Best Horror Movies on Netflix Right Now

September 16, 2026 • Victoria Taylor

September 16, 2026 22 min read

Updated: September 2026

The best horror movies on Netflix right now range from genuinely frightening supernatural films and psychological nightmares to slashers, monster movies, zombie outbreaks, found-footage horror and dark stories that are much harder to categorise.

Horror is one of the broadest genres on Netflix. A film such as The Invisible Man uses horror to explore abuse and control. Creep creates fear almost entirely from one deeply unsettling person. His House combines a haunted-house story with guilt and displacement, while The Cabin in the Woods tears apart the rules of the genre itself. We have prioritised movies we actually think are worth watching rather than simply listing everything Netflix categorises as horror. See also our best thriller movies on Netflix and best psychological thrillers on Netflix guides.

Quick Picks: Best Horror Movies on Netflix

Best horror movie overall: The Invisible Man (2020)
Scariest horror movie: Smile 2 (2024)
Best supernatural horror: His House (2020)
Best psychological horror: The Invisible Man (2020)
Best found-footage horror: Creep (2014)
Best classic found-footage movie: The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Best slasher: MaXXXine (2024)
Best horror comedy: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Best creature feature: A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
Best zombie movie: Zombieland (2009)
Best survival horror: Crawl (2019)
Best folk horror: Apostle (2018)
Best international horror movie: Under the Shadow (2016)
Best hidden gem: Creep (2014)
Best disturbing horror movie: Gerald’s Game (2017)
Best horror movie to watch tonight: Speak No Evil (2024)

Jump to: 30 Best Horror Movies · Scariest Movies · Supernatural Horror · Psychological Horror · Found Footage · Slasher Movies · Survival Horror · Creature Features · Zombie Movies · Hidden Gems · What to Watch Tonight · Watch Blood Star

The 30 Best Horror Movies on Netflix Right Now

1. The Invisible Man (2020)

Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man takes one of Universal Horror’s oldest monsters and rebuilds the concept as a frightening modern story about abuse, gaslighting and control. Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia Kass, who escapes a violently controlling relationship, only to suspect her supposedly dead ex is still watching her.

Whannell frequently leaves enormous empty areas inside the frame. Nothing appears to be there, yet the camera lingers just long enough to make the audience search the negative space.

Year: 2020
Director: Leigh Whannell
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Genre: Psychological horror / stalker horror
Why watch it: One of the smartest modern horror reinventions, combining invisible-monster suspense with a powerful story about coercive control.

2. His House (2020)

Remi Weekes’ His House begins like a haunted-house movie before gradually revealing that its ghosts cannot be separated from trauma, guilt and displacement. Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku play Bol and Rial, refugees from South Sudan given temporary accommodation in Britain.

Weekes uses familiar haunted-house imagery, but the supernatural threat is inseparable from the couple’s history. Bol desperately wants to assimilate and reject the past; Rial understands that the past cannot simply be abandoned.

Year: 2020
Director: Remi Weekes
Cast: Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu, Matt Smith
Genre: Supernatural horror / haunted-house horror
Why watch it: A genuinely frightening ghost story with emotional and political weight beneath the scares.

3. Smile 2 (2024)

Parker Finn expands the unsettling mythology introduced in Smile by moving the supernatural curse into the world of celebrity. Naomi Scott plays pop star Skye Riley, who begins seeing people wearing the same unnatural smile associated with the curse.

Putting the protagonist inside the machinery of celebrity gives Smile 2 a different psychological texture: when Skye sees something terrifying, everyone around her has a perfectly plausible alternative explanation.

Year: 2024
Director: Parker Finn
Cast: Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage
Genre: Supernatural horror / psychological horror
Why watch it: A bigger and more ambitious sequel that turns celebrity pressure and psychological collapse into part of the horror.

4. The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

At first, The Cabin in the Woods looks deliberately familiar: college students, an isolated cabin, a basement, strange objects. Then the film reveals that something much stranger is happening. Drew Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon take the rules audiences understand from decades of horror movies and make those rules part of the actual story.

By the extraordinary final act, almost every monster imaginable has entered the picture.

Year: 2011
Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Richard Jenkins
Genre: Horror comedy / meta-horror
Why watch it: One of the cleverest horror movies about horror movies ever made.

