5 Forgotten Ghost Movies That Still Hold Up Today
by Witney Seibold · /FilmThere's never a bad time to watch movies about ghosts. Every day, we walk into eerie spaces or cursed buildings, and a nagging sixth sense may tell us that there's a presence in the room with us. Thanks to the movies, ghosts have taken many forms. In the 2026 film "Backrooms," large, undecorated, empty rooms seem to possess an eerie, disembodied consciousness of their own. In the previous decade, ghost movies were more ornate, appearing as malevolent, family-destroying ghouls. See: "The Conjuring" flicks or the "Insidious" movies. Back in the 1980s, the most famous movie ghosts were charismatic villains who enjoyed tormenting and murdering teenagers. See: Freddy Krueger. Ghosts can be comedic visitors, tragic fallen heroines, the restless spirits of a forgotten age, or even pests to be exterminated, as seen in "Ghostbusters." See /Film's list of the 15 best ghost movies of all time.
And because they ultimately remind us of the transient nature of life and the persistent presence of our own mortality, it's no wonder that ghosts are so often revisited in literature and in cinema. Does life continue after death? And what would be the nature of that continuation? If we fail to remember the dead, will they assert their presence to the living? And what happens if we leave mortal business unfinished? Can ghosts still fall in love? Can they hook up? Hundreds and hundreds of movies have explored these questions and more.
The following five movies may not be well-recalled by most mainstream audiences, but they are certainly worth familiarizing yourself with. Most of them are horror movies from all over the world, but at least one is a comedy with recognizable Hollywood stars. No matter the genre, take them all as hearty recommendations.
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Victor Sjöström's 1921 horror-ish morality play "The Phantom Carriage," based on the 1912 novel "Thy Sould Shall Bear Witness!" by Selma Lagerlöf, is well-known to film students and subscribers to the Criterion Channel, but it might still be considered obscure to modern-day teens. The premise is delicious. In "The Phantom Carriage," the last person to die in any calendar year is assigned the unenviable task of driving around the titular carriage, essentially serving as the Grim Reaper, for the entire following year.
The main character of "The Phantom Carriage" is David (Victor Sjöström), a drunk who is spending New Year's Eve in a cemetery. When he dies in a fight, David sees that the Phantom Carriage is his buddy Georges (Tore Svennberg), who had died the previous year. Georges, like the Ghost of Christmas Past, reminds David of his history and shows him a longer flashback of how he ended up so miserable. David remembers the good times, the alcoholism, and the breakup he had with his wife, Anna (Hilda Borgström). In another flashback, we see David being taken to church, a chance to redeem himself. It is a chance he actively rejects.
There's no way that Ingmar Bergman (a Criterion Channel staple) didn't watch this movie before becoming a filmmaker. It certainly bears a lot of the master's interests in God, the futility of life, and the moral bent of storytelling. Bergman was three when this movie came out. "The Phantom Carriage," however, is also notable for its amazing special effects, which make the ghosts seem, well, ghostly. It feels like a horror movie because of its shadows and spirits, but ultimately plays like a cautionary tale. It's very good.
Kuroneko (1968)
Many cineastes might know about Kaneto Shindo's 1963 classic "Onibaba" (including Willem Dafoe), but fans of that movie would do well to visit his 1969 follow-up "Kuroneko," a movie that, like "Onibaba," is about two women who prey upon the men who wander into their vicinity. This time, however, the women are vengeful spirits.
Set in feudal Japan, "Kuroneko" is about a woman named Yone (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law, Shige (Kiwako Taichi), after they are assaulted and murdered by a loutish band of itinerant samurai. Like in "The Crow," a black cat appears over their corpses and seems to parlay their spirits back to Earth, where they can wreak vengeance on the samurai who killed them. They then vow to kill all samurai they come across. Their plan even catches the eye of the local magistrates, who are frustrated that spirits are offing their samurai warriors.
Yone's and Shige's plan hits a snag, however, when Shige's husband (Kichiemon Nakamura) returns from the wars, having changed his name to Gintoki and gotten a job as a samurai. To make matters worse, Gintoki has been tasked with destroying the samurai-eating ghosts. Shige, even as a ghost, loves her husband. What are they to do?
"Kuroneko" presents its story like a bleak fable. The death and horror feel weirdly inevitable, and the moral quandary tragic. Like "Onibaba" before it, the tone is whispery, eerie, and horrifying. It's one of the more notable films in the career of a filmmaker who worked from the 1950s through the 2010s (Kaneto Shindo was 100 when he died), and who provided screenplays for the best filmmakers of the Japanese New Wave.
