The 50 best serial killer movies

Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.

A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.

A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action.

A secretary on the run for embezzlement takes refuge at a secluded California motel owned by a repressed man and his overbearing mother.

Between 1968 and 1983, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree.

A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

Five friends head out to rural Texas to visit the grave of a grandfather. On the way they stumble across what appears to be a deserted house, only to discover something sinister within. Something armed with a chainsaw.

Struggling to recover emotionally from a brutal assault that killed her fiancé and left her in a coma, a radio personality begins a quest for vengeance against the perpetrators that leaves a bloody trail across New York City.

Arriving in Chicago, Henry moves in with ex-con acquaintance Otis and starts schooling him in the ways of the serial killer.

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.

A well-respected businessman is sometimes controlled by his murder and mayhem-loving alter ego.

In a small Korean province in 1986, two detectives struggle with the case of multiple young women being found raped and murdered by an unknown culprit.

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

A criminal, shoots and kills a painting restorer during a bungled burglary, and shoots her daughter as well. Twenty years later, the daughter has been left mute and with a mental age of a child, spending most of her time in a mental home.

A retiring police detective pledges to catch the killer of a young child.

A retired FBI agent with psychological gifts is assigned to help track down "The Tooth Fairy", a mysterious serial killer. Aiding him is imprisoned forensic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter.

A serial murderer is strangling women with a necktie. The London police have a suspect, but he is the wrong man.

Based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, a Daytona Beach prostitute who became a serial killer.

A secret agent exacts revenge on a serial killer through a series of captures and releases.

During the 1980s, Soviet authorities hunt for a serial killer who picks his victims in railway stations and commuter trains and lures them into the woods.

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

Former FBI profiler Will Graham returns to service to pursue a deranged serial killer dubbed "the Tooth Fairy" by the media.

Mortimer Brewster, a Brooklyn writer of books on the futility of marriage, risks his reputation after he decides to tie the knot. Things grow complicated when he learns that his beloved maiden aunts Abby and Martha are serial murderers.

Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his "death proof" cars to execute his murderous plans.

The legendary tale of a barber who returns from wrongful imprisonment to 1840s London, bent on revenge for the rape and death of his wife, and resumes his trade while forming a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett.