Top 20 Scariest Music Videos

Top-20-Scariest-Music-Videos

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for those video clips that haunted our dreams then, and continue to scare us in the modern day.

#20: “Thriller” (1983)
Michael Jackson

Everyone of a certain age probably remembers where they were the first time “Thriller” dropped its music video on MTV. Noted director John Landis was hired to helm this dyed-in-the-wool homage to classic horror cinema, and the end results absolutely delivered. Granted, “Thriller” may exist in the realm of Halloween staples today, but Jackson - who was a Jehovah’s Witness at the time - still felt the need to include a filmed disclaimer, denouncing any fervent belief in the occult. That alone tells us that Landis and crew truly desired to make something both funky and scary. Every dancer and performer in the video gives their all, the make-up effects still look great today and “Thriller” remains essential music video viewing.

#19: “Dragula” (1998)
Rob Zombie

The love possessed by Rob Zombie for retro aesthetics has been long documented, right back to the singer’s days fronting White Zombie. However, “Dragula” takes things back a bit further, and lays down some groundwork for Zombie’s eventual helming of the “Munsters” origin story in 2022. The video melds drive-in culture with flashbacks to creepshows of old. Images of creepy clowns and devils are juxtaposed against Zombie’s own wicked make-up to create one hell of a cool-looking atmosphere. That said, we totally understand how younger viewers might be disturbed by some of the visuals at play.

#18: “Sabrina” (2000)
Einstürzende Neubauten

It’s nearly impossible to pigeonhole the music of Germany’s Einstürzende Neubauten. One thing’s for sure, however: the video for their song “Sabrina” is profoundly creepy and disturbing. The song possesses a dark lyrical approach to match the visuals, as well, with “Sabrina” reportedly being about Germany’s current place in the world, and how her people struggle with cultural identity in the aftermath of World War II. Meanwhile, the image of a porcine-visaged individual singing to its reflection in a grungy mirror is more than a little scary. The lighting looks like something out of the “Saw” franchise, while “Sabrina” even brings with it a tragic sense of melancholy. It’s a video clip that’s truly unique.

#17: “Obscure” (2003)
Dir En Grey

The vibe of pure, unfiltered Japanese horror cinema permeates the video clip for “Obscure,” by that country’s avant-garde metal group, Dir En Grey. The band has had several videos banned in some areas, so it’s no surprise that this one was heavily censored for its graphic visuals and disturbing imagery. “Obscure” is heavily stylized, and pulls no punches with its unrepentantly gory approach to shock-rock. This is a case where the aggressive nature of a song’s execution melds perfectly with how it’s presented to an audience. Dir En Grey’s flair for the theatrical shines through as blood, guts and pure terror assault viewers’ senses, without a moment of reprieve. Honestly? This video for “Obscure” is better left unspoiled: just watch it for yourself… since we can’t even show you most of it, anyway!

#16: “Mein Herz brennt” (2012)
Rammstein

The translation of the title of this 2001 Rammstein song may be “My heart burns,” but make no mistake: “Mein Herz brennt” is NO love song. The original video clip for the track is gorgeously shot, while simultaneously being completely nightmarish in scope. Rammstein has made a career at this point of continuously pushing boundaries when it comes to the music video medium, and “Mein Herz brennt” actually had two separate ones filmed. Imagery seemingly analogous to World War II medical experiments rears its ugly head, while Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann acts like an unhinged, murderous psychopath. “Mein Herz brennt” presents pure horror wrapped up in a stylish package; the sort of video clip that’s revolting, yet also impossible to resist.

#15: “Lullaby” (1989)
The Cure

The term “nightmare fuel” gets brought up often when it comes to describing these kinds of music videos. That said, “Lullaby” by The Cure seems to be inspired by real-life bad dreams, as well as those vintage, bloody children’s stories a la The Brothers Grimm. Robert Smith is both predator and prey in this video, while the other members of The Cure appear as creepy little soldiers. The “spiderman” present within the song’s lyrics is brought to life, and Smith sells the horror for all he’s worth. The actual construction of the set for “Lullaby” is fantastic, as well, full of dusty cobwebs and grim make-up effects. It’s a beautifully morbid banger, through and through.

