The time between Christmas vacation and Spring Break can feel like an eternity for most students and parents alike. The dregs of winter finally give way to warmth and sunshine, and yes, a vacation.
But no matter how well planned, inevitably something will go wrong. Maybe your family with fight. Maybe a flight gets delayed or the hotel gets overbooked. For some, well, be thankful you don’t end up struggling to survive.
Here are eleven horror movies where vacations go so wrong, you’ll never complain about a minor inconvenience again.
Four friends decide what they need is to get away from the city, their jobs, their wives, and their kids. They pack up and head out on a canoe into rural Georgia. But the locals don’t appreciate tourists and attack the group as soon as they arrive.
Pursued by a backwoods madman hellbent on violence, reeling from the initial attack, the men are forced into dangerous rapids as they desperately fight to survive.
When five college students (Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchinson, Kristen Connolly, Jesse Williams, Fran Kranz) decide to take a vacation, a remote cabin in the woods seems like the ideal place to disconnect.
And it would have been. Except for the backwoods zombies.
As their friends start dying, the remaining group discovers that there’s more to the zombies than they first thought. If they want to survive, they need to untangle the layers of manipulation hidden in the woods.
Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) travel to visit their friend’s hometown in rural Sweden. The town might be small, but it’s known for its midsummer festival. At first, it’s the perfect vacation.
But the couple soon finds themselves swept into a competition that becomes increasingly violent and more bizarre. And worse, it’s all thanks to a pagan cult.
Accidentally shooting a man was not what college student Bert (James DeBello) planned on his vacation. Panicked, he leaves the man not knowing two things.
One, that he had a skin infection. And two, that he would fall into a reservoir and infect the drinking water.
Soon Bert and his friends are struggling to stop a flesh-eating contagion while running from the man’s backwoods kin out for revenge.
Charlie (Dan Stevens), his wife Michelle (Alison Brie), his brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White), and his girlfriend (Sheila Vand) rent a house on the Oregon Coast to getaway for the weekend.
Everything is perfect, until they find the hidden camera. Unsure who is watching them, they try to leave, only to discover that the camera is only the beginning.
Richard (Nick Frost) isn’t looking for an ordinary vacation to entertain his wife (Aisling Bea) and their two teenage kids (Sebastian Croft & Maisie Ayres).
Two hundred years ago, the island of Svalta was quarantined by the British and the people were left to starve, resulting in some turning to cannibalism to survive.
Every year, the residents hold a play to honor the memory. Outsiders aren’t welcome. But this year is different. It’ll be a celebration to remember—if anyone survives.
To deal with the difficulty of being separated, Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca Cappa (Vicky Krieps) take their two children to a tropical resort. They all agree to a day at a secluded beach with several other guests.
But they’ve barely began to enjoy a relaxing day on the beach when they all make a horrifying discovery: they’re aging. If they can’t escape the beach, they’ll all experience the rest of their lives in a single day. And then die.
Bob Carter (Ted Levine) and his wife (Kathleen Quinlan) are traveling across the country to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary with their three children and their families.
But when they stop at a gas station and decide to take the faster route suggested by the attendant, their vacation turns into a deadly struggle to survive against cannibalistic mutants in the middle of the desert.
All Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) wants is a good night’s sleep before her job interview. But when she arrives at the Airbnb she booked for the trip, she isn’t the only guest in the house.
Charmed by Keith (Bill Skarsgård) after he offers to sleep on the couch, she decides to stay. What began as worry about a strange man escalates into a fear that there is something much darker lurking inside the house.
On a tropical vacation after getting scuba-diving certified, couple Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) go on a group dive. While underwater, they get separated from the rest of the group.
But when an incorrect count leaves them stranded in the middle of the ocean with sharks lurking beneath them, their odds of survival dwindle with every passing hour.
Brother and sister, Darry (Justin Long) and Trish (Gina Philips) are on a routine road trip heading home from college when they stop at an abandoned church. In the basement, they make a discovery that sends them running to the highway.
But it’s too late. What they found has marked them as prey. And now they’re in a race for their literal lives.