The 23 best horror films on Netflix UK
Looking for something creepy to watch? You'll find plenty of scare-tertainment right here
What better way to indulge your taste for the pants-fillingly frightening than to dim the lights, curl up on the sofa, fire up your streaming device of choice and watch a horror film?
- Read: The best 4K TV
There’s a terrifying treasure trove of scary movies available on streaming services like Netflix, Now and Prime Video. Here, you’ll find the Stuff team’s pick of Netflix’s selection. Whether you like your horror movies bloody, creepy, arty or with a twist of comedy, there’s sure to be something in here that’ll put the willies up you.
Searching for scares on a different streaming service? We’ve got you covered:
- The best horror films on Disney+
- The best horror films on Now and Sky Cinema
- The best horror films on Amazon Prime Video and Freevee
- The 13 scariest films on Shudder
A Quiet Place Part II
The taut thriller about surviving in a world invaded by aliens with super sensitive hearing gets a sequel, and while many might dismiss it as unnecessary (and purely a consequence of the unexpected success of the first film), it’s an enjoyable popcorn movie that balances breathless scares and high tension while developing the original characters further.
We see a lot more of the aliens this time around, but it hasn’t gone full action-thriller; director John Krasinski has once again made a family drama that just happens to take place in the wake of a disaster. Emily Blunt is in great form once again, but it’s the young actors and series newcomer Cillian Murphy who shine here.
Nocebo
Wracked with guilt over a mysterious tragedy, a children’s clothing designer (Eva Green) finds herself suffering from multiple health problems: memory loss, tremors and difficulty breathing. Her husband (Mark Strong) believes these symptoms to be purely psychosomatic, but when a Filipina housekeeper (Chai Fonacier) arrives on their doorstep offering her services – a plus a plethora of apparently effective folk remedies, he puts his reservations aside. This woman isn’t all she seems, however, and Nocebo quickly builds into a compelling and tightly scripted horror film with a fantastic final twist.
Saw
The Saw series may have been diluted by an endless parade of needless sequels, but the original remains a psychological rollercoaster – minus most of the painful tropes that litter the genre.
The true genius of the film is that the villain isn’t your typical axe-wielding maniac. Far from it. He actually sees himself as some kind of hero, despite leaving his victims in traps that encourage self-mutilation. If someone manages to escape, they’ll become a better person for it, despite some horrific scars. And if they don’t escape? Well, let’s just say in that case it’s game over.
In the Earth
If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. Not a bunch of teddies munching on scotch eggs but an intense mix of ominous fog, amateur surgeons, and strange botanical rituals.
In the Earth sees a scientist and a park ranger venture deep into the wilderness in search of a missing colleague. Instead they find forest-dwelling Zach, played brilliantly by The League of Gentleman’s Reece Shearsmith.
Despite shooting during a pandemic with an almost non-existent budget, director Ben Wheatley’s National Trust Chainsaw Massacre is a masterful combination of folk-horror, sci-fi and psychedelia that’s reminiscent of everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Evil Dead. You’ll never look at your house plants the same way again.
I See You
A smart modern horror film that cleverly plays with the genre’s tropes and its viewers’ expectations, I See You is one of those under-the-radar movies that will hopefully get the attention it deserves on Netflix. We can’t say too much without risk of ruining the fun, but it involves creepy, unexplained goings-on around Helen Hunt’s house while she struggles to keep her family together and local children are going missing in strange circumstances. If it sounds like a lot to follow, rest assured everything comes together pretty satisfyingly in the end.
Old
We can’t say too much about M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller without ruining its central gimmick, but suffice to say the trailer (and title) probably give you a hint of what’s going on here. The film (based on the Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle) is tonally all over the place thanks to some odd performances and camera angle choices, but we suspect this is intentional (or at least Shyamalan is well aware of it, even if it’s not).
The effect is jarring and disorienting: sometimes you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be laughing at a scene or be utterly horrified by it. Perhaps the correct answer is ‘a little from column A, a little from column B’. Is Old a great Hitchcockian thriller in the mould of Shymalan’s twist-laden early work? No, but it’s an entertaining popcorn movie with some interesting and creepy ideas.
Cloverfield
J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield is perhaps the zenith of the “found footage” sub-genre of horror – and sure, it’s a patchy one, with every decent example (1999’s The Blair Witch Project) seemingly matched by a dreadful effort (2016’s Blair Witch). But this succeeds by taking the concept and conceit – that the viewer is watching actual footage of the events, recovered after the fact – beyond its low-budget roots by setting the movie not in a creepy forest or secluded farmhouse, but in Manhattan during a huge and initially mysterious disaster.
So the viewer gets a first-person view of the apocalypse, complete with gory deaths, collapsing buildings and much, much worse. It’s a fun ride while it lasts, but those who suffer from motion sickness might well have to check out early – Abrams does love his shakicam footage.
