The Best Horror Movies You Can Stream Right Now

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 56m
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics, 94% Audience

If you’ve been loving FX’s Alien: Earth, it’s worth revisiting the movie that started it all. Director Ridley Scott may be stumbling as of late (just skim the 40% Rotten Tomatoes of The Dog Stars to see why), but back in the day the filmmaker had the goods. From its eerie environments courtesy of renowned artist H.R. Giger to its chest-bursting practical effects, Alien holds up even fifty years after its first release.

Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Cast: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O'Brien
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 35m
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% Critics, 78% Audience

Some of the best horror movies take something familiar and make it scary, and 2019’s Ready or Not takes that formula and delivers on its premise. Put simply: the movie is “hide and seek” but violent, as Grace (Samara Weaving) most outwits and outlasts her in-laws in a darkly funny take on the classic kids’ game. Bloody and at times laugh-out-loud funny, the movie is a fun twist on the “final girl” type.

Director: Nia DaCosta
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Alfie Williams, Jack O'Connell
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 50m
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% Critics, 88% Audience

In the early 2000s, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later offered a visceral, disturbing take on the zombie film, making 2026’s Bone Temple a must-see event for fans of the franchise after 2025’s somewhat weaker 28 Years Later. Anyone who had their doubts after that entry needn’t worry about Bone Temple, a gory, philosophical exploration of good and evil, with one extended sequence featuring an Iron Maiden needle drop that takes the franchise to new heights. In short: Nia DaCosta (the director behind 2021’s Candyman) gets the assignment. No notes.

Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun
Rating: R
Runtime: 2hr 10m
Rotten Tomatoes: 83% Critics, 69% Audience

Jordan Peele made a name for himself in horror with the breakout success Get Out, and 2022’s Nope shows that Peele has no desire to slow down when it comes to mixing heady ideas with genre tropes. It’s a potent cocktail, especially in Nope, a wild west science-fiction/horror hybrid about the intersection of fame and exploitation. While not as universally loved as his directorial debut, Nope still sparked plenty of debate upon release. Even the concept of a “bad miracle” feels just as relevant four years later, with employees at Anthropic sounding the alarm on AI. What’s your take on the mysterious floating shoe?

Director: Tobe Hooper
Cast: Marilyn Burns, Gunner Hansen, Allen Danziger
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 23m
Rotten Tomatoes: 84% Critics, 82% Audience

More than fifty years after its initial release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is just as scary as ever. Taking the much-debated No. 1 slot in Variety’s exhaustive ranking of 100 of the best horror movies of all time, the title basically tells you the plot. But that doesn’t make what transpires any less terrifying. As both a prototype for the slasher genre and an example of how low-budget genre films can make money hand-over-fist (with Curry Barker’s Obsession being the latest Cinderella story), it’s hard to argue with Variety’s ranking.

Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 32m
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% Critics, 61% Audience

Director Robert Eggers is no stranger to heightened horror: just look at 2024’s Nosferatu and his upcoming Werwulf for proof. Or, you could check out The Witch, his New England-set story of Biblical paranoia set in the 1600s. With lines of dialogue taken from court transcripts and journals from the time period, it has a unique historical accuracy that makes what goes down all the more chilling. When it comes to horror movie demons, Black Phillip is the literal GOAT.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Rating: PG
Runtime: 2hr 4m
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Critics, 98% Audience

As much a family drama as it is a horror film, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was reportedly so scary when it was first released that people stopped going to the beach. While it’s aged some since it first hit theaters in 1975, part of what keeps the movie working is its restraint. We’re often told that our imaginations are more terrifying than seeing the monster itself, and Jaws is the perfect example of why. All it takes is a few of those iconic bass notes from John Williams’ score, and the hairs on your arm start to rise.

