Five best horror movies on Netflix to watch this fall
Take a look at 2026, and it might seem like Netflix has left horror gathering cobwebs in 2026, because the last we remember, the closest to horror we got was Duffer Brothers’ Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen in April. It might appear like a good start, and yet the year still has not produced that one Netflix horror movie everybody feels compelled to bang on about.
The next one we got was The Boroughs, which, hey, again, is from the Duffers’ production house, with names like Alfred Molina and Geena Davis among residents discovering that something monstrous has moved into the neighbourhood, which at least gave the genre a setting that’s something different from the usual creaking-house malarkey.
September brought My Sad Dead, a four-part miniseries about a woman who can see the dead, so Netflix has played with different corners of horror this year… The problem is the film side of things, which is yet to give the spooky season its new nightmare.
And now fall is here, and nights are drawing in. Halloween is practically breathing down our necks, so stop waiting for a shiny 2026 saviour. Netflix already has five films in its catalogue that know how to keep you inside and spooked.
Five of the best horror movies on Netflix to watch this fall
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
You cannot really talk about possession horror without The Exorcist making the discussion, and it’s also to show you that we are dead serious about this list. William Friedkin adapted William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, which was inspired by reports of a 1949 exorcism, to build the film around 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), whose seizures and violent behaviour leave her mother Chris desperate for answers. Doctors get nowhere, so the next stop is Father Damien Karras and veteran exorcist Father Merrin. And from there… well, forget sleeping.
Back when it was released, the film didn’t get a disposable horror fluff treatment. That’s right, it earned 10 Oscar nominations and won two, including Best Adapted Screenplay, while Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller and Blair were all nominated for their performances. This was no cheap shock machine, people. Friedkin plays the whole thing straight, which is precisely why it still is so relevant. Oh, and don’t go in thinking there is a knowing wink to let you off the hook. You sit there, mate, and take it.
Smile 2 (Parker Finn, 2024)
Being a sequel, Smile 2 could have easily coasted on the first film’s gimmick, but Parker Finn says no. Instead, he widens the frame, dropping the curse into the pressure cooker of pop stardom, where every breakdown can be photographed. Naomi Scott plays Skye Riley, a singer trying to get her career back on track after a car crash and addiction nearly wrecked it. Then she watches an acquaintance die in front of her, and the smiling faces start showing up. Ha! Just what she needs before her comeback tour!
Scott is what really gives the film its edge, because Skye never feels in control of anything. You are left wondering whether the next disaster will happen in private or in front of an audience. Oh, and Finn, he didn’t miss and got plenty of mileage out of that. After a point, the stage will stop feeling so glamorous to you. Bit cruel, yes, very effective, though.
Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)
By the time Jordan Peele made Nope, he had already proved himself with Get Out. He showed us that horror could carry social commentary, but nobody needs to strangle the fun out of it, so naturally he went bigger, much bigger. With Daniel Kaluuya in the frame again, he plays OJ Haywood, a taciturn horse trainer who, alongside his sister Emerald, realises that whatever is stalking their California ranch is not behaving like any aircraft they have seen before, and so they try to capture the impossible on camera.
That is where Nope really bares its teeth, because before long Peele has you scanning those huge California skies like something might come tearing out of them at any second. Though Kaluuya is as fabulous as he is, you can’t ignore Keke Palmer’s Emerald, who turns the film dead serious. And once you realise what is actually up there, good luck looking at a cloud the same way again.
A Quiet Place Part II (John Krasinski, 2021)
John Krasinski going from The Office to one of modern horror’s most successful franchises still sounds improbable, yet much like Jordan Peele swapping Key & Peele for Get Out, Krasinski proved that comic timing and horror timing are closer cousins than people realise. A Quiet Place Part II doesn’t really prove his point because the first part did that, but it does show that it was never beginner’s luck.
After Lee Abbott’s death, Evelyn is left guiding her children through a world where the creatures hunt by sound, while Regan follows a mysterious radio signal with Emmett, an old family acquaintance played by Cillian Murphy. Krasinski keeps widening the geography but makes sure that the fear isn’t diluted now that the space has widened. His use of sound remains the masterstroke. Keep quiet, keep your wits about you… And whatever you do, watch your footing.
Oculus (Mike Flanagan, 2014)
Before Mike Flanagan became the man viewers knew from The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, he was designing domestic spaces into psychological minefields with Oculus, expanded from his 2006 short film Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan. The culprit here is the Lasser Glass, an antique mirror with a poisonous history that, hanging in your house, feels less like tempting fate.
Karen Gillan plays Kaylie Russell, who reunites with her brother Tim after leaving psychiatric care and sets out to prove the mirror caused the violence that shattered their family years earlier. Flanagan keeps folding past and present together until memory becomes unreliable, and suddenly neither Kaylie nor you can trust what is sitting inside the frame. That construction is the film’s trick: the mirror barely needs to move when perception has already gone haywire.