Horror is a genre that lends itself to a broad spectrum of emotions, and in 2025, we got horror films that were weird, funny, bleak, and cathartic. We put together a list of the Top Horror Movies of 2025. From inventive original concepts, genre-blending experiences, gruesome takes on feminism, and two that embrace legacies, these are our top.
With plenty of new takes on classic monsters, a Southern vampire tale, genre-blending hits, and stories that questioned ideas of control through beauty, love, and creation, the top horror movies of 2025 all tapped into different areas of the horror genre, but they all left us with something to talk about. Be it an on-screen heel-turn or songs that shot to the top of Spotify.
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To make our Top Horror Movies in 2025 list, the film had to have been released to United States audiences in 2024. That means festival films that haven’t been released in theaters or on digital platforms can’t make the Top Horror Movies of 2025 list. Additionally, the theater run need only be a limited run, and films that are only released on streaming can also be included.
Additionally, horror is a broad genre that intersects with others. Films included here are either pitched as horror by the studios, on a horror streaming platform, categorized as such, or use horror themes to propel their narrative — save the “this isn’t horror” argument for social media.
So, without further ado, here are our Top 15 Horror Movies of 2022. For our top movies of the year and animated movies, click here and here.
15. Companion
Director: Drew Hancock
Writer: Drew Hancock
“Companion toys with horror and romantic-comedy formulas to give audiences a moral dilemma: if an android is not real, can it be abused? Can an android get revenge? Can an android protect itself justly? And does the fact that one of your main characters isn’t a real person lessen how much of a horrible person their partner is?
That’s what Companion gets at, and the audience soon realizes the film is ultimately a critique of the narcissistic monsters who control us. More importantly, the way male loneliness is one hell of a danger. With stellar performances and a heel-turn for Jack Quaid, Companion is a Valentine’s horror sci-fi horror film that looks at love, control, and why the two are drastically different.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Paramount+ and VOD.
14. Bone Lake
Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
Writer: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
“Bone Lake wants us to ask questions about our own relationships and, within those relationships, the validity of our methods of communication and our relationships to physical intimacy. Are the carefree, sexually hyperactive ways of the young couple, with the salacious secrets hidden underneath, the truest reflection of love?
Or are the lived-in struggles of a relationship well into their time together what love really looks like? Perhaps it’s both, or neither. Bone Lake keeps adding new wrinkles to these questions by piling on trashy genre thrills and ridiculous swerves in the narrative.
By the time Mercedes Bryce Morgan takes us out on an ending note that feels like a sicko version of The Graduate, those questions still linger. Bone Lake resurrects the erotic thriller by drawing a direct line to modern horror films meant to play on audience assumptions, namely Barbarian and Speak No Evil. What makes Bone Lake stand on its own in a chaste cinematic climate is a frank discussion of relationships. It discovers insights along the way that prove the erotic thriller is a valid and necessary method of genre storytelling.” — James Preston Poole
Watch now on VOD.
13. Bring Her Back
Director: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou
Writer: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou
“The scares in Bring Her Back are exceptional and woven so well into the film’s fabric. In fact, the film as a whole feels like one huge continuous scare, with it aiming to unnerve you from jump. The characters’ actions, the music, the setting, and so much more set every scene to keep you glued to your seat in fear. The mystery grips you, even as you wince and feel disgust at the spectacle. The Philippou brothers have played a masterful storytelling game, rife with addictive discomfort.
Bring Her Back is an excellent and unnerving horror film about the terrors of possessive motherhood and what a self-righteous mother figure might do to have her children’s love. With superb performances from the entire cast, excellent direction from the Philippou brothers, a haunting script by Danny Philippou and Hinzman, and a keen focus on terrifying its audience consistently, Bring Her Back isn’t a film horror fans will want to miss. And perhaps in its unique approach, it’ll garner more fans of the genre along the way.” — Swara Salih
Watch now on HBO Max.
