Stephen King is one of the most prolific writers in history, an author who's best known for his tales of horror, the supernatural, and the all-around viscerally disturbing. Considering the quality of his written work, it's no wonder, then, that many of his projects have made the jump to the big and small screens. King's latest adaptations include 2023's The Boogeyman and the upcoming remake of Salem's Lot. It should come as no surprise then that the master novelist also enjoys watching a good movie or two himself. In fact, he's well known as an outspoken cinephile, from his distaste for Kill Bill to his and Guillermo del Toro's newfound favorite, No One Will Save You. Although his favorite film of all time, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, which is a remake of The Wages of Fear, is not in the horror genre, there are plenty of other terrifying works that have struck his fancy over the years ... a list, which, of course, includes just a few of his own.

Said King of his remakes, "I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that’s been made from one of my books, I know that it isn’t going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I’ll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it." So, which films grace the horror icon's scary movie list? From Frank Darabront's The Mist (incidentally adapted from King's own novella) to Robert Eggers' The Witch, here's a list of ten of Stephen King's favorite movies (in no particular order).

Updated on October 13th, 2023 by Amanda Minchin: If you're a Stephen King fan, then you'll be glad to know this list was just updated to include even more of his memorable favorites.

12 The Hitcher (1986, 2007)

When it comes to The Hitcher, King has called himself a fan of both the original and the nearly-forgotten remake. Said the Master of Horror, “Rutger Hauer in the original will never be topped, but this is that rarity, a re-imagining that actually works." The 1986 iteration stars Hauer as the titular character, who sees him stalking a young motorist delivering a car.

The motorist miraculously escapes his murderous clutches, only to become stalked and blamed for the hitchhiker's various crimes. While the initial response to this film was a tad tepid, its intrepid use of suspense spawned a 2003 sequel, The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting, in addition to the 2007 remake starring Sean Bean as the new 'Hitcher'.

11 The Mist (2007)

The Mist, released in 2007 and directed by Frank Darabont, is a particularly appropriate film to include on a list of Stephen King's favorite horror movies because the film was adapted from King's 1980 novella by the same name. It is perhaps one of his darkest on-screen adaptations. Like many of King's stories, this one is set in a small town in Maine. It begins with the townspeople recovering from the damage from a storm that wreaked havoc on their town.

David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), go into town to the grocery store to gather supplies for the house. While inside the grocery store, a thick fog begins to envelop the town, trapping the town's grocers inside. They soon realize that something is terribly wrong when a man runs into the door of the grocery store, covered in blood, and claims to have seen something unnatural in the mist. Referring to the movie King said, "The ending will tear your heart out...but so will life in the end" (via Best Life).

10 The Strangers (2008)

The Strangers is neither a straightforward blood, guts, and gore-type horror movie, nor a psychological horror flick. The plot is realistic - you can actually see it happening, either to you or to someone you know, which makes it believable in the most terrifying of ways. King says it best: "It starts slowly and builds from unease to terror to horror."

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play Kristen and James, a couple who are on the outs after a failed marriage proposal. They drive back to their home in unsettling silence, not knowing the terror they will soon face together. After getting settled in for the night, a knock at the door from a mysterious woman changes, well, just about everything. The Strangers is a creepy what-if that was written and directed by Bryan Bertino.

9 The Blair Witch Project (1999)

This found footage fictional documentary, written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, is likely responsible for its share of phobias, nightmares, and, of course, viral marketing. "One thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing looks real. Another thing about Blair Witch: the damn thing feels real. And because it does, it’s like the worst nightmare you ever had, the one you woke from gasping and crying with relief because you thought you were buried alive, and it turned out the cat jumped up on your bed and went to sleep on your chest." said King (via Bloody Disgusting). Needless to say, it was difficult to finish for many.

The Blair Witch Project is the story of three film students who set out to make a documentary about a mysterious, supernatural entity called the Blair Witch. The team travels around, speaking to locals who have heard of the entity or seen it for themselves. They ultimately decide to venture into the woods, where the witch is said to reside. Of course, they wind up getting lost, and all hell ensues. As they struggle to find their way out before dark, they endure a series of terrifying and unexplainable sounds and experiences that leave both them and the audience shaken to the core.

8 The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

According to King, 2016's The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a "visceral horror to rival Alien and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone." In the film, Coroner Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) and his son, Austin (Emile Hirsch), conduct what they believe to be a routine autopsy on a Jane Doe brought in by the local authorities. However, the further they go into the autopsy, the more strange it becomes.

This tale of supernatural horror was directed by André Øvredal in his first English language film. Made in the vein of found footage, the Jane Doe in question was played by very much alive actor Olwen Catherine Kelly. Most days of shooting with her involved lying, mostly naked, on a gurney, using her well-earned yoga skills to control her movements and breathing.

