40 Best Horror Movies On Netflix

Netflix is constantly adding new horror movies. In fact, it feels like the streaming service gets a new licensed or original fright flick every week. The movies come from all over the world, and just about every horror subgenre you can think of is represented, from haunted house movies and slashers to sci-fi action-horror and character-driven zombie movies.

The "horror" tab on the Netflix app can be pretty overwhelming because there are dozens upon dozens of titles. And the thing about horror movies is that it can be hard to tell a bad one from a good one based on its Netflix tile alone. And you don't want to get stuck watching a clichéd supernatural slasher that's no different from a million other supernatural slashers. That's where this list comes in. We've spent untold hours watching Netflix horror movies to find the absolute 40 best, so that you don't have to waste your time scrolling. You'll find something on this list to make you scream.

Updated on December 27, 2021: Netflix's catalogue of frightening films is constantly changing. So be sure to check back here each month to find out what wonderfully horrific films are waiting for you on the streaming service.

One of the most inadvertently timely movies of the pandemic era was this Korean hit that came out in June 2020. "#Alive" is a zombie movie that follows a video game streamer named Joon-woo as he tries to survive a zombie apocalypse by barricading himself inside of his Seoul apartment. Sounds familiar, right? He manages okay until the internet goes out. And he can't live without the internet. Or running water, which also becomes a problem, but the internet! 

What keeps him alive is the connection he makes with Yoo-bin, the only other survivor in his apartment complex. They share food and messages over a zip-line between their apartments. Alone, they're dead. But together, they might find a way out. It's the perfect zombie movie for the social media age.

• Starring: Yoo Ah-in, Park Shin-hye, Jeon Bae-soo
• Director: Cho Il
• Year: 2020
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Director Francis Ford Coppola's sumptuous adaptation of the vampire tale flirts with camp but lands on the side of grand gothic romance. Gary Oldman plays the legendary count, who travels (in a dirt-filled coffin) from Transylvania to London in search of Mina Murray, the fiancée of his solicitor, because he believes her to be the reincarnation of his long-lost wife Elisabeta. Meanwhile, vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing is after him. Sure, Keanu Reeves plays in the film, and his English accent is notorious, but the film's technical aspects are exquisite. It won Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup.

• Starring: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins
• Director: Francis Ford Coppola
• Year: 1992
• Runtime: 123 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

This gloomy zombie horror movie is set in the Australian Outback in the post-apocalyptic near-future, where a virus is turning people into rabid, flesh-eating zombies. Our main character, Andy, has been bitten, and he has to find someone to take care of his infant daughter in the next 48 hours before he turns. As he travels across the barren landscape, he encounters Aboriginal survivors and scary survivalists. "Cargo" is an emotionally heavy, serious-minded horror drama that's essentially an Australian take on Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic classic "The Road," with a powerful lead performance by Martin Freeman.

• Starring: Martin Freeman, Anthony Hayes, Susie Porter
• Director: Yolanda Ramke, Ben Howling
• Year: 2018
• Runtime: 104 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

In "The Conjuring 2," we follow Ed and Lorraine Warren across the pond as they investigate a haunting on the outskirts of London. The Hodgson family's home is under demonic attack after one of the daughters, Janet, invited an entity in with a Ouija board. The demon takes the shape of an old man named Bill Wilkins, who says the house is his. The Warrens aren't convinced that Janet really is possessed ... until Lorraine meets a demonic nun. It's an assured sequel that shows the success of the first "Conjuring" film was no fluke.

• Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Madison Wolfe
• Director: James Wan
• Year: 2016
• Runtime: 133 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

The sequel to "Creep" finds Josef luring a new victim into his web of deceit and terror. His new target is Sara, a YouTuber who films her meetings with the peculiar, lonely men she meets through Craigslist, seeking to make connections with them. Josef, tired of his old MO and going by the name Aaron in tribute to his victim from the first movie, tells Sara exactly who he is up front, and says he'll let her live for 24 hours if she makes a documentary about him. Sara doesn't believe that he's a killer and isn't intimidated by him. In other words, she's a perfect match for him. "Creep 2" has everything that was good about the original "Creep" and then some.

• Starring: Mark Duplass, Desiree Akhavan, Karan Soni
• Director: Patrick Brice
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 80 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

You didn't hear it from us (okay, fine, maybe you did), but this reboot is secretly one of the all-time best "Friday the 13th" films. The premise is familiar to fans of the franchise: A group of young, frisky adults visit a boarded-up campsite where they run afoul of the hulking, deadly Jason Voorhees. Infused with the ferocity its predecessors lack, this 2009 reboot boasts a real sense of terror. Jason is as scary as he's ever been here, making it an essential watch for slasher fans.

• Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti
• Director: Marcus Nispel
• Year: 2009
• Runtime: 97 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 26%

This supernatural horror flick is a fun throwback to '70s movies like "The Amityville Horror" –- with the gore cranked up to 11. Pro wrestler Phil "CM Punk" Brooks stars as Don Koch, a womanizing ex-con from Chicago who tries to get a fresh start by fixing up a decrepit old house in the suburbs for himself and his pregnant wife. But old habits die hard, and Don has an affair with a woman named Sarah he thinks is a neighbor. But Sarah is no neighbor. She's a ghost, and she gives every man who comes into the house the opportunity to destroy himself. When Don tries to cover up misdeeds, the house fights back. "Girl on the Third Floor" is a feminist horror movie with delightfully disgusting practical effects.

• Starring: CM Punk, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Sarah Brooks
• Director: Travis Stevens
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

Writer-director Remi Weekes' brilliant ghost story is an emotionally complex stunner about two refugees from war-torn South Sudan, Bol and Rial, who settle in crumbling government housing in a depressing London borough. Even worse, Rial comes to believe that the house is haunted by a witch called an apeth that followed them from the old country. The apeth demands payment for a spiritually costly debt they incurred while escaping from the war. "His House" is a nuanced horror tale with devastating performances from stars Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku. It's a socially conscious movie that doesn't skimp on scares. 

• Starring: Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù, Wunmi Mosaku, Matt Smith
• Director: Remi Weekes
• Year: 2020
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

As a horror fan it can be tricky to know who to root for — the horny teenagers or the slasher villain. But in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," the answer is clear. These teens are absolute garbage, and while they don't deserve to die, they do deserve to have their pants scared off by a hook-wielding maniac. 

While making their way back from celebrating their high school graduation, four pals with one brain cell between them accidentally hit and kill a pedestrian on an isolated roadway. Rather than call the cops, the kids dispose of the body and promise each other to keep their secret. But the truth has a way of clawing its way back ... even from beyond the grave. A peak example of 1990s camp that goofs things up without straying into parody, "I Know What You Did Last Summer" is brain-off slasher cheese at its finest. 

• Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe
• Director: Jim Gillespie
• Year: 1997
• Runtime: 101 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 45%

Writer-director David Robert Mitchell's smart and subversive indie is a modern psychological horror classic. It follows (see what we did there?) Jay, a 19-year-old Midwestern suburbanite who has sex with a guy ... who then reveals that he's passed "it" on to her. "It" is some kind of sexually transmitted curse that takes the form of a human shape, constantly walking towards the cursed one. When it reaches the person, it kills them, then moves on to whoever gave them the curse. So if she wants to stay alive, she'll have to pass the curse on to someone else. "It Follows" uses the "sex = death" horror trope to brilliant effect, and it has one of the best scores of the past decade, courtesy of composer Disasterpeace.

• Starring: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto
• Director: David Robert Mitchell
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 101 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

Hollywood remakes of near-perfect international offerings tend to be a fool's errand. But not so with 2010's "Let Me In," which surprised everyone by being a properly atmospheric and unusually leery American take on John Ajvide Lindqvist's 2004 novel, first adapted in 2008 as "Let the Right One In." Sticking to the core story of its source material, "Let Me In" follows a young, bullied boy who forms a bond with his neighbor. As he quickly learns, his new friend is secretly a vampire, who preys upon locals under the cover of darkness with the help of her human companion, Thomas. A surprisingly solid remake with the guts to take its prepubescent angst to a genuinely dark place, "Let Me In" definitely doesn't suck ... pun intended. 

• Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloë Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins
• Director: Matt Reeves
• Year: 2010
• Runtime: 115 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Indonesia has a thriving genre cinema community, boasting some great action and horror movies. One of the leaders of Indonesian action and horror is writer-director Timo Tjahjanto. He's most famous for "The Night Comes for Us," a crime drama so gory it almost counts as a horror film, and "May the Devil Take You," which definitely counts as a horror film. The latter is a devilishly entertaining supernatural story about the spiritual cost of greed. As her wealthy father is dying, a young woman named Alfie and her half-siblings go to his villa to look for valuables. They discover that he got rich by making a deal with a satanic priestess he then betrayed, and she's been haunting his house and family ever since. It's a gruesome tribute to anarchic '80s horror movies like "Evil Dead."

• Starring: Chelsea Islan, Pevita Pearce, Ray Sahetapy
• Director: Timo Tjahjanto
• Year: 2018
• Runtime: 110 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77%

In this striking demonic horror movie, a Mexican-American journalist named Cristina travels to her family's remote village in Veracruz to work on a story about witchcraft. But Cristina is alienated from her cultural roots and addicted to heroin, and the local bruja she meets insists she's possessed by a demon. So Cristina has to get back in touch with the old ways, as well as her own tortured past, in order to survive her trouble and become the person she's meant to be. It's a thoughtful variation on a possession story, where the demon being exercised is colonialism.

