Summary

• Recent horror movies showcase a new golden era for the genre, delivering great entries that still draw people to the movies.
• The genre offers a wide variety of projects, including elevated horror movies, classic horror franchises, supernatural stories, masked killers, and terrifying monsters.
• The best horror movies of the last five years feature slick and entertaining studio monster movies, intense creature features, quirky dark comedies, and genre-bending experiences like the Fear Street trilogy.

The best horror movies of the last five years have showcased why many are starting to consider it a new golden era for the genre. Horror movies have been a staple of cinema since its very beginning with classics like Nosferatu. Subsequent eras such as the golden age of Universal monster movies and the mainstream popularity of 80s slashers, for example, has ensured interest in scary films never waned. The 2020s have seen a resurgent tide of high-quality scares, and the best horror movies of the last five years include some of the most celebrated in decades.

The latest horror movie boom highlights the wide variety of films catering to audiences and viewers hoping for a good scare. There continues to be the rise of so-called elevated horror movies with deeper messages. However, there is also the return of some classic horror franchises that have become popular once again. Supernatural stories, masked killers, and terrifying monsters populate the best horror movies of the last five years, giving horror fans plenty of incredible releases between 2019 and 2023.

40 The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023)

A Crew Battles Dracula On The Night Seas

Dracula movies haven't proven successful at the box office recently, but The Last Voyage of the Demeter proves the iconic vampire still makes for a great genre monster. The movie is inspired by a section in Bram Stoker's classic novel detailing a ship coming to England unknowingly carrying the coffin of Count Dracula.

2024's The Last Voyage of the Demeter operates like Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, Alien, but on a 19th century merchant ship, with the crew getting picked off one by one as the vampire lurks around the dark vessel with no hope of escape. It is a slick and entertaining studio monster movie with a solid cast and some great creature designs.

39 Night Swim (2024)

A Haunted Swimming Pool Creates Some Unique Supernatural Scares

While the haunted house subgenre is somewhat overpopulated by the 2020s, the 2024 Blumhouse horror movie from director Bryce McGuire, Night Swim, is a fresh take on the concept. The house of the Waller family in Night Swim isn't haunted, but their swimming pool, on the other hand, is. While this premise could be written off as gimmicky at first, McGuire's directing ensures that, on the contrary, Night Swim is a truly terrifying watch with some incredibly unique scares.

As with any haunted house movie, the cursed pool in Night Swim has an intriguing history behind it that slowly unravels as the movie progresses — though not before causing some incredibly spooky goings-on along the way. One aspect that makes Night Swim scarier than its premise would suggest is the high level of child endangerment, as the demonic pool desires the lives of at least one of the Waller's children.

38 Five Nights At Freddy's (2023)

Animatronic Puppets Are Out For Blood

Blumhouse's FNAF movie arrived in 2023 and finally brought audiences the long-awaited adaptation of the popular horror video game. Part creature-feature, and part slasher-movie, Five Nights at Freddy's proved the central concept of the games works just as well on the big screen.

Five Nights at Freddy's tells the story of a young father who takes a job as a night security guard at an abandoned family entertainment center only to learn that the creepy animatronic puppets come alive and become murderous monsters. While the critical response to Five Nights at Freddy's was negative, the movie was embraced by fans, becoming one of the biggest openings for a Blumhouse movie to date.

37 The Wolf Of Snow Hollow (2020)

Small-Town Murders Point To A Werewolf

Werewolf movies have been a mainstay of the horror genre in the past, but The Wolf of Snow Hollow finds an interesting new approach to the story. Set in the titular mountainside town, Jim Cummings stars as a young and hot-tempered deputy looking into a series of grisly murders that begins to suggest there is a werewolf among them.

The movie is a dark and bloody affair, but Cummings, who also wrote and directed the movie, brings a great sense of humor to it as well. The result is a quirky dark comedy that feels like the Coen Brothers take on the horror genre.

36 Crawl (2019)

A Father And Daughter Fight Off Alligators During A Flood

The creature feature subgenre of horror movies isn't as prevalent in modern horror, but Crawl brought it back with a terrifically intense and fun ride. Set in Florida during a flood, the movie follows a young woman who attempts to rescue her father who is stuck under the crawl space of their house when a group of hungry alligators arrive. As the water rises in the small area and the gators continue to circle, there is a very effective fast-paced energy to Crawl, mixing in heroic elements of a survival story with the thrills of a killer animal story.

