As any regular user of the internet knows, the bread and butter of modern media discourse is the celebratory top-10 retrospective. Every year will usher in a slew of anniversary lists celebrating the films and media from 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. It’s as reliable as the tides.

If you ask me, those retrospectives don’t ever go far enough. Sure, we can all look back a few decades and wistfully recall the best horror films of our youths (or our parents’ or grandparents’ youths), but how often do we ever get to look back over the entire MILLENNIUM and see what films are the most representative of their era? Well, allow this list to stand among the first. Let us, horror fans, look back to the early days of AD 1000 and count our way forward, citing the best horror films set in each subsequent century.

Best Horror Film of the 11th Century – Macbeth (1948)

Set in 1039 to 1057

Shakespeare’s Scottish play, first performed in 1606, may not be his bloodiest (that honor belongs to Titus Andronicus), but it’s certainly his most harrowing. A Scottish nobleman and his wife – inspired by the prophecy of a trio of witches – commit a brutal act of bloody regicide. They then essentially spend the rest of the play wracked by guilt and suffering the dark consequences of their actions. The play’s most famous speech is about hopelessness and nihilism. Pretty much all the main characters die. It’s a great play.

The best film version of Macbeth (and there have been many) might be Orson Welles’ 1948 production, which is a stylized nightmare set at the base of towering castle spires that disappear into the night sky, and is cloaked deeply in dank shadows. Shakespearean scholars place the action of the play in the mid-1000s, making it one of the best films of the 11th century.

Best Horror Film of the 12th Century – Häxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922)

Set throughout the Middle Ages

Although not set in the 12th century exclusively, Benjamin Christensen’s amazing – and amazingly scary – 1922 Danish/Swedish docu-drama Häxan does straddle most of the Middle Ages, including the 1100s. The film seeks to be an exposé on witchcraft and other demonic practices over the course of several centuries, but it plays more like a straightforward horror film, featuring a lot of scripted re-enactments and legit horror scenes.

The film was banned in America for several decades because of all the demonic awesomeness, including sex, torture, and straight-up nudity. It’s currently available on The Criterion Channel (complete with an optional commentary track) and has been restored several times over the years. Or, if you’re a physical media junkie, you can always get a DVD.

Best Horror Film of the 13th Century – The Virgin Spring (1960)

Set in 12??

Swedish master Ingmar Bergman typically made films about religious and existentialist dread more than he made straight-up horror movies, but his 1960 masterpiece The Virgin Spring is handily both of those things. Set in the 13th century, the film follows an austere and well-behaved Christian family who live in relative peace in the countryside. One day, their young daughter is unexpectedly assaulted and murdered by some itinerant ruffians. Those safe ruffians then try to take shelter in their victim’s family’s home. The family then has to question if blood revenge is, morally speaking, the correct path.

If the story sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen Wes Craven’s 1972 classic The Last House on the Left, essentially a grindhouse remake of The Virgin Spring. Or maybe you’ve seen Revenge. Or I Spit on Your Grave. Or any number of bloody revenge flicks. The Virgin Spring‘s actual date is never given, but the folk tale it’s based on comes from the 1200s.

Best Horror Film of the 14th Century – Black Death (2010)

Set in 1348

Another movie about death and religious angst, Christopher Smith’s 2010 film Black Death features a before-he-was-famous Eddie Redmayne as a traveling monk who must accompany a rough-hewn knight (Sean Bean) to a remote village that seems to be untouched by the Black Plague that was ravaging Europe throughout the 1300s. The film is hazy, muddy, dirty, angry and unpleasant.

When our heroes finally reach said village, they find a nihilistic necromancer (Carice Van Houten) who convinces Redmayne that life has no meaning, that death is part of the equation, and that God is absent or not paying attention. It’s bleak, scary, and death clings to this movie like, well, a plague. Black Death was noted by critics when it was released and has lost none of its depressing sensationalism in the ensuing years.

Best Horror Film of the 15th Century – Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2019)

Set sometime in the 15th century

One of the best films of 2019 so far, Lukas Feigelfeld’s Hagazussa is a quiet and atmospheric horror film about magic, death, and madness. Set in the Alps sometime in the 15th century, a young woman watches her mother die in the first act, finds herself the inexplicable object of a villager’s scorn in the second act, and ends up… doing and eating… horrible… horrible things in the third act. It is a quiet and slow film (my favorite!) and reeks of annihilation. I implore that you seek it out.

