Liminal horror movies operate within the uncanny and in-between areas of our lives that seem familiar until we look a little too closely. Liminal horror is not an “official” genre of horror, though what necessarily counts for an “official” genre of horror is totally up for debate. Anything can be horror if tuned far enough in the right direction, and there’s no shortage of ideas, feelings, and experiences that make us uneasy and check under the bed at night. It’s under the bed where liminal horror lives, as it were.

It’s not fear of a monster or the unknown. It’s the horror that comes from looking under your bed and seeing only darkness. That feeling of unease that is liminal horror. It’s the in-between state. When one space transitions to another. Though this often refers to a literal “space”, just about anything can fit. A room in your house during the day is normal, but at night, it’s something entirely different; the space no longer makes sense as it transitions into something else. It’s a frightening idea and why some of the scariest horror movies can be considered liminal horror.

18

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010)

Directed By Panos Cosmatos

Beyond the Black Rainbow features a telepathic, mute woman, Elena (Eva Bourne), who is kept under close guard by an evil scientist, Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers), who wants to closely monitor her. After her abuse grows to be too much, she decides to flee her imprisonment, but to what end, she’s not sure. A psychedelic horror film, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a colorful and disturbing journey through the mind and madness. Elena’s home, where she is imprisoned, is filled with rooms emblematic of the liminal horror experience.

17

Dark City (1998)

Directed By Alex Proyas

Dark City is a tech noir thriller that follows an amnesiac man, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), who is accused of murder. Unsure of how he got into this position, John flees from both the police and the mysterious group known as the “Strangers”, who are also after him. The world that Murdoch inhabits is only slightly like our own, and as the film goes on, a question about what this place really is rises to the fore. Murdoch feels like he’s stuck between two worlds, both literally and figuratively, a feature of many liminal horror movies.

16

The Langoliers (1995)

Directed By Tom Holland

Based on Stephen King’s novella of the same name, The Langoliers is a two-part TV special that aired on ABC, and while the production values, acting talent, and story logic are in short supply, there are significant moments of liminal horror and the most literal interpretation of the genre that can be found. In the film, a group of plane pᴀssengers awake to find that they’ve somehow traveled to the near past with no one inhabiting it any longer. They also discover a race of ravenous monsters who eat the past, leaving a path of endless nothingness behind.

15

Vivarium (2019)

Directed By Lorcan Finnegan

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg star as Gemma and Tom, respectively, in Vivarium, a science fiction horror film that sees a couple move to a new house only to learn they can’t escape from their neighborhood until they raise a humanoid creature as their own. Any attempts to escape make them wind up right back where they started. The quaint, identical aspects of suburban homes are transformed into something utterly unnerving and sinister in Vivarium. What should be welcoming and warm is cold and lifeless.

14

We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2022)

Directed By Jane Schoenbrun

In We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, by director Jane Schoenbrun, a teenager named Casey (Cobb) takes the “World’s Fair Challenge,” which supposedly results in a physical and mental breakdown. Casey documents what happens to her, and the result is a frightening and disturbing descent into unreality. It’s an isolating film, with Casey, and everyone else who participates in the game being forced away from their friends and family. They become lost in an online world, and the dark spaces of the internet and the real world grow around them.

13

Cube (1998)

Directed By Vincenzo Natali

The Cube franchise is almost entirely constructed of liminal spaces. In every film, a group of characters are placed into a bizarre and mysterious maze of rooms, each with a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly trap of some sort. The first film follows a group of seven individuals who wake up in the ᴅᴇᴀᴅly labyrinth and must find a way to escape. Every new room offers something dark and unknowable. Though each looks almost exactly the same, the small cubes take on an even more sinister air as the team makes its way through the maze, never knowing what’s coming next.

12

Donnie Darko (2001)

Directed By Richard Kelly

Donnie Darko is a psychological thriller starring a young Jake Gyllenhaal as the тιтular Donnie, a troubled teenager who miraculously survives a freak accident. However, his survival results in a frightening and inexplicable journey that eventually loops back around on itself. The characters in the film are floating through lives they can’t totally explain, and while Donnie’s world looks average, there are unexplained inconsistencies on the margins that can make for a frightening and unsettling liminal horror movie.

11

Phantasm (1979)

Directed By Don Coscarelli

In Phantasm, the first movie in the Phantasm franchise, a supernatural and evil undertaker known as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) comes to Earth to turn the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ into zombies to work as his slaves on his home planet. The silly-sounding plotline hides the eeriness of the film and the fantastic special effects, which make the science fiction and psychedelic moments of the movie work incredibly well. As the heroes of the story get closer to stopping The Tall Man, they enter a warped reality halfway between the Tall Man’s and their own.

