Oh no, there has been discourse. Again. Not the discourse! It concerns Timothée Chalamet, who was made out to be the closest thing the 2026 Oscar race/circus had to a villain, since he clearly wanted to win Best Actor for his role in Marty Supreme, and that movie saw him playing someone with a massive ego and a kind of self-destructive confidence. Chalamet seemed to play that up in the lead-up to the film, and then after the film’s release, too, since he got a Best Actor nomination and might’ve even felt like the front-runner, for a time. Michael B. Jordan ultimately won for Sinners, though, and you might have a preference between the two, but both were good; either would’ve been deserving.
Chalamet did make headlines for speaking out against opera and ballet, though, in a moment that was probably blown a little out of proportion… and it went unnoticed for a while, since the “offending” video was on 21 February, and people were only really speaking about the opera and ballet comments about two weeks later. As this article points out, voting closed before the backlash really began. It’s true that Chalamet made those comments before voting closed (on March 5, 2026), but that backlash really only picked up over the subsequent couple of days. The interview, if seen by voters, could well have turned some voters off from voting for Chalamet, but the explosive discourse and social media backlash couldn’t have contributed. Anyway, it’s a bit silly, and so is this article, which is about ballet or opera-related horror movies, plus a couple of movies that are nightmarish without being full-on horror flicks. If Chalamet is to be haunted by his comments (he probably won’t be; he’ll be just fine, since Dune: Part Three is coming out later this year), maybe these movies would also prove similarly haunting or something.
8
‘Abigail’ (2024)
There’s a good bit of schlock to be found in Abigail, but it’s the right kind of schlock, for the most part. The horror is paired with comedy for sure, since the premise is high-concept in nature. Some criminals kidnap a young ballerina who’s the daughter of a well-known mob boss, and they hold her ransom in the hope of collecting some serious money from the whole thing, but then it turns out… eh, it’s not really a spoiler… turns out she’s a vampire.
So she’s not all that young, and she’s a whole lot more dangerous than initially appeared. It’s a vampire girl vs. a bunch of kidnappers, and if that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, then you can probably stay away from Abigail. Also, the ballet stuff is admittedly minimal here, but relevant enough for the premise (and some of the visuals, blood splattering on a white dress and all) to make Abigail worthy of inclusion here.
7
‘Opera’ (1987)
Opera involves a series of murders happening in and around an opera house, so maybe that title is on the nose, but it works. And also, Opera is pretty operatic, being heightened and intentionally over-the-top the way many giallo movies are. Reality schmeality, because these horror movies don’t care much about being grounded, and Dario Argento is up there among the most well-known filmmakers linked to the giallo genre for good reason.
There’s one other film of his that’s even more iconic, in terms of horror movies that revolve around opera or ballet in some way, but Opera (1987) is still very much worth watching if you like this kind of horror movie and/or Argento’s style, and haven’t seen it yet. Dario Argento really goes for it and doesn’t hold back, as per usual (at least in his better films), and the unique setting here goes a long way toward making Opera memorable.
6
‘Annette’ (2021)
So, finding numerous horror movies about ballet and opera was a little tough, so for this spot and the next one, you’re just going to have to put up with one nightmarish movie about opera that’s not really a horror movie, and one fever-dream-like movie about ballet that’s also not really a horror movie. Yes, yes, the title contradicts this, but the task was tricky. And also, for what it’s worth, there are enough creepy and unsettling parts of Annette to ensure it’s a more unnerving watch than some actual horror movies.
At its core, Annette is a musical about a stand-up comedian and an opera singer who have a baby together, and then things get weird. Actually, things are weird before they have a baby, but things get noticeably weirder afterward. The baby’s a puppet, the stand-up comedy is terrible, it was written by Sparks, directed by Leos Carax, and features one of the most intense performances Adam Driver has given. It’s a nightmare in mostly intentional ways… maybe? It’s hard to say for sure. What’s easy to say is this: there’s nothing else out there quite like Annette, for better or worse.
