Since the beginning of her big-screen career, Anya Taylor-Joy has starred in eight horror movies, including her breakout role in Robert Eggers' masterpiece The Witch. It seemed like Taylor-Joy was going to end up typecast in horror movies for her entire career, with her first three years in the business almost dominated by scary movies. However, she was able to break out thanks to lead roles in Jane Austen's Emma and the Netflix historical drama The Queen's Gambit.

However, starring roles in critically adored Netflix shows and Jane Austen adaptations haven't blunted Taylor-Joy’s love of horror, with the actor continuing to shine in the spookier side of genre filmmaking even as her profile grew over the years. Between sci-fi horror efforts, a Giallo-indebted slasher, a playful psychological horror, and dark period pieces, Anya Taylor-Joy has carved out an impressive place in horror history. However, this does not mean that all of her efforts in the genre have been equally successful.

8 Morgan (2016)

As Morgan

Released the year after Anya Taylor-Joy's breakout hit The Witch, 2016’s Morgan was a sci-fi horror film that was a slight step back. Taylor-Joy stars as the titular artificial AI being with synthetic DNA, maturing quickly with autonomous decision-making and emotional responses. Within five years, Morgan had grown into a teenager, and while the scientists who "grew" her consider her their child, when Morgan begins to kill people when antagonized, she becomes a dangerous weapon.

Morgan sees Kate Mara’s Lee Weathers as the only chance to stop Morgan's reign of terror before she kills again. There is also a twist that turns everything around in the end. The film received mostly negative reviews, with critics saying it is more of a generic thriller and doesn't deliver the same thought-provoking sci-fi ideas of Ex Machina or the fun factor of the similarly themed M3GAN. With that said, Anya Taylor-Joy's performance as the half-human, half-non-human girl is worth the watch.

7 Marrowbone (2017)

As Allie

A grim period piece horror, 2017’s Marrowbone has atmospheric chills to spare and an impressive young cast, including Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth, and George MacKay. The film follows a woman in 1968 who brings her four children from England to her childhood home in Maine. The kids soon make a new friend in the area named Allie, played by Anya Taylor-Joy.

The cast received positive reviews for their performances, including Taylor-Joy, MacKay, and an early performance by X star Mia Goth.

When their mother dies, they hide her death at her request until Jack (MacKay) is old enough to become his siblings' legal guardian. Marrowbone lives and dies by its final twist, which becomes obvious to anyone who has watched Gothic horror movies.

Critics gave the film mixed to negative reviews, praising the atmosphere and setting. However, most critics counted off points for its thin characters and lack of scares. The cast received positive reviews for their performances, including Taylor-Joy, MacKay, and an early performance by X star Mia Goth.

6 The New Mutants (2020)

As Illyana Rasputin / Magik

The New Mutants was mostly ravaged by critics and audiences when it came out. However, it had the unfortunate task of being the last Fox X-Men movie released, and fans had already thrown in the towel before it ever hit theaters, knowing that it wouldn't lead to anything. Based on the Marvel Comics series about young mutants not yet prepared to become X-Men, while needing training, The New Mutants changed their story to make it more of a horror movie rather than follow the comic book stories.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as the fan-favorite Magik (she is Colossus's sister in the comics). Her campy, scene-stealing performance is a highlight, with The New Mutants following the teenagers, all believing they are cursed but not realizing they are imprisoned by a research facility run by Mr. Sinister, who was set to be the next big bad. The film has the teens fighting for their survival while also needing to learn to control their powers. It was a nice origin story but struggled to find an audience.

5 The Gorge (2025)

As Drasa

Scott Derrickson directed some great horror movies throughout his career, including The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister, Marvel's Doctor Strange, and The Black Phone. In 2025, Derrickson's new sci-fi horror movie for Apple TV+, The Gorge, arrived. Derrickson cast Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as the leads.

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They star as two elite snipers sent on an identical mission - to guard each side of a top-secret gorge for a year without any with the outside world or even each other. Eventually, they find a way to communicate with each other, and then they learn that dangerous monsters are in the gorge, which they were meant to keep trapped in.