Director: Scott Derickson
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 43m
Rotten Tomatoes: 81% Critics, 88% Audience

Sometimes what’s scariest are the things that feel most possible. That’s certainly the case with The Black Phone, which features Ethan Hawke as a serial killer/kidnapper known only as “The Grabber.” From its soundproof basement to a roster of missing kids, The Black Phone has true crime in its DNA as much as it has supernatural horror. Whether you’re a fan of either, you’ll find plenty to like in this suspenseful mystery.

Director: Levan Gabriadze
Cast: Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 23m
Rotten Tomatoes: 62% Critics, 37% Audience

Back before the Meta Facebook hearings and pandemic-era Zoom calls, there was Unfriended. This horror movie takes the found-footage approach of movies like Paranormal Activity and brings it into the digital age, as a group of teens join a group chat online and are joined by a ghostly anonymous user. With a few fun tricks up its sleeve, the movie gets maximum thrills from its technological premise, showing that teens can face far worse fates online than cyberbullying.

Director: Kane Parsons
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 50m
Rotten Tomatoes: 86% Critics, 74% Audience

One of this year’s biggest breakouts, the hype behind Backrooms was unsurprising for anyone who’s been following the popular YouTube series since its inception. Filmmaker Kane Parsons (aka Kanepixels) showed he had what it takes not just to translate creepypasta into a web series, but to beef up his concept into a feature-length film. Deeply disconcerting, the success of Backrooms’ splashy transition from the small screen to the big screen is largely thanks to a stellar cast featuring Chiwetel Eljofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass.

Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton
Rating: R
Runtime: 2hr 17m
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Critics, 96% Audience

Ryan Coogler doesn’t miss. And after the success of films like Black Panther and Creed, Sinners shows that Coogler also can’t help but go for broke. His blend of historical horror, both real and supernatural, is one of those can’t-look-away movies, where the sheer audacity of it all just keeps upping the ante. From Michael B. Jordan’s Oscar-winning performance as twin brothers Smoke and Stack to Hailee Steinfeld’s deliciously fun turn as Stack’s jilted lover, Sinners is a movie so layered you can’t help but appreciate it even more on repeat viewing. And that’s the mark of a great movie.

Director: Zach Cregger
Cast: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 23m
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics, 85% Audience

Told in eventually-interconnecting vignettes, Weapons was one of the biggest movies of 2025, and for good reason. Its “missing children” hook was catnip for fans of the genre, but it was the careful execution, slowly ratcheting tension, and gleefully violent ending that really made the movie hit. With the recent release of Resident Evil, director Zach Cregger is on a hot streak, and Weapons showcases just how well the Whitest Kids U Know comedian gets horror.

Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper
Rating: R
Runtime: 2hr 25m
Rotten Tomatoes: 83% Critics, 63% Audience

Midsommar takes a simple premise of an on-the-rocks couple attending a festival in Sweden and turns it into a waking nightmare. Emphasis on “waking,” because despite the fact that the bulk of this movie happens in broad daylight, you’re still in for a chilling ride. With a career-best performance from Florence Pugh, this is one of the movies most people point to when discussing the kind of horror movies that really get under your skin.

Director: Daniel Myrick
Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 21m
Rotten Tomatoes: 86% Critics, 57% Audience

One of the first found-footage films to find mainstream success, The Blair Witch Project was so convincing that many people thought the film was what was left of a real documentary crew’s work-in-progress. Part of that came from a savvy marketing campaign with fake police reports back when people were stuck with dial-up, but part of it also comes from how the film is put together. What it lacks in scares per minute, it makes up for in a slow-burning sense of dread.

Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Catherine O’Hara
Rating: PG
Runtime: 1hr 32m
Rotten Tomatoes: 83% Critics, 82% Audience

If you’re more a fan of goofiness than gore, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice is the perfect pick for Halloween. A cult-classic with a gonzo performance from Michael Keaton, this gothic horror comedy hits all the right notes. It also reminds us of just how far Tim Burton has fallen since his heyday in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, although the movie’s sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, did see Burton return to mostly successful form.

Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff
Rating: R
Runtime: 2hr 7m
Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Critics, 72% Audience

One of Ari Aster’s other best horror movies, Hereditary is a slow burn that is as frightening as it is unrelenting. Thematically, the film is just as disturbing for its exploration of trauma as it is for its shocking imagery (if you know, you know), but don’t let that keep you from watching it if you missed it when it was first released in 2018. Toni Collette’s performance alone makes it worth the watch.

Director: Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sora Wong
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 44m
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% Critics, 79% Audience

Horror movies have long been vehicles for some impressive acting performances (just look at Florence Pugh in Midsommar or Toni Collette in Hereditary). Sally Hawkins enters that pantheon as the off-kilter Laura in Bring Her Back. Filmmaking brothers Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou may have made a splash in 2022 when they released Talk to Me (with a sequel currently in the works), but Bring Her Back is proof that they’ve got the goods. Even better, they make horror movies where you actually care about the characters, something which makes Bring Her Back all the more engrossing.

Director: George A. Romero
Cast: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1hr 36m
Rotten Tomatoes: 95% Critics, 87% Audience

Night of the Living Dead might be the oldest film on this list, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. Released in 1968, George A. Romero’s zombie potboiler spawned multiple sequels and imitators in the decades after its release. Its legacy extends beyond its imitators, though, since its release in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination gave Duane Jones’s casting as one of the film’s leads even more political weight. Whether intentional or not, Night of the Living Dead still holds a broken mirror up to society.

Director: Patrick Brice
Cast: Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 20m
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% Critics, 66% Audience

Just when you think the found footage genre can’t be subverted in a new way, a team like Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass find a way to do it. One of the things that makes Creep so unsettling is how normal the movie begins. Especially in today’s economy, a videographer answering an online ad for some extra gig work is totally commonplace. Its descent into horror is truly earned, which makes it all the more effective.

Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 49m
Rotten Tomatoes: 85% Critics, 92% Audience

From Halloween to Christine, John Carpenter is one of horror’s best and brightest (or should we say darkest?) No film showcases his talents in the genre more than The Thing, a chilling blend of sci-fi and horror. The creature effects in this film still hold up decades later, and the entire cast ensures that the stakes in this arctic-set thriller get ratcheted up with each passing minute.

Director: Damien Leone
Cast: Jenna Kanell, Catherine Corcoran, David Howard Thornton
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1hr 25m
Rotten Tomatoes: 63% Critics, 51% Audience

If kills and buckets of blood are the measuring stick you use to judge horror movies, the Terrifier franchise is here to chop that measuring stick to pieces. Art the Clown is one of horror’s most sadistic murderers, and the eight kills (or nine, depending on how you count a plot detail in Terrifier 2) are as brutal as they are inventive. From scalpings to decapitations, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you’re a fan of gritty, grimy, grindhouse horror, you’ll be hard-pressed to beat Terrifier.

Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Octavia Spencer, Diana Silvers, Juliette Lewis
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 39m
Rotten Tomatoes: 55% Critics, 64% Audience

Octavia Spencer has range, and Ma shows that her range isn’t limited to any one genre. In this horror flick about a lonely woman who agrees to let some teens party at her house, what seems like a sweet deal quickly turns into a nightmare. It’s a goofy concept for a movie, but thanks to a committed (and bonkers) performance from Spencer, it’s plenty of fun.

Director: Tim Story
Cast: Antoinette Robertson, Dewayne Perkins, Grace Byers
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 37m
Rotten Tomatoes: 87% Critics, 85% Audience

The Blackening smartly takes the old horror trope that the Black character almost always dies first in horror movies, and turns it into a fun, albeit not-so-scary, satire of the genre as a whole. Even if it’s ultimately less insightful than more serious horror fare like Get Out, director Tim Story (Ride Along and Barbershop) and his cast have a blast with the premise. While it’s only a few years old, this one’s got future cult classic written all over it.

