The Orchard
Last Updated: August 3rd
Sometimes you just want to binge whichever good scary movies on Netflix to watch on a dark, stormy night. From ghosts to vampires, zombies, and Babadooks, just about every morbid fantasy that your demented mind can conjure has representation. We’ve watched the best horror movies on Netflix streaming right now, and here they are, ranked from beastly to blood-curdling.
Related: The Best Mystery Series On Netflix Right Now
Screen Australia
1) The Babadook (2014)
Run Time: 93 min, IMDb: 6.8/10
Starring Essie Davis (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery) and directed by Jennifer Kent, The Babadook is a bracing psychological horror film grounded in the terrors and frustration of parenthood. Davis plays a mother who lost her husband in a car accident on their way to the delivery room. She loves and resents her troubled 6-year-old son, feelings that seem to take supernatural form when a creepy pop-up book, Mister Babadook, mysteriously shows up on his shelf. Kent’s stylish film makes excellent uses of its creepy interiors. but it’s Davis’ committed performance that drives the horror home.
RADiUS-TWC
2) It Follows (2014)
Run Time: 100 min, IMDb: 6.8/10
Sometimes the best horror movies have the simplest of concepts: A nearly unkillable thing is on its way to kill you. It worked for The Terminator, Halloween, and so many others, but It Follows takes a novel approach to the concept. The story centers on a girl who catches a sexually transmitted monster (STM) that’s only goal is to slowly follow its current victim until it can brutally execute them. No one who hasn’t been the monster’s prey can see it, it can take any human form it wants, and the only way to escape it is to pass it along to another sexual partner. The eerie cinematography and retro score push this thriller into terrifying territory to the point where you might not trust anyone walking toward you for a few days after watching it.
20th Century Fox Korea
3) The Wailing (2016)
Run Time: 156 min, IMDb: 7.4/10
Is there ever a time where a mysterious stranger shows up in a small town, and everyone is better off from it? Well, The Wailing is no exception to the familiar inciting incident, as it focuses on a village in South Korea that sees the spread of a terrifying illness once a shady character moves into its surrounding forest. As people start dying, a police officer starts investigating and is sucked into a brutal puzzle. While it’s about 30 minutes too long and the tone isn’t always consistent, The Wailing keeps its audience guessing as much as its protagonist. Its unique religious realism turns this dream-like story into a memorable nightmare.
Focus World
4) Raw (2016)
Run Time: 99 min, IMDb: 7.0/10
If you have the stomach for it, Raw is one of the better horror films available on Netflix right now. The French-Belgian drama centers on a young girl named Justine, who begins her first year of vet school and uncovers a dark secret about herself and her family. A vegetarian, Justine is soon overcome with a craving for meat after a hazing ritual gone wrong. From there, things get strange and gross and nightmare-inducing.
Warner Bros. Pictures
5) The Conjuring (2014)
Run Time: 112 min, IMDb: 7.5/10
The Conjuring marks the first installment in a horror series that sees Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga playing a married pair of paranormal investigators who seek to understand the phenomenon of hauntings. When the duo is called to assist a family living in a ghostly farmhouse in Rhode Island, they encounter more than they can handle when it comes to the undead. Again, these stories were based on true events, so watch at your own risk.
Entertainment Film Distributors/New World Pictures
6) Hellraiser (1987)
Run Time: 94 min, IMDb: 7.0/10
Barker’s directorial debut captures the nightmarish qualities of his literary efforts. Based on The Hellbound Heart (a novella so unsettling no film could do it justice), Hellraiser mixes disturbing imagery with sexual undertones, in the process introducing Pinhead and a panoply of sadistic, multidimensional beings who would return for several sequels.
Gravitas Ventures
7) The Nightmare (2015)
Run Time: 91 min, IMDb: 5.8/10
One of the scariest movies on this list also happens to be a documentary, albeit one that aims to frighten audiences in the way of a typical narrative horror film. Director Rodney Ascher’s (Room 237) rumination on the terrifying phenomenon known as sleep paralysis plays like a more artful and particularly unnerving episode of Unsolved Mysteries, but what makes it even scarier is that everything described by the film’s subjects happened in their own tortured minds.
Pathé/Lionsgate
8) The Descent (2005)
Run Time: 99 min, IMDb: 7.2/10
A group of thrill-seekers goes exploring an underground cave system, while one of its members Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) still struggles to cope with losing her family in a car accident. The group quickly realizes that not only are they in unmapped territory but that they aren’t alone as they become the prey of the cave’s savage inhabitants. With its title not only applying to the obvious journey into the claustrophobic environment but Sarah’s unraveling mental state, The Descent remains bleak and brutal from start to finish.
