The scariest horror movies on Netflix right now (updated for 2026)

Director: Nia DaCosta

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams

Danny Boyle returned to the 28 Days Later franchise in 2025 with an emotional, borderline avant-garde rumination on grief. Seven months later, Nia DaCosta took the reins and went in pretty much the opposite direction, delivering the most brutal entry to the series yet. Heads are ripped clean off shoulders, people are flayed alive and it culminates in a Satanic dance sequence set to Iron Maiden. Nasty as it is, the film is anchored by a soulful performance from Ralph Fiennes as basically a field doctor for the zombie apocalypse, while Jack O’Connell exudes pure malevolence as a cult leader taking full advantage of the UK’s decimated state.

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt

In space, no one can hear you scream – but here on Earth, the screeches and gasps elicited by Ridley Scott’s pioneering sci-fi horror remain deafening, even four decades later. Much has been made of the claustrophobic set design and HR Giger’s dripping, oozing alien mother, but the reason the original film continues to scare and shock – and produce sequels, prequels and TV spinoffs of varying quality – is that it’s really just a classic slasher movie, only mounted on a spaceship, with one of the greatest of all ‘final girls’ and an unknowable killer who just won’t quit coming.

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth

Guillermo del Toro’s childhood passion project is one of the more faithful adaptations of Mary Shelley’s iconic 1818 horror novel, but the director imbues his take with his signature phantasmagoric visual flair and deep emotionality. Oscar Isaac goes full ham as the hubristic doctor, while Jacob Elordi brings new layers of rage and sadness to the monster, underscoring the daddy issues passed down from creator to creation.

Director: Remi Weekes

Cast: Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu, Matt Smith

Haunted house tales usually take place in the ‘burbs, the sticks or ancient European castles. By setting his in a dilapidated British housing project, first-timer Remi Weekes delivers a potent allegory for the horrors of the refugee experience. A pair of asylum-seekers from war-ravaged Sudan settle into a run-down tenement outside London, where they face racism, bureaucracy and something possibly even more sinister.  

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw

A man-eating shark stalks the waters of a New England beach town on its biggest tourist weekend of the year. C’mon, it’s friggin’ Jaws, dude. Do we really need to write an essay here? It’s one of the few movies literally everyone agrees on. Maybe purists would quibble with its horror bona fides and argue it’s more of an adventure-thriller with a smattering of gore and a few well-calibrated jump scares. But figure this: was the fear of being eaten on a beach vacation something that even crossed people’s minds before this movie came out? How many other horror movies can claim to have invented an entire phobia?

Director: Babk Anvari

Cast: Narges Rashidi, Avin Manshadi, Bobby Nadei

Iran’s answer to The Babadook, this chilling, provocative horror film brings the terrors of war home – quite literally. A Tehran woman and her daughter find themselves trapped inside with something malevolent during the height of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. As the missiles rain down, it’s hard to know if it’s more dangerous to be inside or out. It’s directed by Iranian-born, British-based writer-director Babak Anvari, who has a canny knack both for social commentary (Iran’s repressive, sexist regime is a second villain here) and scaring you shitless. 

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke

Who knew uber-likeable Ethan Hawke had it in him to play such an evil bastard? In this box-office-busting franchise-starter, he’s the Grabber, a serial child killer in 1970s Colorado with a taste for creepy masks. A slasher flick with a supernatural twist, Hawke is no doubt the standout, but don’t discount young Mason Thames as the would-be victim determined to put an end to his reign of terror. If only the sequel had matched it for disquieting shocks.

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Marilyn Burns, Paul A Partain, Gunnar Hansen

It’s an odd thing to say about a movie centred around a chainsaw-wielding monster who wears a mask made out of a woman’s skin, but the most striking thing about Tobe Hooper’s foundational grindhouse classic is its restraint. Don’t get it wrong – it’s as shocking and terrifying as the title implies, but nowhere near as gory. Instead, it relies on suggestion, cinematic trickery and a highly evocative sense of place: it’s a movie you can practically smell. And that, it turns out, is enough to generate nightmares that’ll last the rest of your life. 

Director: Osgood Perkins

Cast: Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss

Oz Perkins broke through as a director with 2024’s Longlegs, but his mastery of slow-burning dread was evident years earlier in this gothic ghost story. A nurse (Ruth Wilson) is hired to care for a dementia-addled horror author (Paula Prentiss, in her first major role in three decades), and comes to believe her most famous novel may not be a work of fiction. Even if the narrative is a bit lacking, Perkins’ detailed mood-setting will still leave your spine tingling.

Director: Paco Plaza

Cast: Sandra Escacena, Claudia Placer, Bruna González

When this Spanish-language horror first landed on Netflix, people took to Twitter to admit that they found it so frightening that they had to turn it off. From director Paco Plaza, who also helmed the equally horrifying [Rec], the story is apparently based on a true story and follows the horrifying events after a group of friends decide to do a ouija board session together. Is it the ‘scariest film ever’, as many have suggested? Maybe so...

