Daylight horror: 12 movies that are still scary with the lights on

The sunny, coastal California town of Bodega Bay is the setting for this classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Tippi Hedren. She plays Melanie, a slightly unhinged woman who randomly tracks a man (Rod Taylor) she’s just met in a bird store to his hometown in order to deliver a gift of love birds for his sister. It could be the plot of a screwball comedy, if it weren’t for the fact that her arrival in town coincides with a rise in hostile bird attacks that eventually becomes a full-on aerial assault. The Birds never offers any explanation for the attacks, which makes it even creepier. Are the birds so fed up with humanity that they collectively decide to turn on us? Or does it all somehow trace back to Melanie and her fragile mental state? Hitchcock leaves it open to interpretation. Either way, the implication is that we are all at nature’s mercy. The Birds may be more disturbing than scary by today’s standards, but it’s an excellent demonstration of how to create tension from the master of suspense.

The Wicker Man was ahead of its time, not just as a superb model of daylight horror, but as an early example of what we’ve come to know as elevated horror (the parallels to Midsommar are unmistakable). I’m talking, of course, about the 1974 original directed by Robin Hardy, not the 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage (which doesn’t have much going for it beyond that one meme-able scene). The Wicker Man transports us to a seemingly idyllic village on the Scottish island of Summerisle, where Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) has come to investigate the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl. Shaffer immediately creates an atmosphere of near constant dread, as Howie observes the villagers behaving suspiciously and engaging in pagan rituals that clash with his conservative Christian principles. The Wicker Man doesn’t need to rely on jump scares or gore to unnerve you. The sense that there’s something dark lurking beneath the surface of this bright, colorful, and insulated community is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. And in the end, that gut-level feeling of hidden danger proves to be absolutely correct.

Although Tobe Hooper’s low-budget gore fest Texas Chain Saw Massacre saves some of its bigger shocks for the shadows, enough of it takes place under the sweltering Texas daylight that its ochre-tinged aesthetic has become one of the uniting features of the franchise. It’s only when Leatherface steps outside that we can fully take in the extent of his gruesome visage. And who could forget that iconic ending? After chasing Sally (Marilyn Burns), the film’s Final Girl, down the road and losing her to a passing pickup truck, Leatherface swings his chainsaw around in frustration against the gleaming background of the rising dawn. It’s an image that pairs well with the long days of summer.

Steven Spielberg set the standard for slow-burn creature reveals in Jaws, shooting some of the scariest scenes in bright sunlight to convey the threat of the giant predator lurking under the surface of the water. He attacks at night too, of course, but the fact that this particular shark is bold enough to enter a lagoon and feed on splashing tourists enjoying the beach on the 4th of July is positively chilling. The shots of the blue ocean streaked with red blood are a vivid reminder that no one is safe in the water as long as he’s out there. Rounded out by outstanding performances from its unlikely central trio—Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw—Jaws is the perfect summer movie for horror fans.

For horror fans, this notorious title needs no introduction. It might be more famous now for the uproar that came after its release—including controversy over unethical filming practices, international bans, and criminal prosecution—than the disturbing content in the actual movie, but don’t overlook the fact that the outcry was warranted (and deliberately provoked by the filmmakers). Director Ruggero Deodato wanted audiences to witness every sickening act of torture, violence, torment, and sexual assault in this prototypical found-footage trauma fest, so most of the objectionable scenes take place in the dappled sunlight of the Amazonian rainforest. Thirty five years later, director Eli Roth would take inspiration from this film in his gruesome tribute, The Green Inferno (named after the film within a film in Cannibal Holocaust), which also makes no effort to hide its perversities under the cover of darkness.

Whether you watch director Michael Haneke’s original Austrian-set Funny Games or his shot-for-shot English-language remake starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, this postmodern film isn’t your typical psychological thriller. The pale interiors of the luminous lake house and the white golfer cosplay worn by the pair of nihilistic home intruders contrast starkly with the pitch-black tone. Haneke sets the viewer up as an accomplice in the violence simply by choosing to watch, and continuing to watch even after it promises more violence to come. There isn’t a lot of on-screen brutality—it’s often intentionally withheld or committed off screen—but there’s no lack of blood for the bloodthirsty. It just might not come the way you want it, and even when you think you’re going to get some satisfaction, Haneke rips it away. That most of these cruel games are played within the confines of a well-lit and well-appointed living room is entirely the point.

