20 Creepy Clips to Haunt You

The iconic clip from Jackson’s world-beating Thriller album for the seventh, and final, single from the LP was directed by filmmaker John Landis, who had plenty of experience with things that go bump in the night thanks to his work on the gore-soaked 1981 dramedy An American Werewolf in London. An homage to Jackson’s obsession with old monster movies, the 13-minute video helped turn the medium into a serious concern, thanks to its high production values and eye-popping dead can dance numbers.

Key scene: Just two minutes into the action — after Jackson hands his girlfriend a promise ring — the singer transforms into a werewolf, complete with giant yellow eyes, razor-sharp fangs and lupine limbs.

The ick: Amid the classic Jackson dance routines, horror movie staple Vincent Price pops in for a spine-tingling voice-over as ghastly ghouls crawl from their graves for a massive cretin hop featuring shoulder-shrugging, foot-dragging dance moves that have become holiday canon.

Things are not great in Eilish’s video for her 2019 When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? single. It opens with her exposed back getting jabbed with way too many syringes, which cause the singer to grow a pair of white angel wings that don’t really help when she plunges through the atmosphere to Earth and lands in a gooey tar pit.

The singer said at the time that the video is a warning that “our earth is warming up at an unprecedented rate, icecaps are melting, our oceans are rising.” That is brought to life in the clip by Eilish walking through a flaming hellscape, as she struggles to drags her oil-soaked wings down a deserted street.

Key scene: The shot at the end where a glum Eilish, with a resigned look on her face, marches back toward the flames.

The ick: All those needles!

What if everything you said about Taylor Swift came true? Swift indulged that scenario in the light horror-themed video for this 2017 electro-pop banger from Reputation. Action opens on a tombstone bearing the epitaph “Here Lies Taylor Swift’s Reputation” and from there we shift from zombie Taylor to the imperious singer sitting on a gilded throne as snakes crawl around her and serve her tea. By the end, the various Taylor eras meet up and let’s just say the zombie Tay is not to be messed with.

Key scene: DGAF Taylor standing atop Mt. Previous Eras and waving her arms to violently dispatch all her earlier incarnations.

The ick: A cadaverous Swift crawling from her own grave, her skin a ghastly green, her typically red lips shaded an ashen grey.

Back in their late 1990s heyday, one of the only scary things about the BSB was their sometimes-questionable fashion choices. But this Max Martin written and produced Billboard Hot 100 No. 4 hit from the band’s self-titled debut was accompanied by a Joseph Kahn-directed video inspired by the grandaddy of horror pop clips: Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Hence, the framing device of the boys getting trapped at a haunted mansion when their tour bus breaks down, leading to a series of dream sequences in which each member turns into a classic movie monster.

Key Scene: Howie D’s Dracula opening up his cape to let loose a barrage of bats.

The Ick: Nick Carter’s Mummy asking “am I sexual?” as he pops and locks inside an iron maiden.

Gaga knows all about turning camp horror into high art. The black and white video for this Wednesday soundtrack freakfest — directed by legendary filmmaker Tim Burton —  was shot on the famed Island of the Dolls in Mexico City and opens with scenes of doll heads and creepy dollies before pivoting to Gaga, who blends right in, dressed as a jittery, ashen-faced Kewpie doll. The rest of the clip consists of the singer hosting a dead can dance party while dressed a a raggedy Baby Jane type with some obvious homages to MJ’s “Thriller,” naturally.

Key scene: The reveal of the throat-clutching, hand-jiving “Dead Dance” routine.

The ick: Ugh, all those dead-eyed doll heads dancing and winking at us!

Trent Reznor has a PhD in scaring the living hell out of us. But in this nightmare-fuel clip directed by the great Mark Romanek (Jay-Z, Michael Jackson) — shot at the Linda Vista Community Hospital in L.A. — a 19th century mad scientist conducts a series of definitely not AMA-approved medical experiments. The gritty, weathered footage includes a disembodied heart belching smoke in time to the song’s marching beat, freaked-out, crucified monkeys, Siamese twins joined at the hair, a naked woman holding a giant bison skull in front of her face and a ball-gagged Reznor.

Key scene: Reznor floating in ominous circles on his back as if suspended from a phantom thread.

The ick: We will never get that rotating pig’s head spinning out of control on a mechanical arm out of our heads.