12. Dangerous Animals
Director: Sean Byrne
Writer: Nick Lepard
“Instead of leaning on sexual fantasies or painting sharks as mindless killing machines, Dangerous Animals instead pulls the camera in close on Bruce, his shark attack survival, and his ritual of finding tourists for the sharks. Despite his gruff exterior, he has everything figured out, and as we see, Zephyr isn’t the first, second, third, or even fourth time he’s done this. Bruce views himself as the Apex predator, necessary to keep the ecosystem in check, to cull those who would unsettle the balance.
Bruce’s cruelty drives this film, and it’s always clearly detached from the sharks themselves. They’re ultimately tools, and to be honest, it’s refreshing. After Jaws was released, the poaching of sharks became worse. Human fear, stoked by their inability to understand food chains and ecosystems, decimates many shark populations.
Everything about Dangerous Animals works. The characters pull you into the story, their decisions make sense, and ultimately, at just over an hour and a half, it knows exactly how to use every minute. With everything going for it, I’d be surprised if it didn’t become an instant classic. Dangerous Animals lives for shocking moments, but none of them supersede the story. This is the best time you’ll have on the water and the perfect summer scream.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Shudder and VOD.
11. The Ugly Stepsister
Director:Emilie Blichfeldt
Writer: Emilie Blichfeldt
“Beauty is body horror, and The Ugly Stepsister gets to the bottom. At the same time, as it races closer to its fairytale, the familiar piece of the story begins to fall into place. The film’s shock value may be unwarranted at times, but the comedy it finds in its bleakest and grossest moments is beyond commendable. Emilie Blichfeldt’s comedic timing is a release valve on the tension, only to show you something worse.
The real selling point, however, is Lea Myren as Elvira. She plays the titular ugly stepsister with loneliness, hope, and desperation. Her performance is endearing, allowing you to care for her initially, only to question why she keeps continuing by the end. Myren’s debut performance is a standout.
The Ugly Stepsister is sure to thrill, and its biggest accomplishment is retelling a familiar story without ever finding itself cast in the shadow of any iteration. Beauty is brutal, and Emilie Blichfeldt understands that.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Shudder and VOD.
10. Together
Director: Michael Shanks
Writer: Michael Shanks
“To filmmaker Michael Shanks, that’s just love. While splitting up is the core of almost every conversation that Millie and Tim have throughout Together, it’s why they don’t split that matters.
Sure, the supernatural force in their bodies makes them crave to become one, but their conscious choice to peel back the larger curtain on each other shows how they complement one another. Even when they don’t, their love for each other means more to them than either of them individually.
Loud and ugly, as much as it’s funny and romantic, the double down on weird body horror and running physical gags captures the right mix of wanting to look away and locking in. Together is disgustingly funny, genuinely ugly, and just a good time at the movies.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on VOD.
8. Drop
Director: Christopher Landon
Writer: Christopher Landon
“Where Drop really soars as a genre thrill ride is when the guardrails drop off in the final act. Every scene ups the stakes, the intensity, and the genres it embraces. The beginning hits on a romantic drama with Violet unpacking her previous trauma and setting up to take the plunge into dating, leaving her son for the first time. Then, it transitions into a paranoid surveillance thriller that highlights just how much someone can control your life from a bird ’s-eye view. Only to end as an action spectacle that pulls everything into place.
Christopher Landon’s paranoid thriller is excellent, to say the least. Each reveal is a switch flipped on a kinetic chain of events, with a reveal that doesn’t over-index on exposition. Instead, Drop utilizes the whodunnit eye to capture the angle the audience (and Violet) couldn’t see.
Set mostly in a single location, Drop does the most to stoke paranoia but also explores all the ways for Violet to escape, ultimately paying off with a stellar finale. Part romance and all gas pedal, Drop is the kind of movie meant to headline SXSW. And once again, Christopher Landon knows just how to make a narrative gimmick into a genre thrill ride.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Peacock.
