Horror comics have been an inseparable part of comics history since the 1940s. This has led to a steady stream of movies based on horror comics ever since Tales from the Crypt was released in 1972, the same year Marvel Comics started seriously investing in horror fare. Film adaptations of those Marvel comics wouldn’t follow for another eight years, and Hollywood wouldn’t produce one until 1998, but since then, a respectable number of horror (or at least horror-ish) Marvel titles have hit the big screen. Here’s our ranking of all of them.
15. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)
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Directors: Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor
Writers: Scott M. Gimple & Seth Hoffman and David S. Goyer
Where To Watch: YouTube Movies and BBC America
The first Ghost Rider was primarily known as the film that finally let Nicolas Cage play a superhero after years of failed attempts. The sequel managed an impressive cast that includes Idris Elba, Ciarán Hinds, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Anthony Stewart Head, but there wasn’t enough substance to the script or the over-the-top CGI action for the movie to actually make use of its ensemble.
Crank directors Mark Develdine and Brian Taylor clearly attempted to make the film feel like a comic book, but lousy visual effects and headache-inducing editing mean even the best moments of Spirit of Vengeance fall far short of what films like Sin City and Ang Lee’s Hulk had already shown possible on this front.
At its worst, it’s utterly incomprehensible. Audiences had already seen Cage play a much better superhero in Kick-Ass the year before, so the first movie’s only real charm no longer mattered. It remains one of the worst Marvel adaptations ever to be released.
14. Morbius (2022)
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Writers: Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless
Where To Watch: Disney+, Prime Video
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe was an attempt to replicate the Marvel Cinematic Universe without the benefit of the wider Marvel ensemble or even Spider-Man himself. Very few of the completed films were even in the neighborhood of being good, but it did at least keep a number of screenwriters employed as the studio attempted to develop films centered on obscure characters like Jackpot, El Muerto, and Hypno-Hustler. Even within that context, Morbius was very bad.
Jared Leto plays a scientist driven to the unthinkable by his desire to do good, but Leto can’t manage any of the likability or gravitas that would make that journey believable or interesting. The cinematography is aphotic to the point of imperceptibility, and the action is a mess of bloated CGI that can best be described as “wispy.” The movie flopped at the box office and rightfully became a meme, which Sony executives somehow misinterpreted as a sign the film would do better in theaters on re-release. It did not.
13. Blade: Trinity (2004)
Writer/Director: David S. Goyer
Where To Watch: Peacock
Blade: Trinity tried to match the highs of Blade II by including Dracula (Dominic Purcell) and an ensemble that featured trusted comedic talent like Patton Oswalt, Parker Posey, John Michael Higgins, Natasha Lyonne, Ron Selmour, and Ryan Reynolds. That should have been enough to at least make the film fun, but creative difficulties between star Wesley Snipes and writer/director David S. Goyer sabotaged the production. Snipes’ refusal to cooperate with Goyer led to a number of shots where Blade is very obviously a digital double, plus one shot where CGI was famously used to show Blade opening his eyes when Snipes refused to do so.
It doesn’t help that Dracula has been drained of both mystique and sex appeal. The film is never really able to establish any real stakes (heh) because its big bad is a grumpy old man who is more interested in looking down on the younger, cooler vampires than actually causing mayhem. Reynolds’ performance as Hannibal King—while in no way resembling the actual comic book character—inspired someone on set to give him some Deadpool comics, which led to Reynold’s time as Deadpool and Snipes reprising the Blade role in Deadpool & Wolverine.
12. Ghost Rider (2007)
Writer/Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Where To Watch: VOD
Ghost Rider tried to connect Marvel’s superhero side with its horror side in a way Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer had only touched on. A film adaptation had been in the works since the early ’90s, but the special-effects demands of a flaming skeleton riding a motorcycle meant it took years to get off the ground. The film almost happened in 2001 with Johnny Depp in the lead and Blade team Stephen Norrington and David S. Goyer behind the camera. That production falling through caught the attention of Nicolas Cage, a comic book fanatic who had been attempting to play a superhero for years.
Ghost Rider is actually pretty fun when it’s focused on Cage and Sam Elliott monologuing. Unfortunately, the titular superhero is largely silent, and Mark Steven Johnson’s script hands the bulk of expository duties to other characters. The romance between Cage and Eva Mendes is laughably bad, and even getting to see the legendary Peter Fonda as the Devil can’t make this one exciting. The sequel would be even worse, but Cage would get to play much better superheroes, and Ghost Rider has since been announced for a reboot with Mendes’ husband Ryan Gosling in the lead.
11. Blade: House of Chthon (2006)
Director: Peter O’Fallon
Writers: Geoff Johns & David S. Goyer
Where To Watch: Blade: The Series, including a syndication edit of the film, is available to purchase on Apple TV. The actual feature-length film is frequently bundled on home video with the Wesley Snipes Blade films.
