No one likes a basement and movies have made the daunting experience of going down one even worse. We rank our scariest horror movie basements and throw in a TV show basement for good measure too!
Basements tend to make people feel on edge automatically.
Because they’re damp, dark areas that you rarely venture into, they make an amazing backdrop for a scary or spooky scene.
However, when you start looking into horror basements, you can uncover scenes that really freak you out. Here are seven of the scariest basements in TV and film.
7. Stranger Things
5 Basement Evil Score
Although Stranger Things doesn’t necessarily have the creepiest basement on TV, the series’ dedication toward providing thoroughly terrifying moments means that the basement functions as an anchor for some scary bits of film. In the series, one character calls another from his pillow fort in the basement every night.
6. The Amityville Horror
5.8 Basement Evil Score
The Amityville Horror is all about the horrors of a home, which means it makes sense that the basement would factor into these horrors. In this situation, it’s actually a small hidden room in the basement, which measures only four feet by five feet and is painted red to symbolize the incredible terror that happened in some areas of the home.
5. A Nightmare On Elm Street
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This movie took a unique approach to storytelling and had the movie seamlessly weave between Freddy’s “dream world” and the “real world.” Only in the “dream world” can Freddy harm the characters. In the “dream world,” Freddy’s boiler room was referred to as the Nightmare Factory because the terrifying fictional character used this room for torture and murder.
4. Psycho
6.6 Basement Evil Score
In some ways, Psycho completely revolutionized the horror movie scene. Though some critics reviled it as a horrific movie that would cause the death of cinematic moral standards, it’s come to be known as one of the most influential movies of all time. In one particularly standout scene, one character goes into the basement, where she finds the mummified corpse of Norman Bates’ mother.
3. The Evil
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The concept behind The Evil is that a home sits on top of sulfur pits in New Mexico. When a person accidentally opens a trap door in the basement, they unleash an evil spirit and learn that these “sulfur pits” are actually a portal to hell. Because many of the film’s ultra-terrifying scenes are set in the very basement that starts the movie’s scares, this basement is decisively evil.
2. Get Out
9.6 Basement Evil Score
Get Out is a thriller satire, and it intentionally reverses some traditional horror themes to make its final points that much scarier. One of the scariest moments in the whole movie is a more “traditional” horror moment, however, happens in the basement. Here, the main character goes under hypnosis and goes to the “Sunken Place,” a horrifying in-between state.
1. The Silence of the Lambs
10 Basement Evil Score
At the top of the list is The Silence of the Lambs, often considered to be one of the most influential pieces of horror out there. This movie is a terrifying ride from start to finish. One of the more terrifying parts has to do with the basement of the serial killer Buffalo Bill; he tosses women into a dry well in his basement to starve them so he can skin them.
Conclusion
Out of all the scariest horror movie basements list above, we have left out a few notable mentions.
One such special mention would go to the IT remake, seeing Georgie in the flooded basement water alongside Pennywise absolutely terrified me!
Basements have a well-deserved reputation of being very creepy, and these terrifying basements showcase that fact.
If you’re a lover of horror and you want to watch more movies that spotlight creepy basements, these might be some of the best movies for you to watch.
Make sure you pay attention to Get Out and The Silence of the Lambs, which save some of their most terrifying moments for the basement, to maximize your horror experience.
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