65 Greatest Horror Movies of the 21st Century

A female ghost with long, black hair, the grotesque loom of fright on the faces of those she comes for, home video – Gore Verbinski’s remake of influential Japanese horror Ringu transposes the story from Tokyo to Seatlle, but the song (and more importantly, the scares) remain the same. A VHS tape begins circulating that, upon viewing, allegedly kills whoever views it seven days after watching it. Quicker than you can say “urban legend,” bodies begin piling up and an angry spirit is crawling out of a TV set. Rarely has an American remake of a foreign horror film captured the original spirit so spot on. SZWatch The Ring on Amazon Prime here

For over a century, Massachusetts’ Danvers State Hospital was hell for mental patients, the site of gruesome experiments and unspeakably heinous abuses. It’s all (undoubtedly haunted) luxury condos now, but the sadism lives on in director Brad Anderson’s homemade nightmare about a group of asbestos removers sorting through the madhouse’s remains. As it blurs the line between dissociative identity disorder and demonic possession, the movie uses the cheapo look of digital videotape as an effective source for terror – long before such notions became passé. CBWatch Session 9 on Amazon Prime here

In which literal demon bikers, Manson-like cult leaders, homicidal hippies and your run-of-the-mill “crazy eee-vil” go up against a blood-splattered Nicolas Cage, and none of them stand a chance in hell against him. This grungy revenge story from director Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) may double as a museum of underground artifacts, cult-flick references and personal psychotronic esoterica. But once hesher goddess Andrea Risborough is kidnapped by netherworld minions and Cage goes into beast mode, the horror elements go into overdrive along with everything else. Best onscreen chainsaw duel ever. DFWatch Mandy on Amazon Prime here

Alexandre Aja’s remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 Jaws–rip-off simply retains the original’s name and toothy little predators – and it’s all the better for it. The French director is less interested in redoing that Corman quickie and more interested in channeling that old-fashioned grindhouse mix of copious nudity and abundant gore, as well as embedding a handful of in-jokes into the mix (just when you thought it was safe for Richard Dreyfuss to go back in the water …). But anyone that thinks this is merely a goof should go directly to the scene of a woman getting her hair caught in an outboard motor. You’ve been warned. DFWatch Piranha 3D on Amazon Prime here

Though a sequel of sorts to his ragged debut feature House of 1,000 Corpses, Rob Zombie’s grindhouse throwback was a huge leap forward – a nod to the grit and grim of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and 1970s drive-in sleaze that nonetheless speaks to contemporary worries about torture and revenge. The rocker-turned-filmmaker’s boldness pays off in a bizarre scene where a movie critic is called in for his expertise on the Marx Brothers, as well as in a finale that features perhaps the only acceptable use of “Free Bird” outside a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. STWatch The Devil’s Rejects on Vudu here

Werewolves and womanhood walk arm-in-arm in this Canadian B-movie classic, which stars hip scream queen Katharine Isabelle as a teenage nerd who becomes sexier and more popular after she’s bitten by a snarling canine. Screenwriter Karen Walton and director John Fawcett (who’d later work on Orphan Black, another genre piece about feminine identity) turn the story of the newly cool Ginger and her concerned younger sister Brigitte into a bloody black comedy. Never mind the scary wolf-attacks and grotesque transformations; this is really about the everyday horror girls go through whenever their best friends change in front of their eyes. NMWatch Ginger Snaps on Amazon Prime here

A mockumentary about vampires might seem like low-hanging fruit, but New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi and collaborator/co-director/Flight of the Conchords member Jemaine Clement manages to make it both hilarious and genuinely frightening. The Real World-style friction between several undead housemates, including an 8,000-year-old Nosferatu-like bloodsucker, is sharply satirical and yet strangely poignant; you end up feeling for these creatures of the night, even when they have to rip some poor soul’s throat out to survive. Bonus: A sequel focusing on the pack of uptight werewolves (not swear-wolves) led by comedian Rhys Darby is supposedly on the way. SAWatch What We do in the Shadows on Hulu here

