The best horror films of the moment on Netflix

(Ghost face voice) Do you like scary movies? (Slightly less Ghostface voice) Do you, like 203 million other people on earth, have a Netflix account? Then you’ve probably been scrolling, looking for the best horror movies on the service. Unlike Jamie Kennedy in Screamwe have answers.

But instead of wading through that ever-changing glut of films that flow in and out of the service every month and trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, we’ve got you covered with a list of our own films, written and curated by Polygon’s own horror movie. lovers. (And if you’re looking for a list of the best horror movies to watch on multiple streaming platforms, we’ve got you covered there too.)

We’ve sifted our way through Netflix’s horror offerings to find you a bunch of movies worth spending an evening in… alone… with the lights off… and definitely… no one watching you …through the window…now…

Added our latest update Thanksgiving as an editor’s choice.

---

Editor’s Choice: Thanksgiving

First of all, a word of warning. If you have a problem with gore in movies, you’ll be better off with pretty much every other movie on this list. Go ahead, there are plenty of great ones here to choose from…just not this one.

Now, for the rest of you freaks (I say that with love), you’re in for a treat. Thanksgiving is unofficially the best Scream movie since then Scream 4, Wes Craven’s final entry in the franchise. It’s a delightful slasher with a heavy tongue-in-cheek tone and some extremely gnarly holiday-themed kills.

The film has the kind of twisted kills you’d expect from a holiday-themed slasher, and while the dialogue is occasionally uneven, I was mostly impressed with the character work. Thanksgiving has the perfect mix of characters you really want to see killed and characters you want to survive. That’s a difficult balance to find in the genre, but a crucial one. —Piet Volk

---

Destruction

Imagine a world marked by the absence of humanity. Or better said: a world in which humans and nature are entwined in a horrific symbiosis through the intervention of an alien meteor that crashes into Earth.

Based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, Destruction follows the story of Lena (Natalie Portman), a cell biologist whose husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), has been missing for more than a year after being deployed on a top-secret mission. When Kane mysteriously returns home one evening, now stricken with a deadly virus, Lena discovers that he has been sent on an expedition to the Shimmer – an anomalous zone that has gradually grown out of Florida after the aforementioned meteor strike. Desperate for answers and a possible cure for her husband’s ailment, she agrees to embark on a reconnaissance mission to the Shimmer, but is confronted with wonders and horrors beyond her wildest imagination.

Surreal and disturbing, Destruction is a beautiful horror film that explores the nature of grief and the human tendency to destroy our own environment. Featuring a beautifully ethereal score from Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame, not to mention an astonishing cameo appearance from frequent Alex Garland collaborator Sonoya Mizuno in the film’s final act. Destruction is an invigorating and memorable odyssey into a dangerous post-human future. —Toussaint Egan

Apostle

Fans of the classic 1973 horror film The wicker man (let’s not talk about the 2006 Nicolas Cage version and its beeeeeees) should be warned: The robbery director Gareth Evans’ 2018 film Apostle deliberately starts in the exact same place, and then carries out the same scenario to a much bloodier and graphic conclusion. Set in 1905, it begins with the confused addict Thomas (Legion And The guest star Dan Stevens) receives a letter informing him that his sister is being held captive by a cult on a distant island. So he pretends to enter what looks like a quaint religious community, but is actually the kind of place where people routinely leave bowls of their own blood on the doorstep at night and something can be heard crawling around under the floor. Tense, bloody and almost ridiculously over-the-top in places, Apostle has a lot to say about the nature of religious fanaticism, both for the obedient flocks who do what their leader says God wants, and for the manipulators who arm anyone they can find who is willing to be led. But this is not alone Wicker man redux – it’s a creative, brutal twist on the same idea, which leads to its own unique horrors. —Tasha Robinson

