Intro
Like candy corn and apple cider, nothing says "late October" like Halloween -- and what better way of celebrating our most frightful holiday than sitting down and scaring yourself with a good horror movie? As always, your pals here at RT are here to help -- and armed with our trusty Tomatometer, we've combed through the databases to bring you a list of the best, most spine-tinglingly scary films of all time!

If a movie has curdled your blood, you're likely to find it here -- whether your phobia is creepy kids (The Innocents), mallet-wielding groupies (Misery), or stabby hoteliers (Psycho), our list is guaranteed to give you a reason to draw up the covers and leave the lights on all night. Cue up the creepy organ music and light the jack-o-lanterns -- the countdown starts here!

How It Works

• Each critic from our discrete list gets one vote, all weighted equally.
• A movie must have 20 or more rated reviews to be considered.
• Reviews without ratings are not counted toward the results.
• Because reviews are continually added, manually and otherwise, we have a cutoff date at which new reviews are not counted. The current cut off date is 10/23/2008.
• We use a weighted formula to account for variation in the number of reviews per movie per year. The winners are determined by the rankings, designated as the "adjusted score," after applying said formula:

  t + ((r-a) ÷ a) if number of reviews > average number of reviews for corresponding year.
  t * (r ÷ a) if number of reviews < average number of reviews for corresponding year
  t if number of reviews = average number of reviews for corresponding year
  with "r" representing the number of rated reviews, "t" the Tomatometer score, and "a" the average number of reviews per movie for corresponding year