Let the Right One In.
Photo: Magnolia Pictures
This list is regularly updated as movies rotate on and off of Prime Video. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.
Who wants to be scared tonight? While there are fantastic streaming services dedicated to horror nuts, there’s also a wealth of genre hits and indie darlings on Prime Video. In fact, they have one of the most diverse arrays of horror hits, including films by vets like Tobe Hooper and Dario Argento, alongside newer films from indie studios. This regularly updated list will keep Prime Video subscribers in the know on what are the best horror movies they can watch right now. Turn the lights off and lock the doors.
Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 53m
Director: Alan Parker
Incredibly controversial when it was released, Alan Parker’s thriller has aged very well thanks in large part to great performances from Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro. Rourke plays Harry Angel, a private investigator who is hired to solve a disappearance that leads him to New Orleans at the behest of a devilish man named Louis Cypher (Get it!?!?). Explicitly sexual and violent, it’s the kind of movie for adults that truly doesn’t get made anymore.
Year: 1962
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director: Herk Harvey
An independent filmmaker who had made his career doing industry safety videos just happened to direct one of the most essential horror flicks of all time in this absolute classic. Candace Hilligoss stars as Mary Henry, a woman who barely survives a car accident and starts seeing ghostly, zombie-like figures in the new city she’s trying to call home. As the figures draw her to an abandoned carnival, some of the best horror imagery of the 1960s surfaces in a film that didn’t get much attention on its release but has gone on to be recognized as a genre masterpiece.
Year: 2013
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director: James Ward Byrkit
Eight friends get together for a dinner party in Northern California as news of a passing comet overhead can be heard. What starts as a traditional character-driven drama becomes something very different when the power goes out and, well, things stop making sense. An incredibly smart script anchors this study of alternate universes that plays out in a disturbingly relatable way.
Year: 2006
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Neil Marshall
Neil Marshall’s best work remains this 2005 thriller that works as both a study in claustrophobia and a truly terrifying monster movie. Six women make the dumb decision to leave their houses and go into a cave system, where they first face the incredibly tight and terrifying physical situation…and then the things that live in the dark. Bracing and brilliant, this is one of the best modern horror films on any platform.
Year: 1973
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Don’t Look Now is a phenomenal thriller based on the short story by the legendary Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play a couple who vacation in Venice after the death of their child, and, well, weird things start to happen. When a clairvoyant claims that their dead daughter is trying to contact them, things get worse. You know the modern trend of grief-horror, movies about how trauma can manifest actual horror? This is one of the templates of that subgenre.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 32m
Director: Matt Sobel
Listen, no on Earth thinks that this remake is as good as the 2014 Austrian film of the same name on which it’s based, but maybe watching the new one could bring a bigger audience to the old one. Naomi Watts plays a woman whose children become convinced that she’s not their real mother after she comes home with a bandaged face after surgery. It never justifies its existence, but Watts is solid enough to include it on this list for her fans or those curious about the original.
Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 11m
Director: Ridley Scott
The massive success of The Silence of the Lambs made any kind of follow-up a project that was destined to fail, especially after recasting Julianne Moore in the Clarice Starling role. No one would argue Hannibal is a better film than Demme’s, but it’s a better one than its reputation, thanks largely to Ridley Scott’s remarkable craftsmanship and another fun performance from Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 23m
Director: Stephen Cognetti
We’re all tired of found footage movies but this flick can be one of the exceptions. So popular that it spawned a franchise (there have already been two sequels), this is the story of a documentary crew that captures the creation of a Halloween haunted house that becomes all too real, ultimately killing 15 ticket buyers and staff. Structured both in a “what happened that night” and in-the-moment found footage doc, this is a truly clever indie horror film.
Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Clive Barker
The horror author Clive Barker directed this adaptation of his own novella The Hellbound Heart and made genre movie history. Introducing the world to the iconic Pinhead, who would go on to appear in so many sequels, the original film here is still the best, the tale of a puzzle box that basically opens a portal to Hell. The sequels have kind of lost the thread, but the original is still incredibly powerful. It’s one of the few films from the ‘80s that would still shatter audiences if it were released today.
