Top Psychological Thrillers to Watch After Halloween

Even though Halloween is over, it's never too late to curl up on a cold, rainy night and watch a few cult favorites that will get into your head and scare the pants off of you!

By far The Shining starring Jack Nicholson is one of the most watched suspense movies of all time. Jack plays a husband who accepts a caretaker position at an isolated hotel in the mountains, taking his wife and son with him. While the setting is at first beautiful and picturesque, it isn't long before the isolation starts to take its toll on Jack who starts hallucinating and seeing the former caretaker who murdered his family in the hotel many years before. As the movie races through the hallways of the deserted hotel, you watch Jack's descent into madness while gripping the edge of your seat.

A relative newcomer in the category of campy, badly acted, yet addicting horror films is Session 9, set in the abandoned wilderness of the Danvers State Hospital. The cast includes David Caruso from CSI and Josh Lucas of Sweet Home Alabama and A Beautiful Mind, as well as a few other lesser known actors who play a crew of Hazmat workers hired to remove the asbestos from the abandoned hospital in preparation for redevelopment. The movie takes its title from the final installment of reel to reel tapes found in the basement that document the therapy sessions of a patient with multiple personalities. The hospital begins to claim the Hazmat team as its own as each one falls to the madness within her walls.

The story of Susannah Kaysen's time at McLean Hospital is documented in Girl, Interrupted starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. While not a horror or suspense film in the typical sense, the movie takes you along an eerie, most depressing path as you watch Susannah struggle to come to terms with her life behind the walls of the fictional "Claymoor Hospital".

Another true and disturbing story of madness is the 1960's classic tale of Sybil, young woman afflicted with 17 multiple personalities. In the beginning of her career, Sally Fields plays Sybil who begins experiencing large periods of lost time. She can't account for where she was or what she was doing at the time and it's only when she decides to see a therapist that she discovers her mind and body have been taken over by multiple personalities.

1408 starring John Cusack artfully blends psychological terror with slam bang pee in your pants, pinch your boyfriend's arm scream moments. Cusack plays a soon to be washed up writer who pens guides to haunted buildings. He makes arrangements to stay in Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel where there have been any number of unexplained deaths and suicides. His character, much like Jack Nicholson's in The Shining is eventually consumed with isolation and starts hallucinating.

Finally, for anyone with an interest in the mystery and suspense related to religion, Stigmata starring Patrica Arquette and Gabriel Byrne is a fantastic, frantic journey through a young woman's torment by the wounds of the Stigmata, one of the oldest marks of religious fervor and occasionally of possession.

If you feel like a good post-Halloween scare, head out and rent these flicks, add them to your Netflix queue, or check them out on your cable's On Demand!