As the nights grow colder and Halloween approaches, there’s no better time to curl up on the sofa with a spine-chilling thriller, whether it’s of the slasher, supernatural, or psychologically scarring variety. From terrifying haunted house movies to surreal mind-benders and more than one ambitious, auteur-driven miniseries, there are plenty to be found on Netflix, though it can be quite a task to wade through the glut of mediocre potboilers on the platform to find the releases actually worth watching. To that end, we present six Netflix horror movies and TV shows to stream now. Our only advice? Make sure to watch them with the lights on.
The Haunting anthology series
Netflix’s answer to American Horror Story is horror stalwart Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting franchise, comprising both 2018’s hair-raising The Haunting of Hill House, loosely based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 page turner of the same name, and 2020’s eerie The Haunting of Bly Manor, inspired by the writings of Henry James, including his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. Both feature the likes of Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel, and Carla Gugino—in the first, the talented ensemble play the distressed members of a family who occupy the titular mansion and are traumatized by the paranormal activity they witness there; and in the second, they embody the inhabitants of an equally haunted country pile who are slowly losing their grip on reality. If you don’t begin seeing the petrifying Bent-Neck Lady in your dreams, then you’re made of stronger stuff than me.
His House
Twisty, troubling, and then overwhelmingly tragic, Remi Weekes’s study of grief and insidious and debilitating xenophobia and racism follows a couple (the captivating Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu) who are fleeing war-torn South Sudan. Except, once they journey across the perilous English Channel and finally move into a crumbling house on the outskirts of London, they’re plunged into yet another nightmare: they’re crippled by homesickness, dismissed by unsympathetic case workers, and tormented by hostile neighbors—not to mention the ghostly apparitions who begin tearing holes through their walls and trying to pull them apart. It’s a film that delivers on jump scares and horrifying, unforgettable set pieces, but also offers a moving meditation on the refugee crisis, reflecting on what drives people from their homes and what they risk and give up in their attempts to build a new life elsewhere.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Charlie Kaufman’s bizarre psychological thriller is anything but a traditional horror movie, but it’s certainly one that’ll haunt you in the weeks and months after you’ve watched it: the utterly bonkers tale of a young woman (the always excellent Jessie Buckley) who considers ending her relationship with her boyfriend of nearly two months (Jesse Plemons), even though she’s on her way to meet his parents (an intensely creepy Toni Collette and David Thewlis) for the first time. Cue goosebump-inducing exchanges, inexplicable coincidences, narrative inconsistencies, visions of the past and future, a parallel plot line involving an elderly high school janitor, and a baffling ballet—in short, enough pandemonium to make you feel like you’re losing your mind.
The Fear Street trilogy
Jumping backwards from 1994 to 1978 and, finally, 1666, this thrilling, Leigh Janiak-directed horror trifecta centers on the cursed town of Shadyside, which has been rocked by brutal massacres for centuries. Taking its cues from ’90s slashers like Scream, the delightful first installment tracks a group of teens who delve into the history of their hometown and find themselves stalked by a masked killer, while the second, which nods to Friday the 13th, recounts a series of slayings at a ’70s summer camp which could provide answers for the first film’s protagonists. Then, it all comes to a head in the third release, in which we discover the true origins of the curse in an eerie 17th-century setting reminiscent of The Witch. The meticulous period detailing across all three films and a cast which includes Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke has elicited comparisons to Stranger Things, and rightly so—it nails the same formula of heady nostalgia juxtaposed with genuine terror, making it the ideal franchise to tide you over as we wait for the sci-fi behemoth’s final season.
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
The Oscar-winning auteur presents eight unsettling tales—encompassing dormant demons, alien parasites, human taxidermy, and an enormous, fanged rat queen—in this sprawling anthology series, which is every bit as eclectic, experimental, satirical, and socially conscious as the contemporary horror landscape itself. He has overseen their creation and penned two of the stories on which they’re based, but, most of all, has sought to create a platform on which fellow genre veterans and rising stars can shine—The Babadook and The Nightingale’s Jennifer Kent and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’s Ana Lily Amirpour are among the directors who helm these mostly-hour-long nightmares, and in the various acting ensembles, you’ll find everyone from Rupert Grint, Tim Blake Nelson, F. Murray Abraham, and Glynn Turman to Shadow and Bone’s Ben Barnes, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s Ismael Cruz Córdova, and comedian Eric André. It’s quite the ride.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Mike Flanagan followed up the success of The Haunting franchise with more critically lauded chillers—2021’s Midnight Mass and 2022’s The Midnight Club—but his latest, a Gothic love letter to Edgar Allan Poe, deserves a mention for its mind-boggling visuals and delicious performances. The latter come courtesy of many of Flanagan’s regular players (Carla Gugino, Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, Rahul Kohli), who populate this disturbing account of two ruthless siblings who gain unimaginable wealth and power through their corrupt pharmaceutical company. But then, the heirs to their fortune start to die under mysterious and increasingly grisly circumstances, and portents of doom, many of which will be familiar to Poe aficionados, begin to surround them. From its opening minutes, the sense of dread is overwhelming.
