:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/BEST-HORROR-MOVIES-tout-071524-ecc6b1a0053749fcb4669c6ee00bc220.jpg "The 18 best horror movies on Amazon Prime Video")
Despite its grisly reputation, the horror genre is every bit as malleable as comedy or drama. What tickles the funny bone or bruises the heart is subjective; so, too, is what chills the spine. Our list of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime Video has something for everybody, from gory classics to found footage indies to slow-burning arthouse horror.
Here are the 18 scariest films currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste, and in the horror sci-fi film Black Box, mind games run rampant. Nolan Wright is a single father suffering from amnesia after surviving a car crash that killed his wife. Struggling to remember how to perform basic tasks both at work and in his personal life, Nolan reaches out to a neurologist who deems him a perfect candidate for her experimental black box treatment. Repeated journeys into his mind force Nolan to battle the monsters in his memories, but the deeper he delves, the more he suspects that his past is not what it seems. A Blumhouse Television production full of twists, turns, and traumas that push Nolan to horrifying realizations, Black Box questions how much control we have over our minds, and the lengths to which people will go to keep their loved ones alive. —Ilana Gordon
Where to watch Black Box: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr.
Cast: Mamoudou Athie, Phylicia Rashad, Amanda Christine, Tosin Morohunfola, Charmaine Bingwa
Related content: The 19 best Blumhouse horror movies
Yannis Drakoulidis/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures
If you took Call Me by Your Name, set it in Ronald Reagan‘s America, and focused it on two young cannibals falling in love, you’d get Bones and All. A romantic horror film from Luca Guadagnino, Bones stars Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as young adults living on the outskirts of society and trying to cope with their hunger for flesh and, eventually, each other. After the two join forces and travel across America in the late-1980s in search of Maren’s (Russell) mother who abandoned her when she was small, these two “eaters” struggle to confront their pasts, their family ties, and their urges. An arthouse elegy to growing up and struggling to fit in, EW’s critic describes the film as “two crazy kids with hope in their hearts and a femur bone, perhaps, in their throats, running as fast they can.” —I.G.
Where to watch Bones and All: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, Mark Rylance
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“What happened one summer five years ago is about to happen again and again,” warns the trailer for The Burning, an ’80s slasher film set at an American summer camp. Five years earlier, several campers pulled a prank on Camp Backfoot’s caretaker, Cropsy, that caused him to suffer horrific and disfiguring injuries. Released from the hospital and determined to seek vengeance, Cropsy begins terrorizing the campers at another summer camp — Camp Stonewater. Notable for serving as the film debut for young actors like Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens (all of whom appear in small roles), The Burning is violent, sadistic, and gives off strong Friday the 13th vibes. Genre snobs may feel shortchanged by the similarities between The Burning and the film’s more popular predecessor, but if what you’re after is watching American teenagers suffer at the hands of an unhinged maniac, then The Burning is sure to provide you with your fill of guts, gore, and garden shears. —I.G.
Where to watch The Burning: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Tony Maylam
Cast: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer, Larry Joshua, Lou David, Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens
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After an accident pushes their car off the road, Mary (Candace Hilligoss) awakens on the banks of a river in Kansas with no memory of how she got there or of what happened to her friends. Puzzled and shaken, Mary proceeds with her plans to move to Salt Lake City, where she’s been hired as the new organist at a local church. But no matter where Mary goes, mysterious events, creepy people (including one played by the film’s director, Herk Harvey), and sinister spirits seem to follow. And none of the oddities that pepper the movie’s 78-minute runtime will prepare you for the twist at the end. Watching Carnival of Souls today feels like witnessing a slew of easter eggs before they’ve even happened, as many a genre filmmaker has been inspired by the haunting imagery, gothic music, and ending that continues to baffle even decades later. An EW critic writes, “More than just scary, it’s arrestingly odd, with a bats-in-the-belfry 3-a.m. loneliness that you plug into like a private dream.” —I.G.