5. Creep (2014)

Few horror films demonstrate the value of simplicity better than Creep. Patrick Brice plays Aaron, a videographer who accepts an online job filming a stranger, Josef, played by Mark Duplass, who claims he is dying and wants a video diary for his unborn child.

Josef can be friendly, vulnerable, funny and obviously inappropriate within the space of the same conversation. There is no elaborate mythology — the horror comes almost entirely from being trapped with somebody whose intentions you cannot read.

Year: 2014
Director: Patrick Brice
Cast: Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice
Genre: Found-footage horror / psychological horror
Why watch it: A tiny, intimate horror movie that proves one unpredictable stranger can be scarier than an army of monsters.

6. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Few horror movies have influenced the genre as much as The Blair Witch Project. Three student filmmakers travel into the Maryland woods to make a documentary about a local legend and become lost. The movie rarely shows audiences anything concrete.

Fear develops from sounds in the darkness, strange arrangements of objects and the gradual realisation that the characters may no longer understand where they are.

Year: 1999
Directors: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard
Genre: Found-footage horror / folk horror
Why watch it: The film that turned found footage into a major horror movement and demonstrated the terrifying power of suggestion.

7. Speak No Evil (2024)

James Watkins’ Speak No Evil takes social politeness and gradually turns it into a trap. An American family accepts an invitation to stay at the isolated home of an apparently charming couple, and small things begin to feel wrong.

Horror develops from the gap between what the family feels and what they believe they are socially permitted to say. By the time the danger becomes undeniable, politeness has already allowed the situation to progress far beyond discomfort.

Year: 2024
Director: James Watkins
Cast: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Aisling Franciosi
Genre: Psychological horror / home-invasion horror
Why watch it: James McAvoy gives an unnervingly charismatic performance in a horror movie about ignoring your instincts.

8. A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

A Quiet Place: Day One returns to the beginning of the alien invasion that destroyed much of civilisation. Lupita Nyong’o plays Sam, a terminally ill woman caught in New York when creatures that hunt through sound arrive.

The film is most effective when it reduces massive catastrophe to small human decisions. Sam is not simply trying to save the world — her future was already limited before the monsters arrived.

Year: 2024
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff
Genre: Creature feature / apocalyptic horror
Why watch it: A large-scale monster movie anchored by a surprisingly intimate and affecting story.

9. Gerald’s Game (2017)

Mike Flanagan takes one of Stephen King’s most difficult-to-adapt novels and turns it into a brutally effective psychological survival horror film. Carla Gugino plays Jessie, handcuffed to a bed after her husband suddenly dies during a sexual game.

Isolation forces Jessie to confront memories she has spent much of her life repressing. The physical problem becomes inseparable from the psychological problem of acknowledging what happened to her in the past.

Year: 2017
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood
Genre: Psychological horror / survival horror
Why watch it: A disturbing Stephen King adaptation powered by an exceptional Carla Gugino performance.

10. I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is difficult to classify neatly, which is exactly what makes it interesting. Justice Smith plays Owen, whose connection with an older girl develops around their shared obsession with a mysterious late-night television programme.

Schoenbrun uses horror less to create conventional scares than to evoke the terrifying feeling of having constructed your entire life around the wrong version of yourself.

Year: 2024
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine
Genre: Psychological horror / surreal horror
Why watch it: A haunting and highly original film about identity, nostalgia and the fear of living the wrong life.

11. Cuckoo (2024)

Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo sends a teenage girl to an isolated resort in the German Alps where almost everything feels subtly wrong. Hunter Schafer plays Gretchen, reluctantly moving with her father and his new family, as a mysterious figure begins following her.

Singer is less interested in delivering a conventional monster movie than in allowing the audience to experience the same disorientation as Gretchen.

Year: 2024
Director: Tilman Singer
Cast: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick
Genre: Psychological horror / body horror
Why watch it: One of the stranger recent horror movies, with a terrific Hunter Schafer and an enjoyably eccentric Dan Stevens.

12. MaXXXine (2024)

Ti West completes his trilogy about ambition, fame and violence with MaXXXine. Mia Goth returns as Maxine Minx, trying to establish herself as a legitimate actress in 1980s Hollywood while a serial killer targets women around Los Angeles.

Maxine is already a survivor when the film begins, which makes her different from the standard slasher heroine who discovers strength during the story.

Year: 2024
Director: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Kevin Bacon
Genre: Slasher / serial-killer horror
Why watch it: A stylish Hollywood slasher built around Mia Goth’s fearless central performance.

