The 23 best horror films on Netflix

Smile is a relentless psychological thriller that, despite having a slightly silly central ‘gimmick’ (the film’s big bad entity manifests itself as a mirthless rictus grin on the face of an otherwise normal person), quickly establishes an atmosphere full of dread, paranoia and uneasiness that doesn’t relent until the end. It’s might not be the most inventive or stylish film of the genre, but anyone who wants a popcorn horror with added bite may well end up sporting an outlandish smirk of their own by the time the credits roll.

Watch Smile on Netflix

When a gaggle of amusingly archetypal teenagers (the jock, the stoner, the hot chick – they’re all here) venture into the remote American backwoods for a weekend away, we can all guess what’s going to happen – or can we?

Much like Scream back in the 1990s, The Cabin in The Woods plays with the audience’s expectations regarding the horror genre and its myriad tropes, leading to all manner of knowing nods, chuckles and more than one scare. It’s a postmodern horror film made to rub the bellies of horror-literate geeks (and little wonder, with Joss Whedon as co-writer and producer), but there’s plenty of red meat for the masses too.

Watch The Cabin in the Woods on Netflix

A young American couple move to Romanian capital Bucharest. While her boyfriend toils away in his new job, Julia stays home in their cavernous apartment, feeling lonely and unsettled amidst these unfamiliar surroundings. Her feelings of isolation only increase when she learns of a serial killer operating in the area, and she begins to suspect that she herself may be at risk when she notices a strange man watching her.

Watcher doesn’t break the mould in any way, but it’s an effectively made and slow-burning psychological thriller with a fantastic lead performance from modern-day scream queen Maika Monroe – and a pretty effective supporting role played by the looming grey architecture of Bucharest itself.

Watch Watcher on Netflix

Michael Myers has been in a high security mental hospital since his now-infamous killing spree, but 40 years behind bars hasn’t cured him of his desire to creep around suburbia filleting babysitters. Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is a PTSD-addled gun nut, obsessed with the idea that Myers will break his bonds and return for revenge. Her daughter and granddaughter think she’s crazy, but when her predictions prove prescient, all three generations of Strode women are suddenly in a fight for their lives.

David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot takes a necessarily bold stance: ignore all the previous sequels (yes, especially that one starring Busta Rhymes), don’t make Michael Myers Laurie’s secret brother, strip away all hint of the supernatural… and just generally smash that reset button. The result is a modern slasher movie that’s a direct sequel to perhaps the greatest slasher movie of all time (the 1978 Halloween, sadly not on Netflix at the moment); and it’s almost as well-crafted and creepy. Green’s attempts to create a brilliant new Halloween trilogy stumbled and then totally collapsed with the subsequent entries, but this first shot hits home.

Watch Halloween on Netflix

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.” This Australian indie flick is going to stick with you for some time. In addition to all the thrills and chills you’d expect from a modern-day horror movie, The Babadook has something extra hidden in its basement under the stairs: heart.

Yes, this film will fray your nerves like wool dragged across a barbed wire fence, but it’s also a powerful meditation on loss and trauma. Can single mum Amelia finally lay the repressed memory of her dead husband to rest, saving her son Samuel in the process? You’ll have to watch this modern classic to find out.

Watch The Babadook on Netflix

A group of obnoxiously privileged 20-somethings congregates at a palatial home with the intention of riding out an imminent thunderstorm in style – by consuming piles of drugs, gallons of booze and playing a murder-in-the-dark party game. When the tomfoolery gets a little too real, it sparks off a fast-escalating flood of distrust and paranoia in which old grudges are renewed and fresh suspicions forged.

Working both as an enjoyable murder mystery horror flick and a venomous social satire on Gen Z’s tendency for victimhood and backstabbing selfishness, Bodies Bodies Bodies is one of the rare films that succeeds in being likeable despite having not a single likeable character.

Watch Bodies Bodies Bodies on Netflix

Now 20 years old, this is the first (and arguably best) movie in Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ (the others being Hot Fuzz and The World’s End). London shop worker Shaun (Pegg) takes on a flesh-hungry horde of the undead as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend and save their flagging relationship in the midst of a zombie outbreak.

This zom-rom-com’s scares might be thin on the ground, but the laughs and frenetic pace more than make up for that – and gore-hounds won’t be left disappointed with the blood and guts on offer. There’s bags of heart too, primarily coming from the touching relationship between Shaun and his slacker best mate Ed (Nick Frost).

Watch Shaun of the Dead on Netflix

Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of a near-forgotten 1992 Stephen King novel offers a cracking setup. In an effort to revitalise their ailing marriage, a middle-aged couple decamp to a remote holiday home to try some kinky stuff – only for things to go swiftly south when hubby keels over from a heart attack, leaving his wife chained to the bedframe.

