Halloween is approaching fast, and the excitement is in the air. While many are getting ready with pumpkins and costumes, for others, the real essence of the season is curling up on the couch with a chilling horror movie. It’s that spine-tingling experience, more than anything else, that truly captures the spooky spirit.
The thing is, a decent horror film isn’t quite as easy to come by as you’d think. Sure, there are thousands of them out there. From delightfully campy old horrors like 1951’s The Thing from Another World to questionable revisionist versions of beloved children’s classics like the recent Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, there is a horror for everybody. And sometimes, an outright cheese-fest can be precisely what you’re looking for. But what if you’re looking for something more? Something actually good?
Then you’re in luck; Netflix has some of the most acclaimed and highest-rated horror movies to watch right now – and the top ten offers a little something for everyone.
Whether it’s undisputed classics that reshaped the very cinematic landscape as we know it, masterclasses in the notorious jump-scare or more contemporary and cerebral chillers that use the scares as a way to sneakily feed us some sociopolitical context, this diverse and eclectic mix of horrors all have one thing in common: a solid and consistent rating as the finest of the genre.
The 2017 Stephen King adaptation of Gerald’s Game offers something for the more mature audiences: an erotic and suspenseful psychological thriller that takes an abrupt supernatural turn that plays out like 127 Hours with added ghosts. Meanwhile, in Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy realism opus Pan’s Labyrinth, a young girl in Francoist Spain must navigate a series of increasingly dark and malevolent trials to access a fairytale underworld.
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws retains its legendary position, while indie cult-classic Creep returns for a more-than-worthwhile sequel in 2017’s Creep II. And, at the very top, a nightmarish tale about the experience of refugees in small-town Britain from talented debut director Remi Weekes.
The 10 highest-rated horror movies to watch on Netflix now:
- 10. Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017)
- 9. Hush (Mike Flanagan, 2016)
- 8. Cam (David Goldhaber, 2018)
- 7. Sweetheart (JD Dillard, 2019)
- 6. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
- 5. The Old Ways (Christopher Alender, 2021)
- 4. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- 3. Under the Shadow (Babak Anvari, 2016)
- 2. Creep 2 (Patrick Brice, 2017)
- 1. His House (Remi Weekes, 2020)
