Horror flicks have always been popular, but streaming services like Netflix have made them more accessible than ever. With its deep library of chill-inducing films, Netflix is a perfect place for fright fans to get their fix.
In this list, we’ll guide you through some of the streamer’s best horror offerings. These movies range from recent hidden gems to certified scream-fests. We chose them based on elements like critical reception, influence, scares, and overall watchability. Basically, if a horror movie is considered top-notch and it happens to be on Netflix, chances are high it made the cut.
The Wretched (2019)
Kicking things off is The Wretched, a 2019 indie that puts a creepy spin on the classic “Something’s not right with my neighbor” setup. Directed by the Pierce Brothers, it follows a troubled teen named Ben who goes to live with his dad for the summer in a sleepy lakeside town. While there, he notices the woman next door acting strangely. Even eerier, kids have been disappearing around town.
It turns out the lady is actually a dangerous witch who eats children to maintain her youth. Naturally, she takes an interest in Ben. With some help from a potential love interest, he races to convince others about the true supernatural threat before he becomes the next meal.
What makes The Wretched so solid is its captivating story paired with legitimate scares. It deals with everything from creature effects to body horror. The movie also impressively blends humor and heart with its horror. While not revolutionary, this fresh take on witch lore provides chills that belie its low budget. The Wretched casts just the right spell for fright fans seeking something off the beaten path.
Gerald’s Game (2017)
Gerald’s Game sounds like a pretty straightforward psychological thriller on paper. A couple tries to spice up their stale marriage with some bedroom handcuff action. When the husband unexpectedly dies, his wife must figure out how to escape while still cuffed to the bed frame. But in the hands of horror maestro Mike Flanagan, this 2017 Netflix film becomes a captivating emotional journey that confronts trauma and shows incredible resilience.
Carla Gugino gives a powerhouse lead performance as Jessie, the woman left chained up alone for days in an isolated house. At first thinking only of survival, her mind soon wanders to reflect on past sexual abuse she endured. Jessie starts confronting her inner demons, represented by a vision of her younger self and a sinister doppelgänger.
Watching Jessie navigate her complex psychology while trying to literally break free makes for an unforgettably tense viewing experience. Flanagan’s empathetic direction and Gugino’s magnetic acting blend seamlessly. While undoubtedly tough to stomach at times, Gerald’s Game ultimately offers catharsis as Jessie processes her pain into power.
Under the Shadow (2016)
Iranian director Babak Anvari’s 2016 Farsi-language debut Under the Shadow blends genuine scares with real-life war trauma into an affecting supernatural drama. It takes the classic haunted house concept and grounds it in a 1980s Tehran plagued by bomb threats from Iraq. When Shideh’s husband is sent to the front lines, she’s left to care for their young daughter Dorsa while letting medical school dreams fade. Soon enough, a missile hits their apartment complex, and ghostly happenings start to occur.
What seems like a djinn invasion terrorizing a mother and daughter doubles as a manifestation of feelings like grief, guilt, PTSD triggers from missile attacks. By personifying these emotions as sinister shadow figures and possessions, Under the Shadow visually articulates deeper fears. The supernatural elements intensify the already frightening reality facing civilians during wartime. Thought-provoking and spine-chilling in equal measure, this frightening fable finds horror in both ghosts and war.
The Ritual (2017)
If you ever find yourself on a hiking trip with old friends, don’t take a shortcut through the creepy forest. That’s the hard lesson learned in Netflix’s eerie 2017 folk horror The Ritual. Directed by David Bruckner, this chilling tale follows four men paying tribute to a fallen buddy with a backpacking adventure in rural Sweden. When one twists his knee, they decide to traverse an off-limits woodland to reach their lodge faster. Big mistake.
As the group wanders deeper into the forest, an ominous presence begins lurking. Hallucinations dredge up personal fears and regrets tied to their dead friend. Cult symbols and an effigy suggest they’ve encroached on sacred ground housing an ancient evil. Soon enough, a violent creature starts hunting them through the remote terrain.
Channeling The Descent and The Blair Witch Project before it, The Ritual excels at building anxiety as both the natural and supernatural world close in. The characters’ interpersonal dynamics ground the story in real emotion while the looming monster provides relentless chills. You’ll think twice about leaving marked trails after this one.
Apostle (2018)
When a man’s sister gets kidnapped by a religious cult and held for ransom, he attempts a heroic rescue against all odds. The results, as seen in Apostle, are far more nightmarish than anticipated. Directed with vicious style by The Raid’s Gareth Evans, this 2018 period piece sees Thomas (Dan Stevens) infiltrate a remote Welsh island commune run by a zealous prophet to find his missing sister. But the longer he stays living among the tight-knit group, the more he unravels their sinister secrets.