Blade was too hot of a property for New Line Cinema to abandon following Blade: Trinity‘s failure, so the studio pivoted to television for Blade: The Series, with David S. Goyer returning as showrunner. The series kicked off with the pilot movie Blade: House of Chthon, where a recast Blade (Sticky Fingaz) and his weapon designer Shen (Nelson Lee) cross paths with Iraq war veteran Krista (Jill Wagner) as she investigates her brother’s mysterious death.
The series does manage to incorporate some decent guest stars, including Richard Roundtree as Blade’s estranged father. The best House of Chthon can muster is Randy Quaid sleepwalking Wagner through the exposition that viewers will want to know when watching the rest of the series. Fingaz can’t quite muster Snipes’s gravitas, and the vampire kung fu action that made theatrical films worthwhile crumbles under the television budget, resulting in a film that wasn’t terrible so much as just really boring. Blade: The Series would be canceled at the end of its first season.
10. Marvel Zombies (2025)
Director: Bryan Andrews
Writer: Zeb Wells
Where To Watch: Disney+
The Marvel Zombies comic was an unexpected success, beginning as a tangent in the Ultimate Fantastic Four series, then launching into its own miniseries and some increasingly amusing crossovers. It was a great “yes, and…” to what The Walking Dead was doing for comics amidst the 2000s zombie boom, even if it did run out of steam after Marvel Zombies Destroy!
The Marvel Zombies TV miniseries spun off of the already underwhelming What If…?, only now using the extended two-hour runtime as an opportunity to squeeze in even more exposition. The animation is underwhelming, with the darker tone coming at the cost of the color that occasionally made What If…? nice to look at. The returning cast members are fine, and Iman Vellani is as excellent as ever, but the recast characters are particularly disappointing.
9. Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell (2016)
Director: Mitch Schauer
Writers: Marty Isenberg and David McDermott
Where To Watch: Disney+
Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell was an attempt to get younger audiences interested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s then-upcoming Doctor Strange. Spinning off of some horror-themed episodes of Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., the film features Hulk (Fred Tatasciore) teaming up with Doctor Strange (Liam O’Brien) and the Howling Commandos (the monstrous iteration that resembles DC’s Creature Commandos, not Nick Fury and Captain America’s buddies).
The villain is trapping children in nightmares that render them comatose, which has the potential for some spooky fun but always pulls back right when things start to get interesting. But the film’s biggest problem is divorcing itself from the series it takes its cast and character designs from, forcing it to spend a good chunk of its runtime on exposition mostly aimed at helping returning viewers understand why things are different now.
Comic fans will have fun seeing more obscure monster characters brought to life, but even they’ll likely be better off watching the Howling Commandos appearances in Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. At least that has N’Kantu!
8. Man-Thing (2005)
Director: Brett Leonard
Writer: Hans Rodionoff
Where To Watch: Tubi
In the comics, Man-Thing is Ted Sallis, a biochemist turned swamp monster after terrorists attack his lab. He’s deeply connected to human emotions despite no longer seeming to possess any himself, most notably in the form of chemical secretions that cause anyone experiencing fear to burst into flames. Gray Morrow’s haunting creature design and Gerry Conway and Steve Gerber’s writing made the creature a star of Marvel’s horror line, and his comics introduced popular characters like Mockingbird, Jennifer Kale, and Howard the Duck.
Artisan Entertainment made a Man-Thing film in 2005, the result of a vast Marvel licensing deal that ultimately produced only two films. The approach here is that of a basic mystery slasher, with a sheriff (Matthew Le Nevez) and a schoolteacher (Rachael Taylor) teaming up to investigate a series of disappearances in a small Louisiana bayou, with all clues leading back to a shady chemical conglomerate.
There are a few fun practical effects but also a bunch of lackluster CGI. The cast is full of Australians giving bad attempts at Cajun accents and non-Native American actors portraying Native American characters. And the attempt to replace the character’s scientific origin with one tied to Seminole folklore never shows enough effort to actually be interesting.
Star Rachael Taylor would have a better run with Marvel when she played Patsy Walker in Jessica Jones, and Man-Thing himself would get a much more interesting portrayal when he joined the MCU in Werewolf by Night.
7. The New Mutants (2020)
Director: Josh Boone
Writers: Josh Boone & Knate Lee
Where To Watch: Disney+
The New Mutants was promoted as the first Marvel horror movie, despite all evidence to the contrary. It also had an even more complicated production than Blade: Trinity, with principal photography finishing in 2017, then getting delayed for years and eventually running straight into the Fox-Disney acquisition that canceled 10+ in-development X-Men films. For a while, it looked like it might never actually be released.
That said, the film itself is actually… fine? The horror approach works well even if the constant security camera shots have it feeling more like playing Five Nights at Freddy’s than an actual horror film. It loses steam in the third act when the focus shifts from the cast to the underwhelming visual effects. But the ensemble and character-based moments are great, with Blu Hunt and Maisie Williams especially shining.
