Horror movies feel like one genre in the entertainment industry that continues to enjoy healthy growth, with plenty of acclaimed horror movies released year-round. With so many fantastic horror flicks to choose from, here are the best horror movies available to stream in North America.
10 Best Horror Movies on Streaming Now
10. Alien
While the Alien franchise has seen numerous highs and lows with its subsequent sequels, the 1979 original remains a cinematic masterpiece and the best movie in the series. A landmark in blending hard science fiction with horror, the movie launched the careers of director Ridley Scott and lead actor Sigourney Weaver. The movie follows a space freighter responding to a distress signal, only to find themselves preyed upon by a vicious extraterrestrial who stalks them throughout their claustrophobic vessel.
From H.R. Giger’s celebrated creature design for the relentless xenomorph to the industrial production design of the Nostromo interior, Alien is just an all-around classic. One of the major problems with the subsequent sequels is that they tend to downplay the horror, something that Alien pulled off effectively. Tautly paced and with plenty of scares, even for viewers who know they’re coming, Alien is a perfect film.
9. Evil Dead 2
Long before Spider-Man, filmmaker Sam Raimi’s career received its start from helming low-budget horror movies in the ‘80s with his friends, including actor Bruce Campbell. The high point of these early collaborations was 1987’s Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, which loosely remakes the events of 1981’s The Evil Dead before progressing into its own new sequel story. After discovering an unholy book, hapless hero Ash Williams accidentally unleashes a swarm of demons that possess and torment him and other people around the remote cabin he’s staying at.
Whereas The Evil Dead played its scary story relatively straight, Evil Dead 2 veers into overt horror comedy while maintaining its gruesome premise and stakes. Campbell’s fan-favorite performance as Ash made him a horror icon with Evil Dead 2 inspiring the direction of its sequel Army of Darkness and television spinoff series Ash vs Evil Dead. Incredibly influential, Evil Dead 2 is arguably the most well-regarded entry in the entire franchise and Raimi and Campbell’s respective careers.
8. Get Out
While prestige horror had begun to make a resurgence in the indie film scene years prior, it undeniably hit the mainstream with 2017’s Get Out by filmmaker Jordan Peele. The movie follows a young Black man named Chris who travels to Upstate New York to meet his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time. However, Chris discovers that this odd and isolated community is concealing a malevolent secret, one that involves the strangely acting Black individuals around town.
Get Out is definitely a scary movie with a salient message, but it doesn’t let its thematic overtones overshadow the fact that it is just a masterfully staged and executed – and entertaining – horror flick overall. Fresh off a career predominantly in television and film comedy, Peele effortlessly transitions into an expert horror storyteller writing and helming the movie, while Daniel Kaluuya commands every scene he’s in as Chris. A tremendous critical and commercial success, with Peele winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Get Out is one heck of a directorial debut for the gifted filmmaker.
7. The Thing
Filmmaker John Carpenter had made a name for himself in the ‘70s and ‘80s helming successfully received movies like Halloween and Escape from New York. A noted fan of classic Hollywood filmmaker Howard Hawks, Carpenter remade the 1951 Hawks-produced sci-fi classic The Thing from Another World. 1982’s The Thing leans more into sci-fi horror, especially body horror when a remote Arctic outpost finds itself at the mercy of an extraterrestrial that can assimilate and imitate other organisms as part of its bid to subjugate Earth.
Anchored by a strong cast led by Kurt Russell and Keith David, The Thing is Carpenter’s nihilistic classic and the starting point of his unofficial trilogy of movies contending with apocalyptic themes. There is a mounting sense of dread and paranoia that fuels The Thing, with audiences still debating decades later who at the end of the movie has been replaced by the creature. Rob Bottin’s creature effects have easily stood the test of time, and the movie lives on as an enduring cult classic.
6. Scream
By the mid-’90s, the slasher sub-genre was on the decline after a string of uninspired movies and sequels with diminishing returns. Director Wes Craven, who helped bring the genre to its zenith in the ‘80s, completely reinvigorated it with the 1996 slasher movie Scream, written by Kevin Williamson. Set in the fictional California small town of Woodsboro, the local high school is gripped in a panic when students and other people around the school are targeted by a masked killer nicknamed Ghostface.
