This list is regularly updated as movies rotate on and off of Prime Video. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.
Who wants to be scared tonight? While there are fantastic streaming services dedicated to horror nuts, there’s also a wealth of genre hits and indie darlings on Prime Video. In fact, they have one of the most diverse arrays of horror hits, including films by vets like Tobe Hooper and Dario Argento, alongside newer films from indie studios. This regularly updated list will keep Prime Video subscribers in the know on what are the best horror movies they can watch right now. Turn the lights off and lock the doors.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Scott Derrickson
One of the biggest hits of the Summer of 2022, this horror film stars Ethan Hawke as a sociopath who kidnaps and murders children in the late ‘70s. Hawke is terrifying, but the lead is actually Mason Thames as his latest victim, who discovers that he has a special ability that could save his life. Taut and tight, this is a solid old-fashioned horror movie that echoes the early work of Stephen King in a good way.
Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 31m
Director: Nia DaCosta
Too many people easily dismissed the Nia DaCosta remake of the 1992 classic about a boogeyman who terrorizes a Chicago community. Yes, it’s imperfect in its messaging, but it’s a spectacularly well-made film, including some excellent sound design and chilling compositions. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars in this film that was co-written by the insanely talented Jordan Peele.
Year: 1962
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director: Herk Harvey
An independent filmmaker who had made his career doing industry safety videos just happened to direct one of the most essential horror flicks of all time in this absolute classic. Candace Hilligoss stars as Mary Henry, a woman who barely survives a car accident and starts seeing ghostly, zombie-like figures in the new city she’s trying to call home. As the figures draw her to an abandoned carnival, some of the best horror imagery of the 1960s surfaces in a film that didn’t get much attention on its release but has gone on to be recognized as a genre masterpiece.
Year: 2013
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director: James Ward Byrkit
Eight friends get together for a dinner party in Northern California as news of a passing comet overhead can be heard. What starts as a traditional character-driven drama becomes something very different when the power goes out and, well, things stop making sense. An incredibly smart script anchors this study of alternate universes that plays out in a disturbingly relatable way.
Year: 2010
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Adam Green
No, not the one with the talking snowman. This is a very different film, a 2010 survival thriller directed by Adam Green. Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, and Kevin Zegers star as three college students who go on a ski trip and get stuck on a chair lift that’s shut down while they’re still on the mountain. Can they get down before they freeze to death? And what about the wolves?
Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 23m
Director: Stephen Cognetti
We’re all tired of found footage movies but this flick can be one of the exceptions. So popular that it spawned a franchise (there have already been two sequels), this is the story of a documentary crew that captures the creation of a Halloween haunted house that becomes all too real, ultimately killing 15 ticket buyers and staff. Structured both in a “what happened that night” and in-the-moment found footage doc, this is a truly clever indie horror film.
Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Clive Barker
The horror author Clive Barker directed this adaptation of his own novella The Hellbound Heart and made genre movie history. Introducing the world to the iconic Pinhead, who would go on to appear in so many sequels, the original film here is still the best, the tale of a puzzle box that basically opens a portal to Hell. The sequels have kind of lost the thread, but the original is still incredibly powerful. It’s one of the few films from the ‘80s that would still shatter audiences if it were released today.
Year: 2005
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director: Alexandre Aja
This movie is bonkers. Directed by Alexandre Aja (and sometimes called Switchblade Romance) it stars Cecile de France and Maiwenn as two young woman who go to a secluded farmhouse, where they’re attached by a serial killer. The twist ending to this brutal film will likely either make it or break it for you. Note: Shudder also added a few other French Horror Wave films, including Inside and Martyrs — both essential for horror fans, neither for the faint of heart.
Year: 1978
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Philip Kaufman
There’s a reason that Hollywood keeps returning to Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers—it strikes at a common fear that our neighbors and loved ones aren’t who they were yesterday. The best film version of Finney’s tale is the ‘70s one with Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum, and Leonard Nimoy. A riveting unpacking of ‘70s paranoia, this is a truly terrifying movie.
