18 Best Horror Movies on Netflix (July 2026): ‘Scream’ and More

Who is killing the teenagers of Woodsboro? That’s what high school student Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) wants to know, as well as her terrified peers. A masked killer with a penchant for horror movie trivia is stalking them, and Sidney seems to be the reason why. But what in Sidney’s past could cause someone to want to kill her and her friends? And does it have to do with her mother, who was brutally murdered years ago?

You probably know the answer to those questions since Scream is a genuine horror classic. Nearly 30 years after its release, it still holds the power to terrify and make you laugh, too. Campbell is one of the definitive final girls in the genre, and she gives Sidney gravitas and complexity that are rare in horror films. 

Scream starts streaming on July 24.

High school is over for Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), but her Ghostface nightmare continues into college as she once again has to deal with a mysterious stalker who is murdering her friends. Is it new beau Derek (Jerry O’Connell), who could be following in her ex-boyfriend’s footsteps? Or is it Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man Sidney falsely accused of killing her mother? It could be one of them, or both of them, or someone completely different. But whoever it is, Sidney is ready, and if she stopped two killers before, she can do it again. 

Scream 2 is a largely successful sequel that ups the body count while not really adding anything new to the genre. Still, it’s entertaining, and there are some scenes, like when Sidney and her friend are stuck in a car with the comatose masked killer, that are genuinely thrilling. The killer(s) reveal makes no sense, but you don’t really care by that point.

Scream 2 starts streaming on July 24.

Stab 3, the horror sequel based on the Woodsboro murders, is having some production woes. The script is subpar, sure, but a bigger problem is that the cast keeps dying. Ghostface has gone Hollywood, and he – or she – is murdering the creatives behind the Stab franchise for a reason – they want to draw the reclusive Sidney (Neve Campbell) out of hiding. Ghostface is successful, but they’ll have to face a final girl who is fed up with all these horror games. She wants to cancel Ghostface for good, and the only way to do that is by putting a bullet through their head.

Scream 3 gets no love from franchise fans. Widely perceived as the series’ weakest entry, the threequel is actually pretty fun, even if the script is a mess. The change of locale proves ample opportunities for fresh meta jokes about horror movies, fame and the film business, and it allows Parker Posey’s spoiled actress, Jennifer Jolie, to steal the entire film. Scream 3 is more funny ha-ha than scary, but if you give it a chance, it’s a fun, if uneven, ride.

Scream 3 starts streaming on July 24.

Like Cher and cockroaches, you can’t kill Ghostface. The iconic Scream killer will always be around, because he can be anybody: a man, a woman, a man and a woman and, in one instance, Aunt Jackie from Roseanne. But in the 2022 horror reboot/sequel/”requel” Scream, no one quite knows who this new Ghostface is. The killer(s) is/are after Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and her kid sister, Tara (Jenna Ortega), because they share a connection with the three OG survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette). But what’s Sam’s link to Sidney’s past? And will she find out in time to save herself and Tara?

After Scream 4’s disappointing box office, the franchise was put on ice for over a decade before the ‘22 Scream breathed new life into it. Two sequels have since been released, but this one remains the best of the revival trilogy, primarily because the best job of balancing the old cast with new characters like Sam and Amber (a pre-Anora Mikey Madison). Let’s be honest, the Scream movies were never that scary, but they’re almost always entertaining, and I’d rank this Scream alongside the original 1996 version as the series’ best.

Eden Murphy (McKaley Miller) is desperate to get into Pembroke University. She has the grades, but it costs a lot to attend the school, and she needs a scholarship. She thinks she can get one by convincing Barrett Schroder (Brice Anthony Heller), the son of an influential congressman and school donor, to help her. She drags her best friend, Zara (Keyara Milliner), to Barrett’s Heaven and Hell party at his mansion, but as the night drags on, the two girls experience more of the latter than the former. Barrett is hiding a secret he doesn’t want anyone to know, and it could jeopardize not only Eden’s future at Pembroke but her life as well.

You’re Killing Me is a horror thriller about a killer party that leaves most of its attendees six feet under. Eden doesn’t want to be one of them, but she knows too much about Barrett to live. The film isn’t a slasher like Sorority Row; instead, it takes a fairly realistic premise and exaggerates it with an electrocution here and an axe murder there. Anne Heche appears in one of her final roles, and she makes the most of her supporting role as a wife and mother who will do almost anything to protect her loved ones.

The 2021 horror flick The Black Phone introduced one of the decade’s most iconic villains — Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber, who liked to kidnap children, imprison them in his basement and eventually murder them. At the end of that film, The Grabber was killed by his latest would-be prey, pre-teen Finney (Mason Thames), who was helped by the ghosts of his past victims.