This 1997 scarefest from dance music producer Richard D. James (a.k.a. Aphex Twin) is six minutes of sheer terror. It opens with an old lady walking her dog while being spooked by weird sounds, cutting to the pooch taking a leak on a smashed TV set, which bring the terror tale to life. “I want your soul/ I will eat your soul,” James howls over the chaotic, triple-time beat as the grandma runs for her life from an army of creepy little girls bearing the dance producer’s grown-man face. In between we get glimpses of James’ twisted visage screeching the song’s title as the girl gang run amok through an abandoned warehouse.

Key Scene: Near the end, a towering, demonic Alien-like creature mutates out of a TV screen and shouts in the granny’s face for what feels like 10 minutes.

The Ick: Did we mention the little girls with James’ face?

How can you even do a list like without without including the late Prince of Darkness? Ozzy went full Method for his first-ever music video for the howling title track to his 1983 solo album, acting out the role of a mad Dr. Jekyll type who swigs a potion that transforms him into a fanged werewolf. Straitjacketed and tossed in an asylum to keep him from harming the townspeople, Ozzy yearns to break free.

Key scene: The first, shaky glimpse of the lovably profane hard-rock icon in a hirsute, full-body werewolf costume as he cackles “Bark at the moon/ Haha!”

The ick: WereOzzy chasing a terrified human Ozzy through an underground tunnel. Wait, how does that even make sense?

Death becomes Carpenter in this Dave Meyers-directed, blood-drenched homage to Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn black comedy Death Becomes Her co-starring actors Jenna Ortega and Rohan Campbell. It opens with Sabrina applying her lipstick using a machete as a mirror before she tries to kill her romantic rival in her sleep only to be confronted by a shotgun wielding-Ortega blasting a hole through the singer’s chest. Leaning into campy horror, a gleeful Sab plummets to her not-death as she get impaled on a fence while deftly flinging a switchblade into Ortega’s eye. The rest of the clip finds the two women finding increasingly baroque methods of murder involving heart defibrillators, chainsaws and, at the end, a surprise flash of killer kindness.

Key scene: Carpenter twisting Ortega into knots via a voodoo doll.

The ick: A Psycho-homaging scene where Ortega fights back by slicing the singer’s arm off with a scythe, unleashing a blood geyser, then choking Carpenter out with her own arm.

The Christian Breslauer-directed clip for this Scarlet single eschews metaphor or fancy plot twists in favor of straight-up terror. As actress Christina Ricci soundly sleeps, horned Demon Doja craws along the ceiling, her body a midnight black, set off by glowing red eyes and a neck full of sparkly bling. Soon enough, the attic is crawling with the whole demon crew and Ricci and her family are sprinting for the car.

Key scene: Doja crawling toward a wide-eyed Ricci.

The ick: Bald, naked Doja calmly rapping in a bathtub as a black demon hand grabs her head and jerks it back.

You do not want a seat at the table for this sinister dinner party featuring guest Anya Taylor-Joy (The Gorge) and an unrecognizably creepy Hozier. First off, her host, the singer wearing a gross set of black, stained teeth, has invited ATJ to a feast whose spread features bloody animal skulls, slimy oysters, fish heads and other unappetizing delicacies. After she casually flicks matches at the singer, Joy attempts to leave and is restrained by dancers, who flop her around like a rag doll. She spends the rest of the clip attempting to escape the dinner from hell, before taking her own dark turn.

Key scene: ATJ tossing one last match and roasting a marshmallow on Hozier’s crispy corpse.

The ick: Those mossy teeth!

Rihanna cranks the dial up to maximum weird for the clip she co-directed for the tune from the expanded Reloaded edition of her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad. And man, does it live up to that title! Playing several roles, Rihanna appears as herself with exaggerated black eye makeup surrounded by a dance troupe of fetish-gear-wearing compatriots, as well as a Joan of Arc type lashed to a wooden pole with her arms tied behind her back as the flames climb. With tarantulas, milky eyes and lyrics about feeling “like a monsta,” this one is pure Halloween Express of horror.

Key scene: The herky-jerky, robotic zombie dance break during the “bum bum be-dum” breakdown.

The ick: RihRih crawling all over, and manipulating, a dead-eyed mannequin.

Picking your favorite freaky Zombie video is a fool’s errand. The industrial rocker is basically a living Spirit Halloween, with his whole aesthetic screaming “BOO!” to a bangin’ beat. In the video for his debut 1998 solo single, Zombie gleefully gets behind the wheel of the Munster Koach — the song’s title was inspired by the “Drag-U-La” race car from Zombie’s favorite 1960s monster comedy, The Munsters — alongside a horned devil as they chase two other demons down the street. Add in some clips from classic horror films, nuclear mushroom clouds and out-of-context footage of 1950s kids laughing at an unseen delight and you have a heart-racing, broomstick-waving Halloween classic.