Cue an hour and a half of relentless psychological chills and spills as she attempts to free herself before dying of thirst/dog/possible-giant-bald-demon-man-lurking-in-the-shadows, all the while assailed by the worst terror of all: the recollection of horrific childhood trauma.

If you prefer your scary movies to be at least somewhat grounded in reality, Gerald’s Game fits the bill. Just like a wrist in a snug pair of handcuffs…

Watch Gerald’s Game on Netflix

Offering something of a Gen Z spin on The Exorcist, this Australian indie flick follows a group of teenagers who video themselves becoming temporary vessels for the restless souls of the departed: just take hold of this terrifying embalmed hand, speak the solicitation “I let you in” and the subsequent antics will see you becoming a social media hit in no time.

It’s all fun and games until one spirit doesn’t want to give up its new home, making things go predictably sideways and scary. The result is an enjoyable horror romp with one or two genuinely disturbing sequences.

Watch Talk to Me on Netflix

Few horror movies get a Best Picture Oscar nom, but then Get Out isn’t any old run-of-the-mill slasher flick or haunted house story, even if it does offer loads of gore and otherworldly discomfort.

This is a genre-bending flick that works both as a straight-up scary movie and as a wry take on modern-day racism. And, as you’d expect from a film written and directed by former sketch show star Jordan Peele, it’s also very funny. Add in Daniel Kaluuya’s fantastic lead performance (also Oscar-nominated) and its status as a huge box office smash and you can see why it caught the Academy’s eye. But look: who needs Oscar’s seal of approval when you have Stuff’s?

Watch Get Out on Netflix

Don’t let its 2.5-hour runtime or subtitles put you off; if you’re a fan of unconventional horror, this Korean film is a must-see. It’s an atmospheric, disturbing and sometimes incongruously amusing slice of disquiet and tension that’ll linger in your brain long after the credits roll.

Following a spate of macabre deaths in a quiet mountain community, suspicion and superstition are running rampant. The spotlight falls on an enigmatic outsider who lives out in the woods, but the investigation into the murders is far from straightforward, leaving both the protagonists and the audience in a near-permanent state of discomfort. As a horror film The Wailing really has it all, taking the viewer to some extremely uncomfortable places – all while keeping you guessing until the end.

Watch The Wailing on Netflix

A creepy exploration of guilt and displacement, His House is an unconventional British horror movie with a political bite.

A young married couple, refugees fleeing conflict in Africa, find themselves in an empty house on an English suburban council estate. The property may be dirty, the neighbourhood bleak and the locals unwelcoming, but the couple embrace their chance at a fresh start and a safe new life following a traumatic journey to the UK.

Soon they discover that they can’t escape their past – the house itself keen to remind them of that at every opportunity. Someone or something has followed them across the sea and seems to be inside the walls, urging them to atone for some unnamed sin…

Watch His House on Netflix

Wracked with guilt over a mysterious tragedy, a children’s clothing designer (Eva Green) finds herself suffering from multiple health problems: memory loss, tremors and difficulty breathing. Her husband (Mark Strong) believes these symptoms to be purely psychosomatic, but when a Filipina housekeeper (Chai Fonacier) arrives on their doorstep offering her services – a plus a plethora of apparently effective folk remedies, he puts his reservations aside. This woman isn’t all she seems, however, and Nocebo quickly builds into a compelling and tightly scripted horror film with a fantastic final twist.

Watch Nocebo on Netflix

The Saw series may have been diluted by an endless parade of needless sequels, but the original remains a psychological rollercoaster – minus most of the painful tropes that litter the genre.

The true genius of the film is that the villain isn’t your typical axe-wielding maniac. Far from it. He actually sees himself as some kind of hero, despite leaving his victims in traps that encourage self-mutilation. If someone manages to escape, they’ll become a better person for it, despite some horrific scars. And if they don’t escape? Well, let’s just say in that case it’s game over.

Watch Saw on Netflix

Somewhat counterintuitively for a zombie film, this slacker comedy hits the ground running – in a brilliant, self-aware opening credits sequence that lays out the ground rules for survival in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world.

Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus is a coward who survives by following those rules to the letter; his companion, Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee, is a zombie-killing machine on a quest for the last surviving Twinkie. Sharp, witty and blessed with one of the best cameo appearances ever, this is a zombie movie with brains. Is it scary? Not really. Is it a blast? Yes indeed.

Watch Zombieland on Netflix

OK, so technically this is not a single horror film – but it is a collection of short ones, all of which are brilliant. In order to make this anthology series, horror maestro Guillermo Del Toro recruited a scary movie-making dream team including the creators of Mandy, The Babadook and Splice, tasking each with directing their own hour(ish)-long tale of terror.

