The 22 best horror films on Amazon Prime Video and Freevee

A Quiet Place

This sci-fi thriller poses a simple yet terrifying question: what if there were gross-looking alien monsters that’ll come and kill you if made the slightest bit of noise? Well, there are!

Emily Blunt and John Krasinski (who also co-writes and directs) are excellent as the parents struggling to keep their young family safe from these sonar-wielding extra-terrestrial freaks. Despite barely a word being uttered in the film (most of the dialogue is signed with subtitles), sound plays a major role in cranking up the fear. A good set of surround speakers or a soundbar goes a long way toward making the viewing experience even more bum-clenchingly stressful, particularly when Blunt’s character goes into labour while the monsters are on the hunt nearby.

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The Mist

Frank Darabont has a history of successfully adapting Stephen King stories for the screen – just go and watch The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption if you require proof. But with his version of The Mist, he took a major departure from the horror master’s original by completely changing the ending. And yet it works, with King himself actually citing it as an improvement.

The film stars Thomas Jane as a family man trapped in a supermarket during a spot of meteorological mayhem. Rather than a few hailstones, this storm is spewing out killer monsters left, right and centre. If it sounds silly, it could have been – but Darabont’s alterations make this one of the darkest, most sinister monster movies around, with an ending you’ll find hard to shake off.

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Green Room

Patrick Stewart makes a rare outing as a villain – a neo-Nazi at that – in this scintillating thriller-cum-horror from writer/director Jeremy Saulnier. When struggling punk band The Ain’t Rights takes a gig in a secluded backwoods club, they discover that they’re playing to a room full of angry white supremacists – and after a shocking act of violence occurs, they’re forced into a fight for their lives. If you’re of a nervous disposition, Saulnier’s mastery of tension and explosive action might well send you over the edge, but lovers of seat-of-the-pants survival horror will relish every minute.

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Lake Mungo

This 2009 Australian movie has slowly built up a reputation as a cult favourite haunted house tale – and that’s because it’s about so much more than a few bumps in the night. When a teenage girl drowns in an apparent accident, her family are left searching for answers – and they still feel her presence in their house.

Writer and director Joel Anderson doesn’t rely on scare tactics to bring on the cheap thrills. Instead he steadily weaves together a tale of tragedy, grief and loss that will leave a mark on any viewer willing to give it a chance. Lake Mungo is occasionally very creepy, yes, but it’s also deeply thought-provoking and sad, while its naturalistic mockumentary approach gives it an air of authenticity matched by few big-budget horror films.

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The Cabin in the Woods

When five college kids (including Chris Hemsworth in an early role) venture out to a secluded cabin for a weekend of debauchery, we can all guess what’s going to happen to them – or can we? Much like Wes Craven did with Scream back in 1996, Drew Goddard takes the audience’s expectations about horror movies and riffs on them.

This playfulness not only results in a film that takes delightful leftward turn after leftward turn, but in a genuinely fun horror yarn that references almost every other horror plotline we’ve seen over the past 50-odd years of cinema. It’s an enjoyable scary movie in and of itself, but perhaps more importantly it’s also a love letter to horror as a genre.

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Eden Lake

Of the wave of late noughties Brit flicks obsessed with the dangers apparently posed by roaming packs of hoodie-clad juvenile delinquents, 2008’s Eden Lake is the most nuanced – as well as the nastiest. Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly’s wholesome liberal couple having their romantic weekend in the countryside eviscerated by a gang of working-class kids feels icky to watch after 15-odd years of austerity has tossed millions of youngsters into poverty.

Even if there’s something exploitative about the film’s premise, it certainly isn’t afraid of pointing a critical eye at its protagonists, not to mention its viewers – something you couldn’t say about one-dimensionally reactionary contemporaries such as Harry Brown or Outlaw. And as a horror-thriller, it works very well, cranking up the tension and discomfort right up to its astoundingly bleak ending. Best watched with a strong stomach.

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The Taking of Deborah Logan

A PHD student undertaking research into the effects of Alzheimer’s assembles a documentary crew to film an elderly woman suffering from the disease, only to discover that there’s something far more sinister going on.