35 The Lodge (2019)

A New Step-Mom Is Not What She Seems

The Lodge became one of the lesser-known standout horror movies of the last five years thanks to its overwhelmingly creepy premise. Siblings Mia and Aiden Hall are still mourning the death of their mother, Laura, when their dad commits to a new woman named Grace Marshall and wants the family to spend the holidays at a country house.

Grace's actions become worrisome and end up being more terrifying than the kids imagined.

Grace's actions become worrisome and end up being more terrifying than the kids imagined. The atmospheric approach and the smart script earned The Lodge high praise from critics, who also pointed to the performance of Riley Keough as Grace.

The Lodge is available to stream on Max.

34 Stopmotion (2024)

The Critically Acclaimed Tale That Asks How Much One Can Sacrifice For Art

While it may not be as recognizable a name to wider audiences as many modern horror movies, 2024's Stopmotion has been lauded by fans of the genre and is, without a doubt, one of the most harrowing scary films released in the last five years. The movie focuses on a mother-daughter duo, Suzanne and Ella Blake. Suzanne is an acclaimed stop-motion artist who is suffering from arthritis and must enlist Ella to help her complete her next movie. However, the pair have an incredibly toxic relationship, with Suzanne overworking Ella to the point that she induces psychosis.

While the psychological aspects of Stopmotion are tense enough, it's when Suzanne suffers from a stroke and Ella must complete the movie on her own that the horror aspects of the film really take shape. To say the visuals in Stopmotion are disturbing is an understatement to say the least, and Ella finds that the lines between reality and the grotesque stop-motion film she's making using real decaying animal flesh and discarded human off-cuts like hair and skin-tags become blurred.

33 No One Will Save You (2023)

Home Invasion With An Alien Twist

Alien horror movies have made for some of the genre's greatest entries, and No One Will Save You emerged as a surprise hit that deserves its recognition among the best horror movies of the last five years. The Hulu original horror movie stars Kaitlyn Dever as a young woman living an isolated life who has to fight for survival when an alien invades her home.

A hugely entertaining genre movie with a fun twist on the typical home invasion story.

What is particularly impressive about the movie is that No One Will Save You has barely any dialogue in the entire runtime, working off the tense set pieces and building suspense to tell its story. The result is a hugely entertaining genre movie with a fun twist on the typical home invasion story, and one that also somewhat refreheses the sci-fi horror subgenre, showing that it can be incredibly innovative when handled right.

32 Immaculate (2024)

One Of The Best Antichrist Films Of The Last Several Decades

2024 has already been a great year for horror movies, and one of the most intriguing additions to the genre is Immaculate, starring Sydney Sweeney. With plenty of similarities to movies like The Omen and The Nun, both in the aesthetic and in the plot, Immaculate takes place at a Roman Catholic convent and focuses on Sweeney's Sister Cecilia, a young novice who travels to Italy to the rest of the nuns. However, all is not what it seems, and from the earliest moments it's clear that there are incredibly sinister goings-on behind the religious facade.

The plot of Immaculate truly kicks off when Cecilia discovers that she is pregnant, despite being faithful to her vows and remaining a virgin. The rest of the nuns at the convent see this as a miraculous blessing, with many comparisons being drawn to Mary, the mother of Christ. Cecilia soon learns that, rather than holding the second coming in her womb, her unexplained pregnancy is the result of something far more demonic — and was entirely planned by the nuns around her and their sinister leader, Father Tedeschi.

31 Werewolves Within (2021)

A Whodunnit With A Possible Werewolf

Like The Wolf of Snow Hollow, is a werewolf movie that combines horror and humor in a very fun way. Based on the video game, Werewolves Within is about the residents of Beaverfield, Vermont who are there for one another during bad winter weather and who realize that a werewolf is loose in their seemingly regular, adorable town.

An entertaining genre-bending experience and one of the best movies based on a video game.

The characters of The Wolf of Snow Hollow are charming and portrayed by a great ensemble cast that includes Sam Richardson, Harvey Guillén, and Milana Vayntrub. It is perhaps goofier than it is scary, but makes for an entertaining genre-bending experience and one of the best movies based on a video game.

Werewolves Within is available to stream on Hulu and AMC+.