If you’ve ever been into your own basement, you probably know that basements can be pretty spooky. They’re rarely-trafficked, dark, and damp, making them the perfect backdrop for a scary scene. Are you interested in watching a terrifying basement on screen? Consider these scariest basements in movies and TV, arranged from least spooky to most spooky.
The Exorcist
Even though this movie was one of the most horrifying of its time, the basement doesn’t necessarily factor into the terror. In this movie, the 12-year-old protagonist kicks things off with a Ouija board she finds in the basement.
Misery
This psychological thriller, based on a Stephen King novel, was revolutionary in the world of horror. Although the basement isn’t where most of the horror takes place, it still plays a key role in the main antagonist’s attempts to keep the protagonist from signaling for help.
A Quiet Place
In A Quiet Place, the main characters are on the run from noise-sensitive monsters. Although the relative insulation of a basement seems like the right place to hide a baby, a broken pipe causes it to flood and attracts these monsters.
Parasite
This 2019 South Korean movie won plenty of awards, including the first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture by a foreign language film. The Kim family, who is one of the main families in the movie, lives in a banjiha, which is a fallout bunker from the 1970s,
The Grudge
The Grudge may not have gotten rave reviews from critics, but it made more than 18 times its budget at the box office and it spawned plenty of horror tropes. There’s an extremely terrifying scene where one character enters the basement armed with only a flashlight.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Sure, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is more of a camp, tongue-in-cheek almost-satire than an actual horror movie, but that doesn’t stop it from having some pretty spooky scenes. The Medusa Transducer, which can turn people to stone, is kept in the basement of a British castle.
The Evil Dead
This supernatural slasher film is one of the most well-known of the genre, and it’s gained a substantial cult following over the years. The Deadites in the movie live underneath the home in its fruit cellar-slash-basement.
Stranger Things
The main emphasis of Stranger Things isn’t on the horror of the series, but rather the drama between characters. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any scary moments, however. The basement gets to play a key role; one character calls another from a pillow fort in the basement every night.
The Amityville Horror
The Amityville Horror is a movie based on a book that’s purportedly based on a true experience. The home’s basement, including its small hidden room, is the backdrop for some pretty terrifying scenes in the movie.
A Nightmare On Elm Street
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy chases his victims through the dream world and the real world. In the dream world, Freddy’s boiler room offers a substantial amount of horror — it’s called the Nightmare Factory because of its association with torture and murder.
Psycho
In many ways, Psycho changed the way movies approach horror. One of the most horrifying scenes in the whole movie is the scene in the basement, where the protagonist enters only to find Norman Bates’ mother as a mummified corpse.
The Evil
This classic horror movie from 1978 crafts a story of a movie built over a sulfur pit in New Mexico. However, these “sulfur pits” are more than they seem; it turns out that the basement ends up being a portal to Hell.
Get Out
The classic design of the home in Get Out works against your expectations, making you think that there won’t be any terrifying scenes. In fact, in one horrifying basement moment, the main character undergoes hypnotism and goes to the Sunken Place.
The Silence of the Lambs
Of all these movies, The Silence of the Lambs likely has the scariest basement. That’s because the basement functions as a prison for Buffalo Bill, the story’s serial killer, where he starves women before killing and skinning them.
