Wisconsin horror movies ranked from barely scary to truly terrifying
Wisconsin horror movies ranked from barely scary to truly terrifying
Caden Perry, Milwaukee Journal SentinelTue, October 20, 2026 at 10:03 AM UTC
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If you're looking for something to watch this Halloween season, there are more than a few scary movies with Wisconsin ties to add to your list.
Wisconsin's horror staples range from animated romps like "Monster House" to terrifying tales like "Deranged," directly inspired by real-life Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. To sort Wisconsin horror movies from tame to terrifying, this list used IMDb content rating descriptions to determine the most disturbing details.
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Here’s a look at horror movies with Wisconsin connections, from barely scary to very scary.
Monster House (2006)
MPAA rating: PGIMDb content rating: Mild
“Monster House” is an animated movie about a house that quite literally devours people. While it has some intense images here and there, the animation style does a lot to soften the scariness.
Rob Schrab, a co-writer on the movie, was born and raised in Mayville, Wisconsin, a city of about 5,000 people in Dodge County. Schrab has previously said his hometown was a direct inspiration for the setting in "Monster House."
The movie is set in a community called Mayville, but a specific state isn't named.
Bog (1979)
MPAA rating: PGIMDb content rating: Mild
The simply titled movie "Bog" was filmed in Oneida County, around Harshaw, Minocqua and Lake Tomahawk, according to a Wisconsin Life article from 2018.
“Bog” has a reputation as a B-movie and the scare factor meets that mark. Dynamite fishers awaken a swamp monster from its slumber, starting a chain of revenge that terrorizes a small lake town while local police try to keep the horrors under wraps.
The lake monster is crude and most on-screen kills are close-ups of screaming faces followed by hard cuts to actors playing dead.
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“Bog is sort of on the line of so bad it’s funny,” movie critic John Kenneth Muir told Wisconsin Life. “I love to champion regional, independent, low-budget filmmaking. At the same time, as a critic, I look at quality and I say it’s not very good. But if you want to give an A for effort, you know they tried.”
The IMDb content guide for "Monster House" had a higher sensitive content rating in every category. “Bog,” however, outshines every other movie here with its Wisconsin factor. It features musky fishing, gruffy beer-drinking outdoorsmen and a whole lot of Northwoods scenery about.
Nearby Rhinelander has its own swamp monster, the Hodag, which was snubbed from "Bog" in favor of a more swamp monster-style creature. There are a few Hodag movies like “Backwoods Bloodbath," "The Hodag" and upcoming “HODAG: The Movie."
The Pit (1981)
MPAA rating: RIMDb content rating: Moderate
“The Pit” was filmed in Beaver Dam and the titular pit scenes were filmed in Waupun. It features a creepy child who feeds his enemies to a pit filled with monsters, according to the IMDb synopsis.
The child exhibits also creeps on his babysitter and comfortably confides in his childhood teddy bear about his sinister ideas.
Victims of the pit are thoroughly torn apart and you can see the monsters pass various bloody body parts around the pit.
The Bye Bye Man (2017)
MPAA rating: PG-13IMDb content rating: Moderate
The premise of “The Bye Bye Man” is similar to the urban legend of Bloody Mary, where thinking or saying the Bye Bye Man’s name curses that person to death.
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It features typical slasher film violence as the victims are slain and slay others. Viewers say an unrated cut of the film ups the ante and would likely be closer to an R-rated film if it had a wide release in theaters.
Both the original short story and the film are set in Madison and nearby Sun Prairie. However, filming for “The Bye Bye Man” was done outside Cleveland, Ohio.
The Beast of Bray Road (2005)
MPAA rating: RIMDb content rating: Severe
Bray Road in Walworth County is widely considered Wisconsin's most haunted road, primarily because of a werewolf tale that emerged from Elkhorn in the 1980s.
“The Beast of Bray Road” turns the rural Wisconsin werewolf legend into an on-screen gorefest. Bodies are mangled by animal teeth and claws, with effects that are relatively high quality for a direct-to-video movie.
While Bray Road is a real place, “The Beast of Bray Road” was filmed on a stage in Los Angeles.
Backrooms (2026)
MPAA rating: RIMDb content rating: Moderate to Severe
“Backrooms” is not set in Wisconsin in any way, but it would not exist without some Wisconsin-based inspiration.
The idea for the movie started with a picture taken of an Oshkosh Hobbytown in 2003. After it was used by users of “creepypasta” online message boards years later, “Backrooms” director Kane Parsons put the image in his 2022 YouTube series that he later turned into the feature film.
“Backrooms” includes some violence as the characters explore the reality-breaking backrooms. But for many people, the scarier aspect of the movie is the backrooms themselves. The infinite liminal spaces are intense and follows few rules, if any at all.
Deranged (1974)
MPAA rating: RIMDb content rating: Severe
“Deranged” is a fitting title for this movie, loosely based on the true story of Ed Gein, an infamous serial killer who lived in Plainfield.
The film depicts several grotesque murders at the hands of Ezra Cobb in the Midwest countryside. Cobb’s murders all reference Gein’s actual killings like dressing a body like a game deer, exhuming cemetery corpses and creating trinkets from body parts, though some details in “Deranged” drift away from the real Ed Gein story.
There’s an extended cut of the movie that shows Cobb removing a victim's brain. The scene had to be cut in the original showing to earn an R rating and theater distribution, according to the American Film Institute.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
MPAA rating: RIMDb content rating: Severe
A remake of George Romero's 1978 film, Zack Snyder and James Gunn’s “Dawn of the Dead” is set in Milwaukee, though much of it was filmed in Canada.
The movie is especially gory as zombification spares nobody, all succumbing in a bloody fashion that Hollywood Reporter said “left the numbed viewer in a zombie-like stupor” when the film was released.
It's also a memorable piece of zombie media, "Dawn of the Dead," along with other zombie movies like "Resident Evil," "28 Days Later" and "Shaun of the Dead" helped to establish many of the recurring tropes that continue to be used today.
A sudden outbreak causes mass panic? A random assortment of survivors need to work together? A hidden zombie bite dooms unfortunate victims? “Dawn of the Dead” was among the first to do it – and with Milwaukee as the backdrop.
Honorable mentions
American Psycho (2000)doesn't have an obvious Wisconsin connection, but Patrick Bateman, the main character played by Christian Bale, purportedly quotes Ed Gein to his colleagues. But the quote isn't from Gein and actually belongs to serial killer Ed Kemper.
Psycho Killer (2026) is the newest film in this collection. The directorial debut from Gavin Polone tracks the Satanic Slasher across the West Coast and Midwest. There is a brief reference when the Satanic Slasher is said to have fled to Wisconsin briefly before the killings returned in another state.
The Domestics (2018)is more action than horror. The post-apocalypse film follows a couple trying to navigate across the Midwest to Milwaukee to reunite with family.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin horror movies ranked from barely scary to truly terrifying
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