Well, you can’t keep a good villain down, especially when there’s more money to be made. The Grabber is back, but he’s still dead. He still stalks Finney and his kid sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), through their dreams while both are stuck at a deserted summer camp. Black Phone 2 borrows elements of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th to juice up its jump scares and surprisingly, it works. Hawke is just as charmingly evil as he was in the first picture, so much so that he should already be clearing his for the third entry.

Siblings Angela and Jackson (Florence Pugh and Ben Loyd-Hughes) are American con artists posing as paranormal experts who get rid of evil spirits. As bogus ghostbusters, they’re in high demand, and they accept a lucrative offer from the widowed Mrs. Green (Celebrity Traitors’ prolific farter Celia Imrie): expel whatever is haunting her country estate, and she’ll pay off their debts to some circling loan sharks. But the brother-and-sister duo get way more than they bargained for when they encounter actual ghosts who are still seeking justice for their long-ago murders. Can Angela and Jackson help them? Or are they being conned by an evil force that wants them dead?

Malevolent is a horror movie that doesn’t offer anything new, but it does put a fresh coat of paint on the well-worn haunted house genre. The atmosphere is satisfyingly spooky, and the narrative throws some curveballs that even I didn’t see coming. The movie also features Pugh before she hit it big in classier fare like Little Women and Dune: Part Two. Even in a dimly lit B-grade horror movie, her star already shone brightly.

Rising star quarterback Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) suffers a potentially career-ending injury after he is ambushed and attacked by an unidentified figure late at night. Thinking that this is the end of the line for his football career, Cameron receives an unexpected lifeline: the opportunity to train with his sports idol, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), at White’s isolated compound in the desert. But the longer Cameron spends training with White, the more his excitement turns to fear as he realizes that White is hiding a dark secret.

Wayans and Withers are the anchors of Him, giving their all in their performances as much as their characters give it on the playing field. A highly stylized visual feast with plenty of blood, shocks and a gruesome twist reveal, Him is an intriguing horror movie that doubles as a commentary on the lengths men are willing to go to sacrifice their bodies for sports.

In the coastal town of Annieville, South Carolina, residents anxiously await the arrival of a terrifying Category 5 hurricane, with many people evacuating the town to find safer ground. Unfortunately, Dakota (Phoebe Dynevor) finds herself paralyzed by her own agoraphobia, unable to leave her mother’s house. Alongside a group of other innocent people caught in the storm’s wrath, Dakota finds herself battling more than just relentless flooding. Bloodthirsty bull sharks have swum into town, and they’ve got a taste for human flesh.

If you were a fan of the creature feature survival horror delights of 2019’s Crawl, you won’t want to miss this year’s Thrash, which swaps the hungry gators of Alexandre Aja’s film for indulging in the classic fear of sharks first made famous by Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws. Seemingly taking cues both from Spielberg’s classic flick and something schlocky like Sharknado, Thrash is delightful, low-brow, B-movie fun, complete with plenty of unintentional humor.

In 1978 Colorado, shy teenager Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) is yanked off the street in his hometown by local child kidnapper the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). Finney is imprisoned in a soundproofed room in the Grabber’s basement with a disconnected black rotary phone attached to the wall — then, it starts to ring. When Finney answers the phone, the voices of the Grabber’s previous victims begin speaking to him, and they are determined to help Finney escape their own terrible fate before it’s too late.

This simple yet effective horror story, adapted from the novella of the same name by Joe Hill (AKA Stephen King‘s son), evokes an effective nostalgic atmosphere that clashes brilliantly with the creepy events of the movie. Rather than focus on cheap gore and jump scares, The Black Phone relies on tension, suspense and a strong emotional core that makes the horror even more impactful. But the film would be nothing without the terrifically unnerving performance from Hawke, who trades his boyish charm and measured dramatic chops for some scenery-chewing villainy.

Set between the events of Saw and Saw II, Saw X is a prequel film that follows John Kramer, AKA Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), as he travels to Mexico in search of a cure for his terminal brain cancer. Promised a groundbreaking and experimental treatment that will cure him completely, he arrives to find out that the cure is a fake, the scientists and doctors behind it are frauds and he and many others have been scammed out of their money. Thus, John sets out to do what he does best: teach bad people a lesson using a series of deranged torture traps and deadly puzzles.

After a string of middling-to-very bad Saw movies — including an abysmal spin-off, Spiral, starring Chris Rock — Saw X brings new life to a long-running franchise; in fact, Saw X currently stands as the best-rated Saw movie ever. Bell gives the best performance of the franchise, stepping back into the shoes of the murderous John Kramer, but the movie isn’t just shocking and gory. As opposed to some of the franchise’s previous installments, Saw X actually has a thoughtful and well-written narrative to work hand-in-hand with its blood and guts.