Leaning into folk horror territory, Apostle reveals a society revolving around old gods and brutal rituals hidden under a farming commune guise. While the heady mystery intrigues early on, it’s the explosively gory third act payoffs that make Apostle a horrific force. Stevens grounds the story in palpable emotional stakes while Evans blankets the screen in crimson showers. Filmmakers hoping to attempt the “infiltrate a cult” premise should watch Apostle first—good luck measuring up to this macabre masterwork.
His House (2020)
The haunted house subgenre usually preys on fears of things that go bump in the night. But 2020’s His House takes a more grounded approach by exploring the horrors of the refugee experience through a supernatural lens. When displaced couple Bol and Rial flee war-torn South Sudan for England, they expect relief. Instead, racism and PTSD triggers await in an dilapidated house haunted by ghosts and guilt.
Director Remi Weekes establishes an unnerving tone from the start, with cold colors and menacing angles making the home feel threatening. Apparitions appear tied to the couple’s past traumas, acting as frightening embodiments of survivor’s remorse and the difficulty adjusting to a new country. By personifying real emotional turmoil as literal monsters, His House brilliantly articulates refugee struggles through mounting supernatural scares. It’s a resonant haunted fable proving the living world can be the scariest place.
May The Devil Take You (2018)
Viewers bored with American possession films should take a demonic detour to Indonesia for 2018’s May The Devil Take You. This Ruthless Pictures production earns its sinister name by putting a young woman through hell as she visits her dying father’s home and discovers his dangerous satanic secrets. Director Timo Tjahjanto unloads inventively atrocious sequences involving body contortions, levitation, skinless figures, and the most blasphemous uses of wooden crosses imaginable.
The Exorcist Comparisons come easily for May The Devil Take You, but don’t mistake it for some copycat. Tjahjanto’s hellish vision stands on its own, conjuring shocking visuals and pushing boundaries with gleeful aggression. One particular moment with a pregnant woman out-viles anything in either Conjuring movie. Fans frustrated with Hollywood sanitizing horror should indulge in this impious import turning heads with ghoulish glee. May the Devil Take You…and promptly traumatize your soul.
Creep (2014)
We’ve all taken questionable Craigslist gigs out of desperation. But most don’t end with us trapped in a cabin with a potential serial killer. That’s the terrifying reality facing Aaron, an amateur videographer hired by Josef to film his “final memories” in 2014’s anxiety-inducing Creep. As the day goes on, it becomes clear this dying man harbors unsettling eccentricities and motives. Director Patrick Brice builds skin-crawling tension through minimal means, allowing pitch-perfect performances from him and co-writer/villain Mark Duplass to ratchet up the uncomfortable awkwardness.
A masterclass in low budget suspense, Creep utilizes the found footage/documentary format to make the audience feel captive to Josef’s unwanted presence. Each unnerving reveal cleverly transforms seemingly harmless weirdness into something utterly sinister. You’ll second guess ever hiring a stranger from the internet again. When Brice begs to go home, it’s hard not to plead for escape alongside him.
Vampires Vs. The Bronx (2020)
Smart satirical edge to its playful scares. When a group of young friends start noticing strange businessmen buying up property across the Bronx, they soon learn these capitalist monsters are actually vampires in disguise. Once the reveal spreads, the diverse community bands together for a hilariously gory battle against gentrifying ghouls trying to bleed the life from their neighborhood.
Like What We Do in the Shadows spliced with Attack the Block, Vampires vs. the Bronx balances chuckles, chills, and social commentary with deft skill. Scenes like a Korean corner store owner wielding a sword or a young graffiti artist spraying garlic repellent wink toward horror tropes with wry immigrant perspectives. Throw in absurd vampiric deaths like death by umbrella, and it becomes harder denying this humorous take on urban extraterrestrial invasions biting commentary on timely economic issues plaguing cities nationwide.
Insidious (2010)
James Wan skyrocketed to the top of horror directorial fame through gory franchises like Saw and The Conjuring. But his 2010 sleeper hit Insidious just might lurk amongst the most enduringly scary. When young Dalton mysteriously falls into a coma, his family discovers a supernatural ability allowing his spirit to travel to another ghostly realm called The Further. With their son’s life at risk, they turn to psychic Elise to guide Dalton back from a shadowy dimension hiding unspeakable horrors.
Insidious rightfully turned “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” into musical nightmare fuel, but its scenes sniffing out spirits in the dark generate even more dread. Bold red color palettes, chilling reveals of ghoulish figures, and a finale pitting the family against a crimson-faced demon still startle over a decade later. But what resonates most is the film’s emotional core. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne’s affectionate marriage gives the story convincing stakes while their palpable love for a son in peril drives nail-biting suspense. Revisiting Insidious reminds why Wan remains a master at marrying monstrous visuals with moving family bonds.
