The Best Slasher Movies On Netflix Right Now
Since its rise in the late '70s and early '80s, the slasher film has become a time-honored American horror tradition, so much so that its trademarks and tropes have worked their way into a surprising variety of movies. Sure, you can play with the classics like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and you can even look to more modern films that play with the genre in new ways like Scream and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Eventually, though, you run out of iconic slasher films (even the ones that have a dozen sequels), but that doesn't mean you're done having slasher fun.
If you're browsing the horror section of Netflix and feel like you've hit a dead end, that doesn't mean you're out of luck. The streaming service's horror archive is packed with films that will either scratch that slasher itch perfectly or manage to play with the elements of the subgenre in fresh new ways. Here are our favorite slasher (and slasher-adjacent) flicks on the service right now.
Creep and Creep 2
Throughout the life of the slasher genre, many filmmakers have attempted to riff on its various conventions in myriad ways, straying from the classic formula while still giving fans some of the tropes they love. In that way, the Creep films from Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass are not slasher films in the purest sense, but they create a sense of unending dread in their effort to portray what life might be like from the perspective of a unique killer who wants his victims to play a clear role in their own deaths.
Duplass stars as the title character, whose modus operandi is placing ads for videographers, luring them to secluded locales, and killing them after numerous attempts to freak them out with strange behavior. The first film is a very straightforward cat-and-mouse game, while Creep 2 takes things into more metafictional territory as the killer looks to subvert his own past kills with a new approach. They both work as extremely effective found footage movies, as well as intriguing subversions of certain horror movie expectations.
Horns
What if you woke up one day and found that not only are you a suspect in a murder, but you're also slowly turning into a monster? That's the hook at the heart of Horns, Alexandre Aja's ambitious, darkly comic horror film based on Joe Hill's novel of the same name. It's not exactly a slasher film in the traditional sense, but it plays with certain ideas inherent in the subgenre, and it's especially good at subverting ideas about what being a monster actually means.
The film follows a man named Ig (Daniel Radcliffe), who goes searching for answers after the death of his girlfriend with the help of a pair of horns growing out of his head, which seem to grant him the ability to compel people to confess their darkest deeds. As he digs deeper into the mystery, Ig feels himself continue to transform, even as he gets closer to the real killer.
Tense, wickedly witty, and full of outstanding performances, Horns is an unconventional horror film that'll stick in your brain for days.
The Babysitter
Babysitters and slasher movies have gone hand in hand ever since Michael Myers followed Laurie Strode home from school, and while The Babysitter doesn't play by slasher rules one hundred percent of the time, it's a delightfully fun horror-comedy that still breaks out the slasher toys when the moment feels right.
The film follows an awkward tween named Cole (Judah Lewis), who is perhaps a little in love with his babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving), a cool teenager who never talks down to him and seems to really listen to him. One night while his parents are away, Cole sneaks out of his room to see what his babysitter is up to, and finds her in the middle of a Satanic ritual with a group of friends she's invited over for just such an occasion. Cole suddenly finds himself in the middle of a murderous nightmare, and his only path to surviving the night might just be to take out the teen cult one by one.
Comically violent and witty in a very self-aware way, The Babysitter is a fun little tables-turner of a film that gives you a slasher body count while also delivering plenty of comedy. And, of course, it's got Weaving proving herself as a horror star even before Ready or Not came out. After you've checked out the 2017 original, the fun continues with the 2020 sequel.
The Ritual
Sometimes, even the most die-hard fans can burn themselves out on classic slasher films, but still feel a craving for that "group of friends get picked off one-by-one as they face something horrifying" formula. If you fit that description, then The Ritual is for you.
The film follows a group of friends who, after the death of one of their own, set out on a hiking trip through the Swedish countryside in his memory. When one of the friends is injured along the way, the group decides to cut through the woods, and that's when they stumble upon a creepy house. After that night, strange things start to happen, and the friends find themselves hunted by something out in the trees — something that seems both exceptionally smart and exceptionally brutal.
The Ritual leans heavily into folk horror influences, and you can see things like The Wicker Man and The Blair Witch Project baked into its DNA, but there's also an intriguing layer of slasher dread laced into the tension of the group making their way through dark woods. The element of predator and prey is strong in this film, and it all adds to an extremely creepy atmosphere that sticks with you right up until the final scene.
Sleepy Hollow
Though the slasher movie subgenre didn't really gain steam until the '70s and '80s, the United States has a time-honored tradition of folklore that includes more than a few classic monsters. And among those monsters just happens to be one of the most terrifying slashers in American history: the Headless Horseman.
