As WIRED staffer and former Bloodline correspondent Jay Dayrit recently noted, looking for horror movies on Netflix is a little like "searching through the $5 bargain movie bin at Walmart." And between selections like Blood Lake and Pinocchio's Revenge, he’s basically right. But, much like that bargain bin, there are treasures to be unearthed for the patient seeker. Luckily for you all, we are an intrepid bunch, willing to walk through the movie desert to find the occasional oasis for your replenishment.
So to get you through the spookiest weekend of the year we've compiled a list of 13 horror flicks that are just sitting on Netflix, waiting to make your skin crawl. There's home invasion. There's high-concept psychological horror. Contagion-based scares. Science fiction. Horror comedies. Found footage. There are even a few representatives from international cinema for some varied perspective. There aren't, however, the standard "classics" on this list. In fact, with only a few exceptions, this roundup was intentionally culled out of releases from the last five years. So, no, Carrie isn't here. Neither is The Exorcist. But if we need to remind you that those are on the Must-Watch Halloween Movies list, you're beyond our assistance. Besides, we already put that list together a few years ago, and it's still available for you reference if you want a walk through the cannon. This is a new day, my friends, and Tod Browning won't be offended if you stick to the only-what's-streaming flicks this All Hallows' Eve.
Despite being criminally under-appreciated, this is one of the all time great horror movies—and the only selection on our list released before 2005. If you love sci-fi, this movie will scare you. If you don't love sci-fi, this movie will scare you. Laurence Fishburne is Captain Miller, ranking officer of the recovery vessel Lewis and Clark. The year is 2047, and seven years earlier, the starship Event Horizon was deployed to use a breakthrough technology called a Gravity Drive for achieving faster-than-light travel. The goal is Proxima Centauri, but after firing up the drive and sending their final communiqué, the Event Horizon and her crew vanish. Until now. Miller and his team are sent to salvage the ship and bring home any survivors, but upon boarding the vessel uncover a version of hell that will whither the strongest among you. The cast includes standouts like Joely Richardson, Sam Neill, Sean Pertwee, and Jason Isaacs, and is by far the best directorial effort of Paul W.S. Anderson (no matter how much we loved Mortal Kombat). The application of gore in this one is deliberately employed, and will twist your stomach when it pops up, but the psychological torture is even worse. Watch in the dark and watch it loud.
Do you hate clowns and love absurd horror-comedy? Then take a chance on Stitches! Stitches is one of the most inappropriate clowns this side of Twisty, but where Twisty is the refined culmination of every fear a person has ever had of clowns, Stitches is mostly just a massive failure—gross, dirty, and downright bad at his job. Things go sideways for Stitches at little Tom's birthday party and he meets a bad end, leaving him in the grave and the kids to recover from some weird PTSD. Under normal circumstances, a bad seed like Stitches would be lost to time, but this is a British movie about a debauched clown, so nothing here is normal. Ten years after the incident, Tom's friends are throwing him another birthday bash, but little do they know Stitches belonged to a clown coven of sorts that made his soul immortal, and after a decade of being dead he's back to repay the blood debt. Come for the balloon animals, stay for the cartoonish violence.
Ooohhhh, quarantine horror! Pontypool director Bruce McDonald adapted the screenplay from a novel by Tony Burgess called Pontypool Changes Everything—Pontypool, in this case, being a quiet town in Ontario, Canada. We open with our "hero"—a shock jock radio DJ named Grant Mazzy—driving to work in the pre-dawn snow. Mazzy's career seems to be on a downward trajectory after a more illustrious stint as a provocative talking head. It's early morning; it's freezing; and Mazzy is in a sour mood on his morning commute. He spots a woman wandering alongside the road, muttering gibberish and far too sparsely clothed for safe travel in a blizzard, but before Mazzy can help her she recedes into the black. While this is obviously a little disconcerting, Mazzy and his fellow Pontypool residents have no idea that it's about to get so much crazier. If you're in the mood for a claustrophobic and quirky stressor this one is a fun, unexpected option.
This movie was meant for release in 2006, but didn't see daylight until last year. That's two years before leading lady Amber Heard appeared as Seth Rogen's GF in Pineapple Express—her breakout role, if you will. But the thing is, despite a seven year release delay, Mandy Lane is actually pretty good! It's no innovator in the genre, but as far as contemporary slasher movies go it's a fun time, and we couldn't put a Halloween hot list together without some good old slash material. Six teens who are mostly assholes—three girls, three guys, natch—go to a family cabin for some weekend shenanigans. You know how it goes: underage drinking, boys hoping for sex, house man of dubious intention, the works. Heard plays the eponymous, pristine, virginal Mandy Lane and errrbody wants a piece of what she's got. In true slasher tradition, the story is good enough, the acting is good enough, and the budget is good enough. But the ending has more than what we could have asked for, and so puts ATBLML on our list of worthwhile cinematic pursuits. If you're still skeptical, consider that it's directed by Jonathan Levine, who also brought us The Wackness, 50/50, and Warm Bodies. So, open your heart up to Mandy Lane.