Director: Josh Ruben

Cast: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Devon Sawa

A serial killer targeting young couples on Valentine’s Day pops up in Seattle, where two newly partnered coworkers hatch a plot to stop the culprit for good. Director Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within) mixes and matches slasher and romcom tropes to surprisingly satisfying effect – and the killer’s heart-eyes mask is pretty cool-looking, too.

Director: Greg Jardin

Cast: Brittany O'Grady, James Morosini, Gavin Leatherwood

In this psychological horror comedy, a pre-wedding party devolves into chaos after a guest shows up with a device that allows users to switch consciousnesses. (Always that one friend with the damn Freaky Friday machine, right?) It marks a high-concept, high-energy and high-style debut from director Greg Jardin.

Director: Leigh Janiak

This teen-focused horror trilogy is based on Goosebumps scribe RL Stine’s other book series, and plays like a sister series to Stranger Things – one of the films even stars Sadie Sink. Spread across multiple decades (and centuries), the movies follow a group of kids attempting to figure out why their small US town is cursed, and what they can do to bring it to an end. A fourth standalone film, Fear Street: Prom Queen, came out in 2025, though it's a notable downgrade from the first three movies.

Director: Richard Shepard

Cast: Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber

In this bizarre blend of psychological thriller and body horror, Allison Williams and Logan Browning play rival concert cellists whose trip to China to visit the music school where they were both trained turns into a twisty, majorly screwed-up descent into hell. It’s something like Cronenberg directing Black Swan, with a twist of Whiplash. 

Director: Patrick Brice

Cast: Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass

Patrick Brice directs and stars in this found-footage two-hander about Aaron, a videographer who is hired to record a video diary for the eccentric and supposedly terminally ill Josef. When the pair meet, though, Aaron is distrubed by his subject’s increasingly bizarre behaviour, which in the end could rival Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Unsettling yet oddly humorous, this is one that’ll stay with you after the credits roll. 

Director: Pablo Larrain

Cast: Jaime Vadell, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro

It’s 2023, and Augusto Pinochet is ready to die. ‘Uhh, what?’ you’re probably asking. You see, in this bizarro blend of political satire and horror-comedy from Chilean provocateur Pablo Larrain, the former dictator is a 250-year-old vampire who faked his death in 1990 and retired to a farm, but who can’t quite outrun his past. And that’s not even the weirdest part. It sounds adjacent to historically-informed gimmicks like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but Larrain is an expert button-pusher, and the film was recently awarded Best Screenplay at Venice. Like its immortal old tyrant, it should live on.

Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan

Cast: Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe

As if vacationing at a place called  Bone Lake wasn’t enough of a red flag – what, was Blood Bay all booked up? – poor Sage and Diego show up to discover another couple has double-booked their rental house. And so begins a weekend of disturbing psychosexual mind games. Well regarded at Fantastic Fest in 2024, this erotic horror-thriller builds its creepy sense of dread well before exploding into a bloody finale.

Directors: Adam Schindler and Brian Netto

Cast: Kelsey Asbille, Finn Wittrock, Moray Treadwell 

Yet another riff on the old DOA formula, this Sam Raimi-produced horror-thriller involves a woman (Kelsey Asbille) who encounters a madman on an isolated hiking trail. Stuck with some kind of paralysing agent, she only has 20 minutes to attempt escape before her body shuts down completely. Are your palms sweaty yet?

Director: Xavier Gens

Cast: Bérénice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Léa Léviant

And you thought the water quality was the worst thing about swimming in the Seine. Released just prior to the Paris Olympics, director Xavier Gens’ addition to the ‘place where shark shouldn’t be’ canon unleashes a mutated mako into the City of Lights’ main waterway. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s right before a major triathlon the mayor steadfastly refuses to cancel. It’s a silly, fun B-movie whose topicality made it an unexpected hit.

Director: David F Sandberg

Cast: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Peter Stormare

Among gamers, the 2015 Playstation title Until Dawn is well-regarded as a horror-influenced mystery in which the story shifts based on individual player decisions. Turning what’s otherwise a standard-issue cabin-in-the-woods slasher into a compelling film is another challenge altogether. But director David F Sandberg (Annabelle: Creation) incorporates a clever time-loop conceit into his adaptation, and the result is a gory survival thriller that plays as a love-letter to the horror genre.

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast:  Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood

In this Stephen King adaptation, a struggling couple look to reignite the flames of their flagging marriage with some kinky sex at an isolated lake house. Then he dies of a sudden heart attack while she’s handcuffed to the bed. It’s an anxiety-inducing scenario, and Carla Gugino’s impressive performance keeps you glued to the screen even as she spends much of the runtime lying on her back.