Where to watch Carnival of Souls: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: A– (read the review)
Director: Herk Harvey
Cast: Candace Hilligoss, Sidney Berger
Related content: Carnival of Souls: The movie that inspired Insidious is the spookiest, weirdest, and maybe greatest horror film you’ve never seen
What would you do to ensure a successful corn harvest? For the children of the rural (and fictional) town of Gatlin, Neb., the answer is murder. A slasher film adapted from Stephen King‘s 1977 short story, Children of the Corn tells the story of a supernatural entity known as “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” whose malevolent presence motivates Gatlin youth to ritually murder all the local adults — plus a few others for good measure — to make sure that year’s corn harvest is a bountiful one. The first in a franchise that includes 10 films — including a 2023 remake directed by Kurt Wimmer — Children of the Corn is violent, tense, and only a little corny. —I.G.
Where to watch Children of the Corn: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Fritz Kiersch
Cast: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, John Franklin, Courtney Gains, Robby Kiger, Anne Marie McEvoy, Julie Maddalena, R. G. Armstrong
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One of the greatest contributions the ’80s ever made to the horror canon was Elvira, a character created by comedian Cassandra Peterson, and whose work as the hostess of the local television show Elvira’s Movie Macabre was so popular, that it earned her a movie of her own: the 1988 horror comedy Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. In the film, TV host Elvira quits her job after experiencing sexual harassment and decides to start a new life as a performer in Vegas. To fund her show, Elvira visits the East Coast to claim her inheritance from her great aunt Morgana, but quickly discovers that the puritanically-minded residents of Fallwell, Mass. have taken a disliking to her fashion choices, her tendency towards engaging in accidental witchcraft, and her overall vibe. Also featuring ’80s treasure Edie McClurg (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a good, old-fashioned witch hunt — only this one features more slapstick than stonings. —I.G.
Where to watch Elvira: Mistress of the Dark: Amazon Prime Video
Director: James Signorelli
Cast: Cassandra Peterson, W. Morgan Sheppard, Daniel Greene, Jeff Conaway, Susan Kellermann, Edie McClurg
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Well Go USA/Courtesy Everett Collection
YouTubers will do a lot of questionable things for views, but in Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, one channel’s livestream ends with more of its participants dead than alive. A South Korean found footage horror film set in the Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital, the movie follows a web series creator and the six people he recruits to explore the abandoned building. Drawn to room 402, the former intensive care unit, the group encounters supernatural entities they can’t explain and danger they can’t escape. Based on the real-life Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital — a South Korean asylum that was considered one of the country’s most haunted buildings before it was demolished in 2018 — the film starts off slow, but will have you lunging for the lights by the time the ending arrives. —I.G.
Where to watch Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Jung Bum-shik
Cast: Wi Ha-joon, Park Ji-hyun, Oh Ah-yeon, Moon Ye-won, Park Sung-hoon, Yoo Je-yoon, Lee Seung-wook, Park Ji-a
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There are no shortage of creepy twins in horror (“Come play with us, Danny!”), and the most terrifying example in recent memory is Austria’s Goodnight Mommy, which premiered in 2014 at the Venice International Film Festival and was released theatrically a year later. A psychological horror story, Goodnight Mommy follows 9-year-old twin boys who begin to question their mother’s identity after she returns from intensive cosmetic surgery as a seemingly different person than the parent they once knew. The boys commit to ousting the imposter and finding the location of their real mother, but their investigation leads to truths too horrifying to process. In our 2015 review, we predicted an “inevitable remake” and in 2022, the film gods provided. Starring Naomi Watts alongside Cameron Crovetti (The Boys) and Nicholas Crovetti (Big Little Lies), the American rendition of the film is creepy, but purists agree it lacks the potency and poignancy of the original, both of which are attributed to the 2015’s film’s codirectors, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Feel free to binge both versions, but definitely start with the original. —I.G.
