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Best Horror Movies On Netflix

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By Shawn S. Lealos , Colin McCormick & Stephen Barker

Updated Aug 28, 2024, 1:00 PM EDT

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The best Netflix horror movies offer subscribers a range of terrifying films across dozens of subgenres. When it comes to horror movies, the extensive Netflix library has a large collection, including both licensed theatrical releases and critically acclaimed Netflix Original horror releases made directly for streaming. This is huge since horror remains one of the most popular genres for streaming offerings. Netflix's commitment to providing a fresh and regularly updated selection of scary movies for subscribers is hardly surprising.

Among the pick of the platform's offering are demonic possession movies, slashers, remakes, reboots, and both classics and new modern-day horrors. Between the visceral thrills of being scared and the mystifying visual effects, Netflix's best horror movies deliver. Whether it's a jump-scare-filled popcorn flick or an elevated horror where the scares are in the morbid narrative about existential dread, Netflix subscribers can find so many different approaches to the nightmare-inducing genre.

For even more Netflix streaming recommendations, be sure to check out the best TV shows on Netflix, best romance movies on Netflix, and best family movies on Netflix.

25 The Babadook (2014)

A Story Of Grief & Parenthood

Released in 2014, The Babadook is an independent horror movie that took the world by storm upon its arrival. Made in Australia and directed by first-time filmmaker Jennifer Kent, the film focuses on Amelia, a widow raising a six-year-old as a single mother. Amelia is struggling with mental health issues, and things get worse when her son, Samuel, starts to draw pictures of a mythical demon known as the Babadook. He believes the demon is real, and soon, things start happening that might prove it to be true.

The Babadook is, at heart, a tale of a mother who is dealing with grief but has no idea how to fight this very real monster. Whether the Babadook is the personification of grief or it is real remains up to the viewer, as Kent offers no easy answers. The symbolism and themes helped the movie achieve critical success, winning awards at the AACTA Awards and Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. Its 98% certified fresh critical rating shows that it is a horror release worth checking out.

24 Thanksgiving (2023)

Eli Roth's Holiday Slasher Flick

When Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez created their epic Grindhouse movie, fake Grindhouse trailers were placed between the two features. These include fake film from directors like Edgar Wright, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, and more. Rodriguez made his fake trailer (Machete) into a movie and Hobo With a Shotgun was also made into a real movie after its fake trailer played in Grindhouse. Now, Eli Roth has made his fake trailer into a real film with Thanksgiving.

The movie sees someone wearing a big Pilgrim mask and killing people during a celebration in a small town. As with most slasher movies, it is up to mostly a group of young adults to figure out who the killer is while the local police and authority figures provide no help. The movie plays it mostly straight for a slasher, but it has some inventive kills and some scary moments. For anyone looking for a fun slasher movie on Netflix, this 2023 release fits that bill.

23 The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (2016)

A Story Of Witches & Curses

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe is a movie that slipped by horror audiences in 2016 without getting much attention until it later debuted on home video and streaming. Since that time, horror fans have discovered what they missed. It is a smart and scary film with Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch starring as a medical examiner and his son who get a Jane Doe and are asked to determine the cause of death. However, as they start to cut her open and start the examination, bad things start happening.

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe is about a witch killed many years ago, and the body might possess her evil spirit of vengeance. Based mostly in one location of the morgue, the film is an acting masterclass by Cox and Hirsch, who are mostly forced to act against a dead body on the examining table until the true horrors arrive throughout the night. The film received mostly positive reviews (86% on Rotten Tomatoes), and while people ignored it while it was in theaters, this is one Netflix horror movie that deserves its reevaluation.

22 The Conjuring (2013)

The Cursed Movie That Started The Franchise

The Conjuring Universe has been one of the most successful franchises in the horror genre over the last decade. The movie that started it all is on Netflix, if anyone wants to start from the beginning. The main franchise, starting with this movie, follows Ed and Lorraine Warren, real-life paranormal investigators played here by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson.

While they were best known for investigating the Amityville Horror home, this one takes viewers into a lesser-known investigation. In The Conjuring, Ed and Lorraine head to investigate a farmhouse in Rhode Island, where a family of seven says they believe a haunting is terrorizing them. The Warrens soon learn this is true and set out to find out what is haunting this home and figure out how to exorcise it to save this family.

Not-So-Scary Horror

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The film was a huge success, making $319.5 million on a $20 million budget (via Box Office Mojo) and creating a franchise that has several movies and spinoffs, including The Nun and Annabelle.

21 Army Of The Dead (2021)

Zack Snyder's Return To The Zombie Genre

While most people obsessively began to follow Zack Snyder thanks to his DCU movies, he really got his start with a remake of the zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead. With that, he proved that he could take a beloved classic film and create something just different enough to entertain both fans of the original and fans who love watching zombie movies in the modern day. Once he left the DCU, one of the first movies he worked on was returning to the zombie genre with Army of the Dead.

