Netflix has been leaning especially hard into true crime lately, but as always, the streamer has vast offerings beyond the Menendez brothers and their ilk. Take a detour into fictional horrors with this list of 10 standout films ready to season your eyeballs with frights.
Evil Dead Rise
It’s always a risk when a new filmmaker puts their own spin on a beloved franchise, but Lee Cronin’s 2023 take on Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead world—set not in a cabin in the woods, but a Los Angeles apartment building—proved that sometimes the risk is well worth taking. Within that fresh setting, Evil Dead Rise offers a satisfying blend of what made the original movies such ghastly fun (reluctant heroes, Deadites, chainsaws) and new additions, including a memorably agonizing scene involving a cheese grater.
The Sentinel
Here’s another story about a haunted apartment building—or, more specifically, an apartment building situated over a hellmouth. This comes as a nasty surprise to the up-and-coming model who can’t believe how great her new place is until the weird signs start to make themselves known; and indeed, the campier elements in this 1977 release actually help increase the uncomfortable vibes throughout. Here’s a tip: if your strange new neighbors invite you to a cat birthday party, run.
Incantation
Hailing from Taiwan, this 2022 found-footage tale uses fourth wall breaks to directly involve the viewer in its increasingly creepy plot, following a mother desperate to lift a dreadful curse from her young daughter. It’s a storytelling device, sure—but even if you guess what’s coming, the end result is still enjoyably nightmarish.
His House
Wunmi Mosaku (Deadpool & Wolverine), Sope Dirisu (Black Mirror), and Matt Smith (House of the Dragon) give excellent performances in this story of a couple who escape real-world horrors in South Sudan, only to discover refugee life in England has its own terrors to spring on them—particularly as it pertains to the decaying home they’re assigned to live in.
Under the Shadow
Babak Anvari’s 2016 film uses its perilous setting—1980s Tehran amid the Iran-Iraq War—to bring additional dread to its story of a mother and daughter targeted by a malevolent djinn. That the mother is dealing with personal frustrations galore involving her marriage and her unfairly interrupted medical studies layers even more tension atop the supernatural and missile-borne frights.
The Babadook
Another “mother and child tormented by a monster” tale, but in Jennifer Kent’s chilling 2014 release, the title creature manifests from a picture book and is fueled by a mixture of crippling grief and worst-case parenting scenarios. Read io9’s interview with Kent on the occasion of The Babadook‘s 10-year anniversary screenings here.
May the Devil Take You
As the star of Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto (among his upcoming projects: Train to Busan remake The Last Train to New York) continues to rise, it’s well worth revisiting this 2018 release, his first as a solo director. It’s about a group of step-siblings who band together when their father develops a mysterious illness; he’s a problematic patriarch, and the kids learn just how problematic when they start digging into the family’s (surprisingly Satanic!) history.
Child’s Play 2
Soothe your sadness over Chucky getting its walking papers from the TV airwaves by re-watching what many fans hold as their all-time favorite franchise entry: Child’s Play 2, the 1990 direct sequel to the original film. We get to see what happens next to pint-sized survivor Andy—the good news: he gets a kick-ass older foster sister; the bad news: Chucky’s still after him—while the film’s universe expands to show us Chucky’s plastic, assembly-line origins, as well as the corporate jerks trying to recoup their business after his massacre spree.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
Revisiting this 2016 prequel from Mike Flanagan—released before he became a household horror name with Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House—only makes us even more excited for his next Ouija-based project: a reimagining of The Exorcist. Here, we see what mayhem the spirit board causes for a 1960s Los Angeles mom and her young daughters, whose faux seance racket goes sideways when actual evil spirits crash the party.
Psycho
You can’t go wrong with a classic, especially when it’s Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece about mommy issues, money issues, and why you should always lock the bathroom door when you’re taking a shower. It stars, of course, Anthony Perkins, whose filmmaker son Oz Perkins (Longlegs) is now carrying on the family tradition of scaring the crap out of audiences.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Trending Products
