How-tos

The Best Horror Movies on Netflix in 2022

June 19, 2022

From beloved classics to Netflix originals, from haunted houses to evil creatures, Netflix has something for every kind of horror fan. Here’s a look at the best horror movies streaming on Netflix.

Table of Contents

Crimson Peak

Guillermo del Toro offers a masterful take on vintage gothic horror with Crimson Peak. Del Toro channels the Brontë sisters and Hammer horror productions in equal measure with this ghostly romance set in the late 19th century. Mia Wasikowska plays a young heiress swept off her feet by an English baronet (Tom Hiddleston). He marries her and brings her to his crumbling mansion, which is full of dangerous secrets, most held by his cruel sister (Jessica Chastain).

His House

A pair of refugees from South Sudan are haunted by traumatic memories as well as an evil spirit from their homeland when they settle into government housing in London. His House blends traditional haunted house spookiness with a meditation on trauma and displacement, putting an engaging (and disturbing) new spin on a familiar kind of story.

Hush

Before creating the popular Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, Mike Flanagan directed the tense home-invasion thriller Hush, about a deaf woman (Kate Siegel) fighting off an implacable intruder. Flanagan ingeniously incorporates the main character’s deafness into the suspense, placing the audience in her shoes as she fights for her life.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House

Starting with its eerie title, writer-director Oz Perkins’ I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House creates a sustained mood of discomfort. Ruth Wilson plays a live-in nurse caring for an elderly writer in a house that may be the site for actual tragic events depicted in the author’s most famous novel.

Both the nurse and the ghost of a woman who died in the house drift through the mostly empty rooms, their fates become intertwined as Perkins immerses the audience in an atmosphere of languid dread.

It Follows

One of the scariest things in horror movies is a danger that is unrelenting and inexplicable, and that’s what the characters face in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. Young people pass along a curse via sexual contact, and whoever is the current recipient is stalked by a silent, slow-moving presence that takes the form of strangers or sometimes familiar faces. Mitchell creates an unsettling, off-kilter atmosphere, with the constant specter of death over his protagonists.

Let Me In

It’s not easy to create a worthy remake of a widely acclaimed movie, but director Matt Reeves accomplishes it with Let Me In. Based on the Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In, this American version retains the original’s core elements, with a shy young boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) befriending the mysterious girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) who moves in next door. Reeves gets affecting performances from his two leads, putting a more accessible spin on the haunting coming-of-age story.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The story of horror icon Freddy Krueger begins with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Robert Englund plays the disfigured killer who stalks people in their dreams, taking out the teens of Springwood, Ohio. Heather Langenkamp makes for a formidable match as teenager Nancy Thompson, the only one with the fortitude to stand up to Freddy. Director Wes Craven creates a surreal, terrifying vision that launched one of the most successful horror franchises of all time.

The Perfection

Allison Williams and Logan Browning play dueling cellists in Richard Shepard’s twisty, over-the-top psychological horror movie The Perfection. Both Charlotte (Williams) and Lizzie (Browning) are students of the same strict and demanding teacher (Steven Weber), who provokes their increasingly violent rivalry. Shepard plays with expectations via multiple plot twists, keeping the audience guessing about the characters’ true relationships even as they torment each other mercilessly.

Sweetheart

Kiersey Clemons is the only person onscreen for most of Sweetheart‘s running time as the apparent lone survivor of a shipwreck who is stranded on a deserted island. Or is the island actually deserted? Director J.D. Dillard uses the looming threat of a monster from the deep to tell a story about a woman finding her reserves of inner strength and taking her power back.

Unfriended

Depicting an entire story solely via the images on a computer screen may sound like a ridiculous gimmick, but the clever, intricately designed horror movie Unfriended pulls it off with its basic but effective story about a group of teenagers targeted for revenge from beyond the grave. The movie perfectly captures the online lives of its characters while also delivering a satisfying and scary ghost story.

Source link