Anyone looking to embrace the Sunday scaries rather than chase them away with a feel-good comfort watch (hey, no judgement — time's are tough), Paramount+ just added over 20 new horror movies to kick off spooky season. I'm a huge horror movie fan, and of the batch, these are the top 3 that deserve a spot on your watchlist.
From the deeply unsettling "Smile" and the haunting found-footage of "Sinister" to the slow-burn dread of "It Follows," there's something for everybody on this list. I've ranked them by least to most scary, so if you're hemming and hawing about diving into the horror genre, no sweat. Start with "It Follows," see how that goes, and then let us know how it went in the comments — I'm interested to hear your thoughts!
Whether you’re a longtime horror fan or just looking for one last thrill before the work week starts, I'm rounding up some of the best scares currently streaming on Paramount+. So dim the lights, get comfy, and check out these horror movies worth adding to your watchlist this weekend.
'It Follows'
I'll shout out "It Follows" every chance I get because it's a great movie to help non-horror fans dip their toes in to the genre. The ending feels a little corny, but I was on the edge of my seat up until that point, so it's easy enough to roll with the peak campy slasher vibes. Maika Monroe stars as Jay, a young woman who's stalked by a terrifying supernatural entity after hooking up with a guy. This thing will follow her to the end of the Earth, and it can look like anyone.
The only way to escape the curse along is to have sex with someone else to give whatever the hell it is a new target. As Jay and her friends scramble to find a way to break the curse without condemning someone else, paranoia gets its hooks in them. Its slow-burn tension and ever-present sense that anyone could be a threat make “It Follows” the kind of movie that’ll have you obsessively scanning the background and hiding behind your hands any time someone gets just a little too close.
Watch "It Follows" on Paramount+ now
'Smile'
Moving now to a horror movie for horror fans, "Smile" plays in the same sandbox of paranoia and mounting dread as "It Follows." The final monster reveal is...laughable (my friends and I cackled in theaters at it), but everything up until that point is a genuine treat, riffing on the audience's expectations and trope of the unreliable narrator to terrifying ends.
"Smile" follows a therapist named Rose (Sosie Bacon) caught up in an unsettling supernatural curse after a new patient, Laura (Caitlin Stasey), kills herself under Rose's watch — smiling creepily the entire time. Things get weirder when Rose starts seeing things and acting out of character with no memory of doing so. Her friends and family write off her fears as signs of a mental breakdown, leaving her on her own to break the curse before she becomes its next victim. If you like this one, the surprisingly competent sequel, "Smile 2," is also on Paramount+.
Watch "Smile" on Paramount+ now
'Sinister'
A decade before he terrified us as the Grabber in the phenomenal "The Black Phone," Ethan Hawke had a real horror protagonist moment in the early 2010s between "The Purge" and "Sinister." I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the latter, because it's managed to claw its way back into my nightmares over the years. "Sinister" is haunting in every sense of the word, and I say that as someone who watches a lot of horror movies.
Hawke's sympathetic as struggling true-crime writer Ellison, who's stuck in a rut of writer’s block after his family's big move. While settling in, he finds a box of old film reels hidden in the attic — strange home movies that he's horrified to realize are of a string of brutal murders that have gone unsolved for decades. Ellison becomes obsessed, convinced he just found the key to his next bestselling novel. But as he digs deeper, forces beyond his understanding twist his psyche, and even after the family flees their new home, he can't escape the nightmare he's unleashed.
Watch "Sinister" on Paramount+ now