13. Apostle (2018)

Gareth Evans moves from the martial-arts intensity of The Raid to brutal folk horror in Apostle. Dan Stevens plays Thomas Richardson, who infiltrates a remote island cult after his sister is kidnapped.

The cult is not simply a collection of religious extremists — something supernatural appears connected to the land itself, and the film gradually introduces increasingly grotesque imagery.

Year: 2018
Director: Gareth Evans
Cast: Dan Stevens, Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton
Genre: Folk horror / cult horror
Why watch it: A dark, violent folk-horror story with a wonderfully sinister Michael Sheen.

14. Under the Shadow (2016)

Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow is both a supernatural horror film and a story about life under political and military pressure. Set in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War, the film follows Shideh and her daughter Dorsa after a missile hits their apartment building.

The apartment is dangerous from outside because of bombs and from inside because of whatever may have entered it.

Year: 2016
Director: Babak Anvari
Cast: Narges Rashidi, Avin Manshadi
Genre: Supernatural horror / international horror
Why watch it: One of the strongest modern international ghost stories, using supernatural fear to deepen a real-world sense of entrapment.

15. Final Destination (2000)

Final Destination created one of modern horror’s simplest and most durable ideas: what if Death itself were the slasher? Devon Sawa plays Alex Browning, whose premonition of a plane explosion saves several classmates — who then begin dying in the order Death originally intended.

There is no conventional killer to confront. Ordinary objects become terrifying because any small chain of events might lead towards an apparently inevitable outcome.

Year: 2000
Director: James Wong
Cast: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Tony Todd
Genre: Supernatural horror / teen horror
Why watch it: A brilliant high-concept horror premise that permanently made everyday accidents feel more sinister.

16. Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Initially dismissed by many critics, Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body has undergone a substantial critical reassessment. Megan Fox plays Jennifer, a popular high-school student who becomes possessed and begins feeding on male classmates.

Diablo Cody’s screenplay uses demonic possession to examine female friendship, sexuality, jealousy and the way teenage girls are perceived by the people around them.

Year: 2009
Director: Karyn Kusama
Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody
Genre: Horror comedy / possession horror
Why watch it: A cult horror film whose sharp examination of female friendship has aged far better than its original reception suggested.

17. The Front Room (2024)

The Front Room turns the arrival of a difficult family member into increasingly grotesque domestic horror. Brandy Norwood plays Belinda, a pregnant woman whose home life changes when her husband’s elderly stepmother, played by Kathryn Hunter, comes to live with them.

The horror comes partly from the idea that your own home has been taken over by somebody whom social and family obligation make almost impossible to remove.

Year: 2024
Directors: Max Eggers and Sam Eggers
Cast: Brandy Norwood, Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap
Genre: Psychological horror / domestic horror
Why watch it: A strange and uncomfortable domestic nightmare driven by Kathryn Hunter’s fearless performance.

18. Incantation (2022)

The Taiwanese horror film Incantation uses found-footage techniques to tell a story about curses, belief and the terrifying possibility that watching a film can make the audience part of what is happening. The film frequently addresses the viewer directly.

That interactive quality makes Incantation unusually effective because it creates the sensation that the viewer is no longer safely outside the story.

Year: 2022
Director: Kevin Ko
Cast: Tsai Hsuan-yen, Huang Sin-ting
Genre: Found-footage horror / supernatural horror
Why watch it: A genuinely creepy Taiwanese horror film that cleverly makes the viewer feel implicated in its curse.

19. No One Gets Out Alive (2021)

No One Gets Out Alive combines supernatural horror with economic vulnerability. Cristina Rodlo plays Ambar, an undocumented immigrant renting a room in a deteriorating boarding house because the rent is affordable.

Ambar’s immigration status, lack of resources and isolation leave her vulnerable even before supernatural forces enter the story.

Year: 2021
Director: Santiago Menghini
Cast: Cristina Rodlo, Marc Menchaca
Genre: Supernatural horror / haunted-house horror
Why watch it: An atmospheric haunted-house story where poverty and precarious immigration status make the protagonist’s situation even more frightening.

20. Crawl (2019)

Alexandre Aja’s Crawl demonstrates how effective a creature feature can be when the premise is simple and the execution is ruthless. Kaya Scodelario plays Haley, who finds her father injured beneath their family home during a hurricane — then discovers the alligators.

