Netflix's immense library of horror films is perhaps best navigated by using the cumulative scores of critics on Rotten Tomatoes. According to the Tomatometer, the best horror movies on Netflix are comprised of obscure and original titles from around the globe.
A number were also released by horror movie giant Blumhouse, with Netflix teaming up with the production company for the Stephen King adaptation, Mr. Harrigan's Phone releasing this October. Considering the success of the platform's other King adaptations, it may not be long before there's another addition to the best horror movies on Netflix.
Creep (2014) – 89%
found footage film that follows Aaron, a videographer, as he takes an assignment to help a man he's met through Craigslist, Josef, make a documentary for his unborn child as Josef says has a brain tumor and feels like he won't be around when the child is born. However, Josef starts acting bizarrely and makes Aaron uncomfortable throughout the entire time that they're shooting. As the story progresses, things get stranger and stranger, with Josef's personality and intentions becoming more and more sinister.
Creep is an odd little chiller that has real staying power thanks to the main driving force of the movie – Mark Duplass's performance as Josef. Writing for The Village Voice, Simon Abrams gave a 'fresh' review of the film stating: "As Josef, Duplass has a boyishly skittish quality that makes his character’s unwittingly desperate attempts to bond with Aaron that much more upsetting."
Till Death (2021) – 90%
Megan Fox takes the lead in her most highly-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes with this small-scale thriller that's well-stocked with gory twists. It's an excellent part too, with Fox having to carry the whole film on her shoulders as a woman who finds herself handcuffed to the body of her husband as part of an elaborate revenge plot.
For Variety, Manuel Betancourt praised Fox's performance in one of the film's 'fresh' reviews, writing: "Fox gives Emma an adrenaline-driven jolt that makes her the kind of heroine you want to root for."
The Block Island Sound (2020) – 90%
In his review for The Austin Chronicle, Richard Whittaker called The Block Island Sound a "lo-fi aquatic nightmare" and the movie certainly evokes ideas about Lovecraftian monsters of the deep.
However, it's clear from early on that the film is really more of a family drama about two siblings from a small dead-end island community. One escapes while the other doesn't. Its genre twist is also a fun one for hardened stalwarts of low-budget but still high-concept horror films.
Gerald's Game (2017) – 91%
a Stephen King novel of the same name. The plot revolves around Jessie, played by Carla Gugino, who finds herself handcuffed to a bed with no apparent hope of escape or rescue.
The horror of the movie comes not just from the creative survival aspects of the main plot but from Jessie's own inner thoughts and memories as she confronts the aspects of her life that had led her to her predicament. Writing for Variety, Joe Leydon praised Carla Gugino's central performance as Jessie, stating that "Gugino adroitly intertwines varying threads of panic, rage, resentment, gallows humor and long-simmering resentment" in one of the film's many glowing reviews.
1922 (2017) – 91%
Stephen King adaptation created for Netflix and released in 2017 to strong critical acclaim. The story sees a farmer recounting the macabre tale of how he came to lose everything and become haunted by the sound of the rats in his hotel room walls.
While ostensibly a small-scale horror adaptation of a lesser-known Stephen King novella, 1922 is a fairly robust period piece that seeks to tap into the true themes of its story, with the main character's journey mirroring the rise and fall of the times. Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, John DeFore noted that the film "is not lurid in its scares, and instead depicts its protagonist’s suffering mostly as a slow rot."
Coming Home In The Dark (2021) – 92%
Coming Home in the Dark may appear to be a fairly run-of-the-mill carjacking horror movie at first, but it quickly deviates into becoming a layered drama about the personal histories of the carjackers and one of the victims.
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Noel Murray noted that the film's tone and plot bore a direct resemblance to Australia's "Ozploitation" movies of the 70s and 80s, "when a handful of creative, fearless filmmakers told intense and violent stories, often rooted in the country’s complicated history."
Sweetheart (2019) – 93%
Starring Kiersey Clemons as a shipwrecked woman stalked by a mysterious creature from the depths, Sweetheart is a distinct type of aquatically-themed horror movie that is rarely made in today's market, giving it a lot of character.
The monster is the real focus of the action with Todd Gilchrist writing for TheWrap that "the filmmakers’ use of creature design, gore, and brilliantly measured obfuscation creates a sense of dread that only builds the clearer the silhouette of the beast comes into focus."
Raw (2016) – 93%
Drawing from the drama and body horror of the New French Extremity, Raw is an original coming-of-age story that sees a young woman coming to with cannibalistic tendencies that she encounters after she leaves home for veterinary school.
The film was widely praised for its compelling atmosphere with Catherine Bray writing for Variety that "a kind of twisted dream-logic dominates and permits events to get suitably out of hand."
Cam (2018) – 93%
A nightmarish situation ensues when a woman's on a cam show website is taken over by a sinister doppelganger, with the real-world life that she tries to keep separate from her online persona becoming permanently altered by the consequences.
Writing for Slate, Inkoo Kang described the film as a "kind of Black Mirror for cam girls" and observed that the "slow reveal of the day-to-day realities of cam-girling is the movie’s real striptease—all of it surrounded by an aura of authenticity."
Hush (2016) – 93%
A taut horror thriller that puts the audience into the mind of a deaf woman attempting to survive a home invasion by a determined serial killer, Hush uses its single location to maximum effect, finding creative approaches to its plotting, editing, and sound design.
Writing for Variety, Geoff Berkshire wrote: "Bursts of loud noise are a genre cliche, but rarely used as effectively, or purposefully, as they are here."