If you want some gruesome revenge porn this South Korean flick has all you need and more. Soo-hyun is a young and handsome top tier special forces agent, and on one dark and stormy night his life runs headlong into evil personified: a man named Kyung-chul who kills people for nothing but sport. Kyung-chul abducts and murders Soo-hyun's pregnant fiancée, who also happens to be the daughter of a retired police chief, and the agent embarks on an obsessive quest of vengeance. The thing is, most of these movies end with the climactic final battle between good and evil, right? Well, Soo-hyun catches his victim fairly early on in 2.5 hour run time leaving a whole lot of minutes to fill with one of the most gnarly games of cat-and-mouse imaginable. Kyung-chul is played to raw perfection by the wonderfully grizzly Choi Min-sik (Oldboy, Lucy) and Byung-hun Lee goes step for step with him as a man willing to shed his own humanity to kill a monster. If extreme violence makes you squeamish then leave this one of the proverbial shelf, because things get gruesome.
Here's a tricky little number. Peter Cilella plays Michael, an all around good dude with a junkie best friend, Chris (Vinny Curran), who's content to tweak away his existence in some dilapidated cabin out in the sticks. Michael cares deeply for Chris, so he's taking to the woods to straighten him out. But what he finds when he gets there is way more disturbing than a squatting meth head prattling on about government conspiracy. Other than that, we can't tell you anything for fear of spoilers. It's a movie you just have to live in. But suffice to say, this one is a surprising take on psychological horror that will pull you down into the twitchy paranoia spiral with its protagonists. Watch Resolution for the headier segment of your Halloween weekend.
Here's one for you home invasion horror enthusiasts in the audience. We'll be honest, it took us a while to get into You're Next, mostly because all the characters are such dicks you have a hard time rooting for any of them to survive. That is, until you realize how awesome the primary girl is. Sharni Vinson plays Erin, a rather demure young woman embarking on holiday with her rich boyfriend's family at their rich-family secluded country home. The veneer of perfection surrounding the pastoral getaway erodes quickly when you see one brother popping pills to cope with family time and a mother desperate for more affection from her entitled children. When people start getting picked off it's sort of a relief. We don't advocate murder or anything, but on the real, if you're watching a horror movie there's at least a little bloodlust in your heart, and sides are taken quickly. In any case, the weekenders are being terrorized by a gang of animal-masked stalkers, who are super scary, and everyone in the house is basically reduced to fish-in-a-barrel status with the exception of Erin, who turns into one of the most ass-kicking horror heroines of all time. We won't spoil why or what her backstory is, but the basic terror appeal of nihilistic murderers wearing pig faces in tandem with Vinson's outstanding final girl make this a cringe-to-fist-pump party of scares. Lock the door and fire it up.
If you're down to get weird and are looking for impeccably unnerving art direction, Antiviral is the perfect prescription. It's the directorial debut of Brandon Cronenberg and it's as trippy as anything we've come to expect from his father, David. Caleb Landry Jones goes all-in for his role as Syd March, an employee at the Lucas Clinic, which specializes in infecting its patrons with viruses contracted by their favorite celebrities. (There's also a meat market called Astral Bodies that sells vat-grown meat of the stars.) To make some extra cash, Syd uses himself as a mule to smuggle out pathogens from the clinic and put them up for sale on the black market. This is very illegal. So when the clinic's biggest contract, the ultra desirable Hannah Geist, is newly taken ill, Syd is sent to harvest her cells—and take a little for himself off the top, of course. The problem is, Hannah doesn't just have a sore throat this time around, and Syd is soon staring down a short timeline to neutralize the disease while steering clear of law enforcement for smuggling operation. This one isn't super gory, though it does get pretty gross, and the brain-twisting tension created by Cronenberg's use of sound, music, negative space, and a meaty performance by Jones are what makes this movie really stand out. Malcolm McDowell is also in it, so you know it's totally bizarre.
In case you missed the first V/H/S, or in case you loved it, make it a point to settle in with the second installment in this horror anthology series. Structurally, it's the same drill as before: a collection of off-the-wall vignettes tied together by an overarching narrative, all of which are in the style of found footage. And it's just a lot of crazy, scary fun. Get a group of people together and scream your way through these anaerobic dalliances with the occult, aliens, ghosts, ghouls, and zombies. Contributing directors include Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun), Gareth Evans (The Raid), Eduardo Sánchez (The Blair Witch Project) and Adam Wingard (You're Next), among others. The VFX are gritty and great and the stories may be short, but they'll stick with you after the movie ends.
