Best horror films on Netflix right now

Rising star Samara Weaving who has recently made great impressions in both Ready or Not and Bill and Ted Face the Music shows in 2017’s The Babysitter why she has gone on to be such a popular face in the movie world.

The Babysitter is a very different film from the others that appear on this list and it is one that puts its focus on style – giving it a sense of fun running alongside all the horror elements that come into play as the story progresses. And isn’t it nice to have the trope of the babysitter being a victim turned on its head in such an exciting way? There was also a sequel, also on Netflix, that is also worth a watch, despite not hitting the heights of the original.

It was with a zombie movie that Zack Snyder first entered the spotlight in 2004, when his Dawn of the Dead remake was released, and the divisive filmmaker returns to the genre for his first Netflix film. But there’s a twist – this isn’t just a zombie film – it’s a zombie heist film – so there’s plenty of fun to be had along with all the scares and thrills you’d expect from the genre.

The ensemble cast of Army of the Dead includes Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, with the film following a group of mercenaries who attempt to stage a daring heist in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Expect blood and guts with a side order of political commentary in this two-and-a-half-hour epic.

A horror option for all the family – or just the faint of heart – Nightbooks is proof that scary films don’t necessarily need a high age rating for a chillingly good time. Based on the children’s book of the same name by JA White, Nightbooks follows Alex, a young boy from New York with a talent for writing scary stories who gives up his hobby after being teased. However after an evil witch kidnaps him and demands a new spine-tingling tale every night, Alex must embrace what makes him unique in order to save himself and fellow prisoner Yasmin.

Nightbooks may not be the most unpredictable film out there, but makes an excellent first foray into horror for young viewers – and may even inspire them to read the book. It helps that Krysten Ritter (Marvel’s Jessica Jones) is on scene-stealing form here, just chilling enough in her interpretation of witch Natacha without going far enough to induce nightmares. Family fun with the usual life lessons, wrapped up in a creative horror-fantasy perfect for older kids.

M Night Shyamalan’s work has often been rather divisive, but this film – featuring a stunning James McAvoy performance – was considered a major return to form for the director upon its release in 2016. McAvoy stars as Kevin Wendell Crumb a man with dissociative identity disorder, and the actor gets to try his hand at many of his 23 distinct personalities as he kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls, including one played by Anya Taylor Joy.

The film clips along at a fast pace, keeping things engaging and thrilling throughout. A last minute scene connecting it with Unbreakable held promise, and eventually led to the sequel Glass, but this film can also be enjoyed as a one-off, self-contained story – and is worth watching for McAvoy’s captivating turn alone.

Tim Burton established himself as the master of the macabre in the late ’80s and ’90s, and this is one of the director’s finest creations – a supernatural gothic whodunnit based on the similarly titled 1820 short story by Washington Irving. Johnny Depp takes on the starring role of unorthodox detective Ichabod Crane, who is sent to the titular hamlet to investigate a mysterious slew of decapitations – only to encounter some rather unconventional beliefs among the populace.

Packed with all the eccentric supporting characters and detailed production design you’d expect from the best of Burton’s work, this is a thrilling and eerie mystery filled with humour, romance and no shortage of imagination. Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson and Christopher Walken are among the stars to turn in memorable performances.

Following up a classic movie is a tough gig, and certainly not a surefire route to success. When that classic is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, one of the most beloved Stephen King adaptations of all times, then it’s almost certainly a doomed endeavour.

It is therefore absolutely remarkable that 2019’s Doctor Sleep, directed by The Haunting of Hill House’s Mike Flanagan, is a more than worthy successor, shifting focus from the original to a more meditative and emotional piece which still feels in keeping with the 1980 fan favourite.

It stars Ewan McGregor as a grown-up Danny Torrence, who retains his powers from the first film but is still struggling following the trauma of that movie’s events. It’s a hugely satisfying watch for The Shining fans and newcomers alike, although its final act will be particularly resonant for the former.

