The 13 Best Horror Movies to Stream Right Now

Halloween is a special kind of holiday, and it requires a very specific kind of film. It needs to scare you in the moment, give you a couple of laughs, satisfy (but not depress) you with its ending…and boomerang back to give you the creeps the next time you’re alone in the dark.

But when you’re dealing with a candy-based month like October, you don’t want to mess with anything that feels like homework (sorry, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu) or leaves you feeling worse about the world than you did before you pressed play (like David Gordon Green’s second and third Halloween films). You can watch gore for the sake of gore, nubile teens being tortured, or small children and pets die the rest of the year. The best horror movies for Halloween need to offer something a little richer, that mix of shivers and catharsis that makes this time of year so darned fun.

Below you’ll find our guide to the best horror movies available on streaming right now, all of which tick those Halloween-specific boxes. So fire up the popcorn popper, turn down the lights, and nestle into your favorite spot on the couch.

Alien (1979)

Available on: Netflix and Fubo

Ridley Scott had no idea what he was kicking off when he pulled together this ragtag crew of blue-collar workers awoken from stasis sleep to investigate a derelict ship. It’s easy to forget what a stunning and fresh film this was when it was released just two years after Star Wars. (My parents, assuming it was a similar film, took me to see it in the theater when it dropped. That experience I had at eight years old is probably why I am writing this article for you now, so parents, be warned.) The franchise has taken a lot of directions, some of which were ambitious failures (Prometheus) and some of which remain potential-filled side stories (Alien: Earth). But the OG, with the revelation that is Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and the artist H.R. Giger’s innovative creature design, still feels relevant, vital, and terrifying.

Backrooms (2026)

Available on: HBO Max

Is Kane Parsons’s big-screen debut prepared to stand the test of time? Maybe not, but like its classmate, Curry Barker’s Obsession (now on Peacock), this extremely strong debut of a young YouTube auteur seems just as historically significant as some of the other innovations here. Obsession picks comedy and gore over Backrooms’ claustrophobic dread, which is why the A24 hit made the list—I suspect that in the long run, its striking depiction of trauma and toxic masculinity will have more staying power than Obsession’s villainous (and yes, Michael Johnston, he’s villainous) Cat Person. You know what? We can answer the question of comparable impact in a couple weeks, by tallying how many Halloween partygoers are dressed as Pirate Clark against how many are wearing this sad sack hoodie. Let’s circle back then.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Available on: Starz and Philo

Before dorks were hashtagging everything with #SnyderCut—gosh, before there were even hashtags—Zack Snyder rebooted George Romero’s mall-centric zombie movie with a level of style, humor, and scares that he hasn’t exhibited since. (Netflix’s Army of the Dead is fun, but comparably toothless.) A preretirement Sarah Polley, a post–Pulp Fiction Ving Rhames, and Phil from Modern Family go up against Olympic-sprinter-level zombies, a concept launched just two years before with 28 Days Later (Apple TV+). 28 Days is good, but Dawn is supersized in an especially American way. It’s the movie I go back to most often when I think about what to do—and not to do—when the zombie apocalypse comes.

The Descent (2005)

Available on: AMC+, Roku, and Kanopy

Director Neil Marshall followed his promising 2002 werewolf film, Dog Soldiers (Amazon Prime, Fubo, and Shudder), with this all-female cave exploration movie that ruined me—both for driving behind trucks loaded with pipes and doing anything underground ever again. It’s got the one-two punch of spooky monsters and human ones, and it doesn’t argue that the supernatural beasts are the worst ones in the yarn. Oh, one thing that’s important to note is that the film had one ending when released in the UK and another for its stateside drop; as a depressed citizen of the US, I prefer the happier North American version.

The Fly (1986)

Available on: Hulu, Peacock, and Philo

Has there ever been a more lankily beautiful offscreen-onscreen couple than Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis? The former famously read David Cronenberg’s script for this movie while lying in bed with the latter, who was so intrigued by his visceral reaction as he read that she pursued her own role in the film. It’s sexual jealousy that drives Goldblum’s scientist to take his ill-advised teleporter ride with an insect stowaway, and his growing realization that the experience didn’t make him miraculously healthier, but instead is killing the best parts of him, is body horror at its finest. You’ll never look at your medicine cabinet—or a box of doughnuts—in the same light ever again.