Netflix
9) Gerald’s Game (2017)
Run Time: 103 min, IMDb: 6.7/10
Stephen King’s 1992 novel transpires mostly in one isolated lake house’s bedroom where its protagonist, Jessie, lies bound to a bed after her husband dies in the midst of a sex game. That makes it a tough story to film, which may explain why it took 25 years to get turned into a movie. But the wait was worth it: director Mike Flanagan delivers a resourceful, disturbing adaptation anchored by a great Carla Gugino performance (with some fine supporting work from Bruce Greenwood). Forced to find a way out of her situation, while confronting her own past, Gugino’s Jessie is made to go to extremes, which leads to, among other things, one of the squirmiest scenes in recent memory.
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
10) The Sixth Sense (1999)
Run Time: 107 min, IMDb: 8.1/10
Hijinks-y teen movies and all, 1999 was an impressive year for movies. Magnolia, Fight Club, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, The Matrix… The list goes on and on. Among those entries is M. Night Shyamalan’s first big release, and one of his best (behind Unbreakable, of course). This was a simpler time, before seeing his name in trailers garnered skepticism. Centered on a boy who can’t separate the dead from the living and his child psychologist with issues of his own, The Sixth Sense remains one of four horror movies to ever be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. It’s endlessly tense, driven by strong performances from the two leads over jump scares. It’s held up well, even if it’s established a tough hurdle for the director’s future efforts to clear.
Trimark Pictures
11) Cube (1997)
Run Time: 90 min, IMDb: 7.3/10
The genius of Cube is in its simplicity. A group of strangers awakens to find themselves in a complex system of identical rooms, many of which contain hidden, lethal traps for anyone clueless enough to enter them. With no knowledge of where they are, how they got there, or why they’re there, they have to work together to escape and/or — usually and — die trying. As it all pretty much takes place in a single room, it’s a prime example that the only things needed are a solid idea, a little money, and the stomach to depict people getting their faces melted or their bodies diced by razor-sharp wire. The follow-up installments go a little further out there in ideas and the world outside the Cube, but the original can’t be topped thanks to its unnerving score and tense, claustrophobic nature.
Netflix
12) Veronica (2017)
Run Time: 105 min, IMDb: 6.2/10
After losing her father, young Veronica (Sandra Escacena) and two classmates attempt to contact the other side with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse. Something more sinister breaks through, though, as Veronica is haunted by a dark presence everywhere she goes. Even though it has just been released in 2018, it’s already been called one of the scariest movies ever made. While that is certainly open for debate, what Veronica does do is excel phenomenally in the cliche horror bits every viewer has seen a thousand times over, such as mishandled Ouija use, frightening entities that only the protagonist is privy to, and twisted dreams. Based on a true story, the film relies on the strong performance of newcomer Escacena, highlighted by her haunting expressions of terror and anguish.
Drafthouse Films
13) The Invitation (2016)
Run Time: 100 min, IMDb: 6.7/10
After back-to-back big studio bombs, Karyn Kusama returned to her scrappy indie roots with this contained, brilliantly suspenseful study of the darkness that can arise when people don’t allow themselves to feel. The Invitation isn’t a perfect film, but Kusama does a lot with the scant resources she had to play with here, and you have to appreciate her willingness to tackle grief so directly in a genre that tends to have little time for genuine human emotion.
Warner Bros.
14) The Lost Boys (1987)
Run Time: 97 min, IMDb: 7.3/10
From the hair and the music to its leading stars, The Lost Boys can’t shake the decade that sired it, but that’s essential to its charm and longevity. A pair of teen brothers move to Santa Cruz with their mother and inadvertently get involved with a pack of leather-clad vampires. It’s essentially a brat pack movie with fangs from Joel Schumacher that manages to be fun and funny while keeping the stakes high.
Paramount Pictures/Relativity Media
15) Let Me In (2010)
Run Time: 116 min, IMDb: 7.1/10
Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) wrote and directed the American adaptation of Let The Right One In, a haunting story of boy-meets-vampire. Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a 12-year-old dealing with brutal bullying and neglectful parents, finds friendship and connection with Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz), a seemingly young girl who moves into his apartment building. Let Me In follows the same broad strokes as the 2008 Swedish version of the story — with a little more Hollywood money and color themes behind it — but the understated performances from the film’s leads still make this beautiful, gory tale memorable.
Lionsgate Films
16) Cabin Fever (2002)
Run Time: 93 min, IMDb: 5.6/10
Any horror movie from director Eli Roth is guaranteed to keep you up at night but Cabin Fever might be one of his more terrifying projects. The 2002 film focuses on a group of college students who take a trip together to a remote area and soon become victims of a gruesome flesh-eating bacteria. What makes this whole story even more terrifying is that it’s partly true. Roth based the film’s plot off of his own experience with a skin infection while traveling in Iceland.
AP
17) Red Dragon (2002)
Run Time: 124 min, IMDb: 7.2/10
This 2002 prequel to Silence of the Lambs features everyone’s favorite cannibal – Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) – and a copycat serial killer played by Ralph Fiennes. The film follows a detective named Will Graham (Edward Norton), who gets roped into solving a string of homicides that are committed by a killer known as The Tooth Fairy, a guy who eats his victims in the hopes of transforming himself. Fiennes is chilling in his portrayal of a psychopath whose childhood trauma causes him to target the innocent, and Norton is the kind of hero you root for in weird, terrifying stories like these.
