40 Terrifying Horror Movies on Netflix
Spooky season is (almost) here. With October—AKA Halloween month—steadily approaching, there’s only one surefire way to get in the spirit: by watching an absolutely terrifying film. Don’t worry though, if scary movies aren’t really your thing, we have other options you might like. All you have to do is click here. Or, here. Great. Now, if you’re a true horror movie connoisseur then congratulations—you’ve come to the right place.
Netflix has an abundance of blood-pumping films to watch this year. With a mix of creepy originals and horrifying acquisitions, there’s an option for anyone in search of a good fright. If you’re in the mood for a psychological thriller, watch Mike Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game. Want a revamped classic? Check out the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hoping to hunker down and watch a trilogy? Try making it through the Fear Street series. With this many options, you can't go wrong. So dive in... if you dare.
No One Gets Out Alive
No One Gets Out Alive is a horror movie about immigration. After a woman flees Mexico, she finds herself at a creepy boarding house in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s supposed to be a safe haven, but it quickly proves to be a house of horrors.
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There’s Someone Inside Your House
Living in Hawaii sounds like a dream, but in There’s Someone Inside Your House is more of a nightmare. The film follows a teenage girl who moves in with her grandmother, then gets entangled in an eerie mystery when her classmates are randomly murdered.
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The Platform
The Platform welcomes you to an experimental prison where inmates are stacked on top of each other. Every day, they are fed by a descending buffet, but the inmates on the bottom level never get their fair share—that is, until a new prisoner takes matters into his own hands.
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I See You
In I See You, a suburban family is pushed to the brink after the disappearance of a young boy. Do they know what happened to the child, or are they just as clueless as everyone else? You'll have to queue this one up to find out.
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Mr. Harrigan's Phone
Would you talk to the dead if you could? In Mr. Harrigan's Phone, a kid named Craig befriends an elderly man and gifts him a cellphone. When the man dies, Craig realizes he can still talk to his unlikely bestie—but doing so comes with grave consequences.
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Lights Out
Everyone is afraid of the dark at some point, but we all grow out of it... right? Wrong. In Lights Out, woman who was once terrified of the dark must help her younger brother when he begins to notice the same inexplicable things she saw as a kid.
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The Invitation
If you like vampire movies, this one’s for you. The Invitation is like if Guess Who had a bloodthirsty twist. The film follows a young woman who’s summoned to the English countryside after connecting with her long-lost relatives. She expects a warm reunion, but discovers a grizzly secret instead.
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Berlin Syndrome
Berlin Syndrome is a thriller that will make you question the safety of a good meet cute. When a young photographer and handsome teacher unexpectedly hit it off, they decide to spend the night together. But their rendezvous takes a turn when the teacher discovers she’s been locked inside her lover's apartment.
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Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Netflix's big Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot went under the radar because the streamer released it during the notably not-scary month of February. Make it right by giving Texas Chainsaw Massacre a shot this Halloween season.
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Day Shift
Want to see Jamie Foxx play a vampire hunter named... Bud Jablonski?! In a horror-comedy that also stars Dave Franco and Snoop Dogg? Sure! Why not.
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Army of the Dead
If you're one of Zack Snyder's (probably literal!) zillions of fans, then you'll certainly enjoy his no-holds-barred zombie heist flick.
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The Babysitter: Killer Queen
Sure, The Babysitter: Killer Queen didn't quite live up to the absolute joy ride that was its predecessor. But it's still a fun, campy time, made even better by Judah Lewis reprising his pubescent-scaredy-cat portrayal of Cole.
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Fear Street Part One: 1994
Slasher fans rejoice: Netflix's Fear Street trilogy is for you. Fun, fast-paced, and appropriately bloody, it might fill the Jason Vorhees-sized hole in your life. Plus, if you're missing Stranger Things right about now, Fear Street features Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke in its ensemble.
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Fear Street Part Two: 1978
What's a truly special camp-horror-slasher flick without a mysterious and insidious-sounding sequel? We can't share too much more about Fear Street's sequel without spoiling it for you, but rest assured—the terror continues.
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Fear Street Part Three: 1966
Well, you have to finish at this point, right?
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A Classic Horror Story
A Classic Horror Story, if the name didn't tip you off, is the kind of scary movie you want to keep in your pocket until a rainy night during Halloween season. It's spooky, but not too spooky. It involves a cabin in the woods and some lost campers. You know, a classic horror story.
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1922
What's a good horror movie list without a Stephen King adaptation? Start your marathon of stories from the horror master with 1922, which follows a murderous rancher who gets his son in on the evil-doing. Once you're done, check out the novella it's based on. Or read the novella before watching the movie. Can't go wrong either way.
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The Conjuring 2
Anotha one! You're missing out if you waltz into The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It without knowing all of the shit that the franchise's leading demonologists have gotten into beforehand. Inthe Conjuring 2, Lorraine and Ed Warren go to north London to investigate—what else?—a haunted house. Never gets old.
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Death Note
Sure, Netflix's Death Note didn't quite reach the greatness of the anime it's based on, which sees a kid inherit a book that gives him the ability to kill people. But the film adaptation stars Willem Dafoe as the towering, sniveling demon who haunts this boy. That's worth the watch alone.
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Unfriended
Sure, 2017's Unfriended—a story of social-media-using-gone wrong told largely through webcam—is already massively outdated. Which is fun! Laugh at these teenagers and their pre-AirPodded plights.