As spellbinding a debut movie as you’re likely to see, Ana Lily Armipour’s melding of spaghetti Westerns, John Hughes misfit odes, black-and-white art movies and vampire stories definitely announced a major new talent. But the fact that horror is but one of the film’s many flavors doesn’t dilute the thrills or chills at all; you can swoon to its Type-O–craving heroine dancing with her crush one second and then shudder as she goes fangs-first ballistic on someone several scenes later. Consider this the punk-rock, girl-power Twilight you didn’t know you needed. DFWatch A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night on Amazon Prime here

A genius riff on Italian giallo movies, Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattete & Bruno Forzani’s debut uses the genre’s visual motifs – black gloves, blood-red lips, razor blades – and a gorgeously garish aesthetic to chart the life of a young woman named Ana in three acts. It’s stylish, terrifying and ironic to the extreme, a kaleidoscope of color and a sensory overload. But more importantly, this free-form exercise takes a form associated with masculine menace and uses it to explore how a woman feels to be scared, or aroused, or preyed upon. SZWatch Amer on Apple TV here

The enigmatic title, the found-footage format, and the viral Internet trickery typical of of executive producer/Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams are what drove Cloverfield to the front of the zeitgeist (and the box office). But the film stands on its own as perhaps the first giant-monster movie since the original Japanese Gojira to convey the horror of a creature’s sheer scale. The panic-inducing you-are-there approach to an attack on Manhattan by a berserk, bizarre alien monstrosity – leveling landmarks, unleashing a secondary onslaught of parasites, and inviting increasingly indiscriminate attacks from the desperate military – found the dark and desperate heart of a genre too frequently limited to kaiju camp. STCWatch Cloverfield on Amazon Prime here

Adam Wingard’s neo-slasher film revives the “home invasion” horror of such classic 1970s films as The Last House on the Left and When A Stranger Calls — only this time, instead of teenage girls, it’s a cozy family reunion that’s being menaced. There’s more gore here than you can shake a severed head at, but the script’s dark humor and clever plot twists elevate it far above your typical retro-splatter fare. And Sharni Vinson is one seriously ass-kicking horror heroine. DEWatch You’re Next on Hulu here

Do not underestimate the power of that pale, bleached-out mask. David Gordon Green’s sequel/reboot/franchise rejuvenation returns to the scene of the crime 40 years later, giving Michael Myers numerous sharp objects to play with and setting him loose once more on the quaint suburbs of Haddonfield, Illinois. Only someone’s waiting for him this time. The thrill of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis, all wild white hair and sinew, turn Laurie Strode from victim to angel of vengeance would be reason enough to have show up — her performance gives the film an unexpected depth. (Ditto that parting shot of a sorority of final girls.) But Green has not forgotten the primal thrill of John Carpenter’s original, or the fact that a Halloween movie is required to scare the living shit out of you. This was the transfusion of fresh blood and spilled Caro syrup the series needed. DFWatch Halloween on Amazon Prime here

One of the most extreme of neo-extreme French horror films – which is saying something – Pascal Laugier’s cinematic endurance test is something to be watched on a dare, even for those jaded horror fans who think they’ve seen it all. What begins as a quest for revenge against a group of bourgeois sickos morphs into wrenching exercise in cult sadism, with one young woman’s pain opening the door to the transcendent. It’s either a bruising allegory for real-world torture or an irredeemable trip to the far end of exploitation. What it’s not is forgettable. STWatch Martyrs on Apple TV here

A couple, a house in the woods, a few masked invaders – standard horror-movie stuff. But it’s a great example of why style often matters when it comes to scaring the beejesus out of audiences. Doling out suspense in agonizing drips and drabs, director Bryan Bertino takes his sweet time to get to the mayhem, teasing out the conflict between the victims and the looming threat of their mysterious attackers. The quietest moments are the most effective, built on the eerie discord of composing duo tomandandy’s score and compositions that tuck the bad guys in the corners of the frame, swaddled in shadow. STWatch The Strangers on Amazon Prime here

