80+ Best (and worst) Horror Movies of 2024 So Far, Ranked
The best (and the rest) of horror cinema in 2024. Each movie is ranked and briefly reviewed, with links to extended reviews included when available.
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Table of Contents
We’re halfway through 2024, and there have already been many good horror movies, a few great ones, and some that aren’t as entertaining. But every movie has the potential for greatness (or at least goodness). So instead of ranking only the best horror movies of the year, we like to rank everything that we see. From the best to the worst.
There are still plenty of highly anticipated horror films yet to come in 2024: Trap, Terrifier 3, Cuckoo, Alien: Romulus, Nosferatu. The list goes on and on. Therefore, you should expect this list to grow and change regularly throughout the entirety of 2024. Our Best of 2023 list grew to over 100 movies, and you can expect this year’s to be even bigger.
As always, what we consider to be a “new” horror movie for inclusion in this ranking is any film given its first wide release in North America sometime during 2024. The release can be in theaters, streaming, or physical media, but it must be a release that most people reasonably have a chance to see. That means you might see a few international movies listed that were released prior to 2024 in other countries, and there are movies here that were given film festival screenings or limited theatrical releases prior to 2024. But those movies weren’t released widely in North America until 2024.
The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2024 (so far)
1. Longlegs
If you like horror that is filled with creeping dread, then Longlegs should be at the top of your list for 2024. Maika Monroe stars in Longlegs as FBI Agent Lee Harker. After Harker’s unusually accurate intuitive abilities are recognized by her superiors, she is put on a decades-old unsolved case involving a string of murder-suicides with an unsettling connection. As Harker gets closer to solving the case, the mysterious person behind the deaths gets closer to her. The horror in Longlegs stems from a sense of overwhelming dread that begins with Maika Monroe’s uncomfortably tense performance, and ends with a finale that feels excruciatingly inevitable. The stark imagery and the unforgettable appearance of Nicolas Cage as the mysterious Longlegs further heightens the dark effect of this bleak horror film.
2. I Saw the TV Glow
I Saw the TV Glow works on many different frequencies, some of which the viewer might never have known they could hear and feel. The film begins in 1996, and it follows the life of Owen from adolescence to adulthood. Owen feels out of touch with himself, but while in high school, he finds a connection with his schoolmate Maddy and their shared obsession with a TV show titled The Pink Opaque. What this connection means to both of them, and how they both react to it over the course of their lives, is what I Saw the TV Glow explores in a beautiful and devastating way. This is the type of film that won’t work for everyone, but for those it touches, it can be a profound experience that will stick with them for a very long time.
3. Infested
Infested delivers pure, skin-crawling adrenaline. It follows Kaleb (Théo Christine) and a small group of his family, friends, and neighbors as they try to survive and escape when their rundown apartment building is overrun with large, vicious, and rapidly-reproducing spiders. The film is claustrophobic even if you’re not prone to being nervous in tight spaces, it’ll get under your skin even if you’re not an arachnophobe, and it even has some good character development to make you care about the characters who are in tight spaces with more spiders than they can count. Also, the movie looks great, with impactful camera movements, fittingly distressed locations, and great uses of light and darkness.
4. Stopmotion
Stop-motion animation is already creepy in the most calming of settings. Put it in a horror movie, especially in a horror movie where the stop motion is combined with live action, and you have the makings of a visually enthralling and totally unsettling film. Stopmotion is a psychological horror movie about Ella (Aisling Franciosi), a stop-motion animator who, after working for her filmmaking mother for years, is attempting to create her own short animated film for the first time in her life. Ella struggles with self confidence and her creative side, and when inspiration comes to her in the form of a young girl living in the same apartment building, Ella’s work begins to take over her life and mind.
5. Exhuma
Exhuma is a South Korean mixture of many different subgenres of horror. It begins with a supernatural curse that is affecting a wealthy family. A shaman and her partner enlist the help of a mortician and a geomancer to try to get rid of the curse, but when they exhume the remains of one of the family’s ancestors, they may be doing more harm than good. Before Exhuma is over, viewers will experience curses, folk horror, possessions, monsters, and more. It’s quite the journey, and it’s a fantastically good horror movie.
6. The Devil’s Bath
The Devil’s Bath instills a sense of profound sadness in its viewers. Set in Austria during the 1700s, the story follows Agnes, a deeply religious woman who, at the beginning of the film, is newly married and full of hope. But Agnes has a difficult time adjusting to the new way of life that is expected—even demanded—of her, and the toll weighs heavier and heavier on her mind, body, and soul as the days pass by. The Devil’s Bath inches along at a methodical pace that grows to a palpable sense of dread before its devastating finale. It is a beautiful and affecting film that delves deep into psychological and societal horror.
7. MaXXXine
The best part about Ti West’s “X” trilogy—consisting of X (2022), Pearl (2022), and MaXXXine (2024)—is that each movie provides something completely different. X is a gory slasher, Pearl is Psycho meets The Wizard of Oz, and MaXXXine is an homage to Brian De Palma’s giallo-inspired thrillers. MaXXXine does a great job of creating a seedy atmosphere based on a certain perception of the darker side of Hollywood in the 1980s. It also takes its Hollywood setting to heart, creating a story that is bigger and arguably more outlandish than the previous films in the series.
