7 Famous Movies That Gave Gen Z Permanent Anxiety

For Gen Z, life has been full of unprecedented events and developments in the world around them in the early 21st century. Everything from living through a pandemic to trends to technological advancements and political shifts, the so-called Zoomers are a generation who has seen a lot. This also includes movies, many of which reflect the world and the times to particularly disturbing effect. This is especially true for the horror genre that often taps into some of the bigger anxieties and questions of society and culture in frequently dark or disturbing ways.

While past generations have their share of disturbing horror movie classics to call their own, it is especially true for Gen Z. Some of the 21st century’s biggest horror hits have left Gen Z shaken with their effectiveness to continually unsettle and terrify. Additionally, there have also been other major box office hits that have blurred the line between horror, psychological thriller, and everything in between, and have also produced some all-timers on the fronts of chilling and scaring Zoomers, leaving a whole generation with permanent anxiety. Here are seven big 21st century hits that Gen Z has been shaken to its collective core by.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

The found footage horror movie phenomenon skyrocketed to new heights with 2009’s sleeper hit Paranormal Activity. When young couple Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat begin experiencing bizarre hauntings at night, Micah sets up a camera to try to observe their supernatural menace. Produced for just $15,000 and set entirely in the couple’s house, Paranormal Activity‘s miniscule resources only enhance its terror with director Oren Peli’s deft command of delivering found footage scares.

Paranormal Activity builds the demonic entity’s threat gradually, with sounds going bump in the night that eventually graduate to doors slamming shut and Katie being pulled out of bed by an invisible force. The ending (changed from Peli’s originally filmed conclusion at the suggestion of Steven Spielberg himself) takes the entity’s menace to its most overt, and while the final scene is the move’s most polarizing scare, Paranormal Activity nonetheless frightened audiences to tremendous acclaim and box office success in the fall of 2009. The success of Paranormal Activity launched the eponymous franchise and made found footage horror movies all the rage for years to come after its surprise success, and it remains a Halloween found footage favorite.

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

While 2013’s The Purge first introduced a night where rules of civilized society are thrown out the window and even murder becomes legal, its 2014 follow-up The Purge: Anarchy really showed how effective a premise it is for a horror movie. Set in a dystopian future after the United States has been remodeled by the New Founding Fathers of America, The Purge: Anarchy follows a collection of characters stranded outdoors in downtown Los Angeles on Purge Night. With 12 hours of chaos unfolding around them, the group must survive the night with the unexpected protection of Leon Barnes (Frank Grillo), a mysterious man with his own vendetta to settle on Purge Night.

The Purge: Anarchy greatly expands the scope of Purge Night from the home invasion tale of its predecessor with a spine-tingling survival story of its characters just barely keeping ahead of the carnage unfolding outdoors. The movie also adds a grey area to its political themes and satire in Leo Barnes’ revenge mission, rooted in very understandable human pain and loss. The Purge franchise excels at putting its audience in the shoes of its characters on a night where chaos reigns, and The Purge: Anarchy stands as one of its strongest installments as well as the movie that arguably truly jumpstarted The Purge franchise.

[RELATED: The Purge 6 Star Claims Hopeful Sequel Will Definitively End the Franchise]

Midsommar (2019)

As a studio, A24 has become synonymous with art house horror movies, with Ari Aster’s Midsommar being one of the studio’s crowning achievements of unnerving audiences. Midsommar follows college student Dani (Florence Pugh) as she accompanies her aloof boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) on a trip to Swedish village as part of his friend’s Masters Thesis. As the group partakes in the small community’s midsummer festival, a series of increasingly bizarre events makes clear that this is far from a simple summer vacation for the group.

Consistently awash in bright, vibrant summer daylight and gorgeous Scandinavian scenery, Midsommear is a slow burn of a group of outsiders coming to realize they’ve wandered into a cult’s sacrificial ritual. While Midsommar is full of unsettling deaths and disturbing imagery, the movie’s real impact lies in its tale of Dani and Christian’s deteriorating romance finally coming undone in the worst situation possible. The final act of Midsommar plays as the most horrifying break-up imaginable, with Florence Pugh’s performance as the distraught and heartbroken Dani elevating the movie to a modern horror classic.

