As Netflix’s library of original films grows by the day, finding the right movie to watch can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Factor in the fact that horror is one of the cheapest genres to produce, and you’re left with a tsunami of titles that sometimes seem indistinguishable from one another. So if you’re looking for something good to watch on Netflix that will truly scare you, picking a movie can be a daunting task.
While Netflix’s priorities seem to shift as quickly as its content selection grows, the streamer’s horror library remains a high point. From classics and recent box office toppers to obscure foreign titles you might have never discovered without the all-powerful algorithm, there’s something for every horror fan to enjoy. And to make your job a little easier, we’ve compiled an updating list of the scariest films on Netflix. Keep reading for 22 of our picks.
Zack Sharf also contributed to this article.
-
“It” (2017)
Image Credit: ©Warner Bros/courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection Some things just never change. No matter how many times the horror genre reinvents itself, creepy clowns are always going to be scary. If you need a reminder of that, the first half of Andy Muschietti’s two-part Stephen King adaptation is a great place to start. Bill Skarsgård gives an all-time creepy performance as Pennywise the clown, a shape-shifting killer who finds all kinds of ways to terrorize children. One of the better Stephen King movies of the past decade, it’s a great reminder of why the novelist remains the king of horror. —CZ
-
“The Platform”
Image Credit: ©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection “Cube” meets “The Menu” in this chilling contained horror movie about inmates fighting over gourmet food in a massive vertical prison. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s twisted allegory for the dangers of human greed and individualism boasts one of the most unique horror concepts we’ve seen in years, and finds a way to make its dystopian morality play believable with stunning production design. Come for the creepy premise, stay for some of the most unique sets you’ll find on Netflix. —CZ
-
“The Mist” (2007)
Image Credit: ©Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Collection “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile” director Frank Darabont’s other Stephen King adaptation is this methodically chilling Lovecraftian horror story about a town that becomes enveloped in a strange mist. While the fog contains some terrifying monsters, the film’s real horror comes from the evil that humans are revealed to be capable of when their safety is on the line. If you’re looking for something deeply unsettling without being too in your face, “The Mist” is a great pick. —CZ
-
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997)
Image Credit: ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Sometimes cult classics are cult classics for a reason. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt headline this iconic teen slasher movie from director Jim Gillespie. The slasher movie genre has always thrived on gory simplicity, and this story about four young friends on the run from a killer with a large hook is a reminder that sometimes all you need to scare audiences is a shadowy figure with a cool weapon. If you were considering watching the abysmal TV adaptation from 2021, do yourself a favor and simply rewatch the movie instead. —CZ
-
“It Follows” (2014)
Image Credit: Radius-TWC/Courtesy Everett Collection With so many horror movies being released every year, it can often feel like the genre has tackled every possible original idea, and all that’s left is to find new spins on the best ones. But once in a while, someone comes up with a premise that’s truly fresh. Such was the case with “It Follows,” David Robert Mitchell’s chilling film about a supernatural entity that essentially takes the form of an STD. When a young girl (Maika Monroe) finds herself terrorized after a strange sexual encounter, she is forced to pass the demonic being on to a new sexual partner. What could have been a ridiculous “Friday the 13th” style teen sex horror is played completely straight, and Mitchell’s competent directing produces something downright thrilling. —CZ
-
“Raw” (2016)
Image Credit: ©Focus Features/Everett Collection Before she won the Palme d’Or for “Titane” Julie Ducournau made a delightfully gory cannibal story to launch her film career. “Raw” stars Garance Marillier as a veterinary student who develops an insatiable craving for human flesh, and will stop at nothing to see her desires fulfilled. Ducournau skillfully exploits that simple premise, using it as an excuse to craft a plethora of beautiful body horror scenes. The film is so disturbing that it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that its director followed it up with car sex… —CZ
-
“Apostle” (2018)
Image Credit: ©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collectio Gareth Evans proved he can direct action as well as just about anyone with “The Raid: Redemption,” but with “Apostle,” he showed audiences that horror is firmly within his wheelhouse as well. This stellar folk horror effort tells the story of a man (Dan Stevens), who infiltrates a religious cult on a remote island in an attempt to extract his sister from it, but what he finds is more horrifying than anything he could possibly imagine. —CZ
-
“Blood Red Sky” (2021)
Image Credit: ©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection One of the more fun Netflix original horror movies in recent memory, Peter Thorwarth’s “Blood Red Sky” gets more mileage out of its “vampires on a plane” story than it had any right to. While the German hijacking thriller may never get as gory as its wild logline suggests, it makes up for it in enough psychological drama to make for a highly entertaining viewing. While the idea sounds like pure camp, it takes itself more seriously than one might think and delivers some real scares in the process. —CZ
-
“Piercing” (2018)