This one is purely for the camp. Witchcraft, vampirism, betrayal, revenge, sex, drugs, drinking, over-the-top high school stereotypes at social war with one another, bi-curious cheerleaders—oh, is that a kitchen sink we see over there? We'll take one of those two. In all seriousness for a moment, the scariest parts of this movie revolve around some chilling scenes of abuse against women. It's all in the name of setting up the villain(s) for gleeful, exsanguinating vengeance, but it should still be hard to stomach if you've got something resembling a brain/conscience. Fortunately, the rest of the movie is ridiculous and super entertaining. Caitlin Stasey is Maddy Killian, a regulation hottie playing the part of social outcast for our purposes here. Due to a series of unfortunate events, she's got a hard-earned vendetta against the school's presiding A-listers, especially the captain of the football team. On her way to infiltrating the pep squad and recruiting a girl power army, though, circumstances take a turn for the very dark and Maddy has to factor being undead into her vigilante justice mission. Watch this one with your friends and all your Halloween candy laid out, or just run it on a loop at your costume party. Either way, it's a trashy good time.
Here's a slow burner for you, an old-fashioned American gothic horror tale in the tradition of Rosemary's Baby and Rebecca. This movie won't wear you down with gratuitous violence or trick photography or strategically-placed grating sounds. It will just pull you farther from the back of your couch until you're sitting right in front of the TV screen. To the outside world, the Parkers are a mostly normal family, content to keep to themselves. Normal in this situation meaning religious zealots following the edicts of an unknown sect of Christianity, but still, they shop at the local market and the daughters are allowed to attend public school classes sometimes—that kind of normal. But when a massive rainstorm passes through town and the family matriarch is lost to the elements, this household with a boat-load of secrets has to make sure wandering eyes don't notice what's washed downstream in the flood. With three kids desperate to break free of their familial chains and a father rapidly losing his grip on sanity and self-control, this movie does an excellent job pulling you into the Parkers' nest of crazy so you can find all the icky skeletons in the closet. It's also got one of the best endings we've ever seen. Pop your corn and watch in quiet anticipation.
This recommendation comes with personal reservations. Not because it's bad movie. And not because Elijah Wood does a terrible job playing a solitary man with dark compulsions and eerie obsessions. In fact, we direct you to this movie with trepidation because it is so well done, and because Wood gives such a thoroughly disturbing performance as Frank Zito, you may hate him forever after watching him deliver it. And we are not here to ruin public sentiment surrounding Elijah Wood. Franck Khalfoun directs this French-American remodeling of William Lustig's 1980 movie of the same name, and he had help on the writing end from one of horror's most intriguing contemporary minds, Alexander Aja (High Tension, Horns). Maniac is shot in the first-person style, so you're in the point of view of Frank, a deeply damaged man who sells and restores mannequins for a living. Yes, mannequins. Frank spends his days lovingly tending to the care and distribution of fake women that come in pieces. That is the kind of sick we're dealing with here. As you can imagine, he doesn't fare so well with the walking talking versions of the fairer sex. Watching Frank swing back and forth from meek and needy to vicious and brutal is, well, completely messed up. You see the women through his eyes, putting the hot air from their broken screams right at your neck. But since you also live in Frank's head, you feel his torment and guilt swirl around every scene no matter how much you hate him. Really give yourself up to this one, because it rewards attentive and thoughtful viewing. And as a bonus track, if you end up loving Maniac, check out Spiral from 2007 starring Joel David Moore—just in case you're in the mood for a feel-bad weekend.
Longing for the good old days of artfully ham-fisted horror in the tradition of Sam Raimi? Well you're in luck, because none other than Sam Raimi directed this highly entertaining throwback to simpler times in the horror genre, when a PG-13 rating, some tarot cards, and gypsy curses were all you needed to properly affect the heebie jeebies. Alison Lohman (in her penultimate movie role before vanishing from Hollywood, for some reason) plays the kindly and aspirationally ambitious loan officer Christine Brown. Christine has her eye on moving up the food chain at her bank job, but her weasely boss, played by the always weasely David Paymer, doesn't think she has what it takes to make the tough decisions. And boy, does Christine pick the wrong day to start being a hardass. An old, haggard woman by the name of Mrs. Ganush comes to the bank begging for yet another extension on her home loan. If she doesn't get it, she's out on the street. And to prove she has what it takes to be a ruthless businesswoman, Christine informs Mrs. Ganush that the bank will not be providing any further extensions—huge mistake! Life rapidly goes from serene to calamitous as Christine must now confront demons, ancient curses, gypsy lore, animal sacrifices, and the physical punishment of being the star in a Sam Raimi movie. Bruce Campbell knows what we're talking about. Round up the whole family for this one. It's a spooky good time.
