Horror and adventure don’t initially sound like they’d be the best combination of movie genres on paper, but in practice, the horror adventure subgenre has resulted in some legendary films. The best adventure movies are full of excitement, danger, and peril, characterized by uncharted journeys into hostile environments with memorable characters and ominous dangers. Horror adventure movies take the idea one step further by removing the four-quadrant appeal of the genre, making the obstacles faced by the capable protagonists all the more visceral and terrifying.
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Maintaining a sense of fear and a sense of adventure can often be a difficult balance to strike. Compared to other horror subgenres, protagonists in adventure movies usually have a chance against their villains, actually being able to fight back no matter the demoralizing odds. That’s not to say that horror adventure films can’t be overwhelmingly scary, thrusting their subjects into chilling situations in known settings.
10 As Above, So Below
A harrowing journey through the Parisian catacombs
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The found-footage horror genre has been a popular staple of cinema ever since the success of The Blair Witch Project. As Above, So Below is one such clever film that manages to somehow marry the shaky sensibilities of diagetic footage with the grandiose ambitions of an adventure story. The film’s protagonist, Scarlett, is a scholar obsessed with finding the legendary philosopher’s stone, a key component in the lost art of alchemy. To find it, she must lead a team on an expedition deep into the infamous catacombs of Paris, lined with ancient bodies and horrors too foreign to describe.
Actually filmed in the real Paris catacombs, the attention to detail demonstrated by As Above, So Below makes for a chilling, surreal experience. The entire story serves as an allegory to one of the oldest adventure stories, Dante’s Inferno, adding some high-brow references to a standard spooky film. That being said, the film is rightly criticized for how hurt it is by the found-footage format, with nauseating shakycam that undercuts the tension.
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9 Van Helsing
An Avengers-style crossover of famous horror monsters
Few spooky movies are able to combine the famous likes of Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstien’s monster with quite as much aplomb and flair as 2004’s Van Helsing. Starring Hugh Jackman as the titular vampire hunter, the movie combines story beats from various famous public domain horror tales. Characters like Mr. Hyde and Victor Frankenstien are ultimately woven together by Van Helsing’s mission to eliminate Dracula in the name of the Knights of the Holy Order, an ancient anti-monster organization operating out of the Vatican.
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Admittedly, Van Helsing is far from a cerebral cinematic experience, carried instead by its special effects, creative creature designs and effortlessly cool action setpieces. Jackman is undersung in his second attempt to lead a major action franchise of the early 2000s, making Van Helsing a fun hero to root for. Even if it was critically panned at the time of release, the famed movie revier Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times was pertinent enough to recognize the film’s place as a dumb, but incredibly fun romp through creature feature greatest hits.
8 Brotherhood Of The Wolf
A unique French creature feature with high-flying action
Occupying a unique niche as a popcorn-worthy martial arts horror movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf is a delightfully gothic chiller out of France. Set in the 18th-century, the story tracks a French knight and naturalist who hunts down a legendary beast alongside his Iriquois companion. The creature in question is the legendary Beast of Gévaudan, a real monster from French folklore that supposedly terrorized the French province in the 1700s.
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Famously, Brotherhood of the Wolf is known for heavily inspiring the beloved action-horror rpg video game Bloodborne, which borrowed heavily from the film’s costume and set design. With creative practical effects and strangely exciting martial arts battles in equal measure, Brotherhood of the Wolf is no slouch as a horror movie or an action-adventure extravaganza. However, the film is obscure for a reason, mired in the complicated politics of 18th-century France which, at times, halt the pacing in its tracks.
7 The Witches
One of the best Roald Dahl adaptations ever put to screen
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Interestingly enough, horror adventure movies don’t necessarily always need to lose a technically child-friendly appeal in their endeavors for scarier imagery. The original 1990 The Witches is a great thesis statement to this claim, exploring the darker side of beloved children’s author Roald Dahl. Based on the book of the same name, the film follows an American boy who is forced to move to Europe to live with relatives after his parents pass away, only to encounter a terrifying coven of witches with a burning hatred for children.
Produced by iconic puppeteer Jim Henson, the practical effects of The Witches are a gruesome sight to behold, pushing the limits of what is acceptable in children’s horror stories. The existential terror of some of the children’s fates adds a healthy dose of narrative terror to the impressive special effects, as well. However, the film loses points for chickening out of the book’s downer ending, changing things to be more hopeful.
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6 Hellboy
Still the best adaptation of the classic comic
Adventure horror is in the blood of Guillermo del Toro’s filmography, as proven by the original Hellboy movie. Based on Mike Mignola’s iconic comic series of the same name, the film explores the origins of Ron Perlman’s Hellboy, a demon summoned to destroy the Earth by Nazis in World War II only to be taken in by the allies and raised to become the premiere detective of the BRPD, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. In the film, Hellboy goes up against the sorcerer who summoned him in the first place, Rasputin.