#14: “There There” (2003)
Radiohead

The musical visionaries behind Radiohead had already proven they could reimagine the music video medium via their longform clip for “Paranoid Android” back in 1997. However, the English group didn’t rest upon their creative laurels and upped the ante again with “There There” in 2003. The stop-motion animation style used in the video is decidedly old-school, and stylistically indebted to late Czech surrealism. “There There” is a bit uncanny, as a result, featuring singer Thom Yorke stumbling across the lives of forest animals, before suffering an attack and becoming trapped as a tree. The execution here is captivating and full of imagination; the sort of video that sticks with you, long after it's over.

#13: “Mr. Krinkle” (1993)
Primus

There’s no doubt that the members of Primus seem to be having a lot of fun whenever they decide to make a music video. Clips for songs like “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver” have gone down in history as some of the most inventive examples of the medium ever filmed. “Mr. Krinkle” arrived a bit earlier in the band’s career, and showcased even at this stage how willing Primus was to break the hard rock/heavy metal mold. Granted, guitarist Larry LaLonde’s hair metal getup isn’t too scary, but there’s no denying that frontman Les Claypool’s pig mask is creepy AF. The song itself also just sounds foreboding, while the video also features a whole mess of random, assorted chaos erupting in the background. It’s wild stuff.

#12: “Pagan Poetry” (2001)
Björk

There’s a lot to be said about those little devils of the mind, that part of our imagination that can see things which may or may not be there in front of our face. Björk’s video clip for “Pagan Poetry” features a lot of subliminal imagery of a very explicit nature, yet these sequences are stylistically and intentionally blurred. Our minds, then, are required to connect the dots of what’s going on behind Björk’s private doors. “Pagan Poetry” was also controversial at the time for its filmed real-life piercing scenes, as well as Björk’s revealing dress designed by Alexander McQueen. The clip was banned in the U.S. right from the jump, although standards and practices eventually allowed the full, uncensored version to be aired.

#11: “Bleed” (2008)
Meshuggah

A logical, Venn Diagram situation may come to mind when discussing the creative overlap between extreme heavy metal and scary music videos. “Bleed” by Sweden’s Meshuggah isn’t just blood ‘n guts, however, but also gobs of frightening atmosphere and harrowing dread. The band’s heavy, mathematical approach to metal creates a wall of sound that backs the video’s seemingly demonic goings-on. The bondage and chains, the frantic, seizure-inducing strobe effects; it’s all there to give fans bad dreams and thensome, before the clips’s creepy final images. “Bleed” is part fairy tale, part horror movie and one-hundred-percent cool.

#10: “Breathe” (1996)
The Prodigy

Closely confined in a decrepit house that fosters the claustrophobic tone, the music video for “Breathe” uses lighting, imagery and sound design to prey upon a variety of phobias in order to garner the desired response. In addition to paint peeling off the walls in jagged chunks, alligators slithering around the floor and roaches scuttling about in the sink, The Prodigy also makes use of centipedes, rats and hair-sprouting curtains to turn up the fear factor. Then there’s also the case of the simple yet effective levitating shoe. Combined with the unsettling theatrics of Maxim and Keith Flint, “Breathe” delivers the creepy in spades.

#9: “The Perfect Drug” (1997)
Nine Inch Nails

Although we also could have gone with the music video for “Closer”, we feel the more refined approach to “The Perfect Drug” is just as scary in what it suggests rather than shows. Outfitted with enough gothic trimmings to make Tim Burton proud, Nine Inch Nails’ video for “The Perfect Drug” contains no shortage of the macabre. With Trent Reznor playing a father with substance use disorder grieving the death of his daughter, the video’s increasingly dark tone seems to suggest that his sanity is slowly withering away. As Reznor divides his time up between cuddling up with a bearskin rug and cooling off in a fog-shrouded pool, “The Perfect Drug” also offers up creepy-looking kids, vultures, and stoic servants to add to its classier style of subtle terror.

#8: “Prison Sex” (1993)
Tool

Though Tool’s video for “AEnema” would’ve been a good choice too, the video for “Prison Sex” is arguably even more terrifying for its gruesome undertones and frightening implications. As the song’s title suggests, the video explores the harsh reality of sexual assault, but also puts Tool’s own unique spin on the topic by avoiding explicit depictions of the act and focusing rather on the unbalanced power dynamic at work within it. Using a miniature white doll and a much larger and ghoulish black doll as stand-ins for the roles of victim and attacker, “Prison Sex” provides a metaphorical but no less ugly representation of a truly scary and very real subject.