Guillermo del Toro gives his own fantastical spin on Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel in this Oscar-nominated film. Frankenstein follows Victor Frankenstein’s (Oscar Isaac) evolution from ambitious but controversial surgeon obsessed with curing death, to successfully stitching together a human corpse and reanimating it. But his arrogance and ego lead him to become dissatisfied with the Creature (Jacob Elordi), and he wrongfully pins a murder on it before leaving it to die in a fire. When the Creature survives, it learns of the compassion and cruelty of humans and sets off on a quest to find its creator and confront him.

Frankenstein is the perfect source material for del Toro, a director whose Gothic-inspired aesthetic sensibilities and love of misunderstood monsters come together to create a movie that is more tear-jerking than horrifying. Elordi’s complete transformation into the Creature proves the young actor’s impressive range, while Isaac delightfully hams it up as Frankenstein. Ultimately, Frankenstein is a decadent, stunning epic, and a visual feast that weaves horror with romantic tragedy.

Two years after the bloody events of the first film, M3GAN 2.0 follows M3GAN’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams), who has since become an advocate for government oversight of AI. However, little does she know that a defense contractor has created its own killer doll: Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), a hostile android based on M3GAN’s original design. When Amelia (expectedly) becomes self-aware and stops taking orders, it’s up to Gemma, with the help of a resurrected M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis), to stop her.

A sequel was to be expected after the instant success of M3GAN, and while M3GAN 2.0 leans more into action than it does horror, that doesn’t stop the entertaining killer robot antics from coming just as much (if not more) than before. Just as quippy and sassy as ever, M3GAN returns by going all-in on the ludicrousness that made M3GAN a breakout viral smash.

A romantic getaway to a secluded lakeside house becomes anything but romantic for lovers Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Sage (Maddie Hasson). When they arrive at their destination, they realize that the house has been double-booked by a mysterious couple named Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita). While Will and Cin initially seem friendly and outgoing, the weekend progressively descends into a nightmarish game of manipulation, lies and a blood-soaked fight for survival.

Not just a terrific horror film, Bone Lake is an erotic thriller throwback that some critics favorably compared to films like Basic Instinct. Thus, if you’re a fan of Paul Verhoeven‘s psychosexual classic, you’ll probably be instantly hooked on Bone Lake. Genuinely thrilling, entertainingly cheesy and exceptionally bloody, Bone Lake is a can’t-miss good time.

In an Indonesian village, a dysfunctional family runs a popular business selling herbal medicines. But when the family patriarch (Donny Damara) attempts to innovate a new potion, it ends up triggering a deadly (and insanely gruesome) zombie outbreak. The Elixir mixes complicated family drama with terrifying zombie horror into a fast-paced action film with a surprising amount of emotional depth.

If you’re looking for a horror film that actually makes you care about its characters (in turn, creating characters that actually matter when they get killed), look no further than The Elixir. In addition to some truly revolting and nightmarish imagery, The Elixir boasts a great story, character development and engaging drama that blends genres to create something unique.

A disgraced content creator named Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) mounts his comeback by pulling off an intriguing stunt: by spending the night livestreaming in an alleged haunted house where multiple people have died. Shot in found footage format to simulate the character filming himself, Deadstream follows Shawn as his stunt becomes deadly when he unleashes a malevolent spirit, and his comeback becomes a fight for his very life.

Deadstream combines horror and comedy to effective results while satirizing the influencer industry. While low-budget, it’s an extremely clever film that nevertheless utilizes impressive special effects, creates a believable atmosphere and has a strong lead performance from Winter. Some viewers even compared the mix of comedy and gore to The Evil Dead. 

In this entertaining entry to a newfangled subgenre of Valentine’s Day horror, a masked maniac with glowing red eyes makes an unwanted appearance in different cities every year. On that fateful day of love, “the Heart-Eyes Killer” slaughters unsuspecting couples. But when two Seattle coworkers doing overtime at their job are mistaken as lovers by the killer, they decide to fight back and end this yearly reign of terror.

From the creatives behind the Happy Death Day films and Werewolves Within comes this slasher-romantic comedy hybrid that will leave you both laughing and shrieking in terror. The film has been praised for its seamless genre fusion and killer chemistry between lead actors Mason Gooding and Olivia Holt.

Strapped-for-cash videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice) responds to an online job request that takes him to a remote house in Crestline, California. There, he meets his client, Josef (Mark Duplass), a strange man who wants Aaron to help him film a video diary for his unborn child, as he claims he is dying from an inoperable brain tumor. As the direction for the video becomes more bizarre, Aaron slowly realizes that Josef brought him out there for a very different reason.

Directed by Brice and co-written by Brice alongside Duplass, Creep is a psychological horror that uses the found footage style of filmmaking, with the story being presented through the videos that Aaron shoots. Clever, funny, and extremely tense, Creep also succeeds at creating a suffocating atmosphere and unsettling tone, bolstered by Duplass’s unnerving performance. If you enjoy Creep, be sure to check out the sequel, Creep 2.