8. Immaculate
Immaculate is an insidious horror movie. It starts off perfectly fine, though it is somewhat similar to other religious thriller and horror movies of the past, such as Deliver Us which was released late last year. But at a certain point early in Immaculate, you can tell it’s something special. The visual style is superb, and Sydney Sweeney is fantastic as Cecilia, an American nun who has just taken her vows in an Italian convent where she finds herself inexplicably pregnant. Immaculate draws on the history of nunsploitation and even more general religious-themed horror movies, but that’s not a bad thing. Immaculate is beautiful, unsettling, and has a finale that is going to be hard to beat this year.
9. Frogman
It can be difficult for a found-footage movie to be made so that it appears truly authentic. Frogman excels in its authenticity, and it does so in a highly entertaining fashion. The story is about a struggling filmmaker named Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk) who decides to make a documentary about a cryptid known as the Frogman of Loveland, Ohio. Dallas saw the Frogman when he was young, but nobody believes him. So, he travels to Ohio with two friends and, using the same camera he had when he first saw the Frogman, they go about making their documentary. The structure is a lot like The Blair Witch Project (1999) in how it starts with lots of talking and interviews before venturing into the woods for some scares. It’s a classic formula that works extremely well here, and the climax of the film is a ton of fun.
10. Double Blind
Double Blind is a tense thriller that builds up to a psychological horror finale. It is about a double-blind drug trial taking place in a completely isolated underground facility. The volunteers don’t know what the drug does, but they all submit to the trial for various reasons (mostly for the money they’ll receive). The effects of the drug turn deadly when the volunteers realize they will die if they fall asleep. Double Blind doesn’t take too many big risks with its storytelling, it just does everything exceedingly well. The sterile look of the production design supports the themes, the visual metaphors are clear and unobtrusive, the cast is engaging, and the suspense is tight and effective.
2024 Horror Movies Ranked 11-50
11. The First Omen
Most of the time, a prequel struggles to tell a story that makes it truly meaningful when placed next to the movies that came before it (but take place after it). So, since we know basically where any prequel to The Omen (1976) is going to end (with the birth of the Antichrist), the movie needed to be really good for it to have a true impact. Thankfully, The First Omen is really good. The story follows Margaret, a novitiate in a Catholic orphanage in Italy during 1971. Margaret begins to develop bad feelings about her new home, and she is drawn into a conspiracy that could lead to, well, the birth of the Antichrist. The film is surprisingly engaging thanks to a great cast and a wonderful attention to detail. It does stray into the area of sequel baiting from time to time, and some of its references to the other Omen movies teeter on the edge of drawing too much attention to themselves, but the core of The First Omen is very well done.
12. A Quiet Place: Day One
A Quiet Place: Day One takes chances by being quite different from the previous two movies in the franchise, but the foundation of what makes the A Quiet Place movies good—a strong focus on character—is still there. Sam is a terminally ill cancer patient living in hospice beyond her life expectancy. While taking a trip into New York City, meteors burn through the sky, bringing with them countless alien creatures who hunt by sound. While most of New York tries to find ways to survive, Sam and her cat companion Frodo go on a different kind of journey, meeting another lost soul along the way.
13. Lisa Frankenstein
Zelda Williams (the director), Diablo Cody (the writer), and Kathryn Newton (the star) should collaborate more often. Lisa Frankenstein is a cute horror comedy that emulates movies like Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) in a loving way. Though it doesn’t quite live up to those classics, Lisa Frankenstein still manages to elicit laughs and a few dark surprises in its tale of an outcast in 1989, Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), who is surprised to find that a young man who died in 1837 has risen from the grave due to fate and a critical misunderstanding of a wish Lisa makes.
14. Abigail
What is there to say? Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett simply know how to make fun horror movies. The first part of Abigail plays out like a crime thriller as we watch the kidnapping of 12-year-old Abigail and get to know the culprits, their personalities, and their growing distrust for the job and each other. Then, in a twist not so dissimilar from the switch in From Dusk till Dawn (1996), a crime movie becomes a vampire movie. Abigail the vampire attacks her kidnappers, and it’s a cat-and-mouse style bloodbath. A good cast, suitable writing, and amusing chases make Abigail a pleasure to watch.
15. Blackout
Blackout is a modernized tribute to classic monster movies, specifically Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, but it’s not a remake of any of those Universal films. Instead, Blackout takes the idea of those movies being products of their time while portraying the monster (at least, the monster’s human side) in a sympathetic way. Blackout is about a painter, Charley (Alex Hurt), who knows he is a werewolf and is responsible for the unexplained deaths in the small town of Talbot Falls. Charley has a way to deal with his curse, but before he does he wants to make a lasting positive impact by taking down the racist, manipulative businessman who has bullied his way into a leadership role in the town.
16. Late Night with the Devil
Late Night with the Devil begins as a pseudo-documentary detailing talk show host Jack Delroy’s career, and the rise and decline of his show Night Owls. The movie then transitions into a found-footage style presentation of a recently discovered episode of Night Owls that “shocked the nation” when it aired live on Halloween night in 1977, a night in which Jack plans to showcase guests with connections to the supernatural. Sticklers who want their found footage to feel authentic might be irked by some scenes (and not only in the last twenty minutes), some of the early exposition hints at too much, and the final sequence isn’t going to work for everyone. Regardless, there’s more good than less-good in Late Night with the Devil, making it an enthralling and imaginative crowd-pleaser.
