-frills horror film that introduces us to the camp counselors only to see them all get killed in more sophisticated ways. It may not be high art, but it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Where to watch: Paramount+ , AMC+, Shudder, digital rental .
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
An indie hit that opened up a whole new world of low-budget horror films, The Blair Witch Project took the found footage format and turned it into its own genre, for better or worse. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez sketched out the film and then let the actors improvise dialogue while wandering through the woods. It shouldn’t work, but Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard sell every minute (perhaps because they really had to go through all the trouble , both during filming and in the years that followed). With an original budget of somewhere around $25,000, the film made hundreds of millions and still manages to scare people away.
Where to watch: Peacock , digital rental
Innkeepers (2011)
Long before X, Ti West made a few acclaimed horror films that didn’t make a lot of money, but didn’t cost a ton of money either. “The Innkeepers” is probably my favorite of the first series, starring Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis. The action takes place over the last weekend at the once venerable Yankee Pedlar Inn, a real-life supposedly haunted hotel in Torrington, Connecticut, where some of the film was filmed. A couple of slacker clerks keep an eye on the place, hoping to find some evidence of the supernatural. As expected, their wish came true. A solid, effective story about a haunted hotel with a couple of interesting twists.
Where to watch: Peacock , Tubi, Shudder, Prime Video
Evil Dead (1981)
While Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead largely serves as a proof of concept for the more complex and expensive Evil Dead 2 (a virtual remake), it also has its guilty pleasures, eschewing the very dark comedy for which the series became known. For. Five Michigan State University students, including Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell, naturally), go on a weekend getaway to a cabin in the woods (!) in rural Tennessee where all sorts of demonic activity is going on. Great old-school (and over-the-top) practical effects were created on a shoestring budget and never looked cheap.
Where to watch: Tubi, AMC+, digital rental.
Cannibal Holocaust (1978)
The shock of the proto-found footage style of the Cannibal Holocaust was so shocking that its director Ruggero Deodato was charged with obscenity and then murder, the film’s vérité style was so convincing that some viewers believed it was a document of genuine deaths associated with cannibals. . A quasi-viral marketing campaign conducted decades before The Blair Witch Project fueled this belief, keeping the film’s actors out of the spotlight (until they were needed to clear Deodato’s name). And all this for $100,000.
Where to stream: Peacock
Hush (2016)
Mike Flanagan’s 2011 feature debut, Absence , was equally brilliant and made on a shoestring budget, but of his early low-budget efforts, my favorite is this slasher film, made shortly before he hit it big with Doctor Sleep . , The Haunting of Hill House , Midnight Mass , etc. Co-writer Kate Siegel also stars here as a deaf horror author stalked by a killer. The poignant and intensely tense film makes great use of the protagonist’s deafness, but never once treats the resourceful writer as an object of pity.
Where to watch: Shudder, AMC+, digital rental.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
I’ve tried to keep the budgets on this list to around a million dollars, although you can go much higher and still be considered a low-budget film. I make an exception for Wes Craven’s masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street , which cost about $1.8 million. That’s still not a lot of money, and it seems shocking considering everything Craven managed to achieve here: elaborate dream sequences, set pieces including buckets of blood and reel rooms, fights, fires, and even a couple of famous actors in the film “John Saxon.” and Academy Award nominee (for Nashville ) Roni Blakely. Oh, and let’s not forget Robert Englund’s iconic Freddy makeup. It seems incredible that this brilliant and acclaimed horror film was made for that amount of money, but of course Craven had experience doing a lot with a little in films like The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes .
Where to watch: Max , digital rental
You’re Next (2011)
Erin (Sharni Vinson) accompanies her boyfriend to his family reunion in rural Missouri—a terrifying scenario from the start, but believe it or not, it only gets worse from there. The attackers, one wearing a fox mask and the other wearing a lamb mask, begin killing the family members, who are forced to hide and defend themselves with the help of the resourceful Erin. This is a clever and well-executed slasher film from director Adam Wingard with a clever twist.
Where to watch: Netflix, digital rental.
Horror (2016)
Clown Art begins here, with this $35,000 slasher film that introduces a demonic killer clown at the very beginning of his increasingly bloody multi-film killing spree. Each film in the series cost a little more but performed significantly better at the box office. With Horror 3 already doing well and receiving solid critical reviews, a fourth film is on the way.
Where to watch: Peacock , Tubi, Prime Video