The 5 scariest movie posters of all time

Here are the Halloween movies you should watch based on their hair-raising artwork alone.

Since the early 20th century, horror movie posters have moved through several drastically different aesthetic eras. There were the bright, illustrated designs of the 1930s and ’40s, complete with standout typography and damsels in distress; the bleak, desaturated religious horror motifs of the ’70s, à la The Exorcist; and today there’s an emphasis on stark white typography and human-focused visuals. Horror movie posters can be dramatic, gory, and suspenseful, but there’s a more difficult-to-describe feeling that fewer manage to evoke: that lurking sense of dread that comes with an unimaginable impending evil.