The slasher genre is one that rose and then fell in popularity in the 1990s – but this film trilogy is heading right back to its glory days with a multitude of knife-wielding masked murderers. First film Fear Street Part 1: 1994 makes the most of the era with several 90s rock tracks serving as the backdrop as a group of teenagers discover a curse that has caused violent murders in their town for over 300 years – and they very well may be the next targets.

Part 1: 1994 is the first part of a trilogy, with the subsequent films – Part 2: 1978 and Part 3: 1666 – released every Friday over a period of three weeks in a streaming first. The films have also received comparisons to fellow nostalgic Netflix horror Stranger Things – with the two even sharing a few stars, including Maya Hawke in Part 1 and Sadie Sink in Part 2: 1978.

The first installment of Andrés Muschietti’s IT adaptation had been a monumental hit – becoming the highest-grossing horror film of all time – and so the pressure was on for the second part to stick the landing, and thankfully it just about managed to accomplish its task.

Following the adult versions of the Loser Club –with the new cast including Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy and Bill Hader – as they are enticed back to Derry for another confrontation with the evil shapeshifting clown Pennywise, the film is packed with almost as many laughs as scares. And while the overlong running time means it suffers from a few pacing issues, as it moves into its latter half there are more than enough terrifying moments to make this a satisfying conclusion.

Not one for those with a fear of flying – or vampires for that matter – Blood Red Sky has a similar premise to the previously mentioned Snakes on a Plane, but swaps out the campy fun for a deadly serious and delightfully gory thrill-ride, as well as exchanging snakes for equally bitey vampires. The German horror follows Nadja (Peri Baumeister), a mysteriously ill woman who boards a transatlantic flight to New York which gets hijacked by terrorists. However, it’s the terrorists who should be worried, as Nadja unleashes a monstrous secret to protect her young son – launching a tense game of cat-and-mouse in the pressurised cabin as the clock ticks down to sunrise…

Flying straight to the no.1 spot on Netflix’s top ten on release, Blood Red Sky takes inspiration from horror hits such as Train to Busan and From Dusk Till Dawn to deliver a claustrophobic and high stakes thriller in a confined environment, with danger coming from vampires, terrorists, a potential plane crash and even sunlight. However, it’s a family drama at heart – showcasing the lengths a mother will go to to protect her child from danger, even when that includes herself. Baumeister is the star performer here, but she has excellent support from Legends of Tomorrow actor Dominic Purcell and Castlevania‘s Graham McTavish.

Moving into a new house that turns out to be haunted is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but Aftermath keeps things fresh by adding the horror of a collapsing relationship also. Natalie and Kevin are a couple on the brink of breaking up who in a last-ditch effort to save their relationship move in together after being offered an amazing deal for a house. However, Natalie begins to realise why the property was so cheap after hearing disturbing noises and finding unexplained markings around the house – if only someone would believe her.

You can’t beat a good old-fashioned haunted house story, and Aftermath adds to the creepiness by reportedly being based on a true story. Perhaps one of Aftermath’s greatest strengths however is the examination of a failing relationship, with the eerie occurrences not just being used for scares but amplifying the heartbreak of couples’ counselling and potential affairs.

X-Men star Shawn Ashmore stars as the disbelieving Kevin, while Twilight veteran Ashley Greene plays his long-suffering girlfriend Natalie.

American Horror Story‘s Sarah Paulson stars in this psychological thriller from Searching’s Aneesh Chaganty as Diane, a woman whose teenage daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) suffers from paralysis from the waist down. When Chloe becomes suspicious about the medication her mother has been giving her, she begins to uncover some of Diane’s deep dark secrets that she’s kept from her for years.

A nail-biting rollercoaster of a horror, Run is a stressfully suspenseful 90 minutes with a terrific script from Judas and the Black Messiah producer Sev Ohanian. Paulson and Allen shine as a dysfunctional mother-daughter duo in this thriller, which became the most-watched original film in Hulu’s history upon its release last year.