Rising floodwater turns the crawlspace into an increasingly dangerous environment where every escape route introduces another threat.

Year: 2019
Director: Alexandre Aja
Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper
Genre: Creature feature / survival horror
Why watch it: Lean, fast and uncomplicated survival horror featuring very large alligators and nowhere safe to hide.

21. 1922 (2017)

Stephen King’s novella becomes a grim rural horror story in Zak Hilditch’s 1922. Thomas Jane plays Wilfred James, a farmer who convinces his teenage son to help murder his wife — a crime that appears to solve his immediate problem, then destroys almost everything around him.

Whether every event is genuinely supernatural matters less than the sense that the crime has permanently contaminated his life.

Year: 2017
Director: Zak Hilditch
Cast: Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, Dylan Schmid
Genre: Psychological horror / Stephen King adaptation
Why watch it: A bleak slow-burn horror story about murder, guilt and the impossibility of escaping consequences.

22. The Perfection (2018)

The Perfection begins in the world of elite classical music and proceeds to reinvent itself several times. Allison Williams plays Charlotte, a former cello prodigy who reconnects with the academy she once attended and meets its current star student.

Body horror, revenge and institutional abuse all become part of the narrative. It is messy, extreme and intentionally provocative.

Year: 2018
Director: Richard Shepard
Cast: Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber
Genre: Body horror / psychological horror
Why watch it: A twist-heavy horror film that repeatedly changes direction and becomes increasingly disturbing.

23. Bird Box (2018)

Bird Box builds an apocalyptic horror scenario around one terrifying rule: looking at the wrong thing can kill you. Sandra Bullock plays Malorie, trying to survive after mysterious entities cause anyone who sees them to die by suicide.

The strongest sequences place characters in apparently normal environments where something potentially lethal may be standing directly beside them.

Year: 2018
Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich
Genre: Apocalyptic horror / survival horror
Why watch it: A strong high-concept survival movie built around one simple and frightening rule.

24. Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021)

Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021) poster

Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street Part One: 1994 introduces the cursed town of Shadyside through the conventions of 1990s teen slasher movies. Fear Street benefits from being part of a trilogy — events that initially appear to be simple slasher mythology gradually connect to a much larger history.

The result is accessible, energetic and considerably gorier than its young-adult origins might suggest.

Year: 2021
Director: Leigh Janiak
Cast: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr.
Genre: Slasher / supernatural horror
Why watch it: A fast, bloody gateway into one of Netflix’s most enjoyable horror trilogies.

25. Zombieland (2009)

Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland understands that a zombie apocalypse becomes much more entertaining when the characters have already accepted how ridiculous survival can be. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin gradually become an improvised family.

Zombieland is fundamentally about lonely people discovering that survival means very little without anyone else around.

Year: 2009
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Genre: Zombie comedy / horror comedy
Why watch it: Funny, fast and surprisingly warm underneath all the zombie destruction.

26. Overlord (2018)

Overlord begins as a World War II action movie and gradually reveals that something much worse than enemy soldiers is waiting beneath a French village. American paratroopers sent to destroy a German radio tower find a secret laboratory conducting horrific experiments.

The first act establishes the military mission convincingly enough that when the horror finally appears, it feels like the characters have accidentally entered a different movie.

Year: 2018
Director: Julius Avery
Cast: Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier
Genre: Zombie horror / war horror
Why watch it: A muscular hybrid of World War II action and gruesome laboratory horror.

27. Run Rabbit Run (2023)

Sarah Snook plays Sarah, a fertility doctor whose young daughter begins behaving in increasingly disturbing ways after encountering a rabbit and claiming connections to people from Sarah’s past.

The Australian landscape adds an eerie emptiness, and the ambiguity between psychological trauma and supernatural influence gives the film much of its atmosphere.

Year: 2023
Director: Daina Reid
Cast: Sarah Snook, Lily LaTorre, Damon Herriman
Genre: Psychological horror / supernatural horror
Why watch it: A slow-burn Australian horror film about motherhood, buried trauma and the return of the past.

28. The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) poster

André Øvredal expands one section of Bram Stoker’s Dracula into a full maritime horror movie. The Demeter is the ship transporting mysterious cargo from Transylvania to England; the audience already knows what it contains, but the crew does not.

The isolated vessel provides an ideal horror environment — nowhere to run, no nearby help, very little understanding of what is hunting them.