We’ve watched a lot of found footage horror films (maybe too many); very few of them work as effectively as this. Despite the occasional immersion-breaking moment when you question why anyone would be pointing a camera at something instead of running away in the opposite direction, it succeeds in feeling both authentic and genuinely disturbing.

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Let Me In

Hollywood movie remakes are often about as welcome as a set of razor-sharp fangs to the neck, and while we wouldn’t say Let Me In comes close to matching the frost-bitten brilliance of Let the Right One In, the Swedish original it’s reworking, it’s one of the few English language ‘reimaginings’ of a cult foreign film that stands up in its own right.

Kodi Smit-McPhee plays a young boy tormented by bullies who befriends a female vampire in 1980s New Mexico. While it lacks the same childlike innocence found in the original, it makes up for it with plenty of tension. If you really can’t handle subtitles (or you’re just a horror completist), Let Me In is well worth sinking your teeth into.

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Don’t Breathe

Many of the most memorable horror movies stick in the mind due to some kind of (often literally) killer gimmick, and that’s very much the case with Don’t Breathe.

When a trio of teen tearaways breaks into the home of a sightless old codger intent on robbing him blind (no pun intended), they haven’t reckoned with him being a ruthless ex-military man with near-superhuman hearing, a vicious guard dog and a burning desire to keep the contents of his basement a secret. Cue an hour and a half of toe-curling tension.

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30 Days of Night

Welcome to Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the world – and a place where the sun disappears for a month once a year. Cue the arrival of a coterie of animalistic vampires, taking advantage of the extended period of darkness to feed on the snowbound townsfolk uninterrupted.

Grisly and disturbing (even with Danny Huston’s head vampire bearing an uncanny resemblance to Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys), it’s a fine horror film with a memorable final reel.

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Possession

The only English language film made by controversial Polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski, Possession stars Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani as a young couple in the throes of divorce. Filmed and set in Cold War Berlin – the partitioned city an apt metaphor for a marriage torn asunder – it’s a film that doesn’t do anything by halves.

From the breathless, histrionic acting (Adjani in particular delivers some of the most intense performances we’ve ever seen) to the evocative score, stark cinematography and revolting visual effects, this is artistic horror turned up to 10. Some consider it a masterpiece, others a confusing mess, but one thing is for certain: once the credits roll, you’ll be feeling something.

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Ghost Stories

This Brit flick, co-directed by Andy Nyman (who also stars) and The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson, offers a triple whammy of spooky tales, each of them masterfully interlinked with the others.

This anthology of creepy shorts, all framed as investigations by Nyman’s sceptical paranormal investigator, might not be particularly gory or shocking by modern horror standards, but it succeeds in delivering the old-fashioned feeling of discomfort and impending dread you expect of a British ghost story – and even manages to squeeze in an unforeseen twist here and there. Paul Whitehouse and Martin Freeman are among the supporting cast.

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Color Out of Space

Adapted from a short story by cosmic horror master H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Stanley’s movie (his first since being fired from the famously storied set of The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1996) relocates the tale to modern day New England but retains the same sense of existential dread in the face of incomprehensibly alien forces.

Nicolas Cage plays a man struggling to keep his father’s old farm working and his quarrelling family happy. But these quotidian problems recede into the background when a curiously coloured meteorite crashes into his property, seemingly affecting (or infecting?) every living thing in the vicinity. It’s fairly standard b movie stuff, sure – but the brilliant visuals, moody soundtrack and intense pacing make it a diverting watch.

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Ringu

The movie that kicked off the late 90s Japanese horror craze, Hideo Nakata’s Ringu is a masterpiece when it comes to gradually building up tension and releasing it to maximum effect.

The story? Well, there’s an urban myth about a weird videotape doing the rounds. Pop the tape in your VCR, watch it, and you’ll receive a creepy phone call shortly thereafter with a scratchy voice uttering the words, “seven days.” Then you’ll be dead within the week. With a group of teenagers reportedly falling victim to the curse a curious and sceptical journalist decides to uncover the truth. But are some stories better left untold?

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Dark Water (2002)

Ringu director Hideo Nakata returns with another chilling, slow-burning J-Horror. Dark Water follows a single mother, Yoshimi who, along with her young daughter Ikuko, moves into an aging, unloved apartment building following a divorce. The pair’s attempts to settle into their new life are hampered by water leaking into their flat. At first, it’s a drop here and there, then a trickle, then a torrent. With the landlord and caretaker mystified by the problem, Yoshimi begins to suspect the cause may not be related to leaky pipes. Rather, is the work of a creepy little girl she catches glimpses of in the building’s corridors?