9. We Bury The Dead
Director: Zak Hilditch
Writer: Zak Hilditch
“For her part, Ava can be both frustrating and endearing. At the start, you feel for her. Ridley’s performance brings grief to the surface, and her tenacity to survive is her strongest quality. The softness she brings to the role and her vulnerability are important as the film’s third act sheds more light on her marriage. As her reasons for trekking across Tasmania become clearer, her guilt takes the spotlight.
Outside of that one decision, however, We Bury The Dead is a stunning film. The undead help us understand ourselves and life. In this film, Zak Hilditch navigates it all beautifully. Tense, unique, and unafraid to let silence dominate a scene, We Bury The Dead is nothing as you would expect and everything that makes a zombie story compelling. It is a thrilling drama instead of an action-packed horror, but it’s Daisy Ridley’s pained performance that makes this film stand out.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now in theaters and VOD.
7. The Black Phone 2
Director: Scott Derrickson
Writer: Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, Joe Hill (based on the novel by)
“On paper, Black Phone 2 is too absurd to work, but in execution? Well, to put it plainly, this is the kind of theater horror we have been missing. From the pulse-pounding score to the stellar use of Super 8 to mark distinctions between dreams and realities, and truly unnerving moments like a face sliding down a window, it’s hard to find a film in recent memory that pushed on dreams quite as hard as this, at least not since Nightmare on Elm Street went into its slumber.
In every winding element of the story, Black Phone 2 tries to top itself and doesn’t hold back in swinging for the fences. There isn’t a single moment that isn’t constantly ramping up the stakes, production, or violence. The original film focused on its simplicity with very little shown. This sequel, on the other hand, has aged alongside its young cast and ramped up the blood, anger, and supernatural elements. But even with all of this, Black Phone 2 doesn’t lose its sincerity. And that’s a hard task.
Beautifully shot and perfectly scored, Black Phone 2 is a fast-paced dream slasher that honors the spirit of the original story penned by Joe Hill, while also developing it into something unique. While the characters are the same, the approach to filmmaking feels entirely different, and yet it works. The original film offered simplicity for young characters, and in Black Phone 2, it offers supernatural fear and accelerated stakes to match where the kids are now in their lives. Not every sequel works, but Black Phone 2 does.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Peacock.
6. Frankenstein
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writer: Guillermo del Toro, Mary Shelly (based on the novel by)
“From a storytelling perspective, Guillermo del Toro highlights a concept that he has long worked into many of his films: empathy for monsters. However, as his directorial gaze shifts, he points out the monstrosities that even humans become. He asks us to empathize with their creators and their creations, and to understand our place among them. Not because they are innocent, but because both the wolf, the hunter, and the sheep all exist as they are, and a violent world cyclically rips through them all.
In many of the moments where we see the cycle from father to son damage the next generation of Frankenstein, it’s hard not to see a life that many men in my life have gone through. And given both Isaac and del Toro’s cultural backgrounds, a story about masculinity and fatherhood takes on a separate lens from those who grew up in Latin households.
There is no absolution in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, but there is understanding. Trauma breaks us, and the search for perfection, rejecting the fingerprints it leaves, only makes it burrow deeper. If not for the choices made during the CGI sequences, Frankenstein would stand out beautifully in del Toro’s filmography. Still, it showcases why the auteur is the maestro of monsters. Del Toro has taken Victor Frankenstein from mad scientist back to the tortured soul, and horror is better for it.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Netflix.
5. 28 Years Later
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
“Some moments of 28 Years Later do venture too close to over-sentimentality; however, when violence erupts, it pulls us back from that ledge and manages expectations. This is a brutal film, but it’s not a mean one. Themes like loneliness and losing people aren’t wielded like a sledgehammer.
While some death scenes are shocking and sometimes wander into shock value territory, they never stay there. It interrupts the world and the love, and reminds the viewer where we still are – in a harsh world, with little hope. But it’s what you do in that circumstance that shapes it.
28 Years Later is a beautiful film. It’s also one that looks to be more than what it is, not by shirking its genre but by reinterpreting it in a way audiences haven’t entirely seen before. Tense for almost its entire runtime and yet sensitive as well, this is a horror high for the year, but more importantly, justifies bringing back a franchise 28 years later.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on HBO MAX and VOD.