Year: 2023
Director: André Øvredal
Cast: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham
Genre: Vampire horror / creature feature
Why watch it: A grim nautical horror movie that turns part of Dracula into an isolated-monster story.

29. Gothika (2003)

Halle Berry plays criminal psychiatrist Miranda Grey, who wakes inside the psychiatric institution where she works and discovers that she is now a patient, accused of murdering her husband with no memory of doing it.

Miranda’s professional expertise becomes almost useless because everything she says can be interpreted as evidence of mental instability.

Year: 2003
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Cast: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Penélope Cruz
Genre: Supernatural horror / psychological horror
Why watch it: A stylish early-2000s ghost mystery built around an effective reversal of doctor and patient.

30. The Hunt (2020)

Craig Zobel’s The Hunt combines violent survival horror, political satire and black comedy. A group of strangers wake in an unfamiliar location and discover they have apparently been selected as human prey. Betty Gilpin plays Crystal, one of the targets — considerably more capable than her hunters expected.

Once Crystal begins fighting back, the movie becomes an entertaining reversal of the hunted-human premise.

Year: 2020
Director: Craig Zobel
Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz
Genre: Survival horror / horror satire
Why watch it: A bloody and darkly comic hunted-human movie anchored by Betty Gilpin’s terrific performance.

Scariest Movies on Netflix Right Now

“Best horror” and “scariest horror” are not always the same thing. For pure scares, Smile 2 is one of the strongest choices currently on Netflix. The Invisible Man creates fear differently — empty space becomes threatening because the audience understands that seeing nothing proves nothing. Creep produces discomfort from social interaction rather than supernatural effects, and The Blair Witch Project remains frightening because it gives audiences almost nothing concrete to look at.

Best Supernatural Horror Movies on Netflix

Netflix currently has a particularly large supernatural-horror catalogue. His House is our first choice because its supernatural story is inseparable from the emotional history of its characters. Incantation uses found footage to make the audience feel involved in the supernatural mechanism itself, and Under the Shadow combines supernatural fear with the real-world terror of wartime Tehran.

Best Psychological Horror Movies on Netflix

Psychological horror works because characters cannot always trust their interpretation of events. The Invisible Man is the strongest example currently available. Gerald’s Game forces Jessie to confront memories while physically trapped, and I Saw the TV Glow treats identity itself as a source of existential horror. See our full best psychological thrillers on Netflix guide.

Best Found-Footage Horror Movies on Netflix

Found footage works when the camera makes the audience feel trapped inside events rather than safely observing them. Creep is our favourite found-footage horror currently on Netflix because its camera has a logical narrative purpose. The Blair Witch Project remains the genre landmark, and Incantation pushes found footage in a more supernatural direction.

Best Slasher Movies on Netflix

Slashers remain one of horror’s most durable forms because the structure is so simple: a killer, potential victims and an environment from which escape becomes increasingly difficult. MaXXXine is our strongest modern slasher choice, and Fear Street Part One: 1994 updates the teen slasher with supernatural mythology.

Best Survival Horror Movies on Netflix

Survival horror reduces storytelling to the most immediate possible objective: stay alive. Crawl is almost pure survival cinema. Bird Box removes sight as a reliable survival tool, The Hunt turns human beings into prey, and Gerald’s Game reduces survival to one woman, one room and one pair of handcuffs. See our full best survival thriller movies guide.

Best Creature Features and Monster Movies on Netflix

A Quiet Place: Day One gives its alien creatures a city-sized environment while retaining intimate character stakes. Crawl proves that real animals can be every bit as effective as supernatural monsters, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter reimagines Dracula as something closer to a predatory creature loose on a ship.

Best Zombie Movies on Netflix

Zombieland is the most immediately entertaining zombie film on Netflix because it combines survival with comedy and character chemistry. Overlord merges undead experimentation with a World War II military mission. Zombie stories work because they operate simultaneously as monster movies and social-collapse stories.

Best Folk Horror Movies on Netflix

Apostle is the strongest folk-horror example on the current list — the isolated island community operates according to rituals outsiders do not understand, and the land itself appears connected to those beliefs. The Blair Witch Project approaches folk horror through local legend.

Best Body Horror Movies on Netflix

Body horror makes the human body itself unstable. Cuckoo uses biological mystery and reproduction to generate unease, while The Perfection pushes bodily transformation into increasingly extreme territory. A haunted house can be escaped; your own body cannot.