17. Faceless After Dark
Bowie (Jenna Kanell) starred in a movie about a killer clown, but now her career is at a standstill. Auditions aren’t leading to new roles, and the most money she’s earning comes from selling photos and autographs at horror conventions. Bowie has her fans, but some of those “fans” take their love of that clown movie too far. On a particularly rough night of self-reflection, a stalker breaks into Bowie’s home, but that’s just the beginning. Faceless After Dark takes a spectacularly unexpected turn, becoming a story filled with dark humor, meta commentary, and twisted violence. Jenna Kanell is exceptional in Faceless After Dark in a role that fans of hers will love, and anyone who isn’t familiar with her role in a particularly famous killer-clown movie will still find this film incredibly appealing.
18. Handling the Undead
Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), Handling the Undead is a somber movie that approaches a zombie uprising in a very different way than you might expect. The film is a drama first and foremost, and it uses a measured pace to tell the stories of three families affected by their loved ones regaining some semblance of life after death. Handling the Undead is a movie all about mood and emotion, and if you can let yourself be carried by its slower pace, then it can be a profound experience about grief and loss.
19. Destroy All Neighbors
Destroy All Neighbors is a loud, weird, and cacophonous horror comedy about a hapless musician who can’t stop accidentally killing his neighbors. Jonah Ray Rodrigues (Mystery Science Theater 3000) stars as William, an underachieving prog-rock musician who has been working on his first album for years. Vlad (Alex Winter under a ton of prosthetic makeup) moves into the apartment next to William’s, and the two get into an altercation that starts William down a path of accidental murder, desperation, and, oddly, inspiration. If you like strange and slightly surreal films that are akin to an assault on your senses (but in a good way), Destroy All Neighbors might be for you.
20. Somewhere Quiet
Somewhere Quiet is, as its name would suggest, a very quiet style of psychological thriller. Jennifer Kim stars as Meg, a woman who is trying to resume some semblance of her previous life after escaping from being abducted for six months and presumed dead. Meg travels with her husband Scott (Kentucker Audley) to his family’s isolated house in the woods where they are joined unexpectedly by Scott’s cousin Madeline (Marin Ireland). Meg’s struggles to find normalcy are exacerbated by Scott and Madeline’s increasingly odd behavior, but is it real, or is it all in Meg’s head? Somewhere Quiet is agonizingly tense throughout, and its way of handling the psychological aspects of the film in a way that encloses viewers completely in Meg’s perspective is fantastic.
21. Lowlifes
Lowlifes is a nice surprise. It’s a Tubi Original that, judging by the trailer, appears to be a somewhat typical backwoods cannibal movie. That’s partially a true statement, but the first act of Lowlifes sets something up that makes everything that follows even more enjoyable than you might expect. It also does a really good job of building interesting characters, some of whom you’ll pull for to survive, and some you’ll really want to see get taken out. It’s all very well done.
22. Night Shift
Night Shift is a blending of genres, and it uses the varying expectations of those genres to propel its central mystery. The story follows Gwen (Phoebe Tonkin) as she, alone, works her first night shift at a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere. As we get to know Gwen, it’s clear she is on the run from someone, and her night gets worse when she’s told that the motel she’s working at is haunted. It sounds like it could be a lot, and it is, but it all comes together to tell a satisfyingly twisty story that leans on psychological horror more as the plot unfolds.
23. Wild Eyed and Wicked
The strength of Wild Eyed and Wicked is in its characters. The story is about a woman, Lily, who visits her estranged father, Gregory, when he calls to tell her that he’s finally going to get rid of her mother’s things after her death twenty years ago. When Lily was young, she watched as her mother died, and the memory has haunted her, and adversely affected her life, ever since. Now, Lily tries to come to terms with her grief and the resentment she holds for her father, while also unraveling a mystery involving her mother and an ancient curse. The film contains many very clear metaphors through the use of medieval fantasy imagery which culminates in cathartic action, and the reason it all works is thanks to the movie’s realistic, interesting, and well-rounded characters.
24. Here for Blood
Here for Blood is goofy fun. Tom O’Bannon (Shawn Roberts) is an independent professional wrestler who volunteers to cover for his girlfriend by babysitting a young girl named Grace (Maya Misaljevic) in her place. The job takes Tom to a secluded house where he ends up fighting for his and Grace’s lives when masked intruders break in. The plot veers in some wild directions after that, but it’s more fun if you let the movie take you where it wants to go. Just know that there is a lot of blood, a good amount of silliness, and a fair amount of watching a pro-wrestler beat people up.
25. Arcadian
Fifteen years after an apocalyptic event, Paul lives with his two sons, Joseph and Thomas, in an isolated farmhouse. Everyone has a strict curfew, because every day they have to secure the house from monsters that only come out at night. But one day, Thomas doesn’t make it back home before dark, and Paul is forced to go looking for him. Arcadian is a good family drama/coming-of-age/apocalypse movie that builds to some very tense and exciting scenes towards the end. The monsters, when we finally see them, are particularly interesting, and are probably the best part of the movie.
26. In a Violent Nature
What happens when you take a typical backwoods slasher movie and try to show all the stuff you don’t normally see in a slasher movie (e.g. the killer between kills, the time after the final girl escapes, etc.)? You get In a Violent Nature, a movie that plays out like a pseudo-arthouse slasher, and a great example of why most slasher movies aren’t made this way. The film is interesting, and there are a few good and bloody kills, but it doesn’t always commit enough to its proposed nature to be as effective as it could be. Also, the final sequences aren’t great, and they break the precedent set by the rest of the movie in a way that undermines some of its best features. Even with all that said, In a Violent Nature is still really good in many ways, and it’s worth watching for slasher fans.
