Modern Hollywoods foremost experimenter, Steven Soderbergh, has a new movie out this week, and its all about ghosts. Presence, his excellent new film and his first real foray into the horror genre, is shot entirely from the perspective of a ghost who inhabits a house where a new family has moved in. In the hands of nearly any other director, this kind of formal experiment could feel like a gimmick at best or, at worst, a movie-ruining annoyance but instead Soderbergh integrates it so effectively and smoothly that it feels like the most natural way to tell this story. Soderbergh carefully allows the camera-ghost to become a character at exactly the right times; otherwise, he lets the concept rest and relies on the movies fantastic script and family drama.So, in honor of Soderberghs achievement in ghostly innovation, it got us thinking about ghosts as a subgenre of horror, and all of the fascinating and inventive cinematic storytelling filmmakers have used to tell evocative ghost stories. You can probably think of a few movies that fit the bill off the top of your head: Theres The Sixth Sense and Paranormal Activity, even Field of Dreams if youre willing to stretch a little. But the well runs much deeper than those few movies. Here are some of our favorite unique ghost movies, each of which does something a little different with the genre.Carnival of SoulsDirector: Herk HarveyCast: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney BergerWhere watch: Prime VideoThis film follows Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), a young woman who survives a tragic car accident only to find herself pursued by a ghostly spirit with haunting eyes and a stark white face. Aside from just the spirit, Marys also inexplicably drawn to an abandoned carnival, which she finds herself constantly drifting toward for seemingly no reason at all.Carnival of Souls is an utterly strange and inescapably haunting classic, but the reason it belongs on this list is how quietly and effectively it slips ghostliness into the film. The ghosts in Carnival of Souls arent just haunting, theyre watchful and almost unnoticed, slipping eerily through crowds before doing something tangible, like reaching out and touching Mary before shes even seen them. Watching it now, over 62 years after its release, Carnival of Souls feels both recognizable, in how deeply it influenced not just ghost movies but the horror genre as a whole, and also still somehow surprisingly unique. While its inspirations are felt throughout the genre, its not quite like any movie thats come since.Lake MungoDirector: Joel AndersonCast: Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin SharpeWhere to watch: Prime VideoLake Mungo is a found-footage film that tells the story of the Palmer family, whose 16-year-old daughter Alice drowns in the Australian lake that gives the movie its title. A few days after Alices funeral, the family begins hearing strange noises and waking up to bizarre occurrences in their house each morning. Alices older brother Matthew sets up a video camera to see whats going on, and the family realizes Alice seems to have returned to their home as a ghost they just cant figure out how or why.Theres no shortage of found-footage ghost movies, but few of them engage as meaningfully or interestingly with either concept as Lake Mungo does. What makes it unique is how actively it engages with both the faults of memory and the faults of film itself. Its constantly grappling with the ways that footage could be doctored or altered, and what it might mean for the supernatural to interact with digital manipulation. For the viewer, it also means a constant questioning of what were seeing in this pseudo-documentary is real and what isnt. The result is a film, much like Presence, that uses its ghostly subgenre to tell a deeply moving story about families and the secrets that pull them together and apart.Classic ghost moviesOf course, theres much more to the wider cinematic world of ghosts than just the strange and unique movies weve listed above. While the goal of this main list is to shed light on a few films you may not have seen, or that may have been doing something out of the ordinary, were certainly not immune to the classics either. With that in mind, here are five all-time ghost movie classics, in case the other five in this story werent enough to cure your paranormal curiosity.The HauntingWhere to watch: Rentable on Apple TV and Amazon Prime VideoPoltergeistWhere to watch: Paramount PlusThe ChangelingWhere to watch: Shudder, PeacockThe ShiningWhere to watch: Rentable on Apple TV and Amazon Prime VideoHouseWhere to watch: Max, Criterion ChannelKwaidanDirector: Masaki KobayashiCast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentar Mikuni, Tetsur TambaWhere to watch: MaxKwaidan is unique on this list in that it doesnt tell a single narrative story, but rather is made up of four different ghostly short stories. One short story tells the tale of an unfaithful swordsman, another of a man who makes a promise to a spirit, another of a musician who plays songs for the court of a long-dead emperor, and another of a man who sees someone elses face in a teacup.Kwaidan is both the easiest and hardest movie on this list to recommend. This isnt due to the movies quality its outstanding but rather due to the amorphousness of its influence and uniqueness. Its not just hard to imagine what this subgenre of horror might look like without Kwaidan, its downright impossible. The movies haunting tone and camerawork and the distinctive style with which each of its tales is told have seeped down into the very foundation of horror films and become inextricable from the films we love today which is reason enough to include it here.The Devils BackboneDirector: Guillermo del ToroCast: Fernando Tielve, Eduardo Noriega, Federico LuppiWhere to watch: Rentable on Apple TV or Amazon Prime VideoThe Devils Backbone is about an orphanage in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. One day, an orphan named Carlos arrives and begins to meet the other residents of the orphanage and explore its secrets. While most people might think the orphanages most interesting treasure is the cache of loyalist gold hidden somewhere on the grounds, Carlos finds himself more fascinated with (and terrified of) the ghostly boy who lurks the buildings halls at night.Many movies include ghosts as something other than malevolent spirits, enough that its a category that absolutely necessitates a place on this list, but what makes del Toros version of this narrative so compelling in The Devils Backbone is how elegantly he weaves them into the story and tone of the movie. The Spain of this movie feels constantly haunted by the recent past, and troubled by the wounds of its violence a literal bomb sits in the orphanages courtyard, unexploded but always threatening. Del Toro makes a ghostly presence in this place feel natural, like you couldnt imagine somewhere this terrifying not having a ghost in it. Its at once a more hopeful and haunting kind of ghost story than anything else on this list.PulseDirector: Kiyoshi KurosawaCast: Kumiko As, Haruhiko Kato, KoyukiWhere to watch: MaxThis 2001 masterpiece from Japanese horror legend Kiyoshi Kurosawa is perhaps the scariest movie on this list. Pulse follows several people in Japan whose dealings with computers, and time spent on the burgeoning internet, allow them to watch the slow tumble of ghosts into the real world. These ghosts take the place of the once-living humans and seem to be in constant, but passive, search for more victims.Despite the fact that its now nearly 25 years old, Pulse remains the definitive ghost story for the internet age. Its concept of ghosts who slip into our world through the internet feels as hauntingly plausible as it did when the technology was still mysterious and perhaps even more metaphorically sound than anyone in 2001 could have imagined. Whats more, the films signature images of lonely people on webcams, desperate for connection, fading into black spots on the wall only to return as haunting specters waiting to turn the rest of the world into something just as alone as they are is the most affecting, insightful, and tragic addition to ghostly cinema since the subgenres earliest films.