Assessing the quality of offerings available from Netflix in 2025, it quickly becomes clear that their horror library is a real mixed bag. As competing services, and especially genre-specific ones such as Shudder, continue to expand their horror movie collections, it’s harder and harder for Netflix to project any sense of comprehensiveness, and its library becomes more static and reliant upon Netflix Originals on a monthly basis. At various points in the last few years, for instance, Netflix could boast movies like The Shining, The Silence of the Lambs or Young Frankenstein, along with recent indie greats like The Witch or The Descent. All of those films are now gone—usually replaced by low-budget, direct-to-VOD films with suspiciously similar one-word titles, like Demonic, Desolate and Incarnate.

Still, there are quality films to be found here, typically of the modern variety, from comedies like The Babysitter, to more obscure (and disturbing) titles such as The Wailing, Creep, Apostle or newer films like His House and the Fear Street trilogy. Don’t expect to find many franchise staples in the mold of Halloween or Friday the 13th, but don’t sleep on The Haunting of Hill House, Cabinet of Curiosities or Fall of the House of Usher, either. They’re not technically movies, but they’re impossible to leave off this list if you’re looking for quality horror content.

You may also want to consult the following horror-centric lists:

The Smile

Year: 2022
Director: Parker Finn
Stars: Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner
Rating: R

The first film in Netflix’s trilogy of R.L. Stine Fear Street adaptations quickly announces itself as a far more vicious and bloody beast than any of the family friendly Goosebumps installments of recent years, successfully carving out its own place in the modern meta-slasher canon while hinting at an exciting conclusion to come. 1994 garbs itself in slasher history, being particularly referential of Scream while also including numerous allusions to much more obscure ‘80s slashers such as Intruder, but it simultaneously (and cleverly) distracts the audience from some of its deeper mysteries, to be explored more fully in Fear Street: 1978 and Fear Street: 1666. What we’re left with is a film that lays its mythology out nicely, buoyed both by engaging supporting characters and cinematic violence that is significantly more grisly than audiences are likely to expect. Suffice to say, the kills of Fear Street aren’t messing around, and once that bread slicer makes an appearance, your jaw is likely to drop. Sequels 1978 and 1666, meanwhile, keep up just enough momentum to complete the ambitious trilogy. —Jim Vorel

17. Doctor Sleep

Year: 2019
Director: Mike Flanagan
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis
Rating: R

The Platform benefits immensely from the strength of its simple, high-concept premise and all the superfluous information that is withheld from the viewer. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know why exactly people are placed into this diabolical, vertical prison structure, in which the only sustenance arrives once a day in the form of a steadily descending, increasingly gross stone slab piled high with perishables. Nor do we really need to know how this apparent social experiment operates, although the repeated glimpses we get at cooks slaving over perfect dishes to be sent down to the doomed convicts is no doubt designed to needle at our curiosity. What matters is that we observe the differences in human reaction to this plight—the ways that different personalities react to adversity with an “us or them” mentality, or a predatory hunger, or a spontaneous drive toward self-sacrificing altruism. The fact that the position of the prisoners is constantly in flux is key—it gives them both a tangible reason to be the change they want to see in their world, and an almost impossible temptation to do the exact opposite out of distrust of their neighbors. One expects a nihilistic streak here, and you won’t be disappointed—but there’s a few glimmers of hope shining through the cracks as well. Just enough, perhaps, to twist the knife that much deeper. —Jim Vorel

22. Cargo

Year: 2018
Directors: Yolanda Ramke, Ben Howling
Stars: Martin Freeman, Simone Landers, Anthony Hayes, David Gulpili, Susie Porter, Caren Pistorius
Rating: NR

Samuel Bodin’s upstart Cobweb arrived seemingly out of nowhere in the summer of 2023, and was sadly given very shoddy marketing that doomed it to a quick and uneventful theatrical release before it settled into the morass of VOD availability. That’s a shame, as Cobweb is a very skillfully directed horror yarn from the young filmmaker, unraveling a tangle of familiar tropes in a manner that is able to refresh almost all of them. The film has been expertly framed as a perspective we are seeing entirely from child height, featuring a grimy layer of nightmare unreality through which young Peter (Woody Norman) begins experiencing nightly disturbances from within the walls of his bedroom. It all has the feeling of dark fantasy or fairytale rather than the cold light of our own reality, helped along by scenery-chewing sinister performances from Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr as Peter’s not-at-all-suspicious parents. There are moments here still helplessly bound by cliche like a fly caught in a spider’s web, but Cobweb’s genuinely unnerving visuals, oppressive atmosphere, Halloween-rich setting and gonzo third act lift it above so many other superficially similar stories. —Jim Vorel

27. Fear Street Part Three: 1666

Year: 2021
Director: Leigh Janiak
Stars: Kiana Madeira, Ashley Zukerman, Gillian Jacobs, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Darrell Britt-Gibson
Rating: R

Few genre filmmakers seem to be having as much fun these days as Christopher Landon, a horror-comedy maestro who’s spent the last six years delivering instant classics like Happy Death Day and Freaky while mastering the balance between high-concept fun and emotional impact. That balancing act has won him plenty of fans while allowing him to keep playing in different horror sandboxes, stretching his abilities to see how far his style and narrative dexterity can really go. We Have a Ghost is a test of that dexterity, an expansive take on the ghost story that packs the filmmaker’s signature blend of humor, horror and heart into an ambitious two hours of spooky fun. And while it’s a test the filmmaker mostly passes, We Have a Ghost also feels like a case of narrative overreach, a movie that tries to juggle too many things at once and drops a few balls along the way. —Matthew Jackson