4. Weapons
Director: Zach Cregger
Writer: Zach Cregger
“There isn’t anything truly shocking in Weapons, at least not in the way that will keep you up at night. But there doesn’t need to be. While many have come to see excessive violence as subversion and shock as necessary, this movie smartly develops each shocking moment to have weight. Weapons is a perfectly calculated snowball.
It starts with normal people trying to figure out an unnatural situation and the human consequences of that, angry parents, and a vilified teacher. And then over time, the sections of the mystery that become more grand, more absurd, more bloody, and the break from a crime story becomes sharper with each vignette.
Weapons is the best horror film of the year. It made me laugh, it made me deeply uncomfortable, and that’s what makes this a film I plan to watch again. Violent, bloody, dark, and yet deeply funny, Zach Cregger is a filmmaker who isn’t abiding by any restraints and is proving that sometimes less can very much be more.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch no on HBO Max.
3. Good Boy
Director: Ben Leonberg
Writer: Ben Leonberg
“Good Boy is just over an hour and 20 minutes, but it makes every single minute on screen matter. There are no frills and no eccentricities, and the dog’s perspective proves to be so much more narratively than a gimmick. This is one of those very few films where I would change absolutely nothing, and ultimately wonder how Ben Leonberg crafted a movie that understands the depth of our bonds with our pets so deeply.
Not only that, as a debut film, Ben Leonberg showcases how well he understands how to exploit positive human emotions into terror, and that’s central to horror filmmaking. If this is the kind of understanding of humanity that Leonberg has in terms of direction, then I need to see more. Good Boy is such an excellent example of using love to build fear, but to do so without dishonoring what it means to truly care for someone.
Good Boy is an exercise in simplicity and a testament to the fact that good horror is built on empathy. And for us, in the audience, we could only be so lucky to have a dog in our lives like Indy. And if we do, that’s what makes Good Boy a homerun.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch now on Shudder and VOD.
2. The Long Walk
Director: Joachim Trier
Writer: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
“This is the most heartfelt, heartbreaking, and harrowing adaptation of Stephen King’s work, and it also feels like the most salient. A coming-of-age horror story, a grief story, a vulnerable story, this is one of the best films of the year. The Long Walk is unafraid to be brutal, to steal youth and innocence, and not hide the violence that the men are going through for the entertainment of their country.
The Long Walk (2025) is a film that, despite its unusual treadmill movie screening marketing, is difficult to watch and even more challenging to sit through. It prompts its viewers to develop empathy for the desperate and see themselves in them. It urges us to understand the burden of the young men before us and the expectations that are breaking under.” — Kate Sánchez
Watch on VOD.
1. Sinners
Director: Ryan Coogler
Writer: Ryan Coogle
“Coogler is a masterful horror director from jump. From the first scene, we immediately get appropriate and well-positioned jump scares. The terror builds gradually as you anticipate the monsters coming for Smoke, Stack, and their nightclub patrons and team.
While film and TV have done the vampire concept ad nauseam, Coogler is able to make it his own social commentary, with his dialogue incorporating themes of white supremacist domination, appropriation of Black music and culture, capitalism, and much more. While we’re familiar with the monster, Sinners presents them in a new light.
Sinners is Ryan Coogler’s magnum opus to date. With extraordinary direction, writing, social commentary, sound design, cinematography, scares, and music that will command your attention, Coogler once again showcases he is a master filmmaker with original and bold vision. With a superb cast and crew to make his vision even more entrancing, it’s a must-see theatrical experience. Hollywood desperately needs original and bold ideas, and Sinners fits that bill and so much more.” — Swara Salih
Watch now on HBO Max.
Whether you want b-movie comedy or deep stories about grief, these are our Top Horror Movies of 2025. Did your favorite film make our top horror movies of 2025 list? Let us know on social media: @butwhythopc.
