2021 Film Was Just Ranked the 'Most Terrifying Horror Movie of the Last Five Years'
Within the past few years, the horror genre has seen immense success, with audiences and critics celebrating newer films likeSinners(2025), Weapons(2025), and Talk to Me (2022). However, just because a horror film is acclaimed, it doesn't mean it has the most scares.
Collider recently highlighted some of the most horrifying movies that came out after 2021 by releasing a list of "the 7 most terrifying horror movies of the last 5 years." The ranking featured spooky films like The Black Phone from 2021, 2022's Barbarian, and When Evil Lurks, released in 2023.
The publication named the 2021 film The Sadness as the "most terrifying horror movie of the last 5 years." According to Collider, the movie takes viewers on an intense and upsetting journey, as the protagonists Jim (Berant Zhu) and Kat (Regina Lei) face off against those who have caught a virus that promotes the act of murder.
The Sadness has a score of 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 68 on Metacritic.
The Director & Writer of 'The Sadness' Shared How He Came up With the Film's Upsetting Concept
The director and writer of The Sadness, Rob Jabbaz, discussed how the idea for the movie came about in a 2022 interview on the Horror Movies and Beyond podcast. He explained that the film's financier "wanted to make a pandemic horror movie," which focused on zombies. However, Jabbaz wanted the movie to have a "more interesting concept" and eventually got some inspiration from the horror comic book series, Crossed, written and drawn by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows.
Jabbaz explained that the infected from the comics "were trying to just harm [victims] for the sadistic pleasure." He said while he initially felt hesitant about "appropriating" the monsters in Crossed for his film, he "started thinking like, 'Well no one says that The Walking Dead is a rip-off of like Night of the Living Dead."
"It's just the same monster," continued the filmmaker during the podcast interview.
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This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 12:08 PM.