Year: 2006
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Eli Roth
In the mid-‘00s, horror delivered a subgenre that would be sometimes called torture porn: ultra-violent films about actual violence that tried to push the shock meter in ways that major genre films are rarely allowed to do. Eli Roth’s film is really the centerpiece of that subgenre, an underrated cautionary tale about how naïve American travelers can be. Note: The sequel is also on Prime Video.
Year: 2009
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Karyn Kusama
Notoriously dismissed when it was released largely due to the reputation of star Megan Fox, this Diablo Cody-penned horror comedy has become a cult hit in the last decade or so. Fox stars as a high school girl who gets possessed by a demon and ends up killing her male classmates. It took a long time for audiences to catch on to the female empowerment themes in a movie that now feels like it was ahead of its time.
Year: 2008
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Based on the 2004 novel of the same name, this is one of the best vampire movies ever made. It’s the tale of an ordinary pre-teen who is bullied at school and has a lonely life at home. That’s the case until a new child moves in, one with a secret. She’s a creature of the night, and her connection with this new friend will change both of their lives forever. Moody and moving, this is a modern classic.
Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Brad Anderson
The big story around this indie hit was the physical transformation that Christian Bale went through to star in it. Losing a dangerous amount of weight, Bale played a deeply paranoid young man who has been unable to sleep for an entire year. His grip on reality starts to shift in a way that would make movie history.
Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 35m
Director: Henry Hobson
Is this the last interesting Schwarzenegger performance ever? He’s really good here playing against type as a father whose daughter (Abigail Breslin) has been infected by a zombie pandemic. More drama than action, it allows Ah-nuld to deconstruct his strong, silent exterior in a way that’s fascinating.
Year: 2003
Runtime: 1h 19m
Director: Chris Kentis
Most of the movies in this guide are about killers and victims, but this survival story is a different kind of horror. Loosely based on a true story, it’s the tale of a couple who end up stranded miles from shore after a scuba diving trip goes very wrong. Then they learn they’re not alone in the water. Made for just over $100k, it became a smash hit after its Sundance premiere, leading to a worldwide release that netted over $55 million.
Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director: Rose Glass
Morfydd Clark is fearless as a hospice nurse who converts to Roman Catholicism and becomes convinced that only she can save the soul of her latest patient, a former dancer (Jennifer Ehle) who is in the final days of her life. Is Maud a true vessel for miracles or could she be going insane? Rose Glass’s debut stunner plays with audience expectations until its final unforgettable shot.
Year: 1991
Runtime: 1h 58m
Director: Jonathan Demme
Quite simply one of the best films ever made, Demme’s adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel made Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling into household names. Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster won Oscars for a film that really redefined the serial killer mystery genre, influencing countless films that would come in its Best Picture-winning wake.
Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 58m
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Prime Video isn’t the best place for foreign films of any kind, and definitely not horror. So take the chance to watch something from another part of the world in this international smash hit about a high-speed train from Seoul to Busan in the middle of the undead apocalypse. Incredibly well-directed, this movie flies from beginning to end with the speed of the bullet train at its center. There’s a reason it’s become a smash hit on every streaming service that houses it, including Amazon Prime.
Year: 2010
Runtime: 1h 28m
Director: Eli Craig
This horror/comedy hardly made an impact when it was released in 2010 but has become a true cult hit in the decade since on DVD and streaming services. The main reason is that Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk have perfect comic timing as a pair of lovable hillbillies who get caught up in a crazy horror movie situation that leads to a lot of laughs and buckets of blood. Now give us a sequel!
Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 23m
Director: Jim Cummings
What if Fargo was also a werewolf movie? That’s close to the tone of this memorable horror/comedy from the great Jim Cummings (Thunder Road). The indie filmmaker stars as a smalltown lawman who has to come to terms with a series of murders that appear to be the work of a creature of the night. This flick also includes the last performance from the great Robert Forster.
If you subscribe to a service through our links, Vulture may earn an affiliate commission.