Amanda Seyfried and James Norton give us a new spin on the haunted house horror in Netflix’s Things Heard & Seen – a film from Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini.

Set in 1979, the Netflix thriller follows married couple Catherine (Seyfried) and George (Norton) as they move into a large New York farmhouse. As Catherine begins to feel increasingly isolated in the new home, she starts to suspect that there’s a ghostly presence lurking.

Featuring a star-studded cast, including Stranger Things actress Natalia Dyer, Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn and Roseanne’s Michael O’Keefe, Things Heard & Seen takes its source material – Elizabeth Brundage’s All Things Cease to Appear – and turns it into a tense terror-filled two-hours, shining a haunting light on Catherine and George’s toxic relationship through the lens of a ghostly tale.

His House is the debut of filmmaker Remi Weekes, and expertly blends kitchen-sink realism with horror tropes for an affecting and supremely terrifying haunted house movie.

Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku turn in outstanding performances as a couple who flee their home in war-torn South Sudan to seek asylum in the UK – tragically losing their daughter on the perilous journey. Upon arrival in the UK, they are given a run-down house in which to stay, but this is anything but the end of their troubles. The couple soon find themselves fighting the cruel bureaucracy of the asylum-seeking process, prejudice from their unwelcoming neighbours, and perhaps most terrifyingly a which that has followed them from their home.

Charlie Kaufman has established a track record as one of the most innovative writer/directors in Hollywood, and his latest – adapted from Iain Reid’s novel of the same name – is a nightmare journey into the psyche of a young woman who is taken by her boyfriend to meet her family in a secluded farm.

With a terrific cast that includes Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette and David Thewlis, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is about as unconventional as it gets but will be sure to leave you both haunted and scratching your head.

Countless Stephen King novels have been adapted into films in recent years, and one of the best recent examples is this chiller from The Haunting of Hill House director Mike Flanagan. The film follows a woman who goes on holiday with her husband when he suddenly dies during a sex game – while she is handcuffed to her bed.

With little possibility of rescue, the woman begins hearing strange voices and seeing unsettling visions as she attempts to survive. The film – and Carla Gugino’s lead performance – both rightly attracted significant praise, with its haunting and hypnotic atmosphere ensuring it’s one of the best Netflix original horror films on offer.

Ethan Hawke stars as a true-crime writer who moves into a new house desperate for a bestseller in this effective chiller from Doctor Strange filmmaker. Things seem to take a promising turn in the writer’s investigation when he discovers the existence of a snuff film showing the deaths of a family, but things take a turn for the worse when suggestions of a supernatural force begin to rear their head.

The film perhaps relies on one too many horror movie tropes and becomes a little generic as it reaches its final act, but there are some brilliant scares, while an accomplished performance from the reliably excellent Hawke also lends the film a human edge.

A reboot of the long-running Wrong Turn franchise – this is technically the seventh installment since 2003 – this 2021 film adds a few fresh twists to the usual formula of lost college students being stalked in the woods. Unlike the original films which followed cannibals hunting people in West Virginia, Wrong Turn introduces us to ‘The Foundation’, a self-sufficient community who have lived in the Appalachian mountains for hundreds of years. But when a group of hikers intrude on their land, they’ll use deadly force to protect their way of life…

Wrong Turn knows viewers are here for gory kills and the survival horror certainly delivers on that front, with the franchise’s signature booby traps on full display here. But there’s also plenty of interesting ideas hidden behind the bloodbath, as the film attempts to explore America’s social divides with this culture clash between millennial hipsters and old-fashioned men of the earth.

Dan Stevens and Michael Sheen star in this brutal horror from The Raid director Gareth Evans set in early twentieth century London. Apostle concerns a man who has returned home to discover his sister is being held captive by a cult – and he must pay a substantial ransom in order to free her.