27. Lumberjack the Monster
Lumberjack the Monster has a lot going on. Some places call it a horror movie and even a revenge film, but even though it’s more of a crime thriller, it’s easy to see why people have a difficult time pinning down exactly what it is. Lumberjack the Monster is about a serial killer, Akira (Kazuya Kamenashi), who is targeted by an ax-wielding killer in a mask. Akira tries to find out who the masked assailant is and why he’s after him, while at the same time dealing with a surprising side-effect of the killer’s initial assault. Meanwhile, a dedicated police detective on the case is getting dangerously close to uncovering Akira’s own murderous activities and his ties to the masked maniac. It’s a lot, but it all comes together well in an entertaining mashup of blood, action, mystery, and drama.
28. Kill Your Lover
Sometimes subtlety isn’t necessary. One of those times is when you’re making a movie in which the central metaphor requires showing a toxic relationship as a literally toxic substance secreting and growing out of the two people involved in that relationship. So, no, Kill Your Lover isn’t subtle. But it is good. Kill Your Lover is a body-horror/breakup movie that stars Paige Gilmour and Shane Quigley-Murphy as lovers who are at the end of a relationship that was doomed to fail from the start. We see them in better times through flashbacks, while in the present we watch as a bizarre sickness envelops them both and drives them toward a direct confrontation.
29. Monolith
Monolith is a cerebral thriller made for fans of slow burns and great acting. Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise) is an unnamed journalist who starts a podcast after her career is derailed by a scandal concerning one of her articles. Her podcast is about strange mysteries, and her dismissive attitude about the stories changes when she starts following the trail of a story about odd artifacts described as black bricks. The mystery might be a little underwhelming or unsatisfying for viewers looking for simple answers, but the questions Monolith raises, and the acting of Lily Sullivan, carry the film very well.
30. The Exorcism
The story in The Exorcism is okay. It’s about an actor, Tony (Russell Crowe), who has a troubled past and a history of addiction. Tony takes a role as a priest and exorcist in a movie, a role that was previously filled by an actor who mysteriously died while rehearsing the part. As production gets underway, Tony seems to be reverting to his old, self-destructive habits, but it might actually be something more sinister (and supernatural). The plot has some odd quirks that aren’t always great, but Russell Crowe’s dedicated performance makes Tony interesting to watch, which makes the whole movie better by default.
31. Founders Day
Founders Day is a fun slasher that feels like an homage to the gimmicky slashers of the 1990s and early 2000s. Despite its premise of a masked killer in a powdered wig going on a murder spree in the days before a heated mayoral election, don’t expect any particularly pithy political satire. Instead, expect some light political posturing to go along with a Scream-like mystery and a few good kills.
32. The Bridge Curse: Ritual
Like the movie that came before it, The Bridge Curse (2020), The Bridge Curse: Ritual asks its viewers to go along with it on a journey that doesn’t always make perfect sense. If you can get into the spirit of it though, it’s a good time. The story is about a group of students developing an augmented reality game. They test the game in their school which is already haunted, and, well, you get the idea. This Taiwanese ghost movie is surprisingly entertaining, though the finale does act like it makes things up as it goes along.
33. Under Paris
When it begins, Under Paris appears as if it will be one of the countless Jaws-a-like shark movies in existence. And for a while, it kind of is. The story follows Sophia (Bérénice Bejo), a Parisian marine biologist who is shaken when she learns that the shark that killed her entire crew a few years ago has taken up residence in the Seine river. Sophia and a group of eco-activists each have different ideas about how to deal with the shark, but the mayor of Paris doesn’t want to hear any of it because she has a big event triathlon coming up that can’t be canceled because of some silly shark in the river! This setup takes a while to unravel, and it’s all very average. Then, about halfway through the movie, Under Paris takes a sharp turn into ridiculous, violent action, and the whole experience becomes a lot of shark-attack fun. It’s kind of a silly movie in the end, and it’s all the better for its silliness.
34. Deer Camp ’86
When a group of friends travel to a remote cabin in the Michigan woods to hunt deer, their personal issues with each other soon become the least of their concerns. After a Native American woman is killed by an unknown assailant, something in the woods wants deadly vengeance, and the hunters are all fair game. Deer Hunter ’86 takes a while to get to the gore, but the humor infused in the characters and their interactions with each other help keep the movie completely entertaining while waiting for the real action to begin.
35. Laced
Laced has a simple and gripping premise: a wife plans to murder her abusive husband, but nothing goes according to plan. The film is set in an isolated cabin during a snowstorm, which keeps the cast small and the tension high as more and more twists and turns pop up throughout the evening. The plot does start to veer off track at times, but all together Laced is a nicely-made thriller.
36. Stupid Games
It was supposed to be a night of dinner, games, and maybe even a little romance. At least, that’s what Jaxon and his two friends think when they are invited to Alyssa and her friends’ apartment. But the evening takes a turn for the sinister when the board game they decide to play gets way too personal, and when supernatural events begin happening all around the players. Stupid Games has a great cast, and its atmosphere makes for a fun time.