Where to watch Goodnight Mommy: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: A (read the review)
Directors: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Cast: Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz
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The subpar sequels have somewhat sullied the reputation of Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC, a low-budget mockumentary about a haunted house attraction where tragedy strikes. That’s too bad. Hell House LLC is supremely creepy, centering on a group of friends who scoop up an old, abandoned hotel in the hopes of remaking it into a profitable haunt only to find out that something evil lurks in the basement. Hell House LLC is indie horror at its best, eliding fireworks and burdensome lore in favor of subtle, peripheral scares that encourage rewatches (or, at the very least, lots of rewinding). Even customary scares, like a mannequin’s head that turns when the camera’s not looking, are rendered fresh in a setting that’s clearly as eerie in real life as it is on film. —Randall Colburn
Where to watch Hell House LLC: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Cast: Ryan Jennifer Jones, Danny Bellini, Gore Abrams, Jared Hacker, Adam Schneider, Alice Bahlke
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Pinhead, one of horror’s most memorable — and memeable — icons, recently returned via Jamie Clayton in David Bruckner‘s 2022 Hellraiser reboot for Hulu. Before diving into that, though, you’d be wise to revisit the franchise’s first 1987 film, which introduces the Cenobites, a cadre of inhuman, sadomasochistic weirdos who find pleasure in pain (thus the pins). Written and directed by horror author Clive Barker and based on his own story “The Hellbound Heart,” Hellraiser gives us a lore that, by drawing upon the taboo iconography of kink and BDSM, emerges as both singular and compelling. There’s also the gore, which evokes Italian genre masters like Lucio Fulci in its meaty, unblinking exploitativeness. —R.C.
Where to watch Hellraiser: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Clive Barker
Cast: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence
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Lionsgate
Given that everything natural on the continent is designed to kill you, Australia seems an ideal setting for a horror movie. But in the psychological horror film Lake Mungo — set in Ararat, Australia — the fear isn’t born from external foes, but rather from the terror required to succumb to the depths of human feeling. Lake Mungo begins with the accidental drowning of 16-year-old Alice Palmer. Upon returning home, her brother Matthew believes he sees Alice’s ghost, but further investigation from the Palmer family reveals that Alice was seeing premonitions of her death. Far from providing closure, the family begins to realize that the more they learn about Alice’s personal life, the less they understand about what happened to her. Shot in mockumentary style and incorporating elements of found footage, Lake Mungo is, at its core, a horror movie about human behavior and navigating grief. —I.G.
Where to watch Lake Mungo: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Joel Anderson
Cast: Talia Zucker, Rosie Traynor, David Pledger
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Mariama Diallo’s directorial debut hones in on the insidious world of academia, exposing the unsettling paradigm where colleges promote a faux sense of diversity to mask their racist underpinnings. At the elite New England university of Ancaster, longtime faculty member Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) ascends to the position of the campus’ first Black master. In this newfound role, Gale makes it her mission to protect first-year student Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) from anonymous bigoted pranks that seem to emanate from an otherworldly presence. Though the film is saturated with macabre visuals, the real horror of Master lies within the shameful reality that “things will just continue as before,” according to EW’s critic — who wrote, “Any tale set at a place like Ancaster, its hateful baubles still gathering dust on shelves, would need to resemble some kind of ghost story.” —James Mercadante
Watch Master on Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: A– (read the review)
Director: Mariama Diallo
Cast: Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Amber Gray, Ella Hunt, Talia Ryder
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Religious conversion often comes following a religious experience. A moment of ecstasy and understanding gives way to commitment which gives way to…what? The stark divide between before Christ and after is a source of terror for many a saint and writer-director Rose Glass’ debut feature is one of the most effective genre pieces about the complexities of conversion. Morfydd Clark stars as the titular Maud, a shy nurse with a murky past who can’t help but worm her newfound faith into her work with hospice patients. EW lauds Saint Maud as a “remarkable feature debut for Glass, who conjures an intimate mood of psychological horror before veering assuredly into a more extreme freakout.” —R.C.
Where to watch Saint Maud: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Rose Glass
Cast: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle
Related content: How star Morfydd Clark and writer-director Rose Glass crafted the unholy horror of Saint Maud
According to The Silence of the Lambs, the best way to catch a serial killer is with another one. Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is a former psychiatrist and convicted cannibal whose intellect and preternatural understanding of the human psyche the FBI hopes to use to help catch the killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). To convince Lecter to cooperate, the FBI sends in Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), an agent in training who finds a way to match wits and guts with the monster in the cage. A slow-burn thriller with dialogue that will linger in your nightmares for years after watching, The Silence of the Lambs is a fantastic film, largely due to the energy buzzing between Foster and Hopkins. EW’s critic writes that Hopkins, “always one of the most dynamic of British actors, gives the performance of his life” — just go into the film knowing his portrayal might scare you forever. —I.G.