Image Credit: Everett Collection In director Nicolas Pesce’s shocking first feature “The Eyes of My Mother,” an infant child is kidnapped and raised by a lunatic. In the first few minutes of his followup “Piercing,” an infant nearly gets stabbed by an ice pick. It comes as no surprise that Pesce has raised the bar for his twisted genre sensibilities in this concise sophomore effort, a slick adaptation of Ryu Murukami’s novel about another disturbed mind who finds a more productive outlet than infanticide in S&M. Though it falls short of the eerie surprises found in his black-and-white debut, “Piercing” delivers just enough macabre delights to confirm a darkly comedic sensibility on the rise. —ZS
-
“Veronica” (2017)
Image Credit: Netflix “[REC]” filmmaker Paco Plaza caused a stir in 2017 when his horror movie “Veronica” became a viral sensation on Netflix. The film is a fictional account of an alleged true story which occured in Madrid in 1991, where a young woman died suddenly a few months after using her Ouija board. In Plaza’s film, a teenage girl tries to make contact with her dead dad using a Ouija board during a solar eclipse. The girl’s friends join her, but soon all three realize that their plan to reach the dead has had horrific consequences. Social media erupted in 2017 when the film hit streaming, with many subcribers saying they had to turn off the movie midway through its runtime because it was just too terrifying. —ZS
-
“Cargo” (2019)
Image Credit: Netflix Martin Freeman must protect his daughter from a zombie outbreak in “Cargo,” a Netflix horror offering that also tackles environmentalism and colonialism. Taking a page from “A Quiet Place,” which also explored parenting under unique apocalyptic circumstances, “Cargo” stands out from the pack by asking viewers to imagine what they might do if they knew their life was doomed but they could still offer their child hope. As the world continues to become a dark and unrecognizable place, that seed of hope just might be the key to overcoming insurmountable odds, whether it’s a zombie infestation or the chance to right the wrongs of the past in the hopes of a better future. —ZS
-
“1922“ (2017)
Image Credit: Netflix Thomas Jane gives his best performance in ages in this poetic take on the Stephen King novella of the same name. In “1922,” a guy kills his wife and feels guilty about it. That’s the gist of its premise, and while nothing groundbreaking, the story mines a degree of profundity out of the traditional supernatural thriller tropes at its core. As directed by Zak Hilditch (whose 2013 debut “These Final Hours” was an expressionistic apocalyptic tale), “1922” has the merits of a solid “Tales From the Crypt” or “Masters of Horror” episode, with a straightforward story that folds the delicate visual language of a rural Terrence Malick drama into the mold of existential horror. The result suggests what might happen if Malick took at stab at “The Tell-Tale Heart,” with a mentally disturbed male protagonist straight out of King’s “The Shining.” So while not the most original or surprising King story, it hits a lot of the right notes. —ZS
-
“His House“ (2020)
Image Credit: Netflix This tender but terrifying Netflix movie tells the story of two Sudanese asylum-seekers who arrive in Britain with their demons in tow. One of the best debut films of 2020, Remi Weekes’ shrewd, tender, and often terrifying “His House” begins with a clever premise — the immigrant experience as a horror movie — and expands on that idea in knowing and unexpected ways. Whereas a lesser film might have condescended to these characters and mined easy scares from the indignities of the assimilation process, Weekes’ dingy chiller implicitly recognizes that life would be difficult for a grieving Black couple who show up in England with nothing but each other and a few trinkets to their names, and it never stops using its genre as a torch to illuminate the specific forms those shadowed difficulties might take. —ZS
-
“The Ritual“ (2018)
Image Credit: Netflix Horror favorites like Guillermo del Toro and Mike Flanagan took to social media in 2018 to champion David Bruckner’s lost-in-the-woods chiller “The Ritual.” The film stars Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, and Sam Troughton as four friends who get together to honor the memory of one of their late pals by setting out on a hiking trip through Sarek National Park in northern Sweden. The forest, however, is hiding some dark secrets, and it doesn’t take long for the group to be put in jeopardy after they discovery something terrifying is lurking about. Del Toro “highly recommended” the movie to his followers and called it “amazing and scary.” Flanagan, meanwhile, said the film was “seriously great” and “dripping with tension.” —ZS
-
“The Conjuring“ (2013)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Rarely do you find contemporary horror films dedicated to genuinely scaring you instead of making you laugh ironically, recoil in disgust, or react with politically-fueled anger. Such is the case with James Wan’s “The Conjuring,” an old-school haunted house movie where practical effects, dread-inducing long takes, and the sheer torment on his expert cast’s faces is enough to send a shiver down your spine and give you nightmares. Wan really understands how active, acrobatic camerawork can enhance the storytelling without breaking the fourth wall. Often, he’ll switch perspective in the middle of the scenes, where it will cast doubt as to whose eyes we’re looking through, and in other moments it will shift from one person to the next, without knowledge if that other person is our spectral threat. The effects are immersive as they are disorienting. It’s the perfect filmmaking technique to terrify. —ZS
-