This is primarily a two-character movie, although Sigourney Weaver also plays a role later in the story. Critics gave the movie a 63% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, with reviews saying the mixing of genres makes it a hard film to get behind, while praising the chemistry and performances by Teller and Taylor-Joy.

4 Split (2016)

As Casey Cooke

M. Night Shyamalan’s chiller Split is a return to form for the acclaimed director behind horror hits like The Sixth Sense and Signs. Split is a fun slice of campy psychological horror with a great meta-twist. It is elevated by a stellar central performance from James McAvoy as a serial killer with DID, who manages to stay scary despite some truly absurd moments. However, Anya Taylor-Joy quietly steals the movie out from under him as a seemingly sweet victim with hidden depths of her own.

Taylor-Joy's surprising heroine turns Split into a more even-handed cat-and-mouse game than the movie's premise initially implies. Both actors also return a few years later with the movie Glass, which pulls Split into the world of Unbreakable. However, that movie is not a horror film and instead moves the entire genre into the superhero realm, with Bruce Willis's David Dunn teaming with Taylor-Joy's Casey to battle McAvoy's Beast and Sam Jackson's Mr. Glass.

3 The Menu (2022)

As Margot / Erin

In 2022, Anya Taylor-Joy starred in the dark comedy horror movie The Menu. Nicholas Hoult stars as Tyler Ledford, a foodie who takes a date to an exclusive restaurant on a private island run by a celebrity chef named Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). That date is Margot, played by Taylor-Joy.

Taylor-Joy and Fiennes earned Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances.

When Slowik reveals that the guests are prisoners, and he starts to threaten, injure, and kill them, the horrors begin. He reveals everyone there will be dead by the end of the night. However, Margot is a special case. She is a call girl hired to be Tyler's date when his actual date falls through, and she is not among the elitists that Slowik wants to punish.

As a result, she has a chance to survive if she only turns her back on the other guests' plight. The movie was a box office success, with a high 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. Taylor-Joy and Fiennes earned Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances.

2 Last Night In Soho (2021)

As Sandie

Much like M. Night Shyamalan's genre-bending thriller, Split​​​​​​, director Edgar Wright’s Giallo homage Last Night In Soho is a predictable horror effort for its first two-thirds, albeit one elevated by Anya Taylor-Joy’s character, Sandie, living in 1960s London. Then the twist arrives, and Last Night In Soho suddenly becomes one of the actor’s best movies. Last Night In Soho lives or dies with Taylor-Joy’s performance, although Thomasin McKenzie holds her own as Ellie, a young woman who lives Sandie's life in the present day.

The film seems like a tale of two stories, with the first part showing Ellie's struggles at fitting into London. However, after the big twist is revealed with Sandie, Wright’s movie proves to be smarter, creepier, and funnier than it initially seems. Taylor-Joy is as good as ever, but ’s expectation-flipping twist makes this one of the actor's best horror movies.

1 The Witch (2015)

As Thomasin

Anya Taylor-Joy’s breakout film is still her best performance to date. The absurdly ambitious The Witch lands viewers in an utterly immersive nightmare from which there is no escape and ratchets up the tension across its terrifying, deliberately-paced runtime.

DID YOU KNOW: Anya Taylor-Joy has turned down an offer from Disney Channel to star in The Witch (2015) instead (via Variety).

Set on a remote New England family farm, The Witch commits to its premise as the actors speak only in era-appropriate dialogue throughout the creepy story of a family haunted by a vengeful witch. Deliciously dark, The Witch is a story of obsession, madness, and devotion that makes the family seem deeply creepy, and the Devil seem beguiling by comparison.

Much like Last Night In Soho, The Witch's success or failure depends heavily on Taylor-Joy’s pivotal role as a young heroine seduced to the dark side by a series of tragedies that befall her family. Fortunately, the actress's turn is a beguiling blend of innocence and potential evil that makes The Witch a gothic delight few viewers will forget easily, and comfortably Anya Taylor-Joy’s best horror movie to date.