Where to watch The Silence of the Lambs: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: N/A (read the review)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine
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Frowning gives you lines, but grinning can be deadly. Enter Smile, a supernatural horror film starring Sosie Bacon as a clinical psychiatrist named Rose Cotter who works in a public hospital and witnesses a patient’s baffling suicide. Soon after, Rose finds herself haunted by an entity that takes control of people and forces them to complete horrifying acts while demonically smiling. Concerned she has been cursed, Rose attempts to track down the origin of this deadly pattern, hoping to free herself from its clutches, and avoid passing it on. Scaredy cats need not apply: Smile offers up “sadistic jump scares” and a story so freaky, EW’s critic warns “you might need a bucket of bleach (and several hours of TikTok kitten videos) to cleanse your brainpan afterward.” Directed by Parker Finn with the intention of making audiences feel like they’re experiencing a “sustained panic attack,” and featuring some of the most effective movie marketing in recent history, Smile will not put a grin on your face, but it will strike fear in your heart. —I.G.
Where to watch Smile: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: B (read the review)
Director: Parker Finn
Cast: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan
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In a creative pivot, director Luca Guadagnino followed up his hit Call Me by Your Name with Suspiria, a period retelling of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic that features the incomparable Tilda Swinton playing three different characters (one of whom is male), Dakota Johnson, and new-era scream queen Mia Goth. When a sheltered young woman named Susie (Johnson) travels to Germany and joins an exclusive dance company, she encounters a whole different kind of company in the coven of witches who run the place. EW’s critic highlights some of “the incredibly effective sequences in the film, including one showstopper in which Susie auditions for the lead part in a piece while, in a nearby studio, one of her fellow dancers is violently whipped around like a rag doll, her joints contorting like a possessed Swiss Army knife.” —I.G.
Where to watch Suspiria: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: N/A (read the review)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Angela Winkler, Chloë Grace Moretz
Related content: Dakota Johnson explains why she needed therapy after Suspiria: ‘I was not psychoanalyzed’
Before helming horrors such as Insidious: The Last Key (2018) and Escape Room (2019), Adam Robitel poured his heart into his directorial debut, a film that quietly first dropped on Netflix sans any marketing or hype, yet swiftly attracted a million viewers in its opening weekend. The top half of this found-footage horror forces you to confront your own mortality when meeting Deborah Logan (Jill Larson) — worn down by Alzheimer’s disease and unable to care for herself — and her attentive daughter (Anne Ramsey) through the investigative lens of aspiring documentarians. However, as the film sinks its teeth into the second act, the filmmakers uncover something far more sinister lurking beyond Deborah’s condition. Marked by a heart-rending yet horrifying performance from Larson, The Taking of Deborah Logan crafts a story where characters and their struggles feel achingly real while generating a fraught atmosphere that doesn’t rely on over-the-top special effects or ominous music to scare the living hell out of you. —J.M.
Where to watch The Taking of Deborah Logan: Amazon Prime Video
Director: Adam Robitel
Cast: Jill Larson, Anne Ramsay, Michelle Ang, Ryan Cutrona
Related content: The best found-footage horror movies to watch right now
Everett Collection
Parenting is the ultimate horror story, and in the thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin, a writer named Eva (Tilda Swinton) reflects on how raising her psychopathic son Kevin (Ezra Miller) ruined her life. Kevin and Eva’s relationship is fraught from birth, but as Eva struggles to get her husband (John C. Reilly) to recognize their child’s emotional issues, Kevin’s urges become increasingly more violent. Miller’s performance as the manipulative, destructive Kevin is, as EW’s critic writes, “the best thing in the movie,” and in a conversation with EW, Swinton says the film “has as much to do with the business of bringing up children as Rosemary’s Baby had with the practical business with being pregnant.” —I.G.
Where to watch We Need to Talk About Kevin: Amazon Prime Video
EW grade: B– (read the review)
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller
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:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/exorcism-movies-101424-2e56cf85107341e29f366fafdf4375b6.jpg "The 20 best exorcist-themed movies, ranked: From the 1973 classic to ‘The Conjuring’")