6. Blade (1998)
Director: Stephen Norrington
Writer: David S. Goyer
Where To Watch: Peacock
Marvel’s first theatrical success blazed its way into theaters many years before Spider-Man or the X-Men became box-office phenomena. David S. Goyer’s script threw out most of the character’s comic lore, transforming Blade from a British human with anti-vampire antibodies into a Detroit-born half-vampire. But it did manage to capture the sense of effortless cool that had made the character so fun on the page.
The film is packed with goofy one-liners and charming kung fu action, all delivered with effortless cool by star Wesley Snipes. The costumes and general aesthetic paved the way for The Matrix and played a major role in bringing nu metal into the mainstream. It’s messy, with the script screeching to a halt whenever it tries to deliver exposition. But it’s undeniably fun, and directly responsible for Marvel’s later Hollywood success.
5. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Michael Waldron
Where To Watch: Disney+
Another one that was promoted as the first Marvel horror movie, despite that very obviously not being the case. The departure of Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson due to creative differences caused some fan concern right up until Spider-Man and The Evil Dead director Sam Raimi was hired as his replacement.
It’s still nowhere near as good as the first film, but it’s still a good deal of fun, especially given how much it feels like a Sam Raimi film. No small feat for an MCU title. There’s a bunch of extremely fun practical effects, and that extended murder sequence does manage to be the closest Marvel has come to putting out a straight slasher film.
4. Yami no Teiō: Kyūketsuki Dracula (1980)
Director: Minoru Okazaki
Writer: Tadaaki Yamazaki
Where To Watch: Its last official North American release was on VHS in the ’80s
The Toei-produced Dracula anime is an adaptation of Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula comic, which was a massive success for the publisher and first introduced the character of Blade. The comics were dark and silly. The movie, which was released in North America under titles like The Tomb of Dracula and Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned, had no trouble matching that energy.
The film is absolutely insane, with Dracula (Kenji Utsumi) attempting to sabotage Satan (Hidekatsu Shibata) by kidnapping his fiancée, Domini (Hiroko Suzuki), and Satan hatching an intricate revenge plot that involves letting Dracula and Domini fall in love and have a child. It squeezes in more than the modest 90-minute runtime can afford, but it offers a nuanced and utterly unique take on the title character. It must be seen to be believed.
3. Kyoufu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein (1981)
Director: Yugo Serikawa
Writer: Akiyoshi Sakai
Where To Watch: The first official North American release in 42 years, a Blu-ray from Deaf Crocodile titled Frankenstein, Legend of Terror.
Toei’s second Marvel adaptation was released in North America under the titles The Monster of Frankenstein and Frankenstein, Legend of Terror. It’s less straightforward of a comic adaptation than Yami no Teiō: Kyūketsuki Dracula was, leaning on Marvel’s character design (which was largely based on Boris Karloff anyway) and the characterization of his modern-day appearances in Monsters Unleashed, but sticking with a loose approximation of the novel’s original plot and period setting.
The film wastes no time on Victor Frankenstein’s backstory (Nachi Nozawa), opening immediately on his famous reanimation experiment and spending the rest of the film showing him descend into paranoid madness à la The Tell-Tale Heart. This is in compelling contrast with the creature (Masao Komatsu), who is portrayed even more sympathetically than in most modern adaptations. It’s not the best adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, and it doesn’t have as many werewolf team-ups as the comics, but it’s still awfully compelling.
2. Blade II (2002)
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writer: David S. Goyer
Where To Watch: Peacock
Since nobody really saw Mimic at the time, Blade II became the film that is largely responsible for introducing Guillermo del Toro to the United States. The result makes it obvious why del Toro is such an icon, and also reminds us that superheroes can be dark and gritty without forgetting to be fun.
Snipes is joined by a cast of heavy hitters, including Ron Perlman, Donnie Yen, Norman Reedus, and Tony Curran. The creature and gore effects are a major improvement over what was offered in the first film, while the script features a much more interesting story that adds actual nuance to the vampires Blade is up against. Watching this, it’s easy to see why David S. Goyer became the go-to for spookier Marvel fare.
1. Werewolf by Night (2022)
Director: Michael Giacchino
Writers: Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron
Where To Watch: Disney+
Longtime MCU composer Michael Giacchino stepped into the director’s chair for an adaptation of Marvel’s longest-running werewolf character, Jack Russell, and the relative novelty of the Disney+ special format meant he got a good deal of creative freedom while doing it. The result is a glorious explosion of practical effects and Universal Monsters weirdness, all shot in dazzling black and white.
The thing that makes Werewolf by Night Marvel’s best horror adaptation is just how much it loves being a horror film. So many of these films touch on horror as a concept but struggle to fully commit to it. Here, superheroes and scares go hand in hand. That Marvel Studios has yet to continue with the characters introduced here is one of the MCU’s biggest fumbles yet.
Marvel has varied in its horror publishing over the years, but it’s shown a recent commitment to the genre with the launch of the horror-themed Midnight Universe. Only time will tell if this translates into more movies, but if it does, tradition dictates that at least a third will feature David S. Goyer’s contributions.
