Winter is coming
There's condensation on your windows and ice on your windscreen: yup, its definitely winter again now. The cold can be more than just an inconvenience, though. It can be a killer.
In some horror movies, extreme temperatures are as deadly as any monster. If you're stuck in the middle of a snowstorm, after all, it's a lot harder to run away from the man with the knife. And if you're working at an isolated research centre in the Arctic, you're seriously out of luck when something goes wrong.
These movies all pack plenty of ice, snow, and mortal peril. Here are 20 horror movies guaranteed to give you chills...
Wind Chill (2007)
Baby, it's cold outside: A female student (Emily Blunt) arranges to share a ride home for Christmas with a fellow student, but probably should have vetted her driver more thoroughly, since he turns out to be a creep. And then he crashes the car in a snow drift on a haunted road. It probably would've been easier to just take the bus, all things considered.
Chill factor: 7/10
Being haunted by a corrupt cop is enough to give anyone goosebumps, but it's also about 30 degrees below zero.
The Invisible Man (1933)
Baby, it's cold outside: Dr Griffin (Claude Rains) has found a way to become invisible, but unfortunately that way also involves going insane and murdering lots of people. Being invisible obviously makes him difficult to catch, but when he's driven out into the snow, the townspeople catch him by following his footsteps.
Chill factor: 7/10
Since Griffin couldn't make his clothes invisible, he had to wander around naked in the snow. Makes your feet hurt just to think about, doesn't it?
Pontypool (2008)
Baby, it's cold outside: Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is an obnoxious DJ working through a blizzard when a mysterious virus starts turning people feral. For most of the film, he's safe and warm inside his booth, but knowing there's a snowstorm going on outside does raise the stakes somewhat.
Chill factor: 7/10
By the end of this movie, you might not be entirely sure what the word cold means. Or any other word, for that matter.
Let The Right One In (2008)
Baby, it's cold outside: An unusual and dangerous friendship flourishes in a bleak suburb of Stockholm, where it seems to snow all the time. Vampires might not feel the cold, but everyone else definitely does.
Chill factor: 8/10
Swedish winters don't always get all that cold, but what difference do a few degrees make when someone's threatening to push you through the ice on a frozen lake? Or slit your throat and spill your blood onto the snowy ground? Brrr.
30 Days Of Night (2007)
Baby, it's cold outside: In Barrow, Alaska, it gets cold every winter and stays cold, because for 30 days every year, there's no sunlight to warm up the snowy landscapes. Since we've established that vampires don't feel the cold, that makes it a perfect feeding ground for vampires.
Chill factor: 8/10
A whole month of no sunshine? You'd just find somewhere else to go for the winter, surely.
Troll Hunter (2010)
Baby, it's cold outside: A group of documentary makers heads out to the woods in Norway, hoping to catch a bear poacher. What they actually find, in amongst all the trees and snow, is a lot scarier and much fonder of billy goats gruff.
Chill factor: 8/10
Troll Hunter is a comedy horror, but the trolls are still deadly, and so is the cold.
Curtains (1983)
Baby, it's cold outside: When a famous film director invites a group of promising young actresses to his house for auditions, you'd imagine they'd be heading somewhere warm and sunny, like Los Angeles. Not in this slasher. Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) holds auditions at his mansion in snowy Canada, where an ice-skating menace is picking off his potential leading ladies one by one.
Chill factor: 8/10
Seriously, this movie features an ice-skating serial killer. That's pretty chilling.
The Thaw (2009)
Baby, it's cold outside: Researchers in the Arctic discover the long-frozen remains of a woolly mammoth when global warming causes the poles to melt, and soon a terrifying new pestilence is killing them all off. Despite the title, the Arctic is still pretty damned cold.
Chill factor: 8/10
If the idea of a prehistoric bug infestation doesn't give you the shivers, the realisation that climate change is real and awful should do.
Jack Frost (1997)
Baby, it's cold outside: Not to be confused with the fluffy Michael Keaton movie of the same title, this Jack Frost features a murderous snowman. No, really. A serial killer improbably named Mr Frost (Scott MacDonald) gets doused with toxic waste and melds with the snow, becoming one of literally (if not figuratively) the coolest killers ever.
Chill factor: 8/10
The idea of a killer snowman is pretty ridiculous, but maybe give a wide berth to any snowy figures lurking in the shadows this winter.