Best Horror Comedies on Netflix

The Cabin in the Woods is both a genuine horror movie and a very funny deconstruction of the genre. Zombieland uses zombie apocalypse rules as the basis for character comedy, and Jennifer’s Body mixes demonic horror with sharp teenage dialogue and social satire.

Best International Horror Movies on Netflix

Netflix’s international reach is particularly valuable for horror because different cultures bring different folklore, social anxieties and visual traditions into the genre. Under the Shadow uses Iranian history and folklore, while Incantation draws from Taiwanese religious imagery and curse mythology.

Best Hidden-Gem Horror Movies on Netflix

Creep is the essential starting point if you somehow missed it — few horror films achieve so much with so little. Under the Shadow remains one of the strongest international supernatural films of the last decade, and 1922 is an effective slow-burn Stephen King adaptation that rarely receives the same attention as bigger King titles.

Best Disturbing Horror Movies on Netflix

Not all horror is designed simply to make audiences jump. Gerald’s Game becomes increasingly difficult as Jessie confronts trauma that has shaped her life for decades. Creep makes ordinary social discomfort feel progressively threatening, and The Perfection deliberately pushes the audience into grotesque and uncomfortable territory.

What Is the Best Horror Movie on Netflix Right Now?

Our first choice is The Invisible Man (2020). It is frightening, intelligent, beautifully constructed and works equally well as a monster movie, psychological thriller and story about coercive control. If you want something supernatural, watch His House. If you want something very scary, choose Smile 2. If you want found footage, watch Creep. For a classic, choose The Blair Witch Project. For a slasher, watch MaXXXine. For survival horror, watch Crawl.

What Horror Movie Should You Watch on Netflix Tonight?

If you want a great all-round horror movie, watch The Invisible Man. If you want to be scared, watch Smile 2. If you want a ghost story, choose His House. If you want a movie about a terrifying human being, watch Creep. If you want monsters, choose A Quiet Place: Day One. If you want something fun, choose The Cabin in the Woods. If you want zombies, choose Zombieland. If you want something disturbing, choose The Perfection.

What Makes a Great Horror Movie?

Great horror movies do not all frighten audiences in the same way. Some build fear around what we cannot see — The Blair Witch Project and The Invisible Man understand that imagination often creates something more frightening than a complete visual explanation. Others create horror through confinement: Gerald’s Game traps its protagonist physically, while Crawl gradually removes every safe area as floodwater rises. Films such as His House and Under the Shadow use supernatural horror to explore trauma and displacement.

How We Chose the Best Horror Movies on Netflix

This ranking is not based simply on Netflix’s popularity charts. We consider filmmaking quality, performances, originality, scares, atmosphere, influence, reputation within horror cinema and how strongly the film delivers the experience somebody searching for a horror movie actually wants. We also distinguish between new horror movies on Netflix and the best horror movies on Netflix — older films such as The Blair Witch Project and The Cabin in the Woods remain important because they continue to work and have influenced horror filmmaking that followed them.

Like Horror-Thrillers? Watch Blood Star

If your favourite horror movies are the ones where the threat feels frighteningly possible, Blood Star offers a darker alternative outside Netflix’s current catalogue. The film follows Bobbi, a young woman travelling alone through the American Southwest who attracts the attention of a small-town sheriff. At first, he represents something familiar: authority. Gradually, the encounter reveals something far more disturbing.

That makes Blood Star different from supernatural horror. There is no ghost, demon or creature Bobbi can identify and avoid — the threat is human. The sheriff understands the landscape, the roads and the expectations surrounding his uniform, and Bobbi is travelling through unfamiliar territory where towns are far apart and witnesses are scarce. Read more in our guide to movies about corrupt cops and abusive authority.

The film sits in the borderland between crime thriller and survival movie. For viewers who like the human menace of Creep, the pursuit structure of The Hitcher, the desert isolation of No Country for Old Men and films where victims discover that the person who should protect them is actually the threat, Blood Star offers a similarly stripped-back sense of danger.

Blood Star is not currently on Netflix and therefore does not appear in the Netflix ranking above.

USA Watch Free
on Tubi

USA Watch Free
on Prime Video

UK Watch Now

See every legitimate way to watch Blood Star free →

Film posters via TMDB.