7 Horror Movies Stephen King Loved

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From 1960s and 1970s classics to movies that came out as recently as 2025’s summer movie season, these spooky movies have received King’s stamp of approval. Which one will you give a shot come movie night?

7) Deep Blue Sea

Deep Blue Sea is a breezy, rewatchable merger of action, horror, and sci-fi. It’s purely enjoyable, and you can count the author of Carrie amongst its fans.

King told Entertainment Weekly back in 1999 that seeing Harlin’s shark adventure was his “first trip out after being smacked by a van and almost killed…I went in my wheelchair and loved every minute of it.”

6) The Witch

Back when The Witch received its wide release (February of 2016), King got on his X—then Twitter—page and wrote “The Witch scared the hell out of me. And it’s a real movie, tense and thought-provoking as well as visceral.”

The Witch certainly is an atmospheric modern horror classic. It served as the perfect coming out party for the talents of both director Robert Eggers and star Anya Taylor-Joy.

Stream The Witch on HBO Max.

5) Night of the Living Dead

While discussing what it takes for a movie to be scary, King told Entertainment Weekly: “The scariest sequence I can remember is in Night of the Living Dead. The cemetery-visiting heroine, Barbara, is chased back to her car by a lurching zombie with white hair and dazed eyes. The zombie reaches down, finds a rock, and begins to bash it strengthlessly against the against the car window. The first time I saw this (and twice after), the scene reduced me to jelly.”

Anybody who has seen the film can remember this first act scene. The whole cemetery scene does a wonderful job of establishing the film’s penchant for raising tension to unbearable levels. Admittedly, picking up a rock and using it shows more intellectual capacity than the remainder of the film (or Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead) indicated zombies were capable of, so it’s not fully logical, but it’s wonderfully tense, nonetheless.

Stream Night of the Living Dead on HBO Max.

4) The Exorcist

King once gave A.frame his thoughts on the five films that scare him the most. Among those movies was William Friedkin’s perfect The Exorcist, which he called “scary from the start.”

He elaborated with “It’s very claustrophobic for a studio movie, and every time we go back to that bedroom with Regan, we dread even more what we’re going to see. But for me it’s the grisly grace notes that make the film. Who can forget, ‘Couldja help an old altar boy, fadder?’”

3) Together

King likes to use his social media presence to champion the works of horror filmmakers (and those working outside the genre). Within the horror genre, he seems to have found two 2025 scary movies to be modern classics. One of them was the inventive body horror movie Together.

King wrote on his X page “Dave Franco and Alison Brie are great—and brave–in Together. Horror movies work when you care about the people. This one works.”

2) Weapons

Zach Cregger’s Weapons was another highly-praised 2025 horror film that King enjoyed. He wrote on X that it was a “Confidently told, and very scary” horror movie, following that up with “I loved it.”

Plenty of people loved Cregger’s twisty, witchy horror movie. On top of scoring excellent reviews, it also made an absolute killing at the box office. It was just one of several major wins for Warner Bros. this year.

Stream Weapons on HBO Max.

1) Jaws

King listed Jaws as one of his top ten favorite movies of all time on his X account. And while one might expect that list to be stuffed with spooky films, Jaws was actually the only one that could be considered a member of the horror genre. The remainder of the list included William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, The Godfather Part II, The Getaway (one of the most underrated 1970s action movies), Casablanca, Groundhog Day, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Mean Streets, Double Indemnity, and fellow Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

King has also made clear that he considers “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” as one of the very best lines in cinema history. Few could argue with either that or Jaws‘ general placement in a top ten list.

What is your favorite horror movie that King loved? Let us know in the comments.