15 of the Best Horror Movies on Netflix to Watch on Halloween

Abrar Al-Heeti Senior Technology Reporter

Abrar’s interests include phones, streaming, autonomous vehicles, internet trends, entertainment, pop culture and digital accessibility. In addition to her current role, she’s worked for CNET’s video, culture and news teams. She graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Though Illinois is home, she now loves San Francisco — steep inclines and all.

Liz Kocan has spent the last 20 years covering TV, entertainment and working behind the scenes in digital production. While at VH1.com, she won a Webby Award and was nominated for a Shorty Award as a producer. She has also contributed her writing to USA Today, Decider, Vulture, and many other publications, and has seen every episode of 30 Rock more times than her mind grapes can remember.

Smile (2022)

Sosie Bacon stars as Dr. Rose Cotter, a therapist who sees a patient with curious behavior who then eerily smiles at Rose just before slitting her own throat. Shortly after, Rose begins hallucinating and believes she’s been exposed to a curse. The deeply creepy juxtaposition of sinister smiles followed by brutal deaths, along with the psychological torment of those forced to witness it all, makes Smile as unsettling as they come. The film is available now on Netflix, but it leaves the platform on Nov. 13.

28 Days Later (2002)

2002’s 28 Days Later stars Cillian Murphy as a bike messenger who awakens from a coma to find that Britain has been ravaged by zombie-like creatures infected with a rage virus. The film, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, helped revive (no pun intended) the zombie genre and it’s easily one of the best out there. Netflix currently has both 28 Days Later and 28 Years Later on the platform. (You can check out 28 Weeks Later on Hulu.)

Heart Eyes (2025)

Heart Eyes is the rare slasher film that could work for multiple holidays: It’s arguably appropriate for Halloween or Valentine’s Day. (It also happens to be a genuinely funny horror-comedy. It really ticks so many boxes.) The film stars Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding as co-workers who are mistaken for a couple by a serial killer known as the Heart Eyes Killer. The HEK targets the two, who find themselves in a race to save their lives and uncover the killer’s identity. Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa and Michaela Watkins all co-star, and in a ridiculously meta twist, the detectives investigating the murders are named Hobbs and Shaw — a nod to characters in the Fast and Furious films that Brewster starred in.

Creep (2014)

This psychological horror film is deeply unsettling in the best ways. A videographer named Aaron (Patrick Brice) responds to a Craigslist ad placed by a dying man named Josef (Mark Duplass), who says he wants to record a video diary for his unborn son. But when Josef starts behaving strangely, Aaron becomes increasingly uneasy, and a series of disturbing events unfold. 

The Elixir (2025)

The Indonesian zombie thriller The Elixir blends two of today’s most popular themes: zombies and wellness culture. When a local family that runs an herbal medicine company decides to test a new wellness drink, the result is the ultimate immunity boost: The drinkers turn into bloodthirsty zombies. The Netflix original film just arrived on the platform this month.

Malevolent (2018)

In the Netflix original Malevolent, Florence Pugh stars as Angela, a con artist who pretends to be clairvoyant and able to connect with ghosts so that she and her brother Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) can scam vulnerable, bereaved people out of money. When they’re hired by a woman (Celia Imrie) to rid an orphanage of spirits, Angela starts to actually see things she wishes she couldn’t. While the ghosts of dead children are creepy enough, the film is also about the horrors that real people inflict, too. 

Host (2022)

The 2022 British film Host (not to be confused with Bong Joon Ho’s The Host or the 2013 film of the same name starring Saoirse Ronan) is very much of its time. A lockdown film made during the height of COVID-19, it was shot entirely over Zoom. Returning to that bleak time might be enough to make some people panic, but the concept is actually what makes the movie so compelling. When a group of friends invites a medium to their video call, they unwittingly conjure a dark spirit. Separated by miles but witnessing everything via webcam, they helplessly watch their friends get accosted by terrifying, inexplicable things. It’s a fresh take on the found footage genre, and while some of the on-screen frights are a little silly, the anticipation and terror as we wait for them is a real thrill. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Both the original 1974 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as the 2022 reboot are available now on Netflix, and we prefer the original, now a cult classic. Loosely inspired by serial killer Ed Gein (the subject of Netflix’s latest season of the Monster TV series), the film was made on a shoestring budget and depicts a group of teens who fall victim to a family of cannibals. Leatherface is a brutal killer who wears a mask made of the skin of his victims, and whose weapon of choice is, naturally, a chainsaw. 

Gerald’s Game (2017)

Horror auteur Mike Flanagan has collaborated with Stephen King on several excellent projects, and his first was the acclaimed adaptation of King’s psychological thriller Gerald’s Game. In the film, Carla Gugino plays Jessie, the wife of a lawyer, Gerald (Bruce Greenwood), who handcuffs her to a bed at their remote vacation home — a fantasy of his, not hers — and promptly dies of a heart attack. With this not-so-sexy situation gone awry, Jessie realizes she’s tethered to the bed with no key and no one to help for miles, she begins to hallucinate visions of Gerald, and an alternate version of herself, as she also attempts to find a way to escape the situation. 

The Ritual (2017)

A group of friends embark on a hiking trip in Sweden, where they encounter an ancient supernatural force — or being — that must be satiated. The British film has all the horror makings of a forest hike gone wrong — weird markings, unsettling ritualistic offerings and an impossible escape.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

A group of friends gets into a car accident, accidentally killing someone and then covering it up. One year later, a vengeful killer who knows what they’ve done targets each one of them because, you know, consequences. That’s the premise of I Know What You Did Last Summer, starring an ensemble of young actors including Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders and Jonah Hauer-King, plus a couple of older faces — Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt, who starred as the terrorized teens in the 1997 original. (The original film isn’t on Netflix at the moment, but its sequel, 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, is. And just because these films fall under the “teen screams” category, they’re still good for serious thrills.)

Train to Busan (2016)

Train to Busan is a Korean zombie movie that has spawned both a prequel and a sequel (and there’s also an English-language adaptation in the works, too). Taking place almost entirely on a train to Busan, the film depicts a zombie apocalypse, with passengers learning of a zombie outbreak spreading across the country — and throughout the train. They try to protect themselves by running from those infected on the train and barricading themselves in their train cars. 

His House (2020)

This thriller follows a refugee couple from South Sudan, played by Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu, who endured a harrowing journey in order to seek asylum in England. But when they move into their new home, they find an unsettling, sinister presence within it that wants them to pay back an old debt (or else).

1922 (2017)

This horror drama, yet another adaptation of a Stephen King work on our list, follows a farmer played by Thomas Jane who decides to murder his wife with the help of his teenage son. But they become haunted by guilt — and rats. Lots of rats. 

Apostle (2018)

Apostle is a folk horror film written and directed by Gareth Evans, who also gave us the great series Gangs of London and the recent Netflx original film Havoc starring Tom Hardy. Set in the early 1900s, a troubled man named Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) travels to a remote island to rescue his sister, who’s been kidnapped by a religious cult. When Thomas learns the truth about the island and its inhabitants, the results are as bloody as they come.