The man makes the journey to an idyllic island that homes the cult, where he infiltrates the community and discovers that though the cult claim to have left behind the corruption of mainland society, it is still more than present in their ranks. As he learns more and more about the cult he uncovers one particularly evil secret. This film has clear links back to iconic folk horror film The Wickerman, and contains an uneasy atmosphere of dread.

Don’t be fooled by all the promotional posters showing Black Widow star Florence Pugh surrounded by lots of summery flowers – this film is anything but country fun in the sun. A modern cult classic that is actually about a cult, Midsommar follows a young couple who head to a fabled Swedish midsummer festival in an effort to mend their relationship. However, the event is far from the idyllic retreat the two were hoping for – and they soon find themselves in the hands of a violent and bizarre pagan cult.

From acclaimed indie studio A24 and director Ari Aster – who also directed Hereditary – it is perhaps unsurprising that Midsommar has been one of the best-reviewed horrors of recent years. A great cast helps also – as well as rising star Pugh, Jack Reynor (Sing Street), William Jackso Harper (The Good Place) and Will Poulter (The Maze Runner) are also experiencing some summer scares.

This 2016 Persian-language release from British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari is a classic example of the way horror films can often act as allegories for serious and relevant themes and issues. The film follows a mother, Shideh and daughter living in war-torn 1980s Iran, whose apartment building is hit by a missile. A superstitious neighbour claims that the missile was cursed, carrying malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits – and this suspicion leads Shideh to believe that her daughter is being possessed.

What follows is a chilling, powerful films works both as a piece of horror fiction and an update on the haunted house genre, but also as a prescient social commentary on conflict in the Middle East. Under the Shadow includes some genuinely brilliant performances from its cast and was selected as the UK’s submission for the foreign language film award at the 2017 Oscars – although it did not get nominated by the Academy.

Madeline Brewer steals the show in this gritty psychological thriller set in the salacious world of online webcam pornography. Her character, Alice, becomes increasingly obsessed with being Number 1, and resorts to increasingly daring and extreme measures to climb the ranking system, culminating with a fake suicide broadcast that proves enough to nudge her into the top 50. Soon after, her identity is copied by a mysterious doppelgänger, leading to an intense hunt for the culprit.

Screenwriter Isa Mazzei – a former cam girl herself – drew on her own experiences of exploitation in the industry as she crafted the story. Originally imagined as a documentary, Mazzei felt a horror movie was the only way to portray the underbelly of the industry, with numerous cries for help to the police and other authorities going unheeded and written off due to the nature of her career. Cam is a truly modern horror for modern audiences.

James Wan’s work creating the Saw franchise put him on the map in the slasher genre, but Insidious saw the Malaysian director successfully tread deeper down true horror lines than previously. He took on the Insidious project in a bid to prove his capabilities outside of blood and guts horror, and managed to produce a blockbuster with some genuinely chilling moments.

Insidious is a haunted house ride. It stays on a steady track, but the film is packed with a variety of demonic forces that always have you scanning the screen for the next scare. There’s little reliance on gore, but less is more here. The film does a fantastic job of ramping up the paranoia with constant suggestions that you might have seen something in your peripheral vision, and occasionally you will. This sustains the threat throughout the movie, coupled with an atmospheric score and cast led by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne.

Spanish film Veronica was released to much fanfare in 2017 with some critics and many on social media branding it “the scariest movie of all time”. Director Paco Plaza had already built a cult following after his successful creation of the [Rec] trilogy, but Veronica caused a storm once it landed on Netflix.

The story follows Veronica (Sandra Escacena) who uses a ouija board during a total eclipse of the sun, a time when dark prevails over light, and events on Earth are believed to reflect that mantra. The glass smashes, she passes out, and seemingly recovers, but the girls’ experience changes Veronica. The rest of the films consists of relentless psychological warfare. How much is reality? How much is in Veronica’s head? The whole things gets crazy.

Oh, and it is loosely based on true events from a tragic case of Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro in 1991. A girl died in Vallecas under mysterious circumstances after using a ouija board. Sleep well.