The horror section on Netflix can be a minefield, but there are plenty of hidden gems if you know where to look. Whether you’re looking for thought-provoking social commentary or an unbridled adrenaline rush, these 10 movies will keep your spine tingling. Featuring Santas gone bad, people who snap and seek revenge and a whole lot more.
1. The Vanishing
The first film from Blumhouse Productions to really take its time with its violence, this claustrophobic thriller is a genuinely gripping drama. It also shows Gerard Butler is a much more rounded actor than Geostorm would suggest. The disappearance of the Flannan Isles lighthouse keepers has tantalized mystery buffs for a century, and this movie does a fine job of putting us in their shoes.
2. The Cellist
From the writer of the acclaimed thriller Borderland, this movie is based on true events. It centers on a cellist who plays outdoors during the siege of Sarajevo despite snipers and shellfire. A harrowing tale of revenge and family divided by violent doppelgangers. Lupita Nyong’o is simply astounding in this tense thriller from Jordan Peele. A must see.
3. The Ritual
The first solo directorial effort from rising star David Bruckner (he co-directed V/H/S) elevates a familiar premise. A group of friends encounter supernatural menace while hiking in Sweden’s remote woods. While it borrows heavily from classic forest horror movies like The Blair Witch Project, the movie develops its own identity thanks to excellent sound design — emphasizing rustling leaves and flashlight lens flares – and a pacing that emphasizes tension over jump scares.
4. The Cabin in the Woods
Five college kids pull into a country weekend cabin only to find themselves in the middle of a horror movie. Writer/director Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cloverfield) and screenwriter Drew Goddard deftly skewer slasher cinema with a playful sense of mischief that’s not afraid to shed buckets of blood. The movie cuts back and forth between the isolated cabin and a high-tech control room, where technicians casually bark orders that will determine the girls’ fates.
5. The Exorcist
The original Exorcist was shocking in 1973 because it was a depiction of demonic possession. The new flixtor film tries to recapture that sense of fear but never achieves it. A young woman possessed by a demon vomits pea soup, spins her head 360 degrees, and sticks a crucifix in her vulva, but this sequel from director David Gordon Green doesn’t come close to the shock value of William Friedkin’s classic.
6. The Silence of the Lambs
Though controversies surrounded the film at times, especially with regard to its depiction of Jame Gumb (with his nipple ring and Bichon Frise named Precious), The Silence of the Lambs elevated horror from cheap, gory B-movie thrills to psychologically complex storytelling. Director Demme consulted with actual FBI profilers for the film, and Jodie Foster spent days in training to play Clarice Starling.
7. The Ritual
This British thriller adapted by Joe Barton from an Adam Nevill novel and directed by David Bruckner (the guy behind that creepy compilation movie V/H/S) is an efficient, well-made if unsurprising genre film. Rafe Spall gives an astute performance as a hangdog thirtysomething macho who has a lot to work through in his fragile friendships. The movie ratchets up tension by using rustling leaves, flashlight lens flares, and other effective tropes.
8. Apostle
Gareth Evans traded in his pulse-pounding action thrills and exceptional martial arts acrobatics for full-blown folk horror with this story of a bloodthirsty island cult. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas, who infiltrates the group to save his sister from their wrathful deity. Apostle peels away layers of mystery and mythology, asking why the new arrivals leave flasks of their own blood outside their doors at night and who the island goddess is.
9. The Cabin in the Woods
Just as Scream put a postmodern twist on slasher movies, Cabin in the Woods does the same for horror. Director Drew Goddard, who also worked on Buffy and Angel, crafts a film that skewers genre conventions as it thrills and chills. Five college kids’ weekend of sex and drugs in the woods goes horribly wrong after they find an old diary and unwisely utter ominous Latin scrawlings. Engineers (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins) then start monitoring them from a control room.
10. The Exorcist
The Exorcist shook up Hollywood and ushered in a wave of demonic-themed movies. Unfortunately, Believer falls into a trap of repeating too many cliches. The film does get a big boost from the presence of Ellen Burstyn, who reprises her role as Regan’s mom. But the movie’s central themes of faith tested and renewed, parental anxieties and sexual liberation aren’t as relevant now as they were in 1973.
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