Bong Joon-ho’s breakthrough film The Host is a monster movie with a message. Inspired by a news story about a company in Seoul dumping industrial chemicals down a drain leading to a river, the mutated creature of the title is another metaphor for nature’s wrath. There’s also plenty of other flavors of social commentary woven through the film, which depicts government and law enforcement officials as inept at best and corrupt at worst. The creature makes its first awesome appearance in a daytime scene, rampaging along a river embankment as crowds of people run for their lives. The sequence culminates with the abduction of young Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung), the event that sets the plot in motion. The Host is at times very funny and other times genuinely harrowing, a tricky balance that Bong Joon-ho manages with typical brilliance.

It Follows takes us through a few days and nights with its protagonist Jay (Maika Monro), but it’s the scenes in which the film’s menacing entity shows up in ordinary places like a college campus, a beach, or a suburban street that really stick with you. The premise of a demon that passes from one person to another through sexual intercourse invites the obvious STD comparisons, but this simplistic reading doesn’t really get at the deeper themes at work here. The supernatural force may look like your best friend, your dad, or a creepy old lady in a nightgown, and though it pursues with frightful tenacity, it never seems hurried to get to its victims. It is inescapable, inevitable, like the cycle of life and death itself, which also happens to be perpetuated through sex. Colored in shades of paranoia and existential dread, It Follows is scary at any time of day.

The zombie genre has come a long way since George Romero’s shambling black-and-white ghouls in Night Of The Living Dead. Train To Busan is one of the best modern examples of the evolution of the genre, and most of it takes place over the course of one fateful daytime rail trip from Seoul to, you guessed it, Busan. What sets the South Korean film apart is its fully realized characters, particularly the main character, Seok-woo (Gong Yoo), who starts out as a workaholic absentee father to his daughter and learns the error of his ways over the course of the film. Director Yeon Sang-ho accepts the challenge of delivering thrills and terror without hiding the monsters in the shadows. He establishes a zone of safety and then proceeds to shrink it down, until there’s nowhere left to run.

We’re officially crowning Midsommar the resplendent May Queen of daylight horror movies. Other than its spiritual ancestor The Wicker Man, there’s no film that better exemplifies the qualities of this subgenre than Ari Aster’s folk horror masterpiece. Its incandescent visual language is meant to draw you into the world of the Hårga commune, where the sun shines late into the evening. It’s almost punishingly bright, echoing an aspect of the overly genial community members who welcome Dani (Florence Pugh), her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), and the rest of their group of visiting outsiders to witness their mysterious rituals. We know there’s something weird and unnatural going on, but with everything out in the open it’s hard to anticipate where or how the danger will emerge. It’s a different kind of prolonged tension, but very effective, and the payoff is bizarrely satisfying.

In his first two horror films, Get Out and Us, Jordan Peele staged some fairly disturbing scenes at an outdoor party and on a beach. So by the time he went full neo-Western with Nope, he knew exactly how to play with light and shade to keep you in suspense. In a nod to Spielberg and Jaws, Peele takes his time revealing the alien presence hovering above the Haywood horse ranch (owned by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer’s characters) and the neighboring Jupiter’s Claim attraction (run by Steven Yeun’s Jupe). Against a backdrop of amber Southern California hills and blue skies dotted with white clouds, it waits to feed, or to be fed. And when you finally see it unfurl in the film’s golden-hour climax, it’s quite a frightening sight to behold.

Pearl is the middle child in what will soon be a trilogy of horror films, with the release of MaXXXine this July. It’s fundamentally different from either of the other installments, however, in both tone and aesthetic. While the first film, X, took inspiration from 1970s exploitation and slashers like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Pearl is a prequel that has more in common (at least aesthetically) with Technicolor period films like The Wizard Of Oz or an MGM musical. Mia Goth, who played both the young Maxine and elderly Pearl in X, returns for some backstory here, and is credited as co-screenwriter alongside director Ti West. You don’t have to have seen the first film to grasp that young Pearl is not the picture of mental health, a condition that’s been festering under the isolation imposed by her domineering mother. Still, the film’s saturated color palette and folksy rural setting lulls you into thinking you’re watching something sweeter, and far more wholesome than Pearl turns out to be. When Pearl’s true nature is revealed, it’s not unexpected, but that doesn’t take anything away from its shock value.