Zombieland
Somewhat counterintuitively for a zombie film, this slacker comedy hits the ground running – in a brilliant, self-aware opening credits sequence that lays out the ground rules for survival in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world.
Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus is a coward who survives by following those rules to the letter; his companion, Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee, is a zombie-killing machine on a quest for the last surviving Twinkie. Sharp, witty and blessed with one of the best cameo appearances ever, this is a zombie movie with brains. Is it scary? Not really. Is it a blast? Yes indeed.
Hannibal (2001)
Being the first sequel to The Silence of the Lambs does this film no favours whatsoever. It’s sillier, schlockier and far less interesting, and poor Julianne Moore, playing FBI agent Clarice Starling, couldn’t fill Jodie Foster’s shoes, despite doing her damnedest (in fact, Moore’s wandering Southern drawl may actually be one of the scariest things on screen here).
And yet. And yet. Hannibal, when viewed on its own, is actually a pretty decent turn-of-the-century psychological thriller with fantastic cinematography and Anthony Hopkins delivering another scene-stealing turn as the titular cannibalistic killer, now hiding out in beautiful Florence – but eager to get back to his old tricks.
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
OK, so technically this is not a single horror film – but it is a collection of short ones, all of which are brilliant. In order to make this anthology series, horror maestro Guillermo Del Toro recruited a scary movie-making dream team including the creators of Mandy, The Babadook and Splice, tasking each with directing their own hour(ish)-long tale of terror.
The result is a Twilight Zone-style anthology series, with weightless CGI wizardry reduced (if not ditched entirely) in favour of good old-fashioned practical effects. Del Toro himself introduces each story (and wrote some of them) and, from ghastly rituals to ravenous aliens to bizarre beauty products, there’s so much here for horror lovers to savour.
Watch Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix
Paranormal Activity
Made on a shoestring budget and running with the “found footage” angle that was already long in the tooth by its release in 2009, Paranormal Activity can still put the willies up all but the hardiest viewer. With its grainy camcorder footage, minimal VFX and cast of unknowns, it works for the same reasons [REC] and The Blair Witch Project work – they all feel more authentic and “real” than any slickly directed and star-studded big budget horror film.
The story centres on a woman who believes she’s been haunted by some kind of supernatural presence since her childhood. A psychic warns her and her boyfriend against attempting to communicate with the presence – advice which, of course, they immediately ignore. Cue minor creepy occurrences captured on night vision video, gradually ramping up to the point that you’ll be going to bed with the lights on.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead “reimagining” takes George A. Romero’s beloved 1978 horror film (a wry comment on America’s braindead consumerist culture as well as a bloody survival horror picture), rips out pretty much any satirical intent and dials the action up to 11. And somehow the result is not a cinematic disaster.
Snyder’s zombies sprint rather than shamble, there’s gunplay and gore aplenty and the overall feel is more akin to an action-thriller than a subversively intellectual horror flick. That said, this movie, in which a squabbling group of survivors hole up in a suburban shopping mall, is a whole heap of mindless undead fun. Sometimes, that’s enough.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
There have been several sequels and a full-on reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre over the 48 years since the original caused legions of cinemagoers to spill their popcorn in fright, but this Netflix original is a direct sequel that wipes all that away. A group of well-scrubbed youngsters head to a remote Texas town to start a new business, but find a familiar (leather) face in the process.
While this reboot-cum-sequel is a bit too modern in its horror sensibilities to truly disturb, it’s still a decent slasher flick with a bit of satirical bite thrown in. It also features one particularly gory scene that’s would have been sure to become semi-iconic – had Netflix’s marketing doofuses not ruined its impact by predictably revealing it in the trailer. Another sad example of how scary movies just hit harder in the pre-streaming, pre-web era.
Paranormal Activity 3
There are loads of Paranormal Activity movies rattling around out there and most of them are almost instantly forgettable, suggesting that the pressure to do more and go further than the hugely successful first instalment has seen the series stray too far from its low budget found footage roots.
That being said, Paranormal Activity 3 is the most enjoyably creepy of the later entries in the series. Made by the team behind viral ‘documentary’ (and later reality show spin-off) Catfish, it turns the clock back to 1988 to explore the childhoods of the sisters who starred in the first two movies. You surely know the score by now: malevolent entities, possessions and creepy obsessions with abducting babies abound. But despite treading familiar ground, it can still deliver plenty of chills.
Life
A team of astronauts on the ISS rendezvous with a satellite carrying soil samples from Mars, understandably delighted when they discover microscopic signs of life within. Their giddiness dissipates faster than you can say ‘little green men’ when the organism, which they’ve dubbed Calvin, turns out to be intelligent, cunning and absolutely determined to stay alive – no matter the cost to its hosts.
This is sci-fi horror b-movie stuff at heart, but with a great cast (including Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson), superb visual effects and some disturbing twists and turns, it’s a tense creature feature that doesn’t disappoint.