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Ron Perlman is nothing short of iconic as Hellboy, using his square jaw in combination with some impressive tolerance for makeup to bring the sarcastic everyman demon to life. The insidious Nazi cyborg Kroenen is also a terrifying antagonist that plagues the movie, putting the emotional core of the film in peril. Still the best Hellboy movie even after the release of Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Hellboy is only held back by the sheer concentration of comic characters that might be astounding to those unfamiliar with the source material.
5 The Descent
A claustrophobic spelunk into madness
Few adventure horror films can hang with more conventional horror experiences in terms of raw scares, but The Descent holds its own as a genuinely terrifying film. The plot concerns a group of women who go on a spelunking trip in the uncharted caves of the Appalachain mountains, with one of the less adrenaline-seeking members of the group still reeling from a personal tragedy. The journey goes from bad to worse when they’re not only trapped underground, but beset upon by horrifying cave-dwelling demi-humans called “Crawlers”.
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As far as chaff horror enemies go, the Crawlers are some of the most terrifying packs of monsters around, silently scaling slick cave surfaces while only visible in eerie night vision footage. The caves themselves are just as frightening, closing in around the hapless explorers in a claustrophobic vice grip. While the cast might not be the most memorable bunch of characters, even if they are well-acted, The Descent is a creative and chillingly effective horror movie with a strong sense of adventure.
4 Annihilation
A clever Lovecraftian horror odyssey
Paramount Pictures
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Horror adventure movies don’t always have to be such surface level-experiences, sometimes able to tap into some deep themes and esoteric forces of terror undreamt of by even the most high-brow of traditional horror story. Enter Annihilation, a harrowing Lovecraftian horror movie with some truly reality-defying visuals. The film focuses on a scientist who embarks on an expedition into a mysterious quarantine zone called “The Shimmer”, into which her husband had gone missing in on a previous mission.
The twisted biology of the flora and fauna of The Shimmer are at once a breathtaking adventure and a paralyzingly scary glimpse into cosmic terror. Natalie Portman holds down the fort as a rocksteady lead confused by the nightmare ahead of her, but determined to succeed. Annihilation might be a touch too philosophical at times, becoming lost in its own mysteries, but it doesn’t distract from the fun enough to keep the film from being a deviously exciting horror adventure.
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3 Army of Darkness
The epitome of horror slapstick
Marrying horror adventure with horror comedy alongside a healthy splash of fantasy, Sam Raimi’s iconic threequel Army of Darkness has its fingers in many genre pies. Taking place directly after Evil Dead II, Bruce Campbell returns as the slow, but tenacious Ash Williams, having been flung through a portal to the past by the evil Deadites. After winning over the terrified citizenry of the Middle Ages, Ash has to lead the charge against an encroaAlching army of the undead, leaving on a perilous quest in the process.
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As important as the previous film was to the franchise, the Evil Dead series as a whole owes a lot to Army of Darkness. With daring knights, spectacular battles, and a classic hero’s journey, the film is as adventurous as horror movies get while still offering plenty of gory chills and body horror to surpass the imaginations of dedicated fans. The only fly in the ointment is the occasionally overbearing nature of the slapstick comedy, which often denigrates into a particularly gory episode of Tom and Jerry rather than a horror movie.
2 The Mummy
Indiana Jones meets classic universal horror
Few films can uphold the tenets of the horror adventure movie quite like Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy. Equal parts Raiders of the Lost Ark and classic Universal Studios creature feature, the film posits Fraser as Rick O’Connell, an American tomb raider who is tasked with leading an adventuring party into ancient Egyptian ruins in hopes of uncovering Hamunaptra, the ancient city of the dead. Along the way, the group stirs up some unwanted attention from an ancient mummified evil.
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The Mummy has long reigned supreme as not only one of the best horror adventure movies ever made, but perhaps the all-time greatest mummy movie. From Fraser’s infectious charisma as a leading man to the blood-curdling visuals of the scarab swarms and skinless exhumed corpses, so much about The Mummy simply works. If there’s one thing holding the film back from being timeless, it’s the noticeably aged special effects, which only got worse as The Mummy series continued.
1 Aliens
Glistening science fiction terror in a space opera wrapper
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As great as Alien is as a tense, stand-alone horror feature, adding a healthy dose of adventure, combat, and agency to the journey of Ripley did wonders for the franchise. James Cameron’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece sees the surviving scientist of the Nostromo joining a cadre of overconfident space marines on a mission to a xenomorph-infected planet. Encountering a horde of the creatures rather than a single specimen, it’s up to Ridley to destroy the aliens’ queen and save the lives of innocent colonists.
Aliens was the first film to establish action-horror tropes that have since been repeated to the point of cliché. Beyond the effortlessly cool imagery of Ripley donning the power loader or the terrifying glower of the xenomorph matriarch, Aliens also sneaks in some powerful themes of motherhood, masculinity, femininity, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The quintessential horror adventure wrapped up in a neat science fiction package, it’s hard to do better than Aliens.
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