Listen, everyone who enjoys a good scare follows one rule—and one rule only. When September 1 hits, it’s officially spooky season. No questions. No exceptions. OK, are we all on the same page now? Good. Now, may we humbly direct you to Netflix, where alongside dozens of all-genre excellent offerings, there are also (approximately) three billion horror movies. The streamer has a hearty mix of Stephen King adaptations, foreign horror, the best of A24’s frights, and the occasional B movie.
Netflix has also been pumping out some genuinely great originals in the genre. You have His House, which tells an illuminating, but horrifying immigrant story. The Babysitter, en route to becoming an all-timer in the horror-comedy genre. Not to mention, The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2, if you want more from that terrifying universe.And Hubie Halloween. (Watch it: You know better than to shit on Sandler by now.)Here are the best of what Netflix has to offer in the scare department.
Netflix’s big Texas Chainsaw Massacre went under the radar because the streamer released it during the notably not-scary month of February. Make it right by giving Texas Chainsaw Massacre a shot this Halloween season.
Insidious isn’t quite shit-your-pants scary, but it’s damn close. Have the pause button ready.
Want to see Jamie Foxx play a vampire hunter named… Bud Jablonski?! In a horror-comedy that also stars Dave Franco and Snoop Dogg? Sure! Why not.
We hate to report that 2016’s sequel to The Blair Witch Project hardly reaches the shock value of the 1999 original. If you’re a found-footage horror fan, however, Blair Witch is certainly worth your time.
If you’re one of Zack Snyder’s (probably literal!) zillions of fans, then you’ll certainly enjoy his no-holds-barred zombie heist flick.
The Babysitter: Killer Queen
Sure, The Babysitter: Killer Queen didn’t quite live up to the absolute joy ride that was its predecessor. But it’s still a fun, campy time, made even better by Judah Lewis reprising his pubescent-scaredy-cat portrayal of Cole.
Fear Street Part One: 1994
Slasher fans rejoice: Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy is for you. Fun, fast-paced, and appropriately bloody, it might fill the Jason Vorhees-sized hole in your life. Plus, if you’re missing Stranger Things right about now, Fear Street features Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke in its ensemble.
Fear Street Part Two: 1978
What’s a truly special camp-horror-slasher flick without a mysterious and insidious-sounding sequel? We can’t share too much more about Fear Street‘s sequel without spoiling it for you, but rest assured—the terror continues.
Fear Street Part Three: 1966
Well, you have to finish at this point, right?
A Classic Horror Story, if the name didn’t tip you off, is the kind of scary movie you want to keep in your pocket until a rainy night during Halloween season. It’s spooky, but not too spooky. It involves a cabin in the woods and some lost campers. You know, a classic horror story.
What’s a good horror movie list without a Stephen King adaptation? Start your marathon of stories from the horror master with 1922, which follows a murderous rancher who gets his son in on the evil-doing. Once you’re done, check out the novella it’s based on. Or read the novella before watching the movie. Can’t go wrong either way.
Anotha one! You’re missing out if you waltz into The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It without knowing all of the shit that the franchise’s leading demonologists have gotten into beforehand. Inthe Conjuring 2, Lorraine and Ed Warren go to north London to investigate—what else?—a haunted house. Never gets old.
Sure, Netflix’s Death Note didn’t quite reach the greatness of the anime it’s based on, which sees a kid inherit a book that gives him the ability to kill people. But the film adaptation stars Willem Dafoe as the towering, sniveling demon who haunts this boy. That’s worth the watch alone.
Sure, 2017’s Unfriended—a story of social-media-using-gone wrong told largely through webcam—is already massively outdated. Which is fun! Laugh at these teenagers and their pre-AirPodded plights.
Friends, countrymen, Sandlerites: Hubie Halloween was pretty damn good. There’s a piss joke in the first five minutes, several vomit-inducing images will be burned into your brain, and Steve Buscemi plays a werewolf. But still. Pretty damn good.
Don’t let His House keep going under the radar. In what’s one of Netflix’s best horror originals, His House is as terrifying as it is smart—telling a refugee story through a South Sudanese couple that finds asylum in England.
Nothing is scarier than a pubescent boy coming of age and realizing he’s got a crush on his babysitter. Unless, said babysitter is in a demonic cult that sacrifices random dudes in your parents kitchen.
Florence Pugh is a must-watch in just about every role she takes on nowadays, but in a horror movie? After her tortured, weirder-than-hell turn in Midsommar, she’s quickly turning into one of the genre’s best players. Catch Pugh in Malevolent, which follows a group of scam artists who stage hauntings just so they can get paid to exorcise the fake ghosts. Then, they encounter the real deal.
This horror satire from Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy is a mix of The Square and Eyes of Laura Mars, with Jake Gyllenhaal starring as an art critic who discovers that the mysterious paintings by an unknown artist have supernatural abilities—and take their revenge on anyone attempting to profit off of them.
Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Trevante Rhodes, and John Malkovich star in this dystopian thriller (and Netflix original film) about a woman who must travel blindfolded along with her children to safety as an unseen force stalks them on their journey.
Madeline Brewer plays an enterprising camgirl who discovers that she’s somehow been replicated in various videos that have been uploaded to her own website in this Internet-inspired horror thriller and Netflix original.
Aaron, a videographer (played by director Patrick Brice), answers an ad to work for a mysterious guy named Josef (Mark Duplass), whose awkward and uncomfortable behavior immediately makes Aaron uneasy. But his erratic behavior only becomes more and more bizarre in this indie psychological thriller.
One of Stephen King’s underrated novels thanks to its lack of supernatural fights, Gerald’s Game still packs a heavy psychological punch. A sexy tryst goes wrong when Gerald handcuffs his wife Jessie to a bed, only to immediately have a heart attack—leaving her imprisoned in both a remote cabin and her own delusional mind.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
Director Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins) helms this mystery about a live-in nurse, Lily (Ruth Wilson), who moves into the remote New England mansion owned by her patient, an elderly horror novelist who suffers from dementia. Soon Lily starts to question if the unsettling things that are taking place in this house came straight from one of her patient’s books.
Set in the post-revolution era of 1980s Tehran, a mother must protect her daughter from a demonic possession in their home—all while a war rages on outside, leaving them fighting for safety from both manmade and supernatural evils.
Inspired by a true story (just like the best horror movies always are), this acclaimed Spanish film follows the 15-year-old Veronica who conducts a séance with a Ouija board—already a tricky situation, one that’s heightened by the fact that she does it during a solar eclipse. Things, naturally, do not go well for her afterward.
The Perfection is the age-old tale of two world class cellists who go absolutely insane over their art. By the end, there are six lost limbs, hallucinations, three pant suits, and one of the wildest horror rides that Netflix originals has developed in its history.
Never go in the woods. Ever. There’s just not a reason for it. In The Ritual, four friends head into the woods to honor their late friend, but the Norse legends within the forest aren’t as welcoming as they’d hoped. Essentially, nothing wrong with just… you know, getting a cake and honoring your friend that way.
Justin Kirkland
Writer
Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer focusing on television, pop culture, food, and the South; he is from East Tennessee.