Last Updated: October 25th
To appreciate fully what the world of film has to offer it’s best to watch a wide variety of what’s out there rather than just focus on one genre. That said, there are times when nothing but a great horror film will do. The horror selection on Amazon Prime runs deep, but a few pages in it starts to be dominated by low-budget obscurities. There’s a lot of cream near the top, however, which offers a generous sampling of what horror has to offer. So here are the 10 best horror movies on Amazon Prime right now.
The Witch (2016)
A24
Robert Eggers’ Sundance hit attracted some of the oddest complaints directed at any film in recent years when some disgruntled audience members suggested it wasn’t scary enough. Maybe they were watching a different movie? Set in colonial New England, the austere film follows a family outcast from their strict religious community and trying to make it on their own at the edge of some deep, dark woods. It essentially takes the witch-fearing folklore of the era at face value, watching the family disintegrate under the insidious influence of a nearby witch. It’s a slow-burn horror movie, light on shocks, heavy on unease, and thematically rich in ways that only become apparent later.
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An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Universal
Few directors mix comedy and horror quite so easily as John Landis — Joe Dante is his closest rival — and few movies mix laughs and scares quite so well as this 1981 chiller about Americans abroad, which works both as a fish out of water comedy and a traditional werewolf movie. But Landis also understands that at some point the horror has to take over, and once An American Werewolf in London kicks into full horror mode, it doesn’t let up. It’s make-up and, especially, its transformation scene remains unrivaled.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Dark Sky
The 1970s saw the introduction of previously unseen amounts of gore. But despite its reputation, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic mostly holds back on the bloodletting, letting its unsettling setting and disturbed characters — and Hooper’s right direction — do a lot of the work. Which isn’t to the horror doesn’t turn visceral, at times literally, over the course of the movie. But it’s a subtler, and better-crafted film than its title suggests, and one very much aware of what it means to pit a bunch of drifting, hippie kids against redneck cannibals in the heart of a country still very much divided by the cultural divisions of the 1960s.
Cloverfield (2008)
Paramount
There’s a pretty simple concept behind Cloverfield: What if a Godzilla movie was shot like a found-footage horror movie? This Matt Reeves-directed, J.J. Abrams-produced film makes good on that concept, echoing the chaos of 9/11 as it lets a monster loose on New York and captures what such a catastrophe might look like from the point of view of an everyday person.
Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Market Square Productions
The unlikely origin of the modern horror film: a farmhouse in the rural area surrounding Pittsburgh where director George Romero shot most of Night of the Living Dead. Working on a tiny budget, he not only created the modern movie zombie but made horror safe for grimy, uncomfortable visions taken from everyday life, helping to pull the genre out of gothic castles and away from theatrical monsters. Night of the Living Dead remains essential viewing, and not just because of its place in history. It’s still incredibly scary, in large part because Romero had such humble resources. It doesn’t play like a nightmare from long ago and far away. It has the immediacy of a news bulletin.
Nosferatu (1922)
Kino Lorber
A cornerstone of the horror genre and German Expressionism — and film history as a whole — F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized 1922 adaptation of Dracula helped establish the basic vocabulary of the horror movie, using long shadows and unnerving photographic effects to create a disturbing atmosphere. It also features one of the ugliest monsters ever put to film, Count Orlock, as played by Max Schreck under heavy make up. The years have done nothing to reduce its power to disturb.
The Neon Demon (2016)
Broad Green
It’s not entirely accurate to call The Neon Demon a horror movie, even if necrophilia and cannibalism both factor in pretty heavily. Nicholas Winding Refn’s dark show business fairy tale doesn’t fit easily into any genre, following a just-off-the-bus aspiring model named Jesse (Elle Fanning) as she tries to make it in a Los Angeles where danger awaits around every corner. Beautifully filmed, even when focusing on ugly images, and set to a pulsing synth score, it’s an unsubtle, blackly comic look at the underside of show business with little regard for the divide between good taste and bad.
The Last Exorcism (2010)
Lionsgate
There have been so many awful post-Blair Witch found footage horror movies that it’s sometimes too easy to overlook the good ones, like The Last Exorcism. Patrick Fabian (Howard on Better Call Saul) stars as a Louisiana hustler who performs sham exorcisms for money, a practice he agrees to reveal to a documentary crew. Then he encounters what appears to be the real deal and has to question his lack of belief. The film can’t quite sustain its sense of dread all the way to the end, but it’s filled with scary scenes and Fabian’s performance gives it an unexpected death. (Be sure to avoid the sequel, The Last Exorcism Part II, however, which throws out all the elements that make this on compelling.)
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
Warner Bros. UK
Despite a cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and Glenn Close, this unusual post-apocalyptic film got a bit overlooked during its brief theatrical release. It’s best enjoyed without knowing too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Melanie (Sennia Nanua) the girl of the title, isn’t quite what she seems and there’s a reason she, and others her age, are kept in a secure military facility. But the best trick of the film, thanks in large part to Nanua’s winning performance, is the way its innovations go beyond just putting twists on a familiar genre but making us question where our sympathies ought to lie.
The Innkeepers (2011)
Dark Sky Films/Glass Eye Pix
Ti West’s follow up to The House of the Devil is less creepy than its predecessor, but that’s not really the point. Much of the film coasts on the easy charm of its lead characters played by Sara Paxton and Pat Healy, employees at a rustic, failing New England hotel rumored to be haunted. When it gets scary, West, doesn’t hold back, but mostly it’s just a pleasure to hang out with the protagonists at a past-its-prime haunted hotel. It’s funny, too, especially when Lena Dunham shows up for a cameo.
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