With Halloween just around the corner, what better time to coorie in and enjoy some dark, spine-tingling tales?
Scotland has no dearth of eerie folklore, creepy ghost stories and mysterious legends, something that, coupled with spectacular scenery and historic architecture, has made it a popular haunt – pun intended – for copious filmmakers over the years.
From zombies and vampires to sinister creatures that slink in the shadows, here we list 10 must-watch horror movies, twisty thrillers and suspense-packed supernatural flicks filmed in Scotland to scare yourself with this spooky season.
Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley lead the cast in a sci-fi psychological thriller about a Gulf War veteran who is wrongly accused of murder and sent to a psychiatric facility, where he becomes the subject of a doctor's experiments.
The Jacket, directed by John Maybury and also starring Daniel Craig, the late Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, did a chunk of filming at the then-newly closed Bangour Village Hospital, near Dechmont, West Lothian.
Location manager Lloret Dunn told The Herald in 2020: “We laid linoleum and transformed some of the buildings into parts of an American psychiatric hospital. We had to create a graveyard with fake snow. We built a set in the recreation hall.”
The Little Vampire (2000)
German film director Uli Edel is perhaps better-known for movies such as Body of Evidence, starring Madonna and Willem Dafoe, but his prolific CV also includes The Little Vampire, a comedy-horror based on the children’s book series of the same name.
It follows a boy who moves from California to a castle in the Highlands where he forges a friendship with a young vampire. Among the cast are Richard E Grant, as well as Scottish actors Iain De Caestecker and Georgie Glen.
The Little Vampire was filmed across a raft of grand settings, such as Dunimarle Castle, near Culross, Fife; Gosford House in East Lothian; Newliston, Dalmeny House and Dundas Castle, on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
Other locations featured include an area of farmland near Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, and the roads around Oatridge College, near Broxburn, West Lothian.
The zombie apocalypse action horror World War Z was filmed in Glasgow (Image: free) World War Z (2013)
Brad Pitt fever swept Glasgow in the summer of 2011 when the big-budget zombie apocalypse action horror World War Z used the city to double as Philadelphia under siege.
Inspired by the Max Brooks-penned novel of the same name, Pitt plays a former United Nations investigator who goes in search of the source of the global outbreak and a possible cure.
Glasgow City Chambers, George Square and Cochrane Street took centre stage in pivotal scenes, with the perimeter road at Grangemouth Refinery also serving as a backdrop, the latter chosen for its resemblance to a US-style highway.
Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)
Technically this is a Christmas zombie musical but Anna and the Apocalypse, with its black comedy and killer soundtrack, is a gem to watch at any time of year.
Directed by John McPhail from a screenplay by Alan McDonald and Ryan McHenry, the film is based on the 2010 BAFTA-nominated short Zombie Musical and features songs by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly.
Think George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead franchise meets high school TV drama Glee but set in Scotland and with a snowman that gets decapitated by a seesaw.
Starring Ella Hunt, Paul Kaye and Mark Benton, events unfold in the sleepy town of Little Haven where residents are unaware that a zombie infection is spreading.
Locations used include the now demolished St Stephen's High School in Port Glasgow and the derelict Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village in West Lothian.
Out of Darkness (2022)
Andrew Cumming’s Out of Darkness has been likened to some enduringly popular big hitters of the sci-fi horror genre, such as Predator and Alien.
The Stone Age survival thriller begins with a boat arriving on the shores of a bleak landscape, some 45,000 years ago. Six brave souls have crossed a perilous sea to find a new home. They are hungry, exhausted and in desperate need of food and shelter.
Unfortunately, the sextet is not alone. When the group encounters an unknown creature, the body count soon starts climbing, although the plot twist isn’t perhaps what you might guess.
Urban Ghost Story (1998)
A girl who cheats death finds herself experiencing strange phenomena in a Glasgow high-rise block. Jason Connery plays the sceptical journalist investigating her claims, with Billy Boyd and James Cosmo also popping up as a loan shark and minister respectively.
Urban Ghost Story plays to the audience on multiple levels. On one hand, the Genevieve Jolliffe-directed supernatural drama is what Variety described as “Ken Loach meets The Exorcist”, yet it also packs a punch with its sympathetic portrayal of oft demonised late-1990s council estates.
This sci-fi thriller, based on Michel Faber’s book of the same name, stars Scarlett Johansson as a voracious extra-terrestrial who criss-crosses highways and byways in search of human prey. It was shot entirely on location in Scotland over eight weeks in 2011.
Keep your eyes peeled for a bus stop in Wanlockhead, Tantallon Castle in East Lothian, Glasgow’s Buchanan Galleries, Loch Restil on the Cowal Peninsula, Auchmithie Beach near Arbroath, a Livingston nightclub, a Lanarkshire petrol station and Black Mount Estate in Argyll.
Lord of Tears (2013)
Kudos to filmmaker, director and producer Lawrie Brewster, who has made an impressive clutch of horror movies set in Scotland over the years.
His debut Lord of Tears won two awards at the 2013 Bram Stoker International Film Festival. The plot centres on a Scottish schoolteacher who begins to have recurring nightmares about the Owlman, a strange figure that he was first obsessed with as a child.
Brewster came up with the idea while researching Pagan folklore in the Highlands and reportedly also drew inspiration from the way that Japanese horror movies often reflect stories from native mythology. Parts of Dysart and Kirkcaldy in Fife were used as key backdrops.
A prequel, The Black Gloves (2017), followed four years later. Set in the 1940s and filmed entirely in black and white for a distinct “noir look”, it sees a psychologist desperately trying to unpick the disappearance of a young patient who spoke of being visited by the Owlman.
Another Brewster-made horror involving birds (definite echoes of Hitchcock here) is The Unkindness of Ravens (2016). A veteran soldier returns home to the Highlands, where he begins experiencing flashbacks of a battlefield plagued by terrifying winged creatures.
The Wicker Man (1973)
No list of Scottish horror movies would be complete without mention of the cinematic masterpiece that is The Wicker Man.
Inspired by David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual, this Robin Hardy-directed classic is famed for sending shivers down the spine, with the final scenes seared into your brain long after the closing credits roll.
The stellar cast is led by Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, alongside Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento and Ingrid Pitt.
While the story is set on a fictional remote island, the film itself was shot primarily in the south-west of Scotland using Stranraer, Gatehouse of Fleet, Newton Stewart and Kirkcudbright. Wider locations included Plockton, Wester Ross and Culzean Castle, Ayrshire.
The Bench (2024)
It took 17 years for writer and director Sean Wilkie to bring this slasher movie-meets-locked room thriller to the screen. A group of friends take a trip to a cabin in Renfrewshire, only to disappear one by one.
Wilkie has cited some of his favourites from the genre, such as Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as helping spark the premise for the project.
The Bench stars Joy McAvoy from Two Doors Down and Penny Dreadful actor Matt McClure. It was filmed at Lochwinnoch, Drumpellier Country Park and The Caves event venue in Edinburgh.
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