Key scene: An ashen Zombie howling the song’s refrain in front of footage of the menacing robot from Bela Lugosi’s 1939 The Phantom Creeps sci-fi movie series.

The ick: The creepy John Wayne Gacy-like clown frolicking with a little girl, of course.

Director Autumn de Wilde takes Florence Welch on a spooky fast walk across the highlands, where she encounters a creepy cowboy riding backwards on a horse and is followed by a quartet of black-clad, howling dancers. A primal scream fest in a ballroom proves cathartic, and then alarming, when the attendees start convulsing and falling out.

Key scene: Welch, with an evening primrose flower shoved in her mouth, writhing on top of the cowboy.

The ick: The singer jamming her red high heel into a man’s mouth as she pins him to the floor.

The Cudder tapped one of music video’s all-time legends, Samuel Bayer (Nirvana, Green Day) for the visual to this slow-burn ballad. It opens with a wide-eyed Cudi laying in a grave, seemingly buried alive as the film runs backwards and the dirt flies back onto shovels. The rapper then wanders the city, finds a red-haired version of himself un-punching out a mirror (also run backwards) as we watch what looks like an actual kid (Cudi?) covering his eyes at a funeral.

Key scene: Cudi singing “I stopped running to the grave” in a potter’s field graveyard.

The ick: If the buried-alive bit doesn’t make you hold your breath a bit, then this really is your holiday.

In a kind of booty-focused Beetlejuice homage, three teens at a sleepover try to conjure Luda by testing a urban myth that dancing in front of a mirror will summon the rapper. Sure enough, after Luda ponders “how low can you go,” the women twerk it out as his spectral, floating head offers them enthusiastic encouragement. Eventually, he pops out of the mirror wearing old school Run-DMC-style gear before a pair of Jason-mask wearing dudes unexpectedly join the party.

Key scene: The Jiggy Jasons breakdancing their way down the house’s steps.

The Ick: This one is more silly than scary, but the two writhing female dancers with head-to-toe black body paint flanking Luda are definitely icky.

Metallica have no shortage of videos that will make you check the locks thrice. But this Roboshobo-directed clip for the single from 2008’s Death Magnetic flips the scary script by purporting to be lost documentary footage from a 1938 Russian movie about the 1908 Tunguska event. In that fictional incident, Soviet scientists allegedly discovered alien spores that spawn crab-like creatures with visible spines, later weaponizing the secret weapon against their American foes via a full-on zombie invasion.

Key scene: The flash forward to an animated 1948 scene in which the spores are rediscovered and wielded as a bioweapon against nuke-possessing American antagonists.

The Ick: Scientists re-animating a long-dead cat by pumping it full of spores.

In this continuation of the band’s previous “This Is Gospel” video, returning director/choreographer Daniel Campos (Paramore, Zedd) has singer Brendon Urie dying and plummeting to hell after thinking he was headed in the other direction. The resulting trip finds the singer slowly transforming into a grey-skinned, multi-horned demon that will haunt your dreams from now on. You’re welcome.

Key scene: The chorus of singing skeletons crooning “Mortal kings are ruling castles/ Welcome to my world of fun.”

The Ick: Urie, in his final, seriously freaky form, lit up in blood red staring into the distance as a devilish grin crosses his fangs.

Director Spike Jonze (Beastie Boys, Weezer) went full gore gonzo for the clip from the band’s 2003 debut album, Fever to Tell. Shot in a grainy, Blair Witch-like style, it opens with an adorable grade schooler flipping the bird before she and her dead-eyed classmates lay waste to a car with their baseball bats and otherwise terrify with a game of ring-around-the-dead-dog. Did we mention the scene where the girl hacks her classmate’s arm off with an axe? Good times.

Key scene: A grade school vampire drawing blood from singer Karen O’s neck.

The ick: The girl yanking a boy’s intestines out after he slashes his belly open.

Petty became one of the kings of MTV in the channel’s mid-1980s heyday with a series of envelope-pushing visuals, a string he continued with this 1993 clip that won the singer his second of three MTV VMAs. In it, Petty plays a morgue assistant who is so instantly smitten with the world’s most beautiful corpse (actress Kim Basinger) that he takes her home, where he dolls her up for a Weekend at Bernies-style dinner and dance before giving her a proper burial at sea.

Key scene: Petty repeatedly propping up Basinger’s floppy head and taking her limp body out for a spin on the dance floor.

The ick: Petty running his hands across Basinger’s blue lips and lifeless fingers before he sneaks her out of the morgue.