• Starring: Brigitte Kali Canales, Andrea Cortés, Julia Vera
• Director: Christopher Alender
• Year: 2020
• Runtime: 90 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

Shortly after moving to their new home in the suburbs, Katie and her husband, Micah, start to suspect that something else has moved in with them. Hoping to capture hard proof of the supernatural presence on film, they prop up video cameras all over their house to prove to themselves that it's all in their head ... or that their worst fears are real. A cultural phenomenon and one of the most memorable event films of the 2000s, "Paranormal Activity" cemented found-footage's vice grip on the horror genre. While the film has more jump scares than a rat has fleas, any genre fanatic worth their salt owes it to themselves to seek this formative film out.

• Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Amber Armstrong
• Director: Oren Peli
• Year: 2007
• Runtime: 86 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

This stylish and deeply messed-up arthouse horror thriller will put you in mind of "American Psycho." A blank-faced yuppie named Reed hires a sex worker with the intention to murder her. But the woman who arrives, Jackie, isn't who he expected. She has serious psychosexual issues of her own, and she isn't going to go easily. As the night stretches on, Reed and Jackie learn more and more about each other, and the possessor of the upper hand keeps changing, right up until the film reaches its unexpectedly hilarious conclusion. It's based on a novel by Japanese author Ryu Murakami ("Audition") and contains impressively meticulous production design and riveting performances from Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska.

• Starring: Christopher Abbott, Mia Wasikowska, Laia Costa
• Director: Nicolas Pesce
• Year: 2018
• Runtime: 81 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%

Not to be confused with Antonia Bird's 1999 cannibal western of the same name, this French-Canadian flick is one of the 21st century's best contributions to the zombie genre. Set in an isolated rural community in Quebec, "Ravenous" follows a band of people as they move deeper and deeper into the woods in a desperate bid to survive. A simple tale of endurance that unfurls its bloodletting with care, "Ravenous" is a beautifully shot and disturbingly melancholic ensemble piece that posits humanity's doom will not arrive with a bang, but a whimper.

• Starring: Marc-André Grondin, Monia Chokri, Charlotte St-Martin
• Director: Robin Aubert
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 103 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Before there was "Midsommar," there was "The Ritual," another death trip into the Swedish wilderness. The film follows four British men who go on a lengthy hike in the forests of Sweden. It was their fifth friend's idea, but he was killed during a liquor store robbery that another member of the group witnessed and did nothing to stop, choosing instead to hide in fear. As they hike, they start to see some disturbing stuff in the woods, like mysterious runes carved into trunks and a gutted elk carcass hanging from branches. And there might be something — something very large — following them through the forest. As the group's situation grows more dire, their unspoken resentments against each other come out. Even if they survive their terrifying journey, their friendship might not.

• Starring: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Rob James-Collier
• Director: David Bruckner
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

After their boat sinks in a storm, Jenn and the body of her dead friend wash up on a desert island. The morning after she buries him, she finds his body gone and a trail of blood leading into the water. That night, she sees what took him -– a horrifying amphibious monster that comes out of the water at night to feed on what it finds on land. Eventually, two more of Jenn's friends wash up on the island, and they don't believe her that they're not alone. Suffice to say, Jenn has a lot of problems. "Sweetheart" is a pulse-pounding survival horror/creature feature mashup with subtle social commentary (Jenn is Black, and the friends who don't believe her are white) and a powerful starring performance from Kiersey Clemons.

• Starring: Kiersey Clemons, Emory Cohen, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence
• Director: J.D. Dillard
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 82 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

"Unfriended" was a pioneering movie in the "screenlife" genre, a twist on the found-footage genre where the entire movie takes place on a computer screen, in video windows, chat boxes, and social media pages. It's a mean little movie about a group of high schoolers who find themselves haunted online by the apparent ghost of a classmate who killed herself after being bullied. It came out in 2014, and its insights about the mentally and socially corrosive effects of the internet have only become more prescient in the years since. It's also genuinely influential, with a number of other "screenlife" movies following in its wake, including some really good ones like "Searching" and "Host."

• Starring: Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead
• Director: Levan Gabriadze
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 82 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 62%

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

There aren't a ton of horror Westerns, so "The Wind" stands out among the endless slasher and supernatural horror movies on Netflix. It's set in New Mexico in the 1800s and tells a story about two families driven to madness by the isolation of frontier life –- or maybe by a demon. A little of column A, a little of column B, you know? 

Lizzy and Isaac are from St. Louis, and their neighbors across the prairie, Emma and Gideon, are from Illinois. When Lizzy was pregnant, she became convinced that she was being haunted by a demon. Emma is pregnant now and experiencing the same thing. Is it paranoia, or is there really something there? And what's really going on between Emma and Isaac? Lizzy would like to know.

• Starring: Caitlin Gerard, Julia Goldani Telles, Ashley Zukerman
• Director: Emma Tammi
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 88 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%