The Strangers (2008)
Home invasion horror takes everyday sanctuaries and transforms them into prisons. But 2008’s The Strangers elevates that premise by weaponizing randomness for unspeakable acts. Its killers have no motive behind tormenting a couple alone in a remote vacation home other than “because you were home”—a chilling admission sure to rattle anyone who’s been alone late at night. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman portray victims gripped by confusion and panic as masked psychopaths taunt them silently from outside.
In an age where so many slashers rely on extreme violence, The Strangers disturbs most not through gore but prolonged suspense. Director Bryan Bertino heeds the Jaws strategy in hiding the killers’ masked faces to exponentially increase uneasy mystery. Crazed cultists materializing without warning, emotionless whispers ordering compliance, violins screeching over pitch-black hallway frames; The Strangers turns mundane environments into spaces of paralyzing vulnerability. Sometimes evil doesn’t need a backstory. Its presence is enough to shatter any illusion of safety and trust. After this home invasion, you’ll think twice about remote getaways.
It Follows (2015)
After having a sexual encounter, college student Jay finds herself cursed by a supernatural entity appearing as different people only she can see. It slowly stalks her at all times, never resting, capable of harming loved ones if it reaches her. This nightmarish concept, layered perceptively by upstart filmmaker David Robert Mitchell, drives the relentlessly scary It Follows. The inexorable villain—the “It” which follows—manifests ordinary strangers as phantoms signifying inescapable doom. Neighbors, elderly, even those never noticed become omens of certain death coming for Jay.
It Follows provoked new waves of widespread critical acclaim for horror by weaponizing fear of the familiar. Specters appear innocuously in backgrounds, barely noticed at first yet instilling paranoia upon recognition. Even scarier, while Jay frantically flees through Detroit streets or Michigan beaches, the camera lingers on ambling ghouls inching ever closer. Mitchell maximizes creeping anxieties through patient long takes depicting the entity’s slow, steady pursuit. Regardless of escaping sight, “It” continues following. An insidious infection passed through intimacy, this exemplary exercise in tension depicts threats that persist no matter how far we run.
Get Out (2017)
Very few directorial debuts make an impact as seismic as Get Out. Jordan Peele’s biting social thriller scandalized audiences in 2017 by viciously sinking teeth into race relations through horror metaphors. The setup sees a young Black photographer named Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) visit the countryside estate of his white girlfriend Rose’s affluent parents. Projecting civility yet exuding menace, the all-white community’s “off” vibes toward Chris grow sinister as he unravels literal skeletons in their closet tied to exploiting African-American bodies.
Infusing racial anxieties into creepy scenarios reached new mainstream heights through Get Out’s execution. Peele weaponizes microaggressions and liberal ignorance for slow-building uncomfortableness morphing into explosive violence. Songs like “Run Rabbit Run” take on double meaning as Chris endures hypnotism and unconsented captivity, the family’sSweet-as-pie optics revealing monstrous intentions. Upon release, Get Out’s impeccable construction and damning message felt so momentous that Peele captured Best Original Screenplay. Once witnessed, the horrors of Get Out refuse leaving the psyche.
The Fear Street Trilogy (2021)
The recent Fear Street trilogy on Netflix dusts off R.L. Stine’s classic horror books and updates the teen slasher formula for contemporary audiences. Set over three time periods, a group of Shadyside teenagers must solve the mystery of sinister killings tied to their town’s history of murder sprees. Director Leigh Janiak brings inventive style and gore to the trilogy, nodding to influences like Scream and Halloween while crafting kill scenes that go for broke.
With three feature-length films, Janiak has ample time to develop characters and mythology. She melds multiple eras from puritan witch trials to the heady 90s mall era, threaded together by Shadyside’s dark past. The young cast is appealing, handling both comic banter between friends and fleeing from various slicing and dicing murderers. For horror fans or 90s kids, it’s a blood-soaked nostalgia trip.
Ma (2018)
In the thriller Ma, a lonely middle-aged woman named Sue Ann befriends a group of teenagers and allows them to party in her basement. At first, Ma seems like the cool adult who buys them alcohol and doesn’t narc on them to their parents. But as the teens continue to take advantage of Ma’s hospitality, her simmering rage boils over and she begins enacting an elaborate revenge scheme on the kids and parents who wronged her in high school decades earlier.
Octavia Spencer is captivating as the sweet-faced yet unhinged Ma, plastering on a smile that barely contains her viciousness. As things escalate, the suspense ratchets up through her unpredictable behavior. Ma subverts the image of the harmless, matronly woman, instead unleashing the monster within. Director Tate Taylor builds tension through Ma’s shifting demeanor, lulling us into complacency one moment and jolting us the next. It’s a sinister delight.