Insidious
Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne play a married couple who move into a new house only to find that they and their young children may not be the only inhabitants. When their elder son Dalton falls into a mysterious coma and a series of unexplainable events and sightings prompt them to seek help, it transpires that something truly evil is at work – and they may have to sacrifice everything to save Dalton’s soul.
James Wan’s modern update on the classic haunted house tale comes complete with jump scares, eerie sounds and furniture with a life of its own – a good old-fashioned ghost story that doesn’t require you to turn your brain on.
Blood Red Sky
What do you get when you mash up From Dusk till Dawn, Air Force One and Snakes on a Plane? Something like Blood Red Sky, a German film (with, curiously, about two-thirds of its dialogue in English) in which a transatlantic flight is hijacked by murderous terrorists. Seeking to protect her young son, a mother with a mysterious illness decides to take drastic action.
Despite its b-movie DNA and relatively low budget, Blood Red Sky offers an enjoyable twist on a bunch of familiar movie tropes, and its practical special effects work well. Perfect fodder for a midweek movie night.
Annihilation
Writer-director Alex Garland’s follow-up to the dazzling Ex Machina had a tricky release. Originally destined to get a full release in cinemas worldwide, in the end studio Paramount decided it deserved only a limited US theatrical release, with everyone else getting their first chance to see it on Netflix. Why? Because they likely figured it’d flop in cinemas – it’s chilly, complex and brainy and, right or wrong, big studios don’t credit the average filmgoer with much intellectual curiosity.
Don’t let Paramount’s decision put you off. This is one of the most accomplished and interesting science fiction horrors of recent years, a visually and sonically arresting film that’ll leave you with more questions than answers, but enough clues to work everything out too.
When an unexplained “shimmer” engulfs a tract of land in the southeastern United States, then starts increasing in size, authorities seem powerless to stop it. Everything and everybody they send inside disappears, never to return – with one exception. When Natalie Portman’s biologist finds herself personally drawn into the mystery, she joins a team venturing into the Shimmer to attempt to uncover the truth.
Apostle
Gareth Evans is best known for directing the kick-ass Indonesian action flicks The Raid and The Raid 2, but with Apostle, which he also wrote, he immerses himself into the world of dramatic horror. In this period piece, a clearly troubled Dan Stevens joins a mysterious island-based cult (led by Michael Sheen’s demagogue-like prophet) in order to rescue his sister from its clutches. He quickly discovers there’s much more to this bunch of outcasts and misfits than a spot of misguided religious fervour. Cue mangled bodies, bloody carnage and some extremely creepy reveals.
Even if Evans doesn’t quite manage to pull things off with the same flair as we’ve seen in his stellar pair of action movies, Apostle is an atmospheric folk horror with some truly squirm-inducing scenes and a great final shot.
Cargo
This Netflix-made, Australia-set zombie horror stars Martin Freeman as a new father whose outback holiday goes horrifically awry courtesy of a massive viral outbreak. Get bitten by a carrier and you’ve got 48 hours before you become a shambling, mindless, meat-seeking husk yourself – and the wide open landscape means there are few places to hide from either the zombies or the live folks mercilessly hunting down anyone infected.
So far, so familiar, right? Well, Cargo subverts expectations by focussing on the characters rather than on finding different ways to make you jump, and the viral menace is used as a device to drive the narrative rather than define it. It’s more thought-provoking drama than many gore-hounds would like, no doubt, but we’d rather watch it than yet another Dawn of the Dead rip-off.
Creep (2014)
It’s “found footage” time once more in this micro-budgeted indie flick concerning a videographer hired by a mysterious man for a job – one that initially seems simple but turns out to be anything but.
With a lean cast (it’s basically a two-hander starring writer/director Patrick Brice and co-writer Mark Duplass – yes, he of mumblecore movie fame) and a lean 77-minute running time, Creep relies more on mood and tone than special effects or gore – and it’s well worth sticking around until the conclusion.
Under the Shadow
After her husband is sent away to serve in the army, an Iranian mother is left to care for their young daughter under the looming threat of missile strikes. When their apartment is hit, events take a turn for the paranormal and leave the pair haunted by a mysterious ‘Djinn’ spirit. Though some classic horror tropes soon follow, Under the Shadow‘s unusual setting and creaking, groaning building give it an extra bite.
Veronica
Purported to be based on an actual police report, this early 1990s-set shocker sees a Madrid teenager and her younger siblings terrorised by a malevolent spirit in their apartment – and throws creepy blind nuns, gnarly Spanish alt-rock and coming-of-age tropes into the mix as well.
Think ouija boards, disembodied whispers and half-glimpsed demonic entities rather than gallons of gore, but once the final reel is over you’ll know you’ve watched not only one of the best foreign language horror films on Netflix, but one of the finest foreign language films full stop.
Sam Kieldsen
Contributor 