Halloween (1978)

Available on: Fubo, Philo, and AMC+

Here, let me save you a lot of time: The only Halloween you really need is John Carpenter’s original, especially when it comes to legitimate scares. Sure, you can do what my husband and I did last Halloween and watch them all in order, including the Paul Rudd–starring Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Cinemax and HBO Max) and Josh Hartnett’s film debut, Halloween H20 (same). But stop before you get to Rob Zombie’s 2007 iteration and let Michael Myers rest. He did such a great job of scaring us just by driving down the street (best not to ask how he learned to get behind the wheel) or standing amid some falling leaves in the first film. The rest are increasingly warped and inferior attempts—Pirate Clarks, if you will—to capture John Carpenter’s early brilliance.

The Howling (1981)

Available on: Kanopy and Tubi

Three years before he directed the slightly too cuddly Gremlins (HBO Max), Joe Dante brought us this dark werewolf tale, which takes on 1970s encounter-group culture, marital infidelity, and the cannibalistic nature of broadcast journalism. Now, I know what you’re thinking: All werewolf movies are inherently cheesy. You are not wrong! Transformation scenes can be unintentionally laughable, and no one has fully figured out how to make a wolf-human hybrid look less like a fall-season impulse buy at Home Depot and more like a terrifically terrifying beast. (Maybe Eggers will crack the code with his upcoming Werwulf, which drops on Christmas Day?) Dante and practical-effects master Rob Bottin get pretty close, though—but the scariest moment, in my opinion, involves only the werewolf’s hand.

Joy Ride (2001)

Available on: Amazon Prime

There’s nothing supernatural in this Paul Walker–starring road movie, but that doesn’t mean it’s not scary as hell. The late Fast & Furious lynchpin got back in a car for this thriller just a few months after the now ubiquitous franchise made its debut, but this time he—alongside Steve Zahn—is a hapless near-victim of a rage-filled truck driver pissed off after the pair catfish him via CB radio. It’s all made even more intense because you never see the driver pursuing them, you just hear his voice, provided by the great Ted “Buffalo Bill” Levine. Director John Dahl made his mark in the early 1990s with a series of desert-set noir films, detoured into whatever Rounders was (Oreo spon?), and you could feel him exhaling and having a blast with this very funny, very scary film. Ever made a cross-country road trip and been unsettled when you see the same driver again and again? This movie is the worst-case version of that.

The Ring (2002)

Available on: Netflix, Peacock, and Kanopy

While some prefer the original Japanese version, Ringu (AMC+ and Kanopy), Gore Verbinski’s English-language adaptation streamlines the scares to a stiletto point. For many Americans, this movie was the first time they were exposed to the “creepy pale girl with long hair” trope, now common to the point of parody. But the story of a cursed video tape somehow manifested by an evil kid named Samara holds up, jam-packed with unsettling images backed with an actual plot (yes, friends, it’s possible). Even after 22 years of rip-offs, Samara’s final reveal is still best viewed through one’s fingers.

Sinister (2012)

Available on: Hulu, Peacock, and Kanopy

Ethan Hawke’s author/shitty person, Ellison Oswalt, is my favorite horror movie scribe, and I’d wear all of his writerly cardigans in a heartbeat. (I’m not counting Jack Torrance of 1980’s The Shining—available on HBO Max—as a writer; that guy never managed to produce.) Oswalt somehow manages to move his family into an infamous murder house without them finding out, then assumes he’ll be forgiven once his book about the case makes its inevitable splash. Surprise, surprise, the crime had a supernatural basis—and is linked to a number of others, all brutally depicted in reels of film left in his attic. Over a decade before Weapons’s Aunt Gladys (Amazon Prime and HBO Max) was luring kids to the basement, Sinister’s monster was enticing them to do far worse.

Us (2019)

Available on: HBO Max

Jordan Peele’s Get Out (Peacock, Fubo, and FX) confirmed he was the real horror deal, and two years later, Us suggested his ambitions were more aligned with Stanley Kubrick than John Carpenter. What is this movie—about a trip to the Santa Cruz, CA, seaside that ends in a pair of Lupita Nyong’os in a bizarre and violent dance set to an instrumental version of Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It”—actually about? Is it about the people who make all the stuff we privileged classes thoughtlessly consume? Or is it an examination of the nasty, brutish, and short lives of the animals we eat? You can debate questions like that if you’re feeling clever, but you can also just dig how terrifying it would be to look down the driveway and see yourself, but in a set of red coveralls and driving gloves.