Netflix may be a multi-genre platform, but its collection of horror movies makes up some of the genre's best selections. Ranging from original content and modern monsters to cult favorites and classics, the streaming service serves up some wicked picks for all things horror.
Like Hellraiser's puzzle box or The Shining's Overlook Hotel, Netflix offers users a wide-ranging doorway to horror - especially with the original movies that Netflix has been producing over the past few years. Their digital library has grown substantially, placing genre favorites like the Warrens and Jack Torrance shoulder-to-shoulder with lesser known creeps like the Moonlight Man and Black Phillip.
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Between movies like Get Out sweeping with Oscar nominations and movies like Halloween and A Quiet Place scoring the top spot at the box office, the horror genre has entered into an unofficial golden age. Luckily, Netflix has made sure to offer some of the best - and downright creepiest - movies in the genre. And, now that the days of wandering down the horror aisle at Blockbuster is a thing of the past, users have plenty to sift through down Netflix's digital aisle instead. Here's the all the best ones.
- This Page: Netflix Original Horror
- Page 2: Classic Horror
- Page 3: Modern Horror Movies on Netflix
Hush
Not unlike the 1967 thriller Wait Until Dark, in which a blind woman, played by Audrey Hepburn, must fend off a group of intruders in her home, Hush centers around a deaf woman in a similar situation. Maddie (Kate Siegel) is attempting to live in peace deep in the woods, when a masked stranger shows up. What first begins with the stranger secretly stalking the woman quickly escalates into a life and death situation. Directed by Mike Flanagan, Hush was co-written by Flanagan and Siegel, who would later work together again on The Haunting of Hill House.
Apostle
Religious themes go hand-in-hand with horror movies, and Apostle is a shining example of this. Similar to 1973's The Wicker Man, Apostle centers around a man named Thomas (Dan Stevens) who infiltrates a mysterious cult in order to find his sister. Once there, he discovers the cult's disturbing relationship with God, which revolves less around love and peace than it does misery and torture. Director Gareth Evans - best known for the Raid film series - combines jarring energy with faith-based horror that fuels two hours of unnerving tension with a fair share of body horror.
Gerald's Game
Based on the novel of the same name by genre maestro Stephen King, Gerald's Game is an isolated thriller that cleverly uses a single location to its advantage. Mike Flanagan climbed the ladder at Netflix with this movie before tackling the series adaptation of Shirley Jackson's beloved haunted house novel The Haunting of Hill House, and he managed to score some serious scares. In the movie, struggling married couple Jessie and Gerald (Carla Cugino and Bruce Greenwood, respectively) try to rekindle their flame with a romantic getaway, only to face a desperate fight for survival. After Gerald dies of a heart attack moments after handcuffing his wife to the bed, Jessie must use her wits to free herself, stave off a rabid dog, and evade a mysterious creature she calls the Moonlight Man.
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The Ritual
Buddy road trip movies typically belong to the comedy genre, but there are exceptions. John Landis' An American Werewolf in London walked a fine line between comedy and horror, but The Ritual sticks strictly to the latter. It centers around a group of friends who embark on a hike in Scandinavia to honor their recently deceased friend - only it doesn't go according to plan. Instead of finding solace, they encounter a local legend based in Norse Mythology that wants nothing more than to devour them one by one. The movie stars Rafe Spall, who recently starred in J.A. Bayona's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
1922
Another Stephen King adaptation released by Netflix is 1922, based on one of the author's short stories from his collection Full Dark, No Stars. Set in Omaha, Nebraska, 1922 centers around a man named Wilf (Thomas Jane) who convinces his son to help murder his wife in order to keep her from moving away and selling their land. However, by the time he discovers that his heinous deed will have serious psychological consequences, Wilf is already being haunted by wife's ghost, an infestation of rats hell-bent on destroying his home, and a curse that refuses to leave him be.
Ravenous
The zombie subgenre has been done to death, but there have been some creative standouts in recent years. One such film is Ravenous, which revolves around the citizens of a small village who must band together to survive a flesh-eating virus. Like 28 Days Later and REC, it puts a unique spin on common zombie tropes, adding some surprising depth to the genre. In fact, even among all the body horror and despair, the most jarring aspect of Ravenous exists within its ambiguous ending, which resulted in some divisive responses from audiences.
Page 2 of 3: Classic Horror Movies on Netflix
The Shining
Horror movies are hardly running short on stories set inside haunted houses, but Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, is the crème de la crème of this particular subgenre. After Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes on a job as the winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, he takes his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) along with him. However, instead of using his free time to finish the novel he's been working on, Jack begins falling under the spell of the hotel's supernatural pull - a malevolent force that isn't just attempting to kill the Torrances, but feed on Danny's unique psychic ability.
Hellraiser
"Body horror" is a subgenre unto itself in the world of horror, with movies like The Thing, The Fly, and Scanners fitting into that mold, and novelist/filmmaker Clive Barker pushed the limits within this subgenre with Hellraiser. After a portal to Hell is opened, courtesy of a puzzle box called Lemarchand's Box, creatures known as Cenobites - led by the soul-destroying Pinhead - unleash a course of a horrific events when one of their victims manages to escape their torturous underworld and feed on the living. Leather-clad torture and sadomasochism ensues.
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Cube
In Cube, isolation and confusion are the key sources of horror in which a group of strangers wake up in a strange prison-like structure. Driven by fear and anxiety, these strangers do what they must to not only figure out how they can escape, but how they got there in the first place. Unfortunately, the cubes also happen to be booby-trapped, and survival is hardly a guarantee. Directed by Vincenzo Natali, who is currently in production on the Netflix adaptation of Stephen King's In the Tall Grass, with Patrick Wilson, Cube has earned cult status over the years.