29. Heart Eyes

Year: 2025
Director: Josh Ruben
Stars: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa, Yoson An, Jordana Brewster
Rating: R

In The Tall Grass begins with a killer Twilight Zone premise, then pulls a Richard Kelly by adding one convoluted piece of mythology after another while failing to develop its characters or themes beyond its initial idea. The simplicity of its spooky setup immediately draws us in: A brother and sister (Laysla De Oliveira and Avery Whitted) on their way to San Diego hear a little boy (Will Buie Jr.) yell for yelp from a giant field of tall grass in the middle of nowhere. They run to rescue the boy, but end up trapped “in the tall grass” when they realize a mysterious force is keeping them inside by messing with space and time. Writer/director Vincenzo Natali, who adapted King and his son Joe Hill’s novella, is no stranger to such high-concept thrills. His breakthrough was 1997’s Cube, a tightly wound exercise in bare-bones survival horror. Natali unwisely embraces King and Hill’s “let’s throw a bunch of shit at the grass and see what sticks” attitude to storytelling, indulging in multiple deus ex machina and miscasting Patrick Wilson doing his best with the “religious wacko turns murder-monologuing psycho” King archetype. —Oktay Ege Kozak

31. The Babysitter

Year: 2017
Director: McG
Stars: Samara Weaving, Judah Lewis, Hana Mae Lee, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne
Rating: NR

Paco Plaza, the Spanish director of landmark 2007 found footage horror film R.E.C., has largely delivered diminishing returns via R.E.C. sequels. Verónica, therefore, has been received as a welcome venture into a new concept for the director, even if the results are decidedly on the derivative side. A spirit/demonic possession movie in the vein of Witchboard, the film follows a 15-year-old Spanish student (Sandra Escacena) who unwittingly invites evil into her home while conducting a ouija seance with her school chums. Where the movie shines best is largely on the presentation side: It looks great whenever its images aren’t too dark, capturing an interesting moment in history by setting the film in 1991 Spain. Charismatic performances from multiple child actors serve to bolster a story that unfortunately feels frustratingly familiar, recycling elements of Ouija, The Last Exorcism and practically every possession film ever written. This is very well-trodden ground, but Verónica is at the very least more than competent, even if it’s not the revelation for which we were hoping from the director. —Jim Vorel

33. 1922

Year: 2017
Director: Zak Hilditch
Stars: Thomas Janes, Neal McDonough, Molly Parker
Rating: NR

Seven years after he gave us Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, one of the best horror comedies in recent memory, director Eli Craig has finally returned with an exclusive for Netflix, Little Evil. An obvious parody of The Omen and other “evil kid” movies, Little Evil wears its influences and references on its sleeve in ways that, while not particularly clever, are at least loving. Adam Scott is the sad-sack father who somehow became swept up in a whirlwind romance and marriage, all while being unfazed by the fact that his new step-son is the kind of kid who dresses like a pint-sized Angus Young and trails catastrophes behind him wherever he goes. Evangeline Lilly is the boy’s foxy mother, whose motivations are suspect throughout. Does she know that her child is the spawn of Satan, or as his mother is she just willfully blind to the obvious evil growing under her nose? The film can boast a pretty impressive supporting cast, from Donald Faison and Chris D’elia as fellow step-dads, to Clancy Brown as a fire-and-brimstone preacher, but never does it fully commit toward either its jokes or attempts to frighten. The final 30 minutes are the most interesting, leading the plot in an unexpected direction that redefines the audience’s perception of the demon child, but it still makes for a somewhat uneven execution. Tucker & Dale this is not, but it’s still a serviceable return for Craig. —Jim Vorel

35. Anaconda

Year: 1997
Director: Luis Llosa
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Owen Wilson, Danny Trejo
Rating: PG-13

Till Death initially doesn’t appear to play to Megan Fox’s strengths. For about 10 minutes, it’s a dour marital drama where Emma (Fox) extricates herself from an affair in an attempt to reconcile with her wealthy husband Mark (Eoin Macken). It quickly becomes clear that Mark is controlling and abusive, but he’s able to keep his worst tendencies just tamped-down enough to give Emma some hope—until she wakes up the morning after their seeming reconciliation handcuffed to her beau … who promptly shoots himself in the head. The burden of Emma’s terrible relationship becomes physicalized and literalized as she has to drag the bastard around with her as she evades the criminals Mark has hired to come after her. This trim, compact movie is primarily a thriller, but it has horror-adjacent elements—practical gore; Mark’s Jigsaw-esque messages from beyond the grave; dark and gruesome flashes of humor—and that’s what ultimately makes it such a great match for Fox. From her popping red lipstick in the pre-mayhem sections to the blood splatter that perfectly soaks half of her face, Fox looks like a femme fatale captured mid-morph into scream queen. After years of objectification, she feels in control of her bombshell image. —Jesse Hassenger

37. Day Shift

Year: 2022
Director: J.J. Perry
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, Karla Souza, Meagan Good, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Snoop Dogg
Rating: R

Netflix’s teen-centric horror machine has been revving to life lately, but it must ultimately be said that the ambitious Fear Street trilogy from Leigh Janiak had significantly more creative verve than the much more familiar There’s Someone Inside Your House. Although star Sydney Park is a likable presence, she’s trapped in a film with shallow characters defined by single personality traits, in a script that feels guilty of some of the same offenses it’s ostensibly satirizing. The actual slashings are photographed with plenty of arterial spray, but what the film is really missing is the emotional nuance that characterized director Patrick Brice’s previous horror films in the Creep series. If he could have brought that kind of characterization to a high school slasher, There’s Someone Inside Your House might have been quite intriguing. Instead, it’s a lightweight diversion. —Jim Vorel

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