22 Unmissable Horror Movies Directed By Women

In The Babadook (2014), a single mother and her son are terrorized by a haunting shadow monster who may or may not be the product of their imagination. In Raw (2017), a young woman (and former vegetarian) awakens to her thirst for human flesh. In XX (2017), four women writers and directors came together to create the horror genre's first anthology movie helmed entirely by women.

Sense a pattern? All three movies are part of a wave of intelligent, haunting, women-directed horror movies that bring a unique twist to the genre. As Raw director Julia Ducournau prophesied to Rolling Stone, "It's only the start."

Of course, women have been directing horror films long before this wave of ground-breaking horror indies. Maybe Doucournau has figured out why women make interesting, different horror films. "When you make horror, it's the expression of a form of violence that you feel inside of you – and it's important we recognize that women feel violence and anger as well," she added to Rolling Stone.

Here are the women-directed horror films, from 1953 to 2017, worth watching — especially on Halloween.