The result is a Twilight Zone-style anthology series, with weightless CGI wizardry reduced (if not ditched entirely) in favour of good old-fashioned practical effects. Del Toro himself introduces each story (and wrote some of them) and, from ghastly rituals to ravenous aliens to bizarre beauty products, there’s so much here for horror lovers to savour.

Watch Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix

What do you get when you mash up From Dusk till Dawn, Air Force One and Snakes on a Plane? Something like Blood Red Sky, a German film (with, curiously, about two-thirds of its dialogue in English) in which a transatlantic flight is hijacked by murderous terrorists. Seeking to protect her young son, a mother with a mysterious illness decides to take drastic action.

Despite its b-movie DNA and relatively low budget, Blood Red Sky offers an enjoyable twist on a bunch of familiar movie tropes, and its practical special effects work well. Perfect fodder for a midweek movie night.

Watch Blood Red Sky on Netflix

Writer-director Alex Garland’s follow-up to the dazzling Ex Machina had a tricky release. Originally destined to get a full release in cinemas worldwide, in the end studio Paramount decided it deserved only a limited US theatrical release, with everyone else getting their first chance to see it on Netflix. Why? Because they likely figured it’d flop in cinemas – it’s chilly, complex and brainy and, right or wrong, big studios don’t credit the average filmgoer with much intellectual curiosity.

Don’t let Paramount’s decision put you off. This is one of the most accomplished and interesting science fiction horrors of recent years, a visually and sonically arresting film that’ll leave you with more questions than answers, but enough clues to work everything out too.

When an unexplained “shimmer” engulfs a tract of land in the southeastern United States, then starts increasing in size, authorities seem powerless to stop it. Everything and everybody they send inside disappears, never to return – with one exception. When Natalie Portman’s biologist finds herself personally drawn into the mystery, she joins a team venturing into the Shimmer to attempt to uncover the truth.

Watch Annihilation on Netflix

Gareth Evans is best known for directing the kick-ass Indonesian action flicks The Raid and The Raid 2, but with Apostle, which he also wrote, he immerses himself into the world of dramatic horror. In this period piece, a clearly troubled Dan Stevens joins a mysterious island-based cult (led by Michael Sheen’s demagogue-like prophet) in order to rescue his sister from its clutches. He quickly discovers there’s much more to this bunch of outcasts and misfits than a spot of misguided religious fervour. Cue mangled bodies, bloody carnage and some extremely creepy reveals.

Even if Evans doesn’t quite manage to pull things off with the same flair as we’ve seen in his stellar pair of action movies, Apostle is an atmospheric folk horror with some truly squirm-inducing scenes and a great final shot.

Watch Apostle on Netflix

This Netflix-made, Australia-set zombie horror stars Martin Freeman as a new father whose outback holiday goes horrifically awry courtesy of a massive viral outbreak. Get bitten by a carrier and you’ve got 48 hours before you become a shambling, mindless, meat-seeking husk yourself – and the wide open landscape means there are few places to hide from either the zombies or the live folks mercilessly hunting down anyone infected.

So far, so familiar, right? Well, Cargo subverts expectations by focussing on the characters rather than on finding different ways to make you jump, and the viral menace is used as a device to drive the narrative rather than define it. It’s more thought-provoking drama than many gore-hounds would like, no doubt, but we’d rather watch it than yet another Dawn of the Dead rip-off.

Watch Cargo on Netflix

It’s “found footage” time once more in this micro-budgeted indie flick concerning a videographer hired by a mysterious man for a job – one that initially seems simple but turns out to be anything but.

With a lean cast (it’s basically a two-hander starring writer/director Patrick Brice and co-writer Mark Duplass – yes, he of mumblecore movie fame) and a lean 77-minute running time, Creep relies more on mood and tone than special effects or gore – and it’s well worth sticking around until the conclusion.

Watch Creep on Netflix

After her husband is sent away to serve in the army, an Iranian mother is left to care for their young daughter under the looming threat of missile strikes. When their apartment is hit, events take a turn for the paranormal and leave the pair haunted by a mysterious ‘Djinn’ spirit. Though some classic horror tropes soon follow, Under the Shadow‘s unusual setting and creaking, groaning building give it an extra bite.

Watch Under the Shadow on Netflix

Purported to be based on an actual police report, this early 1990s-set shocker sees a Madrid teenager and her younger siblings terrorised by a malevolent spirit in their apartment – and throws creepy blind nuns, gnarly Spanish alt-rock and coming-of-age tropes into the mix as well.

Think ouija boards, disembodied whispers and half-glimpsed demonic entities rather than gallons of gore, but once the final reel is over you’ll know you’ve watched not only one of the best foreign language horror films on Netflix, but one of the finest foreign language films full stop.

Watch Veronica on Netflix