7 Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Deep Blue Sea, released in 1999 and directed by Renny Harlin, is a science fiction horror movie about groundbreaking research gone terribly, horribly wrong. Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) believes she has found a possible cure for Alzheimer's disease by harvesting the brain tissue of genetically altered sharks.

When those looking to invest in the research, including executive Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson), come to visit the facility, a simple procedure goes amuck and all hell breaks loose. Of the film, King reportedly said that the movie made him "scream out loud," and that he "treasures any horror movie that can make him do that."

6 Crimson Peak (2016)

Guillermo del Toro directed and co-wrote the gothic horror Crimson Peak, which King called "gorgeous and just...terrifying." This thrilling horror take stars Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Hiddleston. In it, Edith (Wasikowska) marries a charming stranger, Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), and is brought to stay at his family's mansion.

Already having an intimate connection with the dead, Edith begins to pick up on something disturbing emanating from the house itself. As things get progressively more frightening, Edith begins to wonder more and more about her new husband and his sister, Lady Lucille Sharpe (Chastain), and whether they are the ones behind the darkness that is present in the house.

5 The Changeling (1980)

The 1980 psychological horror The Changeling won a number of awards, including the Canadian Screen Award for Best Screenplay. In it, John Russell (George C. Scott) leaves his home in New York City after his wife and daughter are killed in a car accident while on vacation. After settling into his new home near Seattle, he begins to experience the presence of the ghost of a boy who drowned in the bathtub there. This horror classic was directed by Peter Medak and written by William Gray and Diana Maddox.

When asked about his favorite films by the British Film Institute, King described his love for The Changeling. "There are no monsters bursting from chests," he wrote. "Just a child's ball bouncing down a flight of stairs was enough to scare the daylights out of me." Considering King's iconic uses of children's toys in his works, it's nice to see that these otherwise innocent items can scare the pants off him too.

4 Final Destination (2000)

Ever the critic, King expressed his love for the original Final Destination by saying, "I love all these movies, with their elaborate Rube Goldberg setups - it's like watching R-rated splatter versions of those old Road Runner cartoons - but only the first is genuinely scary, with its grim insistence that you can't beat the Reaper; when your time is up, it's up." While not as beloved by critics at the time, the film has since gone on to become a cult classic, spanning a plethora of sequels and beyond.

In the movie, high schooler Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) has a premonition of the plane he's in exploding. He of course urges everyone to leave, which results in seven passengers, including himself, being kicked out just before takeoff. When the plane explodes, the survivors believe they have cheated death. But the events that follow prove that might not be true as each of the survivors begins to fall prey to, well, death itself. This first of the Final Destination franchise was directed by James Wong.

3 The Witch (2015)

The Witch, written and directed by Robert Eggers, is set in 1500s New England. It has heavy religious undertones and uses dialogue in early modern English. Of Eggers' film, King said, "The Witch scared the hell out of me. And it's a real movie, tense and thought-provoking as well as visceral." The film follows a family that decides to live alone near the woods after being exiled from their community.

Suspicion of witchcraft soon falls upon the eldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), after the youngest sibling goes missing under her watch during a game of Peek-A-boo. Suspicion only continues to mount when her brother meets a mysterious figure in the woods and comes back with a deadly case of possession... and of course, the annoying toddlers aren't any help. The family unit continues to devolve into madness, partially of their own doing, culminating in one final, shocking scene that proves just how a haunting is made.

2 Les Diaboliques (1955)

Les Diaboliques, also released as Diabolique, is a Criterion Collection gem. This diabolical psychological horror film follows two women who plot against their shared love interest, a vastly disliked school head. The Wife and the Mistress decide to pair up to get even, with shocking results. Based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the rights to this French film were bought out from Alfred Hitchcock by none other than Henri-Georges Clouzot of The Wages of Fear fame.

Funny enough, this film went on to inspire both the novelization and the film Psycho. So, what does good old Stephen have to say about it? While he much prefers 1977's Sorcerer to its Wages of Fear predecessor, he saves this film for his second favorite of all time slot. “... Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques, his suspense-horror masterpiece, [is] as terrifying now as it was back in 1955. He out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock.” That's some mighty high praise indeed.

1 The Last House on the Left (2009)

The Last House on the Left remake was written by Wes Craven, directed by Dennis Iliadis, and was derived from Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. Craven, of course, had a hand not only in this 2007 iteration but in the original 1972 version as well. The plot's disturbing content makes it one of the darkest movies on this list, touching on subjects such as rape, torture, and murder. The concept is simple - After realizing that the strangers taking shelter in their home have brutalized their daughter, John (Tony Goldwyn) and Emma (Monica Potter) exact revenge on the criminals.

Nonetheless, King reserved some rather high praise for the remake. "The Iliadis version is to the original what a mature artist’s painting is to the drawing of a child who shows some gleams of talent. I maintain that if Last House hadn’t come trailing the baggage of its infamous predecessor – and if it had been a foreign film that came equipped with subtitles – it would have been a critical success on the level of Repulsion, Diabolique, or An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."