10 Scary Movies on Netflix
There are literally thousands of streaming movies on Netflix, and frequently subscribers experience a crisis of choice: With so many options, it almost feels easier to watch nothing, or something you’ve already seen before. For horror fans this crisis is doubly difficult, because so many of the genre movies available are microbudget blunders or goofy horror comedies. Well, now horror hounds are in luck as we’ve cherry picked the most bone-chilling, scariest movies on Netflix’s streaming service, from recent releases to time-proven classics. Check out 10 scary movies on Netflix below!
Scary Movies on Netflix: The Nightmare (2015)
Rodney Ascher, who made the exhaustively obsessive The Shining documentary Room 237, returns with a project that’s half-documentary/half-straight-up horror movie. The Nightmare focuses on eight individuals who chronically suffer from totally-for-real sleep paralysis, a condition in which they are unable to move in a half-state between sleep and waking life. The terrifying hallucinations they suffer from are brought to the screen via dramatic re-enactments that make A Nightmare on Elm Street look like Little Nemo in Slumberland. Watching these people’s harrowing experiences is scary enough, but then the realization hits that, yes, you too could potentially suffer from this if you haven’t already.
Scary Movies on Netflix: The Babadook (2014)
Australian newcomer Jennifer Kent made such a splash with her directorial debut that it’s gotten to the point that any promising new horror film (The Witch, It Follows) is instantly hailed as “this year’s ‘Babadook.'” Essie Davis is superb as a widower who subconsciously blames her emotionally damaged son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) for the death of her husband, and her slow descent into madness does not negate the fact that something legitimately supernatural might be going on as a creepy storybook character comes to life around them.
Scary Movies on Netflix: Preservation (2014)
Director Christopher Denham, an actor best known as one of the rescuees in Argo, directs this survival tale about a troubled war vet (Orange Is the New Black‘s Pablo Schreiber), his corporate brother (Mad Men‘s Aaron Staton) and his brother’s new bride (Boardwalk Empire‘s Wrenn Schmidt) taking a weekend trip to the wilderness. There’re only two caveats: The section of the forest they’ve ventured into is closed, and there’s a group of deranged masked maniacs trying to murder them. This is a well-acted, artfully done thriller with subtle elements of slasher, found footage and old school suspense that harkens back to the little-seen 1977 Canadian horror film The Creeper/Rituals.
Scary Movies on Netflix: The Canal (2014)
This haunting slow burn from Ireland centers on a film archivist named David (Rupert Evans of the first Hellboy) who correctly suspects that his wife is cheating on him. His wife’s strange disappearance coincides with David’s discovery that his home was the site of a gruesome murder in 1902. Did he kill his wife, or is there something far more sinister afoot. You can bet that the lines between reality and the beyond will be creepily blurred.
Scary Movies on Netflix: Oculus (2013)
If you like your horror more mind-bending and cerebral than this is a must-watch. Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Brenton Thwaites (The Giver) star as a brother and sister determined to outwit an antique mirror that literally destroyed their family as children. The film flashes back-and-forth from past to present, but things really get trippy once the mirror begins to play games with time, space and perception. Unlike many Blumhouse productions (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister), Oculus feels like a legitimately redefining take on the haunted house movie, one that is always perpetually two-steps ahead of the smart characters and the audience,
Scary Movies on Netflix: Black Death (2010)
Game of Thrones fans will supremely dig this down and dirty medieval plague horror flick, and not just because it features Sean Bean and Carice van Houten in lead roles. Like Thrones, this movie about a group of English knights and a monk (future Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne) sent to stop a necromancer (van Houten) from performing witchcraft is hyper-grounded, hyper violent and loaded with moral relativism. It ultimately stands as a huge indictment against the forces of ignorance throughout the ages, including this age. With Black Death Christopher Smith (Severence, Triangle) proved himself a director to be reckoned with.
Scary Movies on Netflix: Let the Right One In (2008)
Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson crafted one of the most emotionally (and visually) beautiful films in the vampire genre, one that touches the heart and scares in equal measure. The tender story of a centuries-old vampire who looks like a little girl and a shy 12-year-old boy is intermittently punctuated by truly shocking imagery that turns the genre on its head and makes you question how much depth a horror film can –and probably should- have.
Scary Movies on Netflix: The Shining (1980)
Yes, it is basically a hot-throbbing cliché to say Stanley Kubrick‘s über haunted house flick is probably the scariest movie of all-time. Here’s the thing: It probably is the scariest movie of all-time. The Stephen King adaptation in which Jack Nicholson and fam isolate themselves for the winter as caretakers for a labyrinthine Colorado hotel is so pervasively strange that each viewing only brings out further mysteries. Whether it’s the fact that every time Jack talks directly to a ghost he’s looking in a mirror, or the bizarre architectural impossibilities of the Overlook, hitting play for five minutes will probably result in you watching the whole darn thing yet again.
Scary Movies on Netflix: The Legend of Hell House (1973)
This groovy slice of ’70s British genre heaven features all the stuff fans crave: Spiritual mediums, possession, sex, murder, debauchery, weird pseudo-science and loads of atmosphere, all packed within the “Mount Everest of haunted houses.” Roddy McDowall is the standout as a wounded psychic who is the only previous survivor of an attempt to exorcise the notorious Belasco House, a place so marked by evil it makes the Overlook Hotel seem like a two-night stay at a La Quinta Inn. Although not quite as explicit as Richard Matheson’s famous novel “Hell House,” it remains potent as a truly frightening study of spiritualism vs. pragmatism.
Scary Movies on Netflix: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Viewers willing to take a dive into silent film history will be rewarded by checking out this German expressionist masterpiece that influenced everything from the Universal monster movies of the ’30s to pretty much the entire Tim Burton oeuvre… and yes, The Babadook. The 70-minute story of a sleepwalking somnambulist (Casablanca‘s Conrad Veidt) hypnotized by a mad doctor to commit a series of murders was shot on bizarre, angular sets that create a surreal, nightmarish atmosphere. If any of it looks familiar that’s because Rob Zombie’s video for the song “Living Dead Girl” literally borrowed its look wholesale from this movie.
What did you think of our list of scary movies on Netflix streaming? What do you think are the scariest movies on Netflix? Let us know in the comments below!