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Hubie Halloween
Friends, countrymen, Sandlerites: Hubie Halloween was pretty damn good. There's a piss joke in the first five minutes, several vomit-inducing images will be burned into your brain, and Steve Buscemi plays a werewolf. But still. Pretty damn good.
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His House
Don't let His House keep going under the radar. In what's one of Netflix's best horror originals, His House is as terrifying as it is smart—telling a refugee story through a South Sudanese couple that finds asylum in England.
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The Babysitter
Nothing is scarier than a pubescent boy coming of age and realizing he's got a crush on his babysitter. Unless, said babysitter is in a demonic cult that sacrifices random dudes in your parents kitchen.
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Malevolent
Florence Pugh is a must-watch in just about every role she takes on nowadays, but in a horror movie? After her tortured, weirder-than-hell turn in Midsommar, she’s quickly turning into one of the genre’s best players. Catch Pugh in Malevolent, which follows a group of scam artists who stage hauntings just so they can get paid to exorcise the fake ghosts. Then, they encounter the real deal.
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In the Tall Grass
In The Tall Grass, the latest in the mill of Stephen King’s story-to-screen adaptations, is basically everyone’s pumpkin patch nightmare come to life—two siblings dive into the titular grass to find a lost boy, where shady business ensues.
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Velvet Buzzsaw
This horror satire from Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy is a mix of The Square and Eyes of Laura Mars, with Jake Gyllenhaal starring as an art critic who discovers that the mysterious paintings by an unknown artist have supernatural abilities—and take their revenge on anyone attempting to profit off of them.
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Bird Box
Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Trevante Rhodes, and John Malkovich star in this dystopian thriller (and Netflix original film) about a woman who must travel blindfolded along with her children to safety as an unseen force stalks them on their journey.
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Cam
Madeline Brewer plays an enterprising camgirl who discovers that she's somehow been replicated in various videos that have been uploaded to her own website in this Internet-inspired horror thriller and Netflix original.
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Creep
Aaron, a videographer (played by director Patrick Brice), answers an ad to work for a mysterious guy named Josef (Mark Duplass), whose awkward and uncomfortable behavior immediately makes Aaron uneasy. But his erratic behavior only becomes more and more bizarre in this indie psychological thriller.
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Gerald's Game
One of Stephen King's underrated novels thanks to its lack of supernatural fights, Gerald's Game still packs a heavy psychological punch. A hot tryst goes wrong when Gerald handcuffs his wife Jessie to a bed, only to immediately have a heart attack—leaving her imprisoned in both a remote cabin and her own delusional mind.
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I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
Director Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins) helms this mystery about a live-in nurse, Lily (Ruth Wilson), who moves into the remote New England mansion owned by her patient, an elderly horror novelist who suffers from dementia. Soon Lily starts to question if the unsettling things that are taking place in this house came straight from one of her patient's books.
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Under the Shadow
Set in the post-revolution era of 1980s Tehran, a mother must protect her daughter from a demonic possession in their home—all while a war rages on outside, leaving them fighting for safety from both manmade and supernatural evils.
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Veronica
Inspired by a true story (just like the best horror movies always are), this acclaimed Spanish film follows the 15-year-old Veronica who conducts a séance with a Ouija board—already a tricky situation, one that's heightened by the fact that she does it during a solar eclipse. Things, naturally, do not go well for her afterward.
The Perfection
The Perfection is the age-old tale of two world class cellists who go absolutely insane over their art. By the end, there are six lost limbs, hallucinations, three pant suits, and one of the wildest horror rides that Netflix originals has developed in its history.
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The Ritual
Never go in the woods. Ever. There's just not a reason for it. In The Ritual, four friends head into the woods to honor their late friend, but the Norse legends within the forest aren't as welcoming as they'd hoped. Essentially, nothing wrong with just... you know, getting a cake and honoring your friend that way.
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It Follows
The premise of It Follows sort of feels like a weird chastity PSA video. But it serves for a pretty unique thriller. When teenaged Jay learns that her boyfriend has passed on a deadly curse to her through sex, she must pass the curse onto a new sexual partner or be pursued by a spirit determined to kill her.
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Creep 2
In this sequel to the found footage horror movie Creep, Desiree Akhavan stars as a sensationalist YouTuber who is invited by a serial killer, played by Mark Duplass, to make a documentary about him on the preface that he will not kill her. As you might guess from the original Creep, the killer might not be a man of his word.
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Incantation
The highest-grossing Taiwanese horror film, Incantation follows a mother who is determined to ensure that a religious curse she inherited years ago is not passed along to her young daughter. Narrated by the mother, and displayed in a found footage format, the film is filled with plenty of narrative twists and chilling visuals.
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Umma
It's a horror movie starring Sandra Oh. Need we say more? In Umma, Oh stars as a single mother who, upon receiving the remains of her estranged, deceased mother in the mail, begins being haunted by her.
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Ouija: Origin of Evil
If you're a strong believer that sequels are never better than the original, let Ouija: Origin of Evil reverse the curse for you. Leveling up from the original Ouija's Rotten Tomatoes score of 6% to an 83%, Origin of Evil serves as a prequel and major upgrade to the franchise. The film follows a widowed mother who tries out a new gimmick at her fake medium business by introducing a ouija board. However, when the ouija board summons a new spirit that possesses her daughter, she quickly realizes she's in over her head.
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