Haxan Films
Last Updated: August 31st
To appreciate fully what the world of film has to offer it’s best to watch a wide variety of what’s out there rather than just focus on one genre. That said, there are times when nothing but a great horror film will do. The horror selection on Amazon Prime runs deep, but a few pages in it starts to be dominated by low-budget obscurities. There’s a lot of cream near the top, however, which offers a generous sampling of what horror has to offer. So here are the 10 best horror movies on Amazon Prime right now.
Related: The 10 Best Horror Movies On Hulu Right Now
A24
The Witch (2016)
Run Time: 92 min | IMDb: 6.8/10
Robert Eggers’ Sundance hit attracted some of the oddest complaints directed at any film in recent years when some disgruntled audience members suggested it wasn’t scary enough. Maybe they were watching a different movie? Set in colonial New England, the austere film follows a family outcast from their strict religious community and trying to make it on their own at the edge of some deep, dark woods. It essentially takes the witch-fearing folklore of the era at face value, watching the family disintegrate under the insidious influence of a nearby witch. It’s a slow-burn horror movie, light on shocks, heavy on unease, and thematically rich in ways that only become apparent later.
Miramax
The Crow (1994)
Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 7.6/10
Most people know The Crow because of its tragic backstory. Star Brandon Lee died shooting the film in a freak accident on set with some of the final scenes having to be re-worked in post-production. The film itself is a mix of the horror and crime genres as it follows the story of a man seeking revenge for the murder of his fiancee. That man happens to have also been murdered so he comes back to life on the one year anniversary of his death intent on killing the men involved. There are supernatural elements at play, a ton of violence and gore, and some creepy sequences sure to give you nightmares.
A24
It Comes At Night (2017)
Run Time: 91 min | IMDb: 6.2/10
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait with 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale.
United Artists
Carrie (1976)
Run Time: 98 min | IMDb: 7.4/10
Sissy Spacek’s blood-drenched teen horror flick made high school seem even more terrifying when it landed in theaters in the late 70s. The film follows a young girl suffering under the abuse of her religiously-devout mother and being bullied by the more popular kids at school. She has some embarrassing moments — getting her period during swim class — and some tension-filled fights with her mother that begin to unleash her supernatural abilities. Good ol’ mom thinks they’re powers given by the Devil himself but Carrie decides to use them to exact her vengeance and it’s a gruesome as you’d hope.
Market Square Productions
Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Run Time: 96 min | IMDb: 7.9/10
The unlikely origin of the modern horror film: a farmhouse in the rural area surrounding Pittsburgh where director George Romero shot most of Night of the Living Dead. Working on a tiny budget, he not only created the modern movie zombie but made horror safe for grimy, uncomfortable visions taken from everyday life, helping to pull the genre out of gothic castles and away from theatrical monsters. Night of the Living Dead remains essential viewing, and not just because of its place in history. It’s still incredibly scary, in large part because Romero had such humble resources. It doesn’t play like a nightmare from long ago and far away. It has the immediacy of a news bulletin.
Kino Lorber
Nosferatu (1922)
Run Time: 81 min | IMDb: 8/10
A cornerstone of the horror genre and German Expressionism — and film history as a whole — F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized 1922 adaptation of Dracula helped establish the basic vocabulary of the horror movie, using long shadows and unnerving photographic effects to create a disturbing atmosphere. It also features one of the ugliest monsters ever put to film, Count Orlock, as played by Max Schreck under heavy makeup. The years have done nothing to reduce its power to disturb.
Broad Green
The Neon Demon (2016)
Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 6.8/10
It’s not entirely accurate to call The Neon Demon a horror movie, even if necrophilia and cannibalism both factor in pretty heavily. Nicholas Winding Refn’s dark show business fairy tale doesn’t fit easily into any genre, following a just-off-the-bus aspiring model named Jesse (Elle Fanning) as she tries to make it in a Los Angeles where danger awaits around every corner. Beautifully filmed, even when focusing on ugly images, and set to a pulsing synth score, it’s an unsubtle, blackly comic look at the underside of show business with little regard for the divide between good taste and bad.
Lionsgate
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Run Time: 81 min | IMDb: 6.4/10
Found footage movies have been a dime a dozen in the past 20 years, and much of the thanks can go to the one that solidified the genre as cheap, easy-to-shoot, and most of all, downright scary, if done well anyway. Shot on a budget somewhere around $60,000, The Blair Witch Project made it into the Guinness Book Of World Records for top budget-to-box office ratio, raking in $248 million. The film follows three college students shooting a documentary in the woods as they track down a local urban legend. By today’s standards, it doesn’t exactly chockful of scares, but what sells the horror is how real it seems. Pushing all the imitations (and sequels/remake) aside, it’s certainly worth a rewatch with fresh eyes.
Warner Bros. UK
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
Run Time: 111 min | IMDb: 6.7/10
Despite a cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and Glenn Close, this unusual post-apocalyptic film got a bit overlooked during its brief theatrical release. It’s best enjoyed without knowing too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Melanie (Sennia Nanua) the girl of the title, isn’t quite what she seems and there’s a reason she, and others her age, are kept in a secure military facility. But the best trick of the film, thanks in large part to Nanua’s winning performance, is the way its innovations go beyond just putting twists on a familiar genre but making us question where our sympathies ought to lie.
Dark Sky Films/Glass Eye Pix
The Innkeepers (2011)
Run Time: 101 min | IMDb: 5.5/10
Ti West’s follow up to The House of the Devil is less creepy than its predecessor, but that’s not really the point. Much of the film coasts on the easy charm of its lead characters played by Sara Paxton and Pat Healy, employees at a rustic, failing New England hotel rumored to be haunted. When it gets scary, West doesn’t hold back, but mostly it’s just a pleasure to hang out with the protagonists at a past-its-prime haunted hotel. It’s funny, too, especially when Lena Dunham shows up for a cameo.
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