The term “elevated horror” — used to refer to thrillers of a “higher quality” than what the genre is typically known for — has a bad reputation among the genre’s biggest fans. Reason being: it seems to imply that classic slasher movies such as Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street do not deserve to be put in the same camp as more recent acclaimed horror films like The Babadook or It Follows.
Well, what if I told you that all four of those titles have a Rotten Tomatoes score above 90%? In fact there are plenty more great horror movies of a vast variety of styles and tones that have all earned the right to be held to the same standard by the rules of the critical review aggregator by falling within the same range of percentage. Let’s go over just 30 of our favorite examples, shall we?