Year: 1990
Runtime: 1h 53m
Director: Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne’s horror film has developed an increasingly vocal fan base in the three decades since its release (helped in part by a horrible remake in 2020 that reminded everyone how much better the original was.) Tim Robbins stars as Jacob, a man who starts having increasingly terrifying visions and hallucinations, many of them related to his time in Vietnam. A stunning journey into Hell, it’s also an anti-war film that’s given weight by Robbins’s genuine, in-the-moment performance.
Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
One of the most inventive directors of his era adapted a screenplay for the first time when he tackled Paul Tremblay’s stunning 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World. Shyalaman does some bad things to the final act, but this is still worth a look for its incredible craft and an excellent performance from Dave Bautista as the leader of a group of people who believe that a sacrifice must be made to stop a pending apocalypse.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 2h 10m
Director: Jordan Peele
The genius behind Get Out and Us delivered his most controversial film in 2022, a story that blends an alien invasion with a commentary on movie-watching and spectacle in general. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer are fantastic in this story of people beset upon by an alien species that likes to watch. Brilliantly structured and gorgeously shot, Nope is blockbuster horror filmmaking at its finest.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: William Brent Bell
Who would have guessed that the 2009 cult horror movie Orphan would get a prequel almost 15 years later? Or that it would be kind of campy fun? Isabelle Furhman returns to tell the story of how Esther, her character from the first movie, got from an Estonian psychiatric hospital to faking a life as an orphaned child. It’s a ridiculous movie, but kind of in a good way.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 44m
Director: Shana Feste
Ella Balinska is excellent in this thriller that sat on the shelf from Sundance 2020 until a spooky season drop in October 2022. It’s also been recut a bit and come out as a really solid little genre exercise about a woman who is forced by her boss (Clark Gregg) to go to dinner with a client who turns out to be a sociopath (and maybe something even scarier). As she flees through the Los Angeles night, RSW gets crazier and crazier.
Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director: Rose Glass
Morfydd Clark is fearless as a hospice nurse who converts to Roman Catholicism and becomes convinced that only she can save the soul of her latest patient, a former dancer (Jennifer Ehle) who is in the final days of her life. Is Maud a true vessel for miracles or could she be going insane? Rose Glass’s debut stunner plays with audience expectations until its final unforgettable shot.
Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: James Wan
It’s hard to believe but Saw X lands in theaters in September 2023. That’s right – ten movies in! Go back to where it all began in the first-and-still-the-best horror movie about two people who wake up in the middle of a dirty room with only one way to escape: a saw. Almost all of the Saw films are on Prime right now, actually, so you can have yourself a truly twisted marathon.
Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 47m
Director: André Øvredal
Guillermo del Toro produced this clever adaptation of the short story collections by Alvin Schwartz that warped an entire generation or two. Several of the most beloved stories work their way into a story that takes place on Halloween in 1968 in a Midwest town. Some of the big stuff about a magical book is a little silly, but there are unforgettable little horror vignettes that give this movie its strength.
Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director: Edgar Wright
The true genius of Edgar Wright’s 2004 horror-comedy is that it takes both sides of its clever genre coin completely seriously. Yes, the story of a zombie attack on a small British town is laugh-out-loud hysterical, but this is also a legitimately great horror movie at the same time. It kicked off Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, followed by the also-fantastic Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, also both on Prime.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Parker Finn
Paramount has been regularly funneling some of their biggest theatrical hits to their streaming service for a small window of time before they roll over to Prime too. That was the case with Parker Finn’s debut feature film that was in theaters just last summer and made a fortune worldwide (over $200 million). One of the biggest commercial and critical horror hits of 2022, Smile is about a therapist who discovers something supernatural stalking her patients. It will get under your skin.
Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 58m
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Prime Video isn’t the best place for foreign films of any kind, and definitely not horror. So take the chance to watch something from another part of the world in this international smash hit about a high-speed train from Seoul to Busan in the middle of the undead apocalypse. Incredibly well-directed, this movie flies from beginning to end with the speed of the bullet train at its center. There’s a reason it’s become a smash hit on every streaming service that houses it, including Amazon Prime.
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