“Hush“ (2016)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Before Mike Flanagan directed “Doctor Sleep” and became Netflix’s go-to horror master with his “Haunting” anthology series and “Midnight Mass,” he helmed this inventive home invasion horror movie with a unique twist: the woman struggling to survive the night is deaf. It’s only a slight conceptual twist on “Wait Until Dark,” the 1967 thriller with Aubrey Hepburn as a blind women facing similar circumstances, but the film doesn’t resemble that movie much aside from its main fear factor. With a main cast of two and one eerie cabin-in-the-woods setting, “Hush” is continually engaging without any fancy tricks. Flanagan’s expert use of sound design, fused with the Newton Brothers’ energetic score, creates a constant sense of urgency to each scene as it keeps moving forward. The liberal use of bloodshed maintains an enveloping air of danger right down to the tense finale. —ZS
-
“Creep“ (2014)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Just when you thought the found footage horror genre had hit its limit, Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass dropped “Creep” to get fans excited about the subgenre all over again. Brice plays a down-on-his-luck filmmaker who answers an online ad to film the eccentric Josef (Duplass) for an entire day. Filming around Josef’s family cabin in Northern California, the director soon realizes that not everything is as it seems. The first part of “Creep” has an oddly hypnotic quality, with Duplass starring in what feels like a performance art piece. As the day goes on, the dynamic between the two characters gradually mutates and becomes more imbalanced until Josef makes a startling revelation late at night and things become unrelentingly creepy. The revelation forces the director to flee the cabin, and that’s when “Creep” goes from hypnotic chiller to scary good horror movie. —ZS
-
“Under the Shadow“ (2016)
Image Credit: Everett Collection Jump scares and a frantic parent shielding her child from ominous supernatural forces: These tropes are hardly new to the horror genre, but they receive a fresh spin in “Under the Shadow,” the feature-length debut of Iranian director Babak Anvari. The Tehran-set story takes place in 1988, as Iraqi bombs rain down at the height of the two countries’ war, an enticing historical backdrop for things that go bump in the night. On the face of it, the setting of “Under the Shadow” may call to mind 2014’s black-and-white Iranian vampire tale “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” but the similarities stop with the nationality and demonic presence. Instead, “Under the Shadow” bears a closer similarity to “The Babadook,” which also focused on a mother protecting her kid from an an eerie, largely unseen figure who may or may not be a metaphor for psychological duress. —ZS
-
“Cam“ (2018)
Image Credit: Everett Collection “Handmaid’s Tale” star Madeline Brewer and “The Love Witch” breakout Samantha Robinson lead this eerie mind-fuck about our online personas. Brewer plays Alice, an ambitious camgirl who wakes up one day to discover she’s been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself. This early twist sends the movie even deeper into Lynchian territory, but “Cam” would have been plenty effective without it. Director Daniel Goldhaber, resisting the urge to confine the entire film to a computer screen (à la “Unfriended”) creates a thoroughly credible live-stream community. Lola’s web chamber is slathered in a neon pink light that turns everything it touches into the stuff of pure creepiness. “Cam” is able to reflect the strange house of mirrors that we’re all lost in whenever we log on, and it’s able to viscerally convey the panic of trying to find a way out. The ultimate solution that Alice devises is too simple to be dramatically satisfying, but it’s believable enough to scare you off social media… if only for a couple of minutes. —ZS
-
“Gerald’s Game“ (2017)
Image Credit: Netflix Mike Flanagan directs this compelling, faithful Netflix treatment of Stephen King’s book and gets help from his committed actors Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood. “Gerald’s Game” centers on a woman chained to a bed after a kinky sex game gone wrong who is forced to wander the dark contours of her own mind. How do you make a movie out of that? Flanagan figured it out. It takes a specific kind of filmmaker to tackle the challenges of a single-set survival movie, whether it’s Danny Boyle in a canyon (“127 Hours”) or Rodrigo Cortés inside a coffin (“Buried”), but the closest cinematic comparison to “Gerald’s Game” is James Wan’s “Saw,” which also involves terrified people handcuffed against their will. Here, modern horror maestro Flanagan tackles the tricky proposition with a keen visual sense and plenty of disorienting twists. Just like King’s book, the film adaptation of “Gerald’s Game” is disturbing, grotesque, and absurd. —ZS
-
“Fear Street“ (2021)
Image Credit: Netflix The kitschy genius of Leigh Janiak’s “Fear Street” trilogy, which the writer-director has adapted for Netflix from R.L. Stine’s young adult horror books of the same name, is that each of its three chapters offers its own full-tilt throwback at the same time as they all bleed together into a wholly modern story. That story — a frothy but fanged tale of cursed outsiders, cyclical violence, power-mad white men, and virtually every other evil that seems top of mind these days — is plenty of the moment in its subject matter, but even more so in its construction. At a time when the border that separates movies and television can seem like a relic from an outdated map, the “Fear Street” trilogy makes those divisions seem more irrelevant than ever. Here we have three feature-length titles, each of which belongs to a different tradition of horror cinema. —ZS
-
“I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House“ (2015)
Image Credit: Netflix Osgood Perkins broke out with his 2015 directorial debut “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and most recently earned strong reviews with this year’s “Gretel and Hansel,” but wedged in between those efforts is his sturdy Netflix original “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.” Ruth Wilson gives a commanding performance as a live-in nurse who comes to believe her elderly employer’s house is haunted. Perkins doesn’t waste a second in this 87-minute supernatural chiller that is further proof the writer-director is one of the most overlooked directors in the horror genre. —ZS
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