Army of the Dead sees a zombie outbreak start thanks to something the U.S. military lost containment of outside Las Vegas. The outbreak was confined to Vegas, and the U.S. government blocked it off to keep them there, so a man hired a crew of mercenaries to break into Vegas and steal his money from a vault. There was backstabbing and ulterior motives, but the best part of this horror movie was seeing a mostly smart lead zombie waging war on the humans who came into his kingdom.

20 Zombieland (2009)

A Zombie Comedy

Netflix has one of the best horror comedies in the zombie genre available with Zombieland. The movie sees a small group of survivors trying to make ends meet until they meet each other and start to ruin everything. Jesse Eisenberg is Columbus, a young man who survived thanks to his rules to live by. Woody Harrelson is Tallahassee, a man who survived thanks to his strength. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are Wichita and Little Rock, sisters who survive by scamming other survivors.

However, when the four meet up, they realize they have to work together, or they might all end up dying in this world overrun by zombies. The movie was a massive success at the box office, spawning a sequel. It had brilliantly funny moments, including a sequence with Bill Murray playing himself. There are also rumors that director Ruben Fleischer could return and make a third movie, with the director commenting on waiting until 2029, so each installment would have a 10-year break.

19 1922 (2017)

Stephen King's Story Of A Man Haunted By His Sins

Netflix has made a few solid Stephen King adaptations, and in 2017, it made a movie based on one of King's more obscure short stories. Based on a novella from the book Full Dark, No Stars, the movie 1922 is a historical piece with Thomas Jane starring as Wilf, a farmer who lives in Nebraska with his wife and teenage son, Henry. When his wife decides to sell their farm and move to the city (Omaha), Wilf convinces his son to help murder her so they won't have to move and can keep the farm.

Wilf throws her into a dry well, where rats feed on her. While the local sheriff believes Wilf might have had something to do with her disappearance, he sticks to the story that she ran out on him and their son. The movie is similar to Edgar Allan Poe's Black Cat, as Wilf soon ends up haunted by visions and sounds from his wife, including rats descending on him and his home. The story is terrifying, with some striking imagery, and is one of King's scarier movie adaptations.

18 Bone Tomahawk (2015)

A Western Horror Movie

Bone Tomahawk is a unique horror movie in that it is a horror Western that combines the two classic film genres into one bloody mess. Kurt Russell takes the lead in the film as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who has to deal with a brigand who is ambushed at a Native American burial site and escapes while his partner is killed in an ambush. Soon, Hurt returns to his office and finds that the brigand, a deputy, and the doctor's daughter are gone. He learns they might have been captured by a group of inbred cannibals known as the Troglodytes.

This is where things turn into a straight horror movie, as Hurt and his men go to find the abducted people and find themselves in a life-or-death battle with a group that even other native tribes do their best to avoid. The film is a hard watch at times, with bloody, violent, and disturbing scenes when the Troglodytes start their torture and attack. However, it was also highly praised as a tense horror Western, rated at 91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

17 Pearl (2022)

The Prequel To Ti West's X

When Ti West released his throwback horror movie X, few people could have expected that a prequel would arrive just months later. However, this is what happened as Pearl tells the origin story of Pearl and Howard, the elderly couple who were secretly serial killers. This movie brings back Mia Goth, who starred as both Pearl and the Final Girl, Maxine, in X, to reprise her role as Pearl, a young woman living with her parents while her husband, Howard, was fighting in World War I.

This movie shows how Pearl went from the girl next door to a serial killer, and it is an unflinching look at her descent into madness. Much like X, this prequel also received rave reviews and was, in many ways, even better than X. The film received a 92% positive fresh rating on ORtten Tomatoes, and Goth proved that she was an actress to watch. Many critics groups named it one of the year's top films, and Goth won the Best Lead Performance Award at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.

16 Annabelle (2014)

A Spin-Off In The Conjuring Universe

Annabelle, part of The Conjuring franchise, remains one of the best horror movies on Netflix, especially among those that deal with the supernatural. While Insidious was a great franchise starter for James Wan, it was The Conjuring that provided him with a plethora of story ideas in the form of sequels and spin-offs.

The original Conjuring movie focused on Ed and Lorraine Warren, real-life paranormal investigators who went to exorcise a home. The Conjuring featured many haunted objects in the Warrens' collection, including the haunted doll Annabelle. The spinoff Annabelle takes place in the past and shows how the Warrens got their hands on the doll. Annabelle was almost as successful as The Conjuring and spawned two sequels of its own, though the original remains the best.