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Jeepers Creepers

Horror doesn’t have to be played dead straight to work, as evidenced by the silly, camp and somewhat tongue-in-cheek Jeepers Creepers. Jeepers Creepers is a film that’s not short on gore or scares, but steadfastly refuses to take itself too seriously. A brother and sister, driving home from college, endure a threatening encounter with an old truck. Later, they witness its driver dumping what seems to be a dead body into a sewer pipe. Choosing to investigate rather than immediately calling the police is their first mistake. Thankfully for us, the decision sparks off a life-and-death chase with the apparent killer.

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Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The second in George Romero’s series of zombie classics this is one of the most iconic and influential horror movies of all time, despite its low budget. When an epidemic of undead starts to unravel society from within, four survivors decamp to a giant abandoned shopping mall in a bid for safety. They then discover that the shambling hordes also find themselves drawn to this palace of consumerism.

You’d have to be braindead to miss Romero’s satire (no pun intended) but there’s so much else going on here that it hardly matters. Zack Snyder’s 21st-century reimagining isn’t a patch on this for atmosphere, and the practical effects and synth score give it an eerie atmosphere you just don’t get with modern horror flicks.

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Bone Tomahawk

Genres get sliced and diced as much as the unfortunate characters in S. Craig Zahler’s brutal debut. Bone Tomahawk starts out like a Western but gradually unfolds into a nightmarish horror flick, albeit one with some great comedic dialogue and character moments.

Kurt Russell heads a killer cast as the upstanding sheriff who assembles a small posse to track down tribe of cannibalistic kidnappers. There’s an old-school nastiness about Bone Tomahawk not often seen in modern movies, not to mention a refreshing tendency to take its time, allowing you to get properly acquainted with its characters and its world.

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Scanners

Scanners might be best known for that famous shocking scene early on (if you’ve seen it, you’ll know the one). Nevertheless, David Cronenberg’s psychological (and psychic) thriller is a great piece of early 80s cinema, all bad haircuts and doom-laden synths. A shady corporation seeks to turn “scanners” – a growing number of powerful psychics – into living weapons, but somebody appears to be murdering them just as fast as they can be found. When one particularly powerful scanner goes on a killing spree, the corporation sends its latest recruit to hunt him down – but things don’t go to plan.

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The Babadook

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.” Honestly, this Australian indie flick is going to stick with you for some time. In addition to all the thrills and chills you’d expect from a standard horror movie, The Babadook has something extra hidden in its basement under the stairs: smarts.

Yes, this film will fray your nerves like wool dragged across a barbed wire fence. But it’s also a powerful meditation on loss and trauma. Can single mother Amelia finally lay the repressed memory of her dead husband to rest and save her son Samuel in the process? You’ll simply have to watch this modern classic to find out.

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Paranormal Activity

Made on a budget that would barely get you a Ford Focus, 2009’s Paranormal Activity will nonetheless put the willies up all but the hardiest viewer.

The story centres on a young couple, one of whom claims to have been haunted by some kind of presence since her childhood. A psychic cautions the pair against attempting to communicate with said presence. This turns out to be good advice, given that when they don’t take it the entity goes on to torment everyone throughout the remainder of the film. Cue minor creepy occurrences captured on grainy night vision video, gradually ramping up to the point that you’ll be sleeping with the lights on.

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Suspiria (2018)

Luca Guadagnino’s stylish reimagining of the Dario Argento classic is bound to divide audiences. Ponderously paced and tottering under the weight of more themes and ideas than it knows what to do with, this is peak arthouse horror. Some might find the eventual gory payoffs too little reward for the investment, though.

Others will appreciate the movie’s strong sense of place (late 1970s Berlin, a divided city riven by political turmoil). The film builds an atmosphere of oppressive discomfort throughout with its use of sound effects, strange camera angles and Thom Yorke’s krautrock-inspired score. Dakota Johnson stars as an unworldly young dancer joining a prestigious all-female company that just might be a coven of witches, while Tilda Swinton excels in three separate roles.

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