How do you follow a dark, shadow-filled fever dream like Hereditary? If you’re Ari Aster, you drag your horror into the light — specifically, a Scandinavian summer festival where the sun hardly sets at all. A group of Americans, including a lone female (viva Florence Pugh!), have come to this far-away, once-in-a-lifetime event to study folkloric customs and mythology; quicker than you can say The Wicker Man, the sense that there’s something wicked happening right below the smiley, happy surface starts to take hold. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better answer film to contemporary toxic masculinity, a bleaker breaking-up-is-hard-to-do parable or a more unnerving look at the rites of spring. Most of all, however, Midsommar is the sort of movie that delights in turning its wheels so slowly that you’re not even sure it’s a horror story…until it confirms that yes, it is, and completely drops the floor out from under you. DFWatch Midsommar on Amazon Prime here

While Ringu may have kickstarted modern J-horror, it wasn’t the only franchise game in town – Takashi Shimizu’s bone-chilling tales of a ghostly curse that attaches itself to anyone entering a house with a homicidal history also helped spread the country’s new wave to vast shores.The third film in the series but the first to get a theatrical release and international attention, Ju-On didn’t change the subgenre’s conventions so much as refine them, adding a sickening sense of grace to its scenes of black-haired spirits creeping and crawling. And never underestimate the power of someone unexpectedly finding a hand on the back of their scalp. DFWatch Ju-On: The Grudge on Amazon Prime here

French director Claire Denis divided both fans and critics sharply with her relentlessly gruesome tale of love and cannibalism, casting the appropriately vampiric likes of Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle as the afflicted halves of two separate couples torn apart by “the sickness.” This is where the Venn diagram of high art and extreme horror meet in the middle, and you will not find a better gut-punch allegory about love as a consuming passion. Literally. STWatch Trouble Every Day on Amazon Prime here

The story is basic: A secret service agent (Lee Byung-hun) goes after the psychopath (Oldboy‘s Choi Min-sik) who murdered his pregnant wife. They each take turns playing the cat and the mouse of the equation; torture, gory violence, decapitated heads, and some of the grisliest scenes of vengeance ensure. The film poses the question “How do good people destroy evil without becoming rotten themselves?,” but don’t look for answers to that philosophical query here — this is the sort of Asian exploitation cinema that takes pleasure in literally sticking its fingers in wounds. As for the killer, Choi plays him with such blasé soulnessness it’s chilling: He’s the personification of the abyss staring back. TGWatch I Saw the Devil on Vudu here

The mighty Sam Raimi returned to the genre after a long absence with a story of a legendary witchy woman and a new-school heroine (Alison Lohman), then drops them in to a characteristically old-school funhouse of gypsy death vomit, atomic nosebleeds, deadite goats and possessed cakes. For fans who’d missed his signature splatter-meets-the-Three-Stooges approach, this was like a gift from the Fangoria gods. And just about the time Lohman tells an elderly corpse to “choke on it, bitch!” you realize we’d already got all the new Evil Dead movie we needed. SZWatch Drag Me to Hell on Peacock here

Enfant terribles Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo cut a deep gash in the French “extreme horror” new wave with their slasher film extraordanaire. Béatrice Dalle is La Femme — effectively the female version of Michael Myers, minus the cheap Shatner mask and coveralls. She’s got an axe to grind with Sarah (Alysson Paradis), who is pregnant, alone on Christmas Eve, and pretty much relentlessly terrorized for 82 minutes straight. It’s a gory Gallic violence party of household weapons including knitting needles, a lamp, Lysol, sewing shears and – bonus points – the very creative use of a toaster. JVWatch Inside on Amazon Prime here

It starts as a stark domestic drama and slowly morphs into a just one-last-job hit-man thriller; the fact that Ben Wheatley’s jaw-dropping second movie ends as a spiral into hell attests to the gent’s ability to meld genres while dropping the rug out from you. The less said about how it gets to that point, of course, the better; what we can say is that the director makes dread part of the movie’s DNA from the get-go, and that you understand why it’s a horror-film list long before the end credits. SZWatch Kill List on Amazon Prime here