#7: “Kids” (2008)
MGMT

This controversial video by MGMT is every kid’s worst nightmare come to life. With the protagonist being played by a toddler who is terrorized by people in some pretty grotesque monster costumes, you can be sure that things get more than a little uncomfortable. Aside from the fact that the monsters in the video are pretty terrifying on their own, what makes “Kids” even more frightening is the fact that the toddler’s frightened reaction to them appears to be very genuine. Combined with the lack of attention the kid’s mother gives him, the video generates an intense concern for the child’s safety, making it one scary video that you won’t forget any time soon.

#6: “Sick, Sick, Sick” (2007)
Queens of the Stone Age

Cannibalism is often considered a universal taboo. “Sick, Sick, Sick” takes a page out of Hannibal Lecter’s playbook by dressing up the consumption of human flesh as a classy and refined affair. As Queens of the Stone Age play for an elegantly-dressed woman during her dinner, the video cuts between their performance and the preparation of her meal, which happens to include human fingers. As each member of the band is carted off by a creepy masked figure, her appetite only increases and she soon discards her table manners to gorge herself. A modern retelling of many a Grimm’s fairy tale, “Sick, Sick, Sick” might make you want to consider becoming a vegetarian.

#5: “Overneath the Path of Misery” (2011) [aka “Born Villain” (2012)]
Marilyn Manson

Though “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” was also a contender, Marilyn Manson’s Shia Labeouf-directed short film, “Born Villain”, takes the singer’s knack for horror to the extreme. Beginning with an ominous scene of Manson giving two women a haircut, “Born Villain” jumps head-first into the grotesque, all to the beat of “Overneath the Path of Misery” from the singer’s 2012 album. The scene in which Manson drives a needle through the cheek of a woman and then playfully pulls it in and out before kissing her epitomizes the video’s blurring of the lines between pleasure and pain. This recurring theme is echoed in Manson’s torture of a scantily-clad patient while dressed as a surgeon, another powerful metaphor for the power dynamic of predator and prey, which, in hindsight, makes the video all the more disturbing.

#4: “One” (1988)
Metallica

A song and a video about the horrors of war, Metallica’s “One” is as grim as it is poetic in its narration of a wounded soldier’s agony. Using scenes and dialogue from the 1971 film “Johnny Got a Gun” to emphasize the song’s message, Metallica plays “One” somberly in a deserted warehouse as both the band and the film’s footage convey the unspeakable agony of a person missing their limbs and their voice who wishes for death. Describing the feeling of sheer helplessness of not being able to walk, speak or even have the strength to take your own life, “One” is even more powerful considering it tells the story of only one scarred soldier, leaving its audience to ponder how war affects the thousands it touches.

#3: “I Fink You Freaky” (2012)
Die Antwoord

A celebration of all things freaky, this music video from the controversial South African alt hip hop group revels in its subject matter and disturbing imagery. From explicit drawings on the wall to the rats and the accidental cooking of cockroaches, “I Fink U Freeky” has a fairly tongue-in-cheek style that is less about genuine horror and more about creating a sensation of unease. Furthermore, the intensity and seriousness in which Ninja and Yolandi Visser deliver their lyrics do possess an unsettling vibe, which, combined with the black-and-white pallet of the video, may make your skin crawl just a bit.

#2: “If I Had a Heart” (2008)
Fever Ray

Opening with a torch-lit boat ride through a river at night, “If I Had A Heart” establishes its gloomy tone from the beginning, which foreshadows the chilling things to come. With recurring images of witch doctors, dead bodies and suffocating shadows, Fever Ray’s ghoulish exploration of a lifeless estate is made all the more haunting by the fact that it is never made clear who or what is responsible for the massacre. The combination of its ghostly chants, gothic undertones and unnerving calm make “If I Had a Heart” all the more scary because it leaves its story open to interpretation, making it a kind of Rorschach test for its audience’s worst fears.

#1: “Come to Daddy” (1997)
Aphex Twin

Dripping with an insane and eerie atmosphere from the get-go, Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” is truly a nightmare come to life, which is both unrelenting and truly terrifying. After an elderly woman’s dog urinates on a discarded television, it comes to life with a malevolent face hungry for souls. The old woman then flees in terror only to come upon a group of frightening children whose faces are identical to Aphex Twin himself. While the gang of man-children go on a rampage through the neighborhood and terrorize whoever they come across, an inhuman monster emerges from the television and takes physical form to the children’s delight. He also proceeds to scare the you-know-what out of the old woman and just about everyone watching.

Which music video scared the crap out of YOU? Let us know in the comments!