Best Horror Films with Asylum Settings, From “Unsane” to “Shock Corridor”

• Asylums and mental health hospitals are often synonymous with horror movies.
• The setting can lend itself to multiple kinds of horror, from being held prisoner by cruel staff to being unfairly deemed insane.
• This list curates the best horror movies set in asylums for your perfect mad-house movie marathon.

Despite any good they may accomplish in real life, asylums and mental health facilities are frequently depicted in horror films. The environment can support a variety of horror, from being imprisoned by ruthless personnel to being wrongfully labeled insane, to eerie halls and ruthless spirits. How many horror films truly take place in asylums, excluding horror video games, which frequently use this setting? This list has the top horror films set in asylums, excluding dramas and thrillers like Girl, Interrupted and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, for your ideal mad-house movie marathon:

In his most recent movie, “Master of Horror” John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) returns to the horror genre. Amber Heard plays Kristen in the 1966 film The Ward, which is set in Oregon. After setting fire to a dilapidated farmhouse, Kristen is committed, only to discover that she is being haunted by the spirit of a former psychiatric patient. This spooky psychological thriller, which also stars Jared Harris from Chernobyl, combines the terror of unjust imprisonment with the concept of haunted halls.

This inventive South Korean found-footage horror film is titled after the actual psychiatric facility of the same name. With nearly ten times its budget earned at the box office in the US alone, this movie became the third most watched horror movie in South Korea. This tale of a web series crew that live-broadcasts their adventure exploring the halls of this haunted asylum will probably appeal to fans of The Blair Witch Project. Gonjiam, which was directed by Jung Bum-shik, is tense to the point of nervousness.

Peter Mullan, a star of Ozark and Westworld, as a man charged with removing asbestos from Danvers State Hospital. Josh Lucas, who is addicted to gambling, Stephen Gevedon, who is a law school dropout and is aware of the history of the building, David Caruso, who plays a heartbroken Romeo in CSI: Miami, and Brendan Sexton III, who has a pathological dread of the dark, make up his squad. When they come upon audio recordings of a woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder and start hearing voices in the hallways, their already unsettling assignment becomes even more unsettling. Brad Anderson, who helmed The Machinist, is the director of this cult classic.

Claire Foy’s Sawyer unknowingly agrees to spend 24 hours in the care of a mental hospital while fleeing a stalker. She is held for a further seven days after pleading with the police for help and getting into fights with both staff and convicts. As the tension-filled Steven Soderbergh film quickly progresses, Sawyer learns details about the facility and its multicultural mix of inhabitants. In addition, Joshua Leonard stars, following his performance in the 2004 asylum horror film Madhouse, which was almost on our list. The cast is completed with SNL’s Jay Pharoah and Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple, both of whom demonstrate their dramatic abilities.

The director of the neo-gothic psychological horror film The Ring, Gore Verbinski, also stars Dane DeHaan in it. A finance executive tries to go to a health clinic to get his boss but is rejected away. Later, he gets into a vehicle accident and ends up in the wellness center. He meets Hannah, another patient, who is portrayed by contemporary horror icon Mia Goth (X, Pearl), along with Dr. Heinreich Volmer (Jason Isaacs), and the mysteries surrounding this health center become clear. The Magic Mountain, a 1924 book by Thomas Mann, served as the basis for this film, which is set in the Swiss Alps.

Robert Bloch, the author of the novel Psycho, which became the Alfred Hitchcock classic, wrote the screenplay for this British movie, which was later released in the United States under the title House of Crazies. In this anthology film based on Bloch’s short tales, Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) conducts interviews with patients at a mental hospital, introducing viewers to the settings of each of their four stories. Even Peter Cushing, the iconic star of the Hammer Horror films from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, appears in one installation. An eerie epilogue that wraps up the movie leaves spectators with lasting impressions.

In their respective roles as Freddy Krueger and Nancy, Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp return, this time joined by Patricia Arquette and Lawrence Fishburne, who would go on to become well-known actors. Arquette’s Kristen is admitted to Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital after a fight with Freddy leaves her wrists bloodied because her mother worries that she might be suicide. There, Nancy, the original “final girl” from Elm Street, happens to be interning as a therapist. Together with her patients, they learn how to resist Freddy Krueger. Wes Craven had planned for this film to be the last in the series, but its success has only led to more installments.

What do Brendan Gleeson, Michael Caine, David Thewlis, Kate Beckinsale, and Ben Kingsley all have in common? This A-list horror-thriller centers on the personnel and clients of the titular mental institution! The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, an Edgar Allan Poe short tale published in 1845, serves as the basis for this movie, also known as Eliza Graves. In 1899, an Oxford professor displayed a case of female hysteria to his pupils. The students argued that the woman was sane, but the professor insisted that all mental patients claimed to be sane. One student moves in to the asylum to investigate the cruel practices it calls “revolutionary.”

In a distant castle, an ex-Marine takes over management of a mental hospital where he plans to treat the patients by letting them live out their wildest fantasies. Sounds recognizable? The plot of Scorsese’s Shutter Island was influenced by this tale written by The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty as well as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligary. Blatty made a strong transition from writing novels to screenplays, and his debut as a filmmaker was recognized with a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. The film, which stars Scott Wilson from The Walking Dead and is set “toward the conclusion of the Vietnam War,” invites deep interpretations that enhance the already captivating story and provide something more thought-provoking than your typical asylum-based horror.

This story of a journalist performed by Peter Breck was written and directed by Samuel Fuller in the 1940s under the working title Straitjacket for Fritz Lang. In a last-ditch effort to win a Pulitzer Prize, Johnny Barrett (Breck) voluntarily checks himself into a mental hospital in the hopes of solving the mystery of an unsolved murder, but as is to be expected, he not only discovers the horror of the hospital but also directly observes the horror of being consumed by insanity. “Shock Corridor opens the door to vistas you’ve never seen before,” reads the famous poster. and even though this might not be entirely accurate now, this movie is so lauded for its accomplishments that in 1996, it was chosen for preservation because of them.

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