Director: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 42m
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics, 83% Audience

As the second installment in a trilogy-of-sorts, Ti West and Mia Goth’s return to the demented world they first explored in X. The atmosphere is spooky, the premise provides a great origin story, and, most importantly, Mia Goth returns in a pitch-perfect performance. If X established Goth as a scream queen to watch, Pearl cements her as one of horror’s most definitive scream queens.

Director: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 41m
Rotten Tomatoes: 73% Critics, 73% Audience

MaXXXine is the third film in Ti West’s Mia Goth horror trilogy, and it doesn’t disappoint. Just as focused on skewering Hollywood as it is on providing an entertaining and suspenseful mystery, this entry is a fitting cap to the franchise that doesn’t feel like it’s any less fresh on its third outing. This is in large part thanks to a totally watchable Mia Goth, who remains the series’ biggest strength.

Director: Halina Reijn
Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Sennott, Pete Davidson
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 35m
Rotten Tomatoes: 85% Critics, 69% Audience

Bodies Bodies Bodies isn’t the first horror movie to feature a group of unsupervised friends vacationing together, but it’s definitely the first one to squeeze as much backstabbing fun from such a standard setup. As funny as it is frightening, the movie has a great eye for style and an equally great ear for its Gen Z characters. If you’ve had your fair share of fake friends and misunderstandings, it’s hard not to laugh out loud at where this twisty whodunnit winds up.

Director: Osgood Perkins
Cast: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 41m
Rotten Tomatoes: 85% Critics, 61% Audience

Nicolas Cage either hits or he doesn’t. And as the titular serial killer in Longlegs, Cage most certainly hits. More in the vein of psychological thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en than straight-up horror, Longlegs is nonetheless a disturbing and suspenseful movie. If you’re a fan of true crime or any of those comps, buckle up and just wait to see what Cage does with this unnerving role.

Director: Curry Barker
Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrete, Cooper Tomlinson
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 48m
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics, 94% Audience

The breakout horror movie of the year, Obsession showed that you don’t need a big budget for big scares. Made for ~$750,000, Obsession was a juggernaut at the box office, and for good reason. Its smart premise and strong performances from a cast of newcomers (especially an impressively creepy Inde Navarrette) make it one of the best horror films of the decade. With a few great jump scares to boot, Obsession takes the old adage “Be careful what you wish for” and twists it to delightfully dark effect.

Director: Emma Tammi
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Kat Conner Sterling
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1hr 50m
Rotten Tomatoes: 33% Critics, 85% Audience

Who knew that a videogame inspired by Chuck E. Cheese would be so good as a movie? This one is more likely to hit for true fans of the game series, but even if you’re new to the world of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, you’ll get caught up quickly thanks to the way the movie catches viewers up on (and expands their understanding of) the Five Nights lore. Best of all, the movie packs its storyline with tons of Easter eggs, making it great to revisit on streaming even if you caught it in theaters.

Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Anthony Michael Hall
Rating: R
Runtime: 1hr 45m
Rotten Tomatoes: 38% Critics, 66% Audience

As far as movie villains go, serial killer Michael Myers is definitely near the top of the list. The Halloween series established a new dawn in the slasher genre, and Halloween Kills ups the ante with more brutal mayhem than most of its predecessors. Sure, you won’t get that much in terms of plot development (although the film does pick up from where 2018’s reboot left off), but is that really what you look for most in a Halloween film? Bring on the butcher’s knife!

Director: Christopher Landon
Cast: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1hr 36m
Rotten Tomatoes: 71% Critics, 67% Audience

What if your life was like Groundhog Day, except that you had to relive your murder again and again until you solved the crime? Happy Death Day answers that question, and the answer is: you have one helluva whodunnit on your hands. Even if this movie isn’t the scariest on the list, it’s certainly one of the most fun, thanks in large part to some great twists on familiar elements of the thriller genre. And if you like a few jump scares in your mystery thrillers, you won’t be disappointed.