5
‘The Red Shoes’ (1948)
It only feels like a bit of a stretch to call The Red Shoes kind of horrific, since it does for ballet what Annette did for opera, in terms of being psychologically intense and also surprisingly unsettling. It’s about a young up-and-coming ballerina who is torn between pursuing her career and dedicating herself to a romantic relationship, with the pressures of doing both at the same time threatening to cause a total psychological breakdown.
It’s not quite a musical, even if it has some stunning (and sort of surreal) dance numbers, and it’s also not quite a horror movie, even if parts of it prove very troubling and even haunting. It’s hard to forget certain sequences of The Red Shoes, and it’s that factor – plus the intense psychological drama at its core – that ensures it’s one of the most haunting non-horror movies out there. If you wanted to call it horrifying, you’ve got plenty of ammunition here to back up such a point of view.
4
‘The Phantom of the Opera’ (1925)
The Phantom of the Opera has been retold and re-imagined a fair few times throughout cinema history, but for present purposes, it’s only the first film adaptation being mentioned here. Okay, there was one other, from 1916 (a German film), but it’s now lost, so The Phantom of the Opera (1925) is, for now, as far back as things go, with this adaptation made only 15 years on from the publication of Gaston Leroux’s novel of the same name.
It’s a horror classic, and you can look beyond subsequent adaptations to see the true influence both the original story and this 1925 film have had.
It’s about a murderous and mysterious man who loves a woman who’s trying to become a star within the world of opera, and he does murderous things to try and speed up that whole process. It’s a horror classic, and you can look beyond subsequent adaptations to see the true influence both the original story and this 1925 film have had (take 1974’s The Phantom of the Paradise, for example).
3
‘Suspiria’ (1977)
Before Opera, Dario Argento also made Suspiria, and this is deservedly considered his most iconic film. It takes place at a dance academy, and the main character is a young American woman who goes there (it’s located in West Germany) to further study ballet. And it’s a horror movie, so the dance academy has some weird secrets buried within it, and so things get strange, to put it mildly.
Call it style over substance if you want, but the style in Suspiria (1977) ends up being more than enough, since this is easily up there among the best-looking horror movies ever made. There isn’t a ton of dancing, truth be told, but it’s got that dance academy setting, which makes it technically ballet-related, and it’s most certainly a horror film (more than some of the already-mentioned movies), so it fits here pretty neatly.
2
‘Suspiria’ (2018)
So, while only one version of The Phantom of the Opera has been included here, it feels worth highlighting the 2018 version of Suspiria as well as the 1977 version, since both are very different. There’s a strange dance academy here, and various supernatural occurrences that happen at an increasingly intense rate, but so much of the story and feel in this more recent Suspiria differ.
It’s a great deal longer, and it’s also potentially worth highlighting as “better” for present purposes because there’s more by way of dancing in the 2018 version of Suspiria than the 1977 one. It’s a good deal more graphic and shocking, too, albeit a whole lot more patiently paced, which could rub some people the wrong way. It’s not as gleefully relentless, nor quite as beautiful visually speaking, as the original, but then again, it is largely trying to be its own thing.
1
‘Black Swan’ (2010)
Probably the easiest movie to include here, Black Swan is kind of the definitive horror movie about ballet, even if The Red Shoes (again, more nightmarish and psychologically intense than outright horror-focused) stands as the ultimate movie about ballet overall. Black Swan is about a ballerina going to great lengths to be perfect, or as dangerously close to it as possible, with the whole film depicting her psychologically unraveling from the whole ordeal.
It stands out most of all because of Natalie Portman’s Oscar-winning performance, which is up there among the best in relatively recent memory, but it’s also striking as a horror movie in ways that go beyond the acting, too. Maybe “exciting” isn’t the perfect word to use, but Black Swan is persistently engaging and intense, and truly succeeds in being genuinely harrowing and psychologically devastating, where it counts.