SF Norge A/S
18) Troll Hunter (2010)
Run Time: 90 min, IMDb: 7.0/10
Norwegian director Andre Ovredal’s 2010 horror-fantasy merges scrappy found-footage cinematography with truly astounding visual effects in this story about a group of university students who discover a race of giant, man-eating trolls while making a documentary about a suspected bear poacher. Think Blair Witch meets Jurassic Park, shot through with a liberal dose of sharp satire as the young city-dwellers come up against a rural world that’s far more alien than they ever could have imagined.
The Orchard
19) Creep 2 (2017)
Run Time: 80 min, IMDb: 6.4/10
(Spoilers for Creep:) What could have very well been a stand-alone character exploration in 2014’s Creep is heightened in Creep 2, which sees Mark Duplass’ chameleon-like killer seeking a different kind of self-portrait. Burned out on his string of murders, Aaron reaches out to a woman who’s looking for her own kind of story by meeting and filming the lonely people she meets online. Instead of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing path the killer normally follows, he tells the woman what he is off-the-bat and what he wants: An ending to his journey. With all his cards (seemingly) on the table — and her hiding some of her own — it’s an even more fascinating tale than the original.
The Orchard
20) Creep (2014)
Run Time: 82 min, IMDb: 6.3/10
One of the better found-footage movies to come down the pike in Paranormal Activity‘s wake is this creepy gem about a videographer (director Patrick Brice) who answers a strange Craigslist ad from a man (Mark Duplass) who requests to be followed around with a camera for 24 hours. There are a few points late in the narrative where suspension of disbelief becomes an issue (a not-atypical problem for the genre), but if you can look past that, you’ll be treated to a very scary turn by Duplass and a supremely-unnerving epilogue.
Cannes Film Festival
21) Train To Busan (2016)
Run Time: 118 min, IMDb: 7.5/10
Zombie movies have been done to death, brought back to life, and repeated a few more times. But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t entertaining stories to be found in the genre. Train To Busan doesn’t bring anything exceptionally original to the walking undead, but it’s no less of a thrilling ride. An overworked dad is riding the rails with his neglected daughter when a Z-word outbreak strikes, causing savagery from corpse and living alike. Its fast-moving, contorted foes are genuinely freaky in the movie’s cramped setting, making the story feel like a zombified Snowpiercer. It’s a fun action flick with a slightly heavy-handed but solid emotional core that’s unsurprisingly getting an English remake.
A Pokeepsie Films/Nadie es Perfecto/Atresmedia Cine
22) The Bar (2017)
Run Time: 102 min, IMDb: 6.4/10
A varied group of people is stuck in a bar after a man is gunned down outside. As the paranoia spreads and they turn on one another, they discover a mysterious sickness could be the culprit. It’s a bottle-type plot that has been done before — locking a bunch of frenzied folks in a cage and let instincts take their course — but this Spanish horror comedy injects its own dark humor and keeps the answers to a minimum, making an entertaining story that unfortunately favors the “dark” over the “comedy” in its final act.
Dimension Films
23) Scream 2 (1997)
Run Time: 120 min, IMDb: 6.1/10
This 1997 slasher-flick is a cult classic, so of course it has a place on the list. David Arquette, Courtney Cox, and Neve Campbell reprise their roles with Campbell’s Sidney Prescott now attending a university where the Ghostface Killer strikes again. After several students are murdered, Sidney takes it upon herself to end the killing spree by uncovering the true identity of the murderer, which turns out to be the person she least expected.
Collective Digital
24) V/H/S/2 (2013)
Run Time: 96 min, IMDb: 6.1/10
Each found footage horror movie can be hit-or-miss, but when it works it really works. The V/H/S anthology films pack several short films into each feature, drawing on a talent pool that includes everyone from Adam Wingard (You’re Next, The Guest) and Jason Eisener (Hobo With a Shotgun). Each entry provides a short, POV-glimpse into a different genre of horror, with plenty of jump scares and over-the-top gore to go around. The 2012 original was unfortunately removed from Netflix, along with the weakest of the three, V/H/S Viral, but V/H/S/2 is still available.
Netflix
25. Hush (2016)
Run Time: 81 min, IMDb: 6.6/10
Mike Flanagan, who directed Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, expertly directs this simple tale of a deaf woman being menaced by a masked (and later unmasked) killer in her remote home. This is nothing you haven’t seen before, but Flanagan brings real panache and visual energy to a film that could have easily felt redundant in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.
Recent Changes Through July 2018:
Removed: Starry Eyes, 30 Days Of Night, The Hallow
Added: Cube, Let Me In, The Lost Boys, Red Dragon, Cabin Fever, Scream 2, The Conjuring, Raw
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