37. You’ll Never Find Me
A woman stranded in a storm takes shelter in the mobile home of a man. They don’t know each other, they both have secrets, and they’re stuck together until the storm passes. You’ll Never Find Me is a tense and claustrophobic psychological thriller that progresses at a deliberate pace. The finale might not be worth the buildup for some viewers, but it is engrossing the way the film handles the back-and-forth batting of suspicions between the two characters.
38. Dagr
Dagr begins by introducing viewers to online pranksters/criminals Thea (Ellie Duckles) and Louise (Riz Moritz). In a found-footage format, we watch as the pair record themselves as they plan their greatest heist yet. They’re going to steal from the crew of a commercial being filmed in an isolated mansion, but what they don’t know is that the town the mansion is located in is the home to supernatural happenings. Naturally, Thea and Louise soon discover the danger for themselves. Dagr is really good, and the structure of its plot is something unique and tremendously memorable for found footage.
39. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is satisfactory big-budget franchise filmmaking. It’s entertaining and has its charm, but the writing is just okay most of the time, and the cast—although great—is too big to be able to keep a strong focus on the main plot thread. There is a lot going on, and not all of it is explored well enough, or even conceived well enough. But yeah, it’s totally fine. People say funny things from time to time, the current Ghostbusters team up with the previous Ghostbusters, and there’s a big ice monster.
40. Bag of Lies
Bag of Lies has an odd premise, but once you get into the story and meet the two main characters, it will draw you in. Claire (Brandi Botkin) has cancer at an advanced stage, and her husband Matt (Patrick Taft) can’t bear the thought of losing her. Matt conducts a ritual that involves blood and a large bag with something in it that should not be looked at, touched, or spoken to once the ritual is complete. This leads to a story that is part supernatural horror and part heartfelt drama about a husband and wife who no longer understand where each other is coming from.
41. What You Wish For
Though it is much more of a thriller than a horror movie (which it’s tagged as on certain sites), What You Wish For does deliver effective suspense. The movie is about Ryan, a chef whose career is going nowhere, and who is in serious debt to dangerous people. Ryan visits an old friend from culinary school who is living life as an in-demand chef for rich people with specific tastes. When an opportunity presents itself, jealousy and desperation drive Ryan to take his friend’s place, but he has no idea what is going to be required of him. What follows is a night of tension, danger, lies, and testing just how far Ryan will go to get what he wants. The suspense in What You Wish For is good, but some odd quirks in the writing make the logic and tone of the proceedings a bit unstable, which keeps it from being great.
42. Clickbait: Unfollowed
Clickbait: Unfollowed proves that you should never underestimate a Tubi Original. There is no shortage of movies satirizing/examining social media influencers, and a quick glance at Clickbait: Unfollowed might give you the impression that it’s yet another average horror-comedy about that subject. And, well, it is a horror-comedy about influencers, but it does a lot of things extremely well. It sets up some truly despicable characters you’ll want to see get their comeuppance, it establishes likable characters you’ll want to see prevail, and the central premise of a deadly social media competition is a surprisingly engaging format for the story. It’s comical horror done well.
43. Model House
In Model House, five swimsuit models are staying together in a rented house when two masked intruders break in. The intruders have a cunning (and naive) plan to make money off the models, but things go awry, trust is threatened, and violence takes over. Parts of the second half of Model House don’t work as well as the first half, but it’s still a good recommendation for fans of crime thrillers that are, for the most part, character-driven.
44. The Strangers: Chapter 1
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is essentially a remake of The Strangers (2008). By comparison, the newer movie doesn’t fare well against the original, but on its own The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a pretty good home-invasion film. There are some egregiously foolish character decisions that will prohibit much enjoyment for viewers who get hung up on that kind of thing, but if you can get into the likable main characters’ story, then there are some good horror moments to be had here. Overall it’s a very middle-of-the-road movie that does its job, and it seems to make a promise that what’s to come might be even better.
45. My Bloody Galentine
My Bloody Galentine is kind of like a slasher version of an anti-rom-com. It’s about a naive/innocent American woman who becomes friends with two of her new coworkers in London when they bond over their displeasure with men and romance in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. They plot revenge on their exes, but a killer in a mask is adding to their revenge with murder. My Bloody Galentine is quite silly most of the time, but it’s also really charming.
46. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II
We said that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II would be better than the first Blood and Honey, and it is. By a lot. Pooh and his friends look better, there’s more killing, and the story is greatly improved. Christopher Robin (played by Scott Chambers) drives the story this time as he deals with the effects of the first film and memories of his past when he first became friends with Pooh. The movie does run out of steam by the end, but seeing Pooh and Tigger run wild through a rave is great.
47. Departing Seniors
Departing Seniors is a high-school slasher comedy with a supernatural twist. After Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) is bullied and tumbles down a flight of stairs, a knock on his head unlocks a psychic power. Javier can now see into the past and future of any person he touches. This leads him to the discovery of a killer dispatching his classmates, so Javier and best friend Bianca (Ireon Roach) try to stop the murderer before they strike again. Departing Seniors is light and cute, but the action can be awkward, and the mystery ultimately isn’t very mysterious.
48. Slay
Slay is essentially From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) meets To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), and it’s as fun as that sounds. It is a horror comedy about four drag queens who mistakenly book a show at a dive bar in a remote and (mostly) unwelcoming town, and during their performance vampires arrive to crash the party. Now the queens and the locals are forced to work together as vamps surround the bar while trying to find their way in. The movie might be a bit long at an hour and forty minutes, and some of the jokes are run into the ground by the end, but Slay still provides plenty of laughs with its unabashed campiness.