10

I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

Directed By Jane Schoenbrun

I Saw the TV Glow is a psychological horror drama and an allegory for coming to terms with being transgender as well as contending with the danger of nostalgia. In the film, two troubled high schoolers connect over their shared love of a The Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like TV show. They soon come to believe that they’re actually characters in the show and resolve to escape their current reality. I Saw the TV Glow sneaks up on you, and the dark corners of rooms in real life and on television come together for a frightening combination.

9

Skinamarink (2022)

Directed By Kyle Edward Ball

Skinamarink is almost entirely based around liminal horror scares. The film follows two young children who awake to find their father has disappeared and that the doors and windows of their house have disappeared. As the night continues, they encounter frightening visions in the dark recesses of their home. Skinamarink is a nightmare that makes incredible use of dark, empty space. You never know if you’re looking at something real in a scene or if it’s just your eyes playing tricks on you. The unknowable terror of a dark room is at the heart of the film.

8

Coraline (2009)

Directed By Henry Selick

The stop-motion feature from Laika studios, Coraline, is aimed at younger viewers, but there are still plenty of scares to be had, and many of them are of the liminal horror kind. In Coraline, a young girl moves to an apartment in a new home, and there she finds the door to another world. This “other” world is filled with “fun” versions of the reality she knows, but it also hides a horrifying secret. Rooms and hallways go on forever, Coralline can’t leave the boundaries of the new world, and everything is just a bit off. It’s excellent liminal horror.

7

I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (2020)

Directed By Charlie Kaufman

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is not a traditional horror movie, but the unknowability of Charlie Kaufman’s plot becomes increasingly unsettling as the movie runs toward its finale. A boyfriend and girlfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemmons) and an unnamed young woman (Jessie Buckley), visit Jake’s parents to meet them for the first time, but the road there and the house itself are missing some important things, like other cars and walls. There is an uneasy quality to the film that makes you feel like you’re looking in on something you shouldn’t be.

6

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Directed By David Lynch

David Lynch’s sixth feature-length film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, is a prequel movie to the first two seasons of Twin Peaks. With much of the main cast returned, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me depicts the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s (Sheryl Lee) life, whose death is investigated in the TV show. Much darker and more ambiguous than the TV show, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a frightening descent into violence and an unnerving journey through the final moments of an innocent girl’s life.

5

It Follows (2015)

Directed By David Robert Mitchell

In It Follows, Jay Height (Maika Monroe) is a high schooler who, after a Sєxual encounter, is cursed with an unstoppable enтιтy who pursues her forever, taking the form of anyone it so chooses. A smart and tense horror film, It Follows is filled with unique scares. It widens the lens of the movie by constantly introducing characters that the audience has to wonder whether they are real or the enтιтy. You are constantly scanning the edges of the frame to look for something, and the usual becomes unusual as normal, safe spaces become hiding places for horror.

4

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Directed By Eduardo Sánchez & Daniel Myrick

Possibly the greatest found-footage horror movie, The Blair Witch Project is also an excellent liminal horror movie as well. Ostensibly documenting a Maryland legend about the “Blair Witch”, three film students, Heather, Mike, and Josh, set out on a trek through the woods to confirm or bust the legend. It’s a search none of them ever return from. Space is uncertain in The Blair Witch Project, and the never-ending woods that loop constantly create a suffocating atmosphere. The final scene in the basement may be one of the greatest examples of liminal horror in movies.

3

Pulse (Kairo) (2001)

Directed By Kiyoshi Kurosawa

The original Pulse, called Kairo in Japan, is a techno-horror film from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The movie sees how ghosts invade the world of the living through the internet, terrorizing those they encounter along the way. Pulse sets out to evoke a creepy, dreadful atmosphere that grows darker and more unsettling the longer the film goes on. It’s a testament to the power of liminal horror in how Pulse stays away from blood and gore and instead chooses to focus on the terror that comes from the corner of a room or of the internet.

2

Lost Highway (1997)

Directed By David Lynch

David Lynch’s Lost Highway has a тιтle that’s steeped in liminal horror alone. The surrealist neo-noir follows a man, Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), who begins receiving cryptic videotapes of himself and his wife in the mail. A haunting and psychologically disturbing tale, as Lynch is wont to make, Lost Highway is as unnerving as anything Lynch has produced, and the dark atmosphere features intense and frightening scenes in dark rooms and settings. The illogic of the plot makes it even more uncomfortable, a staple of liminal horror.

1

The Shining (1980)

Directed By Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, is a ghost tale set at the Overlook H๏τel, where a man named Danny Torrance (Jack Nicholson) begins to lose his mind and put his family and his own life at stake. The most frightening scenes of The Shining are steeped in liminal horror. The rooms don’t make sense, and the hallways go nowhere. Even when Danny isn’t running around with an ax, a door opening up into a H๏τel room is enough to make you want to dive right under the covers and hide.