It’s only partially explored in the film’s text, but there is also an air of witchcraft hanging over Hagazussa (which literally translates to “A Witch’s Tale”), which evokes suspicion and accusations that we in the 21st century know from the historical Witch Trials of Salem. Hagazussa is currently available on Amazon Prime.

Editor’s Note: Alongside Doppelgänger Releasing, Bloody Disgusting released Hagazussa earlier this year. 

Best Horror Film of the 16th Century – The Golem (1920)

Set in the mid-1500s

One of the great silent horror films, Paul Wegener’s and Carl Boese’s Der Golem, Wie er in die Welt Kam has provided cinema with an indelible monster that remains part of the medium’s everlasting horror canon. Set in the 1500s in Prague, The Golem (as it is known in America) follows a rabbi living in the Jewish ghettos when the Holy Roman Empire elects to oust the entire community. In response, he builds a Golem, a powerful hulk-like statue made of clay brought to life via an obscure magical rite.

At first, the Golem is a good way to impress the occupying Empire, but, as may be predictable in such monster scenarios, it eventually commits murder. The Golem is a terrifying monster on par with any Frankenstein or Jason Voorhees. The most baffling thing about the Golem is that we haven’t seen it in more movies.

Best Horror Film of the 17th Century – The Witch (2015)

Set in the 1630s

Yet another film about the overhanging threat of witchcraft, Robert Eggers’ 2015 film The Witch manages to take that threat and make it feel very, very real. The film follows a family of Puritans who is so puritanical that they are ousted from their already super-puritanical tribe of Puritans. Moving into a home at the edge of the woods, they all begin to suspect that supernatural forces are encroaching on their not-at-all-placid existence. That their goat, Black Phillip, looks like a demon spawn certainly doesn’t help matters.

The Witch makes the threat of supernatural interference seem as real to us as it would seem to the characters, leaving us questioning how much of what we’re seeing is real, and how much is imagined. Additionally, Eggers wrote the film using authentically florid 1630s English, having each character declare their lines poetically rather than merely speaking them. It’s one of the best films of 2015 and the best film of the 17th century.

Best Horror Film of the 18th Century – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

Set in the mid 1700s

Tom Tykwer’s truly odd and utterly wonderful film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is the only odor-based horror film in my recollection. The main character, Jean-Philip Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) was born in the smelliest part of 18th-century Paris, possessed of a supernatural sense of smell. He is allured by odd odors – cotton and metals and the like – and dreams of recreating the ultimate perfume someday. He eventually finds that certain human beings – usually young women – possess pieces of the ultimate smell, and he will go to great, grisly lengths to capture their odors in a bottle.

Perfume is lurid, Gothic, and amazing. More than any other film, you begin to get a sense of actual smells while you watch it, and you can almost sniff what Grenouille might be searching for in his mad quest. It’s a creative premise, a great story, and a deliciously violent potboiler. More need to discover the best horror film of the 18th century.

Best Horror Film of the 19th Century – Gothic (1986)

Set in 1816

Although Frankenstein itself is set in the 19th century – along with many other well-known monster stories – the best film of the 19th century might be Ken Russell’s bonkers 1986 tale of how Frankenstein was written. Horror lit fans know all about Frankenstein‘s origin: In a rain-soaked mansion, Mary Shelley made a bet with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley as to who could write the finest horror story over the course of their stay there. Mary wrote Frankenstein, changing – some would say properly inventing – the genre forever.

In Ken Russell’s version of these events, the party was a wild night of madness, drugs, hallucinations, and debauched hedonism springing from relationship angst and dimly realized motherhood symbolism. The film is a wild, messy blast of dirty, dizzying air from a director known for pushing boundaries.

20th Century – Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Set in 1944

If we want to look at the 20th century from the perspective of the 21st, then it’s no contest. Guillermo Del Toro’s El Labarinto del Fauno is certainly the celebrated director’s best film, and remains, after 13 years, one of the more stirring horror fantasies of its century. Set in Franco’s Spain in the 1940s, Pan’s Labyrinth is about a young girl named Ofelia who finds herself transported into the household of a wicked stepfather whose quest it is to hunt down rebels hiding in the nearby woods.

Under the cloud of violence, Ofelia begins to encounter fantastical creatures, including a massive scary faun, imploring her to go on a series of magical quests wherein she matches wits with creatures and monsters. Whether or not the creatures are real, or merely a fantasy in the mind of Ofelia will depend on how you modulate your cynicism. It’s one of the best horror films of the 2000s, and also one of the best horror films of the 20th century.