49. The Camp Host
Brooke Johnson stars as the title character in The Camp Host, and she is a woman who takes her job way too seriously. Sadie (Rachel Colwell) and Ed (Dillon Casey) are living the van life and decide to stop at a scenic campground for the night. They meet the camp host who tells them the rules of her forest, and they realize too late that breaking her rules could very well mean death. This isn’t a straightforward slasher movie though. It turns into something else about halfway through which keeps things interesting even if it does stretch believability pretty far.
50. All You Need is Death
All You Need is Death is a unique blending of folk horror and cosmic horror. It follows a couple, Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher), who travel throughout Ireland looking for rare folk songs to secretly record and sell. It’s a strange premise that gets even stranger when they meet a woman, Rita (Olwen Fouéré), who sings a forbidden song for them that has disastrous effects on their minds (and possibly more). The pacing of All You Need is Death is rather slow, but it tells its story in a way that supports the ideas of musicality and creeping dread.
2024 Horror Movies Ranked 51 and Beyond
51. Prey for the Bride
A weekend getaway for a bachelorette party turns into a bloodbath when a killer in a wolf mask arrives uninvited. Prey for the Bride is a decent slasher movie with a few good twists and some nice slasher kills. The ending sequence is a bit odd and awkward, but the mystery leading up to it is handled well. Without giving too much away, the story involves a secret being kept by one or more members of a bride’s close circle of friends, and it soon becomes clear that the killer knows what that secret is.
52. The Seeding
The Seeding is a gorgeous movie, but it never becomes as dangerous or surprising as it should. The Seeding tells the story of Wyndham Stone (Scott Haze) who becomes trapped in an enclosed canyon when he gets lost in the desert. At the center of the canyon is a dilapidated house where a woman named Alina (Kate Lyn Sheil) lives, and now Scott lives there too. The drama between Wyndham and Alina is set against the fear of the gang of boys who watch from above and keep them trapped.
53. No Way Up
With the sheer number of shark movies that come out every year, how can you possibly make one that stands out? No Way Up does it by putting a shark in an airplane after it crashes into the ocean in exactly the right position so that a tiny group of survivors have a pocket of air. If you enjoy a lot of the lower-budget, lower-profile shark movies that are released with regularity, then you’ll probably enjoy No Way Up as well.
54. Trim Season
Trim Season has some interesting ideas, and it has some striking visuals, but the characters, tone, and story are too uneven to produce great results. The story is about a group of young people who are enticed by the idea of earning a load of money by trimming marijuana for a few weeks. They’re taken to an isolated farm deep in the woods, and soon enough they realize they are now trapped with a trio of dangerous people, including a woman with supernatural powers and sinister plans. The movie struggles to find a fitting tone, vacillating between inarticulately comedic to underwhelmingly scary. The characters are also rather flat, with the most interesting arcs moving forward in sudden leaps that feel expected yet disingenuous. The more horror-forward stuff towards the end is pretty good though.
55. The Watchers
In The Watchers, Mina (Dakota Fanning) becomes hopelessly lost in the woods and is forced to take shelter with three strangers in a small structure. Every night mysterious, potentially deadly creatures known as the “Watchers” approach the structure and watch the four survivors through a one-way mirror. There is an interesting mystery to the story when we, as viewers, don’t know exactly what is happening. But that period of not knowing what is happening lasts way too long, and it only leads to something mildly worth the wait. The Watchers also stretches logical sense too far at times, and the ending is wrapped up in a strangely melodramatic way that feels obvious and odd. In all, it’s too little substance and not enough style to make up for it.
56. Baghead
Baghead begins with an intriguing premise somewhat reminiscent of Talk To Me (2022) in how its horror could be approached. Iris (Freya Allan) inherits her estranged father’s pub, and after arriving there she finds something strange in the basement. A creature, the eponymous Baghead, lives in the walls of the basement with the ability to not only channel the spirits of the dead, but to completely take the dead’s form. The movie is quite creepy and intriguing for the first two thirds, but the story takes a strange, convoluted turn towards the end that leaves a lot of its most interesting drama and character development behind.
57. Blackwater Lane
Blackwater Lane is a psychological thriller that dips into the crime thriller, murder mystery, and even haunted house genres. The mystery at the heart of the action involves a murder in a car on a road, the eponymous Blackwater Lane, during a dark and stormy night. Cass (Mika Kelly) passed by the car on her way home, and now she’s having a myriad of problems. She’s becoming forgetful, she’s seeing and hearing things in her house, and she fears she might be the next victim of the unknown killer. Blackwater Lane attempts to achieve a slightly gothic, “Old Dark House” vibe, but, despite some nice moments, the plot gets too twisty for its own good. To top it off, the resolution has a twist that undermines most of what we’ve seen up to that point, making the whole movie a frustrating experience.
58. Refuge
Refuge has the feeling of a well-made made-for-TV movie. Like an impressive Hallmark Channel movie, but with horror. Refuge is about an American soldier, Rick, who encounters something supernatural while deployed overseas. He comes home with what is thought to be PTSD, but he’s actually possessed by an evil spirit, and his only hope might be the Imam of a local mosque. There are good ideas here, but the delivery of those ideas comes across as melodramatic thanks to the dialogue, and largely superficial thanks to stock characters with little development. It’s not bad, it just feels very slight, especially when considering the heavy topics it attempts to explore.