Comb

Madeline Brewer stars in Daniel Goldhaber’s Comb as Alice, an ambitious cam girl desperately trying to reach the coveted number one spot on the site she streams for. After a particularly intense show, she wakes up to discover that her account has been taken over by a mysterious doppelgänger, someone who will seemingly go to any lengths to achieve what Alice herself could not. As Alice fights to regain control of her show and expose the identity of her impersonator, she must deal with the consequences of the blurring of her offline and online identities. Comb is a chilling psychological horror that will leave audiences wondering again and again how, if at all, the heroine will manage to overcome and survive the horrors that plague her life. -AT

Creep & Creep 2

Leave it to indie darling Mark Duplass and his frequent collaborator Patrick Brice (The overnight stay) to make the Found Footage horror film still shine 15 years later The Blair Witch Project. In CrawlJosef (Duplass) recruits Aaron (Brice), a videographer, from Craigslist with the intention of filming a suicide note to his unborn son. Josef is dying… or so he convinces his new buddy Aaron to spend the night in the woods and drink whiskey with him. The batshit revelations are best left unsaid, and how Creep 2 picks up the story, with Girls actress Desiree Akhavan front and center as a YouTube star hopeful is even more of a hoot. Crawl is the twisted, internet-friendly horror franchise we deserve. —Matte plasters

Crimson peak

“Ghosts really exist. That much I know.”

So says Mia Wasikowska in the opening scene of Guillermo del Toro’s 2015 gothic horror novel about the spirits of the dead and the ties that bind them. Wasikowska stars as Edith Cushing, an aspiring writer à la Mary Shelley and the daughter of a wealthy businessman, who is haunted by a premonition from her deceased mother’s ghost to be wary of a place known as Crimson Peak . Edith meets and falls in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a baron looking for investors to revive his family’s clay mines.

After her father is brutally murdered, Edith marries Thomas and retires to his ancestral country home in the eponymous clay hills of northern England. Upon arrival, however, she realizes only too late that her mother’s warnings were true, and that a mystery at the heart of the house threatens to cost her and her father their lives. Featuring an exquisitely designed set, beautiful costumes, eerie practical effects and a memorable score, Crimson peak is a great tribute to del Toro’s love of Gothic literature and an excellent ghost story to boot. -AT

His house

His house turns the trials and tribulations of immigration into a shocking ghost story. Gangs of London‘s Sope Dirisu and Lovecraft countryWunmi Mosaku plays a Sudanese couple who seek asylum in Britain, where they find supportive but less than friendly social workers (including House of the Dragon star Matt Smith) who can’t accept that the house they’ve been given is haunted. Caught between the ghosts at home and an inflexible system ready to send them back to a war-torn country, the couple grapple with their past and their very questionable future. —TR

The ritual

Even in our post-Cabin in the woods world, there are still opportunities for clever filmmakers to scare us with a creepy-hut-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-why-would-you-go-in-there-what-was-that-in – the-shadows-no-no-no-no-no stories. The ritual follows four friends who trek along the Kungsleden trail in northern Sweden in tribute to a fifth friend, who was recently murdered in a supermarket. Death weighs especially on Luke (PrometheusRafe Spall), whose drunken belligerence put his friend in danger in the first place. Luke is also the member of the group who realizes that, after discovering a wooden deer altar in an abandoned house along their ill-advised detour, the group is haunted by more than just memories. Like a unique mix of Euro horror and The hills have eyes, The ritual twists a familiar journey with creature instincts to keep the genre fresh. —MP

Under the shade

During a series of Iraqi air raids in Tehran in the late 1980s, the Iranian government bans medical student and political activist Shideh (Narges Rashidi) from continuing her studies. She retreats to her family’s apartment and, despite her husband’s wishes, stays with her young daughter in the war-torn capital. This is her home and she’s not leaving. But when a missile blasts straight through her building, the normal life Shideh and her daughter knew is marked by an invisible, nefarious presence. Is it a djinn? Just like The Babadookdirector Babak Anvari allows the issue of the supernatural to revolve around the action Under the shade as he captures the erosion of his simple main set and Shideh’s existence. —M.P