You know the drill: Careless scientists dump unstable chemicals into a nearby body of water and presto-change-o, some supersized mutant’s off devouring the nearest metropolis and its helpless, screaming citizens. South Korean genre chameleon Bong Joon-ho works his singularly wonky sense of black humor (several killings play like punch lines) and sharp sense of social satire, and fashions a giant-monster-movie for our ecologically fraught, precariously unstable moment. Not to mention that the film assigns more fully-formed identities to the characters terrorized by the seaweedy beast than usual for the subgenre. It’s a funnier, smarter sort of Godzilla-style B-movie. CBWatch The Host on Amazon Prime here

Guillermo del Toro was insistent that the story of a 19th-century woman who marries into a doomed aristocratic family was a “Gothic romance” rather than a traditional horror film. Fair enough. By the time skinless ghosts starting crawling along the floors and roaming the halls of their crumbling mansion while threatening a pale-skinned new bride (Mia Wasikowska), however, that distinction seems rather moot. The movie’s high style and use of color harkens back to old-school Maria Bava movies and Hammer flicks, while an expert cast — including Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain — play out the macabre storyline in a way that would make Edgar Allan Poe positively beam. SAWatch Crimson Peak on Netflix here

Nicole Kidman’s intense turn as a widowed mother anchors Alejandro Amenábar’s supernatural mystery, which updates the time-honored haunted house genre – think The Haunting or The Turn of the Screw – with a Sixth Sense-type spin. The scares here are low-key but immensely effective, thanks to the film’s dreamlike pacing and creepy atmosphere. (Remote Victorian country house, anyone?) Amenábar uses his subtle way with clues and metaphors to alert us that all may not be entirely as it seems, yet he never telegraphs the surprise ending. DEWatch The Others on Amazon Prime here

A horror movie about making horror movies, this trippy, giallo-influenced British art film stars Toby Jones as a sound-effects expert who goes slowly mad while working on an Italian fright-flick with a hostile crew. Writer-director Peter Strickland keeps most of the menace in his protagonist’s mind, watching the man disappear into his own paranoid imagination as he spends his days approximating the sounds of stab wounds and victims’ screams. It’s a clever exercise in audience manipulation, making us uncomfortable by showing the fakery that going into producing a good scare – and the delivering the goods. NMWatch Berbarian Sound Studio on Amazon Prime here

The most brutally horrific home-invasion flick since The Last House on the Left, this take-no-prisoners French horror flick was a rare movie to get a U.S. theatrical release despite an NC-17 rating for violence. But graphic depictions of spurting arteries, decapitation and disembowelment aside, this movie ranks high by living up to its title (translation: “High Tension”) and presenting enough intense suspense to make it so you can’t look away. Because how else would you know if its pixie-cut protagonist Marie (viva Cécile De France!) can properly defend herself with a barbed-wire–covered two-by-four or not? Also, watch out for the concrete saw. KGWatch on Haute Tension Amazon Prime here

J.A. Bayona’s 2007 film asks the question, What could be more terrifying than the unexplained disappearance of your child? Its unnerving answer: The possibility that ghostly youth had something to do with it. The rare horror flick that’s as heartbreaking as it is terrifying, this supernatural thriller certainly makes the most of its titular setting, a gothic pile located on a desolate stretch of Spain’s Costa Verde; but it’s Belén Rueda’s outstanding performance as the missing child’s bereaved mother that really gives the film its lasting emotional wallop. DEWatch The Orphanage on Starz here

Japanese horror was all the rage in the late Nineties and early aughts; South Korean director Kim Jee-woon’s take on dark-haired-ghost stories proved that “K-horror” could match their eastern neighbors when it came to supernatural freakiness. A couple of siblings endure a hate/tolerate relationship with their icy stepmother, while the haunted mansion they live that keeps dropping disturbing clues about their shared past. Offbeat camera angles disorient the viewer, making it all the more startling when apparitions leap out of the shadows. By the time the movie reveals all its secrets, a dysfunctional family has morphed into its own kind of monster. NMWatch A Tale of Two Sisters on Amazon Prime here