Interview with the Vampire
Author Anne Rice has crafted a career around romanticizing the supernatural, and her novel Interview with the Vampire - adapted by director Neil Jordan - is a quintessential example of this. It follows a 200-year-old vampire named Louis (Brad Pitt) who tells the twisted tale of his immortal journey through life alongside the violent Lestat (Tom Cruise) to a curious reporter (Christian Slater). Interview with the Vampire was pure pop-horror when it was released in 1994, twisting the romantic nature of vampirism into a soul-sucking curse. The movie also stars Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas, and Stephen Rea.
The Sixth Sense
In M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, nine-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is tormented by some unseen force, but no doctor can pinpoint a clear diagnosis. However, when child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) intervenes, he discovers that Cole's delusions - an ability to see and speak with ghosts - might actually be real. The Sixth Sense held the title for the highest-grossing horror movie until IT was released in 2017, and it's still a treasured ghost story that is best known for its twist ending.
Se7en
Instead of centering around ghosts or demons, David Fincher's Se7en is a murder mystery exploring man-made horrors inspired by the seven deadly sins. It follows nearly-retired detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) who pairs up with the much younger David Mills (Brad Pitt) as they attempt to track down the film's elusive culprit, confronting one horrific crime scene after the next. Though this movie feels more like a police procedural than a horror movie, its graphic nature steers it closer to the latter.
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Page 3 of 3: Modern Horror Movies on Netflix
The Witch
Supernatural lore surrounding early settlers in New England is nothing new, but writer/director Robert Eggers managed to breathe something unique into 17th-century witch panic with The Witch. After a family is banished from their village due to their conflicting religious beliefs, they quickly succumb to one horror after the next that may or may not have to do with a local witch residing in the woods. The family ultimately suspects oldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) of practicing witchcraft, which rapidly reaches a deadly boiling point.
It Follows
It Follows is very much a back-to-basics style of horror that replaces fast-paced torture porn, made popular in the 2000s with movies like Saw and Hostel, with the slow-burning tension of movies like Halloween and Let the Right One In. It centers around a group of teens who are preyed upon by a mysterious demon-like creature who possesses people through sexual intercourse. Taking the form of slow-moving strangers, the embodied curse attempts to kill them one-by-one as the teens concoct a number of strategies in order to survive.
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The Conjuring
After defining an entire era of horror with Saw in the early-2000s, director James Wan replaced body horror with supernatural horror in The Conjuring. Based on real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, respectively), The Conjuring follows the married couple as they attempt to rid a family's home of a demonic presence. Only, what begins as a routine case ends up evolving into one of the Warrens' darkest experiences dealing with the paranormal. The movie spawned a direct sequel, as well as a number of spinoffs, including two Annabelle movies and The Nun.
The Invitation
To paraphrase Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow, The Invitation manages to be a horror movie "without benefit of ghouls and goblins." When Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend are invited to a dinner party by Will's ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard), awkward tension is unavoidable. However, said tension takes a horrific turn when Will suspects that Eden and her new husband (Michiel Huisman) aren't nearly as innocent as they seem. Whether or not his suspicions prove to be valid depend on his efforts to unravel their ambiguous intentions.
Creep and Creep 2
In Creep, Mark Duplass stars as a peculiar individual named Josef who puts out an online ad requesting that someone film him for an entire day. He claims that the footage is for his unborn child, but Josef's motives seem less and less straightforward to Aaron (Patrick Kack‑Brice), the man who responds to the ad, the longer he's with him. Though Creep is slow-moving, its obscure tone makes for an overall unsettling viewing experience. And, if nothing else, it's paid off expertly with a wholly unexpected ending. Its sequel, Creep 2, plays on the same homemade aesthetic, but replaces an unsuspecting videographer with an eager video artist.
Train to Busan
Zombies have invaded rural neighborhoods, cities, underground facilities, and apocalyptic landscapes, but in Train to Busan, the setting is far more contained. When Seok-Woo (Gong Yoo) travels with his estranged daughter to Busan, they discover that they are in the midst of a zombie outbreak. The movie marries survival horror with a creative spin, in which the passengers on the train desperately attempt to find their way to safety, without leading the zombie horde with them. With a 96 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Train to Busan has been heralded by many as one of the best zombie movies ever, and James Wan even announced that he will produce a remake.
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Oculus
The third film by Mike Flanagan on this list is Oculus, a tense supernatural thriller that highlights much of the director's trademark elements that would eventually show up in movies like Hush and Gerald's Game, as well as his TV series The Haunting of Hill House. In Oculus, sister and brother Kaylie and Tim (Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites, respectively) attempt to destroy a mirror that they believe manifests a well of demonic powers - powers that ultimately possessed their mother and father when the two were children. However, despite their seemingly fool-proof plan, the mirror manages to make their mission a near-impossible feat, with potentially deadly consequences.
The Wailing
While some horror movies are effective when the the central threat is obvious from the get-go (i.e. Pennywise in IT, Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street), The Wailing benefits from a completely mysterious antagonist. Police officer Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) investigates a series of deaths that just so happened to begin soon after the appearance of a stranger in a small Korean village. As he attempts to discover the truth behind the situation, the local death toll (as well as unbridled mania) continues to rise. The film received a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 99 percent rating, and Ridley Scott has considered producing a remake.
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