Spain has been a regular contributor towards horror in recent years. Coming from a country rich with folktales and cultural context, Spanish horror is known for elements of gore sprinkled with atmospheric tension, thereby resulting in an overly terrifying experience.
Update October 7, 2023: This article has been updated by Federico Furzan with even more great Spanish horror films to check out this Halloween season.
While some of Spain’s horror films are made with a younger audience in mind, they are sufficiently endowed with the potency to shock and scare anybody who happens to view them. Here are some of Spain’s best horror movies of all time.
13 The Platform (2019)
The Platform works on a narrative trope that’s easy to understand and difficult to execute. The film isn’t a typical horror flick but manages to scare the living daylights out of the viewer based on its depiction of humanity. In The Platform, there is no monster thirsty for the hero’s blood; in fact, the horrifying aspect of the film lies in its sheer lack of things. The plot revolves around a futuristic set-up where prisoners are housed in vertical cells, where the only food they get is what comes from above, meaning the higher you are, the better your fed. This simple, primal instinct turns men into monsters and monsters into men.
12 Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil (2017)
Errementari is a Basque folktale version of the European fantasy tale of The Smith and the Devil. Set in the mid-18th century, the film follows Patxi, a rebel soldier who makes a deal with a devil named Sartael to save him from being executed by his captors. Once the deal is made and Paxti is saved, he devises a plan to trick Sartael and continues to torture him only until one day, the devil is set free by an innocent little girl.
11 Piggy (2022)
An overweight teenager who’s constantly bullied by her peers goes through an intense bout of dilemma as she witnesses her tormentors being kidnapped by a mysterious stranger. Piggy is more than just an average flick about the hunted turning into the hunter. A victim turning into an oppressor puts forth pertinent questions about human behavior and the consequences it comes with. Furthermore, the film does a terrific job of keeping the viewer on the edge of the seat while constantly maintaining a degree of unease.
10 Sleep Tight (2011)
Sleep Tight is a disturbing tale about an apartment concierge called Cesar, who thinks he’s destined to be unhappy and goes to despicable heights to ensure everybody around him is unhappy too. Like a parasite, Cesar penetrates into the sanctity of their homes and finds creative means to add pain and distress into their lives. Directed by Jaume Balagueró (Rec, Venus), Sleep Tight is far more subtle and cerebral in approach but equally potent in impact.
9 The Skin I Live In (2011)
Not conventionally regarded as an all-out horror film, The Skin I Live In is more creepy than shocking. When explaining the nature of the film, director Pedro Almodóvar described it as “a horror story without screams or frights”. Almodóvar’s eerie film is based on Thierry Jonquet’s 1984 novel Mygale and follows Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a successful surgeon who holds a young woman named Vera against her will. The Skin I Live In works on Almodóvar’s similar stylistic devices, like dark secrets and sexual deviations, while adding a very dark Hitchcockian twist to the mix.
8 The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
Set in 19th-century Spain, The Devil’s Backbone follows a twelve-year-old orphan named Carlos. As Carlos arrives at the Santa Lucia orphanage, he makes a group of friends along with some enemies as he scrapes beneath the surface of a dark and mysterious presence that’s thirsty for revenge. Directed by Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro, The Devil’s Backbone errs more towards the side of captivating than gory while being heavily soaked in a gothic atmosphere.
7 Julia’s Eyes (2010)
Del Toro produces Julia's Eyes, a psychological thriller that gets extremely creepy at some point and makes that risky jump into horror territory. It tells the story of Julia, a woman whose twin sister Sara dies by suicide. Sara was a blind person, and Julia is now suffering from the same degenerative disease.
But Julia becomes very interested in the events previous to Sara's death, and starts investigating. She finds some disturbing facts about her sister and what she ended up doing. We'll leave it like that for you to find out for yourself.
6 Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Another one of Guillermo del Toro’s masterpieces on the list is Pan’s Labyrinth. The film is set five years after the Spanish Civil War and follows a young girl named Ofelia who lives with a tyrannical stepfather and Spanish army officer, Vidal. Vidal is a brutal man with little to no regard for family, who only seems to derive some sort of joy from hunting Spanish Maquis. To escape her stepfather’s tyranny, Ophelia escapes to a labyrinth, where she meets a mysterious yet creepy faun who claims to know about her destiny.
Del Toro beautifully strikes the perfect balance between being a visually dark and stunning film while also managing to imbibe a certain childlike essence to the story. The master filmmaker intercuts between the real world and a mystical world, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.
5 Thesis (1996)
Alejandro Amenábar's horror thriller Thesis is a groundbreaking genre exercise that showed great films could be done by film students and outside the Hollywood sphere. Amenábar was in his early twenties when he decided to partake in the film that would completely change his life.
In the film, Ángela is a film student planning her thesis on violence in film. When she communicates this to her director, he promises he will do everything possible to get access to the university's material that could help her work. He finds a tape in the archives and watches it. A couple of hours later, the man is found dead. The contents of that tape are pure nightmare fuel and what makes Thesis such an interesting film, not only about a woman trying to solve a murder but about our society's morbid fascination with forbidden material.
4 The Orphanage (2007)
Produced by del Toro and directed by J.A. Bayona, The Orphanage is one of Spain's most important films in modern cinema. Based on an original script, this supernatural horror film with Gothic themes, tells the story of Laura, a wife and mother who convinces her husband they have to open an institute for sick children. They select the place where Laura grew up.
But their adopted boy disappears in the manor's surroundings and when no sign of his body is found, Laura starts reminiscing about her past and how it may have influenced their present. This is an instant horror classic.
3 The Nameless (1999)
Based on Ramsey Campbell's novel of the same name, The Nameless tells the story of a mother whose daughter is brutally killed, and her body is found some time after. Apparently, she's been killed in some kind of ritual.
However, years later Claudia receives a very important call. A girl claims to be her living daughter and she begs to be rescued. That's how Claudia's journey begins. A fall down a spiral of corruption and the occult. This was Jaume Balagueró's directorial debut, but there are no hints of amateurish work. The Nameless is a solid and scary horror thriller.
2 Rec (2007)
Rec, (short for “record”) is one of the most terrifying found footage films ever made and definitely a horror icon from Spain. The film follows a late-night TV host who joins a group of firefighters on a distress call. As the firefighters and camera crew arrive at the site, they discover a contagious virus has spread throughout the building, converting its victims into bloodthirsty monsters. Upon its release, the film was immediately put on many top 10 lists of that year, and Hollywood snatched it to produce its own remake. It makes for a great double bill with its direct sequel, Rec 2.
1 The Others (2001)
Amenábar got his big break in Hollywood when he made The Others in 2001. Suddenly, he could be able to count on a star to deliver his film. The result was an extremely beautiful supernatural film inspired by the best of the Gothic but also bettered by a director's understanding of space, framing, lighting, and folklore.
In the film, Grace is a woman living with her children in a huge country house. She's waiting for her husband, who went away to war and never came back. Her children are extremely sensitive to sunlight and can't be exposed in any way. When the new housekeepers arrive and begin working on the manor, spooky things start taking place. Needless to say, this is one of Spain's most important films and Amenábar best genre film to date.