59. Imaginary
Imaginary stars DeWanda Wise as Jessica, a wife and mother who is doing her best to connect with her two step-daughters. The family moves into the house where Jessica grew up, but Jessica remembers almost nothing about living there as a child. Her youngest step-daughter finds a stuffed bear in the basement, and that begins a series of increasingly dangerous events as the girl begins doing whatever her new imaginary friend tells her. The story of Imaginary isn’t bad, though the execution isn’t always the most exciting or scary.
60. Primbon
After getting lost in the woods and remaining missing for a week, Rana (Flavio Zaviera) is presumed dead by everyone except her mother. Rana unexpectedly returns home, but most people don’t believe it’s Rana who returned. Instead, they think something sinister from the forest that has taken Rana’s form. The first half of Primbon is rather clichéd with its attempts to scare, but the second half of the movie—when the drama starts to really pick up—is actually pretty good.
61. Lovely, Dark, and Deep
Lennon (Georgina Campbell) is on a mission. She lost someone close to her (like, literally lost them in the woods) when she was young, and she’s dedicated herself to a life of service as a national park ranger as a means to continue searching locations where many people have gone missing over the years. After years of work, she’s finally gotten a position in the backcountry, and she might finally be on the verge of discovery, but her own trauma combined with the mysterious forces in the forest send Lennon into a mind-bending nightmare. Lovely Dark and Deep is a psychological horror movie that means well, but it spends way too much time wandering around lost in its mysteries to produce anything particularly meaningful or engaging. Before we get to any big revelations, many viewers will have lost interest.
62. Ship of the Damned
If you can manage your expectations, Ship of the Damned is pretty good. Four hundred years ago, the crew of a pirate ship cannibalized a witch, and they were cursed to sail the seas forever. Now, in modern times, the ship is found, and two people are taken prisoner by the undead pirates. It’s a fun premise, and the lead actors make the whole scenario worth watching. Just don’t expect much in the way of sets, oceans, horror, graphic cannibalism, or even the outside of the pirate ship. This movie was made with a tiny budget, but they made the best of it with fun characters.
63. Night Swim
If you think a movie about a haunted swimming pool would be hard to pull off, then Night Swim proves you right. Despite a good cast led by Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon, Night Swim is just okay. It does have a few good scenes and creepy moments, but they all add up to something very average.
64. ROMI
ROMI is a smart-home thriller with supernatural elements, potential stalker vibes, and family drama. It’s a lot, and it doesn’t always mesh well, but it’s intriguing more often than not. The story is about a young woman, Maddie (Alexa Baraja), who runs afoul of the artificial intelligence installed in the house she is temporarily staying in. Maddie has serious troubles with her mother, the AI won’t listen to her half the time, and the technician who installed the system is getting a bit too friendly. Plus there might be a ghost in the machine.
65. Sunrise
Guy Pearce costars in Sunrise as the film’s outrageously infuriating villain, and he is the best reason to watch the movie. The plot involves a mysterious man named Fallon (Alex Pettyfer) who wanders into town and winds up staying with a single-parent family led by Yan Loi (Crystal Yu). Fallon has dangerous secrets, some of them involving his past enemies, and some of them involving exactly who (or what) he is. There are good ideas in Sunrise, but it is slow to get where it’s going, and it disappointingly falls apart towards the end.
66. History of Evil
In a near future where America is overtaken by extremist ideology, a family of three is on the run as terrorists and fugitives. Accompanied by a member of the resistance, the family stays at an old house in the woods until a rescue team can pick them up. Why do they think the house is safe from the prying eyes of the enemy? Because the house is said to be haunted. History of Evil is kind of like The Shining (1980) in how the house affects the family (specifically the father), but it’s nowhere near as good. It’s like History of Evil can’t decide what to focus on—the horror, the politics, or the family drama—so it waters down all three. It also fails to realize what the most tense part of the movie is, getting rid of it prior to the actual finale.
67. Last Night at Terrace Lanes
Last Night at Terrace Lanes is a horror comedy that feels almost disjointed in its switch from the drama and horror buildup in the beginning, to the weird comedy and nonsensical plot points towards the end. The story is about a young woman, her father, and her friend/crush who try to survive the night when members of a cult invade a bowling alley. There are some fun gore effects, and the movie is fine overall. There’s just too much squandered potential.
68. Festival of the Living Dead
Festival of the Living Dead is set 55 years after the events of Night of the Living Dead (1968). Ash (Ashley Moore), the daughter of Ben from George Romero’s original movie, attends a music festival with her douchey boyfriend and his friends. Then a zombie outbreak occurs. The result is an okay action-horror movie that would have been much better (but still only okay) if it hadn’t tried to associate itself with one of the classics of the zombie genre.
69. Cold Blows the Wind
Cold Blows the Wind begins as a thriller about a couple who have accidentally hit a jogger with their car, put the jogger’s body in their trunk, and are now spending their night trying to figure out how to cover up the incident. The horror of the movie gradually enters the story in the form of a mysterious and spooky woman who knocks on the couple’s door in the middle of the night. Cold Blows the Wind looks good and has an interesting premise, but the way the story is told comes across as a little too vague and meandering to keep its hooks in you.
