The Big Apple and its various boroughs have played host to a wide assortment of fright films over the decades. Some have been suspense thrillers, others outright gore-fests. A few have done an excellent job showing the city’s most notable locations, while others take place almost exclusively in interior spaces like apartments or hotel rooms. All of them take advantage of the fact that New York is a crowded place full of both residents and tourists, where evil can lurk on a major street or in a dark alley. They also take place in popular New York boroughs like Manhattan or Brooklyn. Scroll down to see our selection of top 5 iconic horror movies set in New York City!
American Psycho
Patrick Bateman is handsome, well educated and intelligent. He is twenty-seven and living his own American dream. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. At night he descends into madness, as he experiments with fear and violence.
Rosemary’s Baby
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move into an apartment in an opulent but gothic building in Manhattan. Their landlord Edward “Hutch” Hutchins attempts to dissuade them from doing so: the building has an unsavory history. They discover that their neighbors are a very friendly elderly couple named Roman and Minnie Castevet, and Guy begins to spend a great deal of time with them. Strange things begin to happen: a young woman Rosemary meets in the laundry commits suicide, Rosemary has strange dreams and hears strange noises and Guy becomes remote and distant. Then Rosemary falls pregnant and begins to suspect that her neighbors have special plans for her child.
Maniac
Frank Zito misses his mother, who was killed in a car accident years before. She was abusive to him, and made money selling her body, but Frank still misses her. He tries to keep her from leaving him, and reform her evil ways, by killing young women and putting their scalps on mannequins which he displays around his apartment. Photographer Anna D’Antoni takes a picture of him in the park, and he pursues and befriends her. Is she the one he has been looking for or just another mother wannabe?
More Movies From New York City
The Sentinel
Alison Parker’s a model, living with her friend Michael in his apartment. After twice attempting suicide, she left the Catholic church, and wants to live on her own. With help from real state agent Miss Logan, she finds an apartment in Brooklyn Heights for almost nothing. She sees a man in the window in the top floor, and Miss Logan says is Father Halloran, a blind priest who lives alone, supported by the church. Alison moves In, and receives a visitor: her neighbor, Charles Chazen, who introduces the other tenants to her. After inviting Alison to his cat Jezebel’s birthday party, the next day, weird things begin to happen to Alison – in her apartment and her health. She’s informed the building’s a gateway to hell.
Jacob’s Ladder
On 06 Oct 1971, in Vietnam, the American soldier Jacob Singer is wounded by a bayonet during an attack to his platoon. He wakes up in a New York subway while going home late at night after working overtime in the post office. He is divorced from Sarah, lives with his colleague and lover Jezebel in a small Brooklyn apartment and misses his young son Gabe, who died in an accident for which Jacob feels responsible. During the next days, Jacob is chased by demons and finds the army conspiracy against him, while having strange visions during different moments of his life.