I give director James Wan an awful lot of credit. After making a boatload of money creating the Saw franchise (a series of movies that popularized the term “torture porn”), he turned around and reinvented the spooky haunted house genre in Insidious and The Conjuring. Tastes in thrillers vary wildly, but it’s hard to argue that those movies were any less scary for being relatively blood-free, and sometimes you just want to watch a scary movie that won’t make you lose your lunch.
I’m neither pro-gore nor anti-gore myself, but it’s not uncommon for horror movies to rely on gross-out special effects as a substitute for scares—and while that can make for a good time at the movies, it doesn’t relieve horror filmmakers of the burden of crafting a film that’s genuinely creepy or unsettling. If a pierced eyeball or some intestines dangling on a hook contributes to that, great! Otherwise, and often, it’s simply a neat bit of practical effects.
If you’re a more squeamish thrill seeker, there are a ton of great movies that will disturb you without resorting to throwing a bucket of blood in your face. (My favorite local movie theater serves a full menu now, and honestly sometimes I can’t handle wound closeups while I’m trying to eat my personal pizza.) Here are 18 of them—guaranteed to raise your heart rate but not your gorge.