Witchboard (1986)
Kevin Tenney's 1986 horror flick "Witchboard" once carried with it — at least in my personal, childhood circles — a reputation as the scariest movie of all time. Forget "The Exorcist" and "The Shining," we said in 1986, "Witchboard" is the real deal. Revisiting "Witchboard" in the modern era will reveal that it is nowhere near as terrifying as those classics, but also surprisingly effective and actually scary.
The movie is about a group of callow partiers who use a Ouija board to contact the spirit of a dead child named David. The Ouija board belongs to Brandon (Stephen Nichols), who is a bit of a snot about using it and about pronouncing "Ouija" correctly. Brandon's ex-girlfriend, Linda (Tawny Kitaen, who passed in 2021), continues to chat with the ghostly David in the days that follow and finds that David is 100% real. Naturally, eerie, fatal accidents begin occurring around Linda and her friends, while David innocently claims that he has nothing to do with them. Even a hired medium (Kathleen Wilhoite) is called in to investigate matters, and you can guess that her fate is grim.
Not to give too much away, but Brandon and Linda's current boyfriend, Jim (Todd Allen), begins to look into David's alleged history and finds that he is not who he says he is. Also, his intentions are, quite naturally, far more malevolent than previously assumed.
"Witchboard" is hardly novel. It's constructed like a slasher movie or a knockoff of "The Omen." But that doesn't change the fact that it's scary, paced well, and that the central ghost is appropriately terrifying. If you're a fan of '80s horror, and you haven't seen this one yet, put it near the top of your to-do list.
Slaughterhouse Rock (1988)
In the 1980s, heavy metal music was often cited by hand-wringing parents and snippy censors as the root of all evil. The demonic, aggressive lyrics of bands like Iron Maiden, Anthrax, and Metallica concerned tightly-wound prudes, and the genre was cited by politicians as a sign of social degradation. Naturally, horror filmmakers latched onto this rhetoric and made a subgenre of horror movies, Heavy Metal Horror, that took the demonic connotations of hard rock literally. The genre included a lot of goofy titles like John Fasano's "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare," the same filmmaker's "Black Roses," and Beverly Sebastian's "Rocktober Blood."
Dmitri Logothetis' 1988 flick "Slaughterhouse Rock" was perhaps the most whimsical of the bunch, mostly because it starred Toni Basil (who worked with Bert I. Gordon) as the playful ghost who helps the film's hero, Alex (Nicholas Celozzi), investigate Alcatraz (!) to find the source of his recurring nightmares. Alex, you see, has been dreaming of a dead serial killer who was sentenced to Alcatraz many years before. When the killer begins appearing as hallucinations, Alex bundles a bunch of buddies over to the prison island to investigate. Naturally, the spirit of the serial killer will possess Alex's brother (Tom Reilly) and begin bloodletting again in due course.
Toni Basil is the wildcard, though. She plays the former lead singer of a rock band called Bodybag and dresses, well, like Toni Basil. She is given her own dance number, and it's the scene in the movie you'll probably remember the best. The music for "Slaughterhouse Rock" was provided by Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale of DEVO. It was only Mothersbaugh's second film score after "Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise."
Heart and Souls (1993)
Ron Underwood's 1993 comedy "Heart and Souls" is emotionally earnest, moreso than its high-concept premise might have you believe. It might help that the film features excellent performances from a crackerjack cast, including some of Robert Downey, Jr.'s best work. Seriously, this is one of Downey's career highlights.
The film begins in 1959 when a group of strangers boards a bus. The strangers are played by Tom Sizemore, Kyra Sedgwick, Alfre Woodard, and Charles Grodin. Their bus driver (David Paymer) is distracted by a sexy woman and crashes the bus, killing them all. In the same accident, a nearby woman is giving birth. The four strangers, now ghosts, are now supernaturally attached to the child. As a boy, Thomas could see them and found that they couldn't wander too far from his body. They sing to him and care for him, but so as not to make him appear mentally ill, the ghosts choose to vanish from his sight (even if they're still present). They reappear when Thomas is an adult, played by Robert Downey Jr.
When the ghosts reappear, they announce that they — thanks to a Heavenly miscommunication — only have a few days to take care of their unfinished business on Earth before they ascend. The ghosts then take turns possessing Thomas and forcing him to speak for them. Downey gets to impersonate Woodard, Sedgwick, and Grodin, and he nails them all. It's a truly astonishing performance. Indeed, it's so good, it grounds the movie's flighty, silly premise in honesty. We feel the ghosts' angst as well as the premise's whimsy. "Heart and Souls" is funny and sweet, with a lighthearted view of the afterlife. It's really quite good. Sadly, it is not one of Downey's highest-ranked movies.