Scream blends a self-awareness of the horror genre with genuinely tense slasher stalking sequences, wrapped up a murder mystery keeping audiences guessing the identity of Ghostface. The young cast leading the movie are all standouts, forming a dark counterpoint to popular coming-of-age movies era, like Clueless or Can’t Hardly Wait. Horror cinema had become postmodern before Scream, but Scream took those self-aware qualities and elevated them into a legitimately thrilling horror movie.
5. Shaun of the Dead
After working on the acclaimed British comedy series Spaced, filmmaker Edgar Wright reunited with its actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for the 2004 horror comedy Shaun of the Dead. The British film follows a slacker named Shaun who decides to get his life together and win back his girlfriend in the midst of a zombie apocalypse sweeping across the United Kingdom. The small ensemble decides to take shelter in their local pub, navigating London suburbs teeming with the ravenous undead.
So much of Wright’s signature style can be seen throughout Shaun of the Dead, with more foreshadowing and sight gags than one can count in a single viewing. There are plenty of laughs, but the story keeps the stakes real, and the zombie violence as gruesomely gory as its influences. A perfect horror comedy, Shaun of the Dead arguably remains one of the best movies in Wright’s subsequent filmography.
4. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Though filmmaker Wes Craven had been working in the industry for over a decade by 1984, it was that year’s A Nightmare on Elm Street that cemented him as an enormously influential voice in the horror genre. The movie introduced undead serial killer Freddy Krueger, who preyed upon his victims by attacking them in their dreams, menacing them with a glove fitted with knives on the fingers. As a group of high schoolers are targeted by Freddy, teenager Nancy Thompson investigates the killer’s origins and his connection to the town and its parental figures.
Launching an entire multimedia franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street holds up 40 years after its debut as one of the definitive horror movies released in the ‘80s. Freddy Krueger became a cultural icon and went on to star in a line of sequels and 2010 reboot, in addition to headlining his own spinoff television series and a number of video game tie-ins. A Nightmare on Elm Street captures the unconscious angst of teenage suburbia and turns it into a memorable scary story, complete with its appropriately dream-like sequences.
3. Suspiria
Italy has been the source of a fantastic wave of horror movies, especially from celebrated Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. Across his impressive body of work, Argento’s most iconic film is 1977’s Suspiria, the start of Argento’s thematic The Three Mothers trilogy. Set in a prestigious dance academy in West Germany, a new American student learns that this private school holds deadly and supernatural secrets as a murderous coven of witches surfaces.
With its sumptuous art design and lighting, Suspiria is one of the most visually stimulating horror movies to come from Italy and of the entirety of the ‘70s. The on-screen violence is excessive by design and leans into the movie’s expressionist themes and dream-like set pieces. Grandiose in its gore and vibrant in its violence, Suspiria is the definitive giallo film and a high point in Argento’s extensive filmography.
2. Halloween
While slasher movies had certainly existed before 1978’s Halloween, none had quite the lasting impact and influence as John Carpenter’s small-town thriller. 15 years after brutally murdering his teenage sister on Halloween night while he was just a boy, Michael Myers escapes from the sanitarium where he is confined and makes his way back to his hometown of Haddonfield. Shortly after his return, Myers sets his sights on high schooler Laurie Strode and her friends as he makes their Halloween night one for the entire town to remember forever.
Before the long line of convoluted and increasingly shoddy sequels, the divisive Rob Zombie reboot movies, and the David Gordon Green revival trilogy, the original Halloween rises above all of it to stand the test of time. Carpenter spends just enough time positioning the characters and reminding the audience of the sinister stakes before escalating into an unforgettable finish dominating the movie’s second half. A masterclass in building suspense with thrilling payoffs, Halloween is Carpenter’s undeniable classic and a standout in the slasher subgenre.
1. The Exorcist
Adapting William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name, The Exorcist took the world by storm when it was released in 1973, both critically and commercially. The story follows two Catholic priests who are summoned to exorcize a demonic entity from a young girl possessed in Georgetown. As the two combat the ancient evil, they face existential questions about their own Christian faith, leading to the ultimate theological showdown.
The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and continues to endure as a cinematic milestone in the genre. The movie’s success spawned a whole wave of major studio prestige horror movies, the first of its kind compared to the more cheaply made and imported horror movies from years past. All of that doesn’t happen if The Exorcist isn’t any good, and over 50 years later, the film firmly holds its reputation as one of the scariest and most effectively chilling movies ever made.
And those are the 10 best horror movies on streaming now.
Published: Oct 9, 2024 07:37 am