In space, no one can hear you scream — and in actor-director John Krasinski’s post-apocalyptic parental nightmare, no one had better hear you scream or else. The premise is pure high-concept ingenuity: Extraterrestrials with supersensitive ears hunt down the surviving members of the human race via sound. Stay silent, stay alive. For someone who claims he’s not a horror-film fan, Krasinski certainly knows how to use the conventions for maximum shock and awe; the scene in which Emily Blunt is trying to avoid a predator after stepping on a nail (and going into labor!) suggests he’s boned up on his Hitchcock 101. Even when this domestic take on Alien turns into a last-act riff on Aliens, it still delivers the scares. DFWatch A Quiet Place on Hulu now

STDs, unplanned pregnancy, social awkwardness at keg parties — as unintended consequences of sex go, they’re all a walk in the park compared to, say, an unstoppable wraith that stalks frisky teens and is passed from victim to victim by, well … take a wild guess. David Robert Mitchell’s lo-fi, revisionist take on the slasher flick’s horny-teen-victim trope is filled with stylistic flourishes (that 360-degree pan is a stunner), pitch-perfect John Carpenter homages and a genuine sense that you’re watching a waking nightmare. Never has losing your V-card ever had a higher cost. CBWatch It Follows on Amazon Prime here

How did that girl just appear in a funhouse mirror? Why is that guy, the one with the bloody hands, standing on the edge of the beach? What’s up with all the scissors? Who, exactly, are the four people in red jumpsuits standing at the end of the driveway — and what do they want with the vacationing Gabe and Adelaide Wilson and their kids? Jordan Peele’s second movie does more than beat the dreaded sophomore slump, or prove that Get Out was not a fluke; it’s a genuinely terrifying tale that doubles down on the old chestnut about how we’ve seen the enemy, and it’s … well, check out the title one more time. The fearsome acting foursome at the center of this tale nail both the average middle-class family under siege and the psychotic dopplegängers who are stalking them, but kudos to Lupita Nyong’o for giving her two best performances to date in one film (and, occasionally, in the same scene). You will never look at “Hands Across America” the same way again. DFWatch Us on Amazon Prime here

Ti West’s slow-simmering “Beware of Satanists!” cautionary tale looks and feels like an artifact from the early 1980s, found in a dusty corner of an abandoned video store. A naive college student takes a babysitting job at a creaky Victorian house, working for a couple of shady characters (played by veteran cult movie weirdos Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov). Before the literal all-hell-breaks-loose third act, The House of the Devil plays up the spooky atmosphere and retro style – right down to a scene involving a cranked-up Walkman, a song by the Fixx, and our sick fear that everything’s about to go very wrong. NMWatch The House of the Devil on Vudu here

A mesmerizing, moody ghost story set in a haunted orphanage during the waning days of the Spanish Civil War, Guillermo del Toro’s third feature was the one where all the pieces fell into place, and watching him grab hold of his true voice remains a thrill. It’s his simplest movie, and still one of his scariest, the moreso because its old-school vision of the supernatural fits so snugly into the real world. SAWatch The Devil’s Backbone on Amazon Prime now

Something has landed on Earth, and it’s starting to terraform within a permeable dome — “the shimmer” — surrounding the ground-zero point of contact. And because she lost her military husband (or did she?) when he entered this danger zone, Natalie Portman joins a recon unit to see what, exactly, is happening inside this rapidly evolving ecosphere. Writer-director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) turns this adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel into a slab of cerebral sci-fi. But it’s as much a horror movie as it is an alien-invasion flick — just ask anyone who sat through that blood-curdling scene involving a “screaming” mutant bear. And even when the movie goes full cosmic head-trip at the end, there’s a close-up of Portman, caught between a door and … something, that we’d consider instantly creepfest canon-worthy. Go to the 55-second mark here. That shot alone still gives us chills years later. DFWatch Annihilation on Hulu now