Joker (2019)

Todd Phillips’ Joker creates a new origin story for The Clown Prince of Crime as Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a Gotham City clown for hire who is constantly bullied and berated by his fellow denizens of the city. After Arthur kills some subway attackers in self-defense, he inadvertently starts a popular uprising in Gotham with the city’s downtrodden inspired by him. Despite controversy before its release that it would inspire mass shootings, Joker became a cultural phenomenon, as did Phoenix’s performance as Fleck.

In Joker, many saw a society of haves and have-nots reflective of the real world, with Arthur Fleck’s fall into homicidal villainy a cautionary tale of the dangers of society leaving its most vulnerable out in the cold. Fleck doesn’t properly become Joker until relatively late in the movie, with his on camera interview with talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) a disturbing descent into madness. The failure of 2024’s follow-up Joker: Folie a Deux may well be testimony to Joker being a lightning in a bottle case of unnerving social commentary.

The Lighthouse (2019)

The sophomore directorial effort of Robert Eggers, 2019’s The Lighthouse sees incoming lighthouse keeper Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) partnered with decidedly eccentric former sailor Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). The largely two-man show of The Lighthouse is a suspenseful tale of isolation as Winslow is gradually taken in by Wake’s bizarre ways as he simultaneously develops cabin fever in being trapped with such an off-kilter associate. When a storm causes Winslow to be trapped even longer with Wake, his sanity only continues to fall apart with visions of a mysterious mermaid bedeviling him.

Pattinson and Dafoe each give gripping performances as Winslow and Wake, while the movie’s black-and-white cinematography adds an aura of both mystery and foreboding atmosphere to the tale of the movie’s two increasingly unhinged main characters. The Lighthouse ends on a note that is as disturbing as it is ambiguous, while also pointing the way to what has become a vibrant directorial career for Robert Eggers.

Terrifier 2 (2022)

While Art the Clown had gradually built up a reputation as the scariest clown around with 2016’s underground hit Terrifier, the 2022 sequel Terrifier 2 finally made him an iconic slasher movie villain. Set sometime after the first Terrifier, Terrifier 2 follows Art the Clown (David Howard Thorton) on his latest Halloween night killing spree, with the young heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) fleeing Art’s pursuit. As anyone who has seen it can attest, Terrifier 2 is easily one of the bloodiest, most violent movies ever put to film, and Art’s sadistic glee at butchering his victims makes it all the more disturbing.

Art’s exceptionally graphic kills include Terrifier 2‘s infamous bedroom scene, and one unlucky boyfriend on the receiving end of a particularly nasty bit of dismemberment. At 138 minutes Terrifier 2 is a little longer than it needs to be, which makes the final showdown in an abandoned amusement park a bit of a slog (the equally violent Terrifier is a comparative a walk in the park at 85 minutes), but it nonetheless set in motion what has arguably become Hollywood’s reigning slasher movie franchise. Terrifier 2‘s success brought Art the Clown home for the holidays in 2024’s Terrifier 3, with Art to return in the forthcoming Terrifier 4.

Smile 2 (2024)

2022’s horror movie hit Smile set a new mythos in motion of a demonic entity driving one victim insane before hopping to a new one, and the 2024 sequel Smile 2 actively improves on an already strong start. In Smile 2, pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is prepping for a comeback tour following a terrible car accident and subsequent time in drug rehab, but after witnessing the death of the entity’s latest victim, Skye finds herself haunted by a smiling demon causing her to lose her mind. Smile director Parker Finn returns to helm Smile 2, and delivers both a terrifying supernatural horror movie and a heartbreaking tale of a star’s downward spiral.

Naomi Scott gives an electrifying performance as the troubled Skye Riley, a young woman overwhelmed by the pressures of the success she spent years pursuing and undone by a series of bad coping mechanisms. Even without the entity haunting her, Skye is trapped in a bad situation of handlers trying to shove her back onstage when she clearly isn’t ready to return to the spotlight. Smile 2 also ends on a shocking twist that sets up the entity’s return in Smile 3 as one of truly apocalyptic proportions, all predicated on the sinister smile that is the Smile franchise’s terrifying trademark.