11 Best Horror Movies to Stream on Netflix – IGN

By William Bibbiani

There are so many great horror movies out there that most of us will never, ever have time to watch them all. Fortunately, quite a few of them are currently available at the click of a button, on streaming services like Netflix.

So if you want to see something really scary, but you dont want to go out searching for it, youre in luck: weve scoured every single horror movie currently available on Netflix and picked the 11 scariest, grossest, and best horror films for you to watch tonight.

An American Werewolf in London

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Horror and humor: two ingredients that taste great together when placed in the gnashing maw of this lycanthropic classic, directed by the great John Landis (Animal House). A pair of American tourists fall prey to a werewolf, and the survivor finds himself cursed to transform into a monster each and every full moon, undergoing painful, groundbreaking, Oscar-winning transformation sequences that have helped turn An American Werewolf in London into an instant classic. Decades later, this imaginative and unusual film is still considered one of the best werewolf movies ever made, and with good cause/claws.

The Babadook

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Amelia (played by the incredible Essie Davis) was having a hard enough time raising her six-year-old son, alone, after the death of her husband. So when a storybook boogeyman called The Babadook strikes in Jennifer Kents shocking horror thriller, it doesnt just make her life harder it becomes a terrifying metaphor for all parental anxieties. As sleepless nights and non-stop stress take their toll, we realize that as frightened as Amelia is, its her young son trapped in the house with a woman who is violently losing her mind who we should really be worried about. One of the most mature and disturbing horror movies in years.

Cujo

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A vicious Stephen King adaptation, mean-spirited and brilliant in its simplicity, Cujo stars Dee Wallace as a housewife trapped in her car with her young child for days while a rabid St. Bernard waits impatiently outside to tear their throats out. The isolation is unnerving, Lewis Teagues direction is intense, and Dee Wallace gives the performance of her career as a mother with no safe options, but who has to do something before her little boy dies of dehydration, heatstroke, or a brutal canine attack.

The Fly (1958)

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Netflix doesnt have many old school, classic horror movies left, but The Fly would have been a highlight even if they had hundreds. Patricia Owens plays a woman who confesses to killing her scientist husband under unbelievable circumstances, and Vincent Price listens in dread as she recounts the bizarre experiment that turned the poor victim into a human fly. Kurt Neumanns film is a gripping sci-fi thriller and a tragedy of scientific obsession, and although David Cronenbergs 1986 remake is more acclaimed, all of the body horror Cronenberg brought to vivid life is right here in the original too with a creepier, unforgettable ending.

The Invitation

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Some folks like their horror subtle, slipping quietly under the skin instead of stabbing inside of it. Karyn Kusamas riveting thriller The Invitation is one of the best films of that kind, an unnerving tale about a man who goes to his ex-wifes house for dinner and cant shake the feeling that something, somewhere, is wrong. Maybe hes right or maybe hes just paranoid. Either way, waiting to find out is nail-bitingly agonizing, and the disturbing conclusion is well worth your well-gnawed digits.

It Follows

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It Follows is about an evil specter that follows you around, slowly and calmly, until it finally grabs you and kills you. The only way to get rid of it is to have sex, and pass it on to somebody else. Under the direction of David Robert Mitchell this eerie concept becomes a perverse stand-in for young sexual anxiety, as a group of teenagers come to terms with the unintended consequences of their first intimate contact. The unnerving widescreen photography is also some of the scariest in years. That demon could be anywhere and anyone, in the back of the frame or on the sides. Keep your eyes peeled!

Jaws

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Steven Spielbergs original horror classic is just as pulse-pounding today as it was when it transformed the motion picture industry back in 1975, giving birth to the modern age of movie blockbusters. A killer shark is stalking the beaches of a resort community, and a sheriff tries too often, in vain to rescue the disbelieving townsfolk and tourists. The shark is off-screen most of the time, but the characters and story are so realistic and engrossing that you hardly care until the explosive finale, of course.

Re-Animator

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Re-Animator is considered one of the greatest horror movies of the 1980s, and whether youre already a member of its enduring cult or totally new to its grotesque charms, you have to admit this movie is gory, funny, and fascinating. Scary movie icon Jeffrey Combs plays Herbert West, a college student who thinks he can raise the dead, but who hasnt perfected the formula yet. Ultraviolent chaos ensues including several severed head moments youll just have to see to believe. But while the blood and guts will churn your stomach, the unexpectedly charismatic performances will win your heart.

The Shining

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One of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived, Stanley Kubrick took quite a few liberties with Stephen Kings classic ghost story, and Stephen King never quite forgave him for that. But audiences sure did! The feature film version of The Shining is one of the most nerve-shattering movies ever produced an ethereally filmed tale of a family falling prey to an unstable patriarch, played with equal parts tragedy and menace by the great Jack Nicholson, in an isolated hotel in the dead of winter. (Stephen King wrote his own TV mini-series adaptation in 1997; it wasnt as good.)

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

Weve all heard the horror stories about hapless city folk driving into the Deep South and falling prey to murderous Southerners. But Eli Craigs whimsical and ultraviolent Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is all about why that was always a terrible, xenophobic idea. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine play Tucker and Dale, two good-natured yokels who are mistaken for murderers by judgmental urbanites, who then kill themselves in one spectacular accident after another as they try to defend themselves from the title characters who werent doing anything but wearing overalls and being friendly. Its a brilliant horror satire, inventively filmed, and even though its violent as all hell its also one of the most endearing comedies of the decade.

Wes Cravens New Nightmare

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The sequels in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise are, mostly, entertaining killfests in which a supernatural killer slaughters teenagers in their wildest dreams. But when Freddy Krueger became a pop icon he also became less scary, and that gave Wes Craven an ingenious idea: to tell a story about Freddy Krueger breaking into the real world and the makers of A Nightmare on Elm Street making a new film to keep him trapped in the world of fiction. Wes Cravens New Nightmare is clever, and unlike Scream, its not a satire its a grim and frightening treatise on the whole horror genre, arguing that our monsters belong on the screen because we cant handle them in real life.

What are your favorite horror movies on Netflix?

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11 Best Horror Movies to Stream on Netflix - IGN