Back in the 1990s, director Tim Burton teamed with one of his favorite actors, Johnny Depp, to make this horrifying specter into their own particular brand of cinematic monster, and the result is a slasher-esque film that even people who aren't super into horror films might enjoy.
Depp stars as Ichabod Crane, this time revamped as a policeman sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of mysterious murders. What he finds as he digs deeper into the mystery is, of course, that the killer is something inhuman, something monstrous, and something that he might not be very well equipped to handle.
In the tradition of classic romps from Hammer Films, the movie is more spooky than outright scary. Still, the feeling of a small town being stalked by a killer with a giant sword makes Sleepy Hollow a nice slasher-adjacent film for budding scary movie fans, and the Tim Burton design of the whole thing adds a layer of whimsy laced with all the blood.
Hush
We tend to associate slasher movies with high body counts (and for good reason), but sometimes thrillers are at their best when they get a little more intimate, and focus a little more tightly on the struggle between a remorseless killer and the person on the other end of the knife who's just trying to survive.
That's the premise at the heart of Hush, director Mike Flanagan's film co-written by and starring real-life partner Kate Siegel. Siegel plays Maddie, a deaf woman and novelist who lives alone in a secluded house in the woods. In the middle of a quiet night at home, Maddie starts getting strange messages, and realizes that someone is outside, taunting her, waiting for his moment to come in. What follows is more than an hour of absolutely relentless tension, as Maddie battles a masked killer who wants to end her life.
Breathlessly paced, anchored by fantastic performances, and packed with great horror flourishes by Flanagan, Hush is a master class in what the slasher genre can do if it decides to narrow its focus to a single horrifying encounter.
Green Room
In the hands of another filmmaker, the story of Green Room might have played out a little more like a crime thriller than a horror movie. Sure, the tension still would have been there, but another director might not have made it quite so horrifying, and quite so... well, slasher-y. Thankfully for us, this is Jeremy Saulnier's movie, and he chose to make it into 95 minutes of stripped down, absolutely brutal horror tension.
The film follows a punk band who arrive at a gig only to find that they've been booked at a skinhead bar. After playing their set, the band is simply eager to leave, but then they see something in the green room backstage — something they shouldn't have seen. What starts as a little bit of tension soon boils over into a full-on nightmare, with the band fighting to survive as the skinhead gang's ruthless leader (Patrick Stewart really showing his range) plots to resolve the crisis.
It's not a traditional slasher film, but if you're looking for kills you can really feel in your bones, Green Room will give that to you, along with a lot of pulse-pounding thrills, great performances, and even a few unexpected laughs. It's a perfect little white-knuckler of a movie.
Sweetheart
One of the great joys of a good slasher film is not the killer at the center of the story, but a clever character who manages to survive all the way to the end through a combination of brains, guts, and sheer strength of will. J.D. Dillard's film Sweetheart shines the spotlight on just such a character as she battles not a maniac with a knife, but a monster from the depths.
The film follows Kiersey Clemons as Jenn, a young woman who washes ashore on a remote island after an accident and finds herself stalked by a strange sea monster. As she fights to survive, Jenn uncovers secrets not just about the island, but about the friends she seemingly left behind, and Dillard just keeps building the tension as the struggle gets more and more brutal. It's not a slasher film in the classical sense, but the element of the survival horror that comes from a Final Girl battling her way through a whole movie is persistent, clever, and constantly entertaining. Throw in an outstanding performance by Clemons and you've got a great horror film.
House of 1000 Corpses
Rob Zombie's music, both with White Zombie and as a solo artist, was always so tinged with horror imagery that it seemed he was bound to get around to making a movie at some point. In 2003 we got to see it at last when House of 1000 Corpses, Zombie's feature directorial debut, arrived with all the darkly comic flair we'd come to expect from his music videos. In some ways, the film even plays like an extended Zombie music video, which is a testament to just how clear his horror sensibility really is.
In terms of plot, House of 1000 Corpses' closest cousin might be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in that it's also the story of a group of young people traveling around who get lured to a house full of crazies who then proceed to kill them all. As the mythology surrounding that plot expands, though, Zombie manages to incorporate everything from weird half-human mad scientists to creepy roadside attractions and much more. It's like an exploded view of his horror movie brain, and it launched a mini-cinematic universe that continued with The Devil's Rejects and 3 From Hell. It also helped Zombie gain enough of a reputation that he was able to launch a remake of one of his favorite slasher films, John Carpenter's Halloween.