70. Cinderella’s Revenge
Cinderella’s Revenge delivers exactly what you’d expect. It’s a low-budget version of the classic Cinderella story, but the glass-slipper-wearing heroine gets really angry and starts killing people. Cinderella is helped out (i.e. encouraged to kill) by her fairy godmother who has a weirdly detached air about her, and who has a portal to the modern world where she can pull out famous people and cars. It’s very weird. Cinderella’s Revenge is a horror-revenge-comedy that only sort-of works some of the time.
71. The Hangman
The Hangman isn’t what you might expect. From the trailers and even the marketing artwork, it looks like a monster movie. What it really is, is a crime thriller about a man, Leon, who is searching for his missing son in an unfamiliar rural area where criminals run the town. The criminals are involved in a cult, and that’s where The Hangman comes in, but the movie takes a long time to get there. And when it does get there, it’s underwhelming. However, LeJon Woods, who plays Leon, is super-fun to watch, and he’s easily the best part of the movie.
72. Tarot
Tarot is about a group of friends who each find themselves cursed to die after having their horoscopes read told using an old deck of tarot cards. Each friend is targeted by a monster resembling the being pictured on the final tarot card drawn for them. The monsters in Tarot look great and creepy, but unfortunately the monsters are the best part of the movie. The story and plot feel like a cross between Final Destination (2000) and Ouija (2014), with the quality skewing way close to the latter.
73. This Never Happened
The setup of This Never Happened is good. A woman travels to the childhood home of her boyfriend. She discovers he’s really rich, and over the course of a night she also discovers he and his friends have a dark past that has been waiting to get revenge. So, This Never Happened is a ghostly revenge movie, and in the first half it’s not bad. Then, when the killing starts and more supernatural events occur, it’s not so good. Effects are distractingly bad at times, character actions and reactions get ridiculous, and the big reveal at the end is just okay.
74. Punch
Punch is a slasher set in a small seaside town in England featuring a killer wearing a mask inspired by the Mr. Punch character from the puppet show “Punch and Judy.” Frankie (Alina Allison) is back in her hometown for a few days before returning to university, and as she reconnects with a few estranged friends, the Punch-masked killer appears to be murdering his way towards her. Punch is a decent slasher, but the pace slows down at times, and it ends up coming across as a little flat overall.
75. Project Dorothy
Project Dorothy is a sci-fi/crime thriller that follows two criminals who hide from pursuing police in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse, but is really a scientific facility that houses a dangerous artificial intelligence. The idea is good, but the execution struggles to provide much sympathy for the humans, or much tension between the humans and the machines (which mostly consist of AI-controlled killer forklifts).
76. Séance Games – Metaxu
Séance Games – Metaxu has some interesting ideas, but its mixture of haunted house, vengeful spirits, streaming influencers, relationship drama, and online “games” is a bit too much for it to handle. The basic plot is about four aspiring social media influencers who take part in a game/challenge to stream from the scariest places they can find. They decide to perform two séances over two nights at an old house in the middle of nowhere. The séance conjures something real, secrets are revealed, and people start dying in what is an unnecessarily convoluted supernatural horror film.
77. Horny Teenagers Must Die!
Billed as an homage to slashers from the 1980s, Horny Teenagers Must Die is a valiant attempt at a slasher comedy that is unfortunately underdeveloped in most ways. It is eye-rolling in a way that might connect with people who love bad movies, but otherwise it’s really awkward a lot of the time.
78. Byte
Byte appears to be one of those movies that started with a clever(ish) title, then the script was written to somehow make sense of that title. Byte is a movie about a mobile app that turns people into werewolves. A guy performs the ritual required by the app, he turns into a werewolf, and his friends try to figure out how to save him. The movie is silly enough to be funny, but it’s also dumb enough to be, well, just dumb.
79. Witches’ Well
Witches’ Well tells a story about an author, Leona Chantraine, who is writing a book about witch trials in Scotland. Through found footage, we watch as Leona—who is a skeptic about the supernatural—endures a potential haunting while a stalker watches her every move. Unfortunately, found footage probably wasn’t the best choice for this story. The hidden cameras spread throughout Leona’s apartment significantly reduce the tension and drama of certain scenes, and the stalker’s camera is only effectively creepy in a few brief moments. There’s also not enough story to fill up the already brief one-hour run time.
80. Alice in Terrorland
Alice (Lizzy Willis) is orphaned when her parents die in a fire, so she moves in with her grandmother Beth. Beth claims that her house is where Lewis Carroll used to live, and when Alice becomes gravely ill, she begins having nightmares about twisted versions of characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The movie never takes full advantage of its whimsical source material, instead opting to be a psychological thriller with a mystery that becomes tedious when it becomes very obvious what is happening early in the proceedings.
81. Snow Valley
In Snow Valley, Laura (Rachel Michiko Whitney) learns a lot of things she didn’t know about her boyfriend Heath (Cooper van Grootel) when they spend a weekend at Heath’s family ski chalet. There’s also the matter that the land might be cursed, and that Laura senses a strange presence in the lodge. Snow Valley feels unfinished in a lot of ways, and it takes some very abrupt transitions from tepid thriller, to bizarre comedy, to tacked-on horror.
82. Inverted
Inverted sounds interesting. It’s a retro-styled movie made to look like a 1970s Satanic-cult-inspired exploitation film. In some ways it accomplishes that goal, but not all of those movies are very good. Inverted feels stiff and awkward a lot of the time. It’s also quite repetitive, with its story involving cult members “testing” a small group of potential members/victims in gruesome ways.
83. Insane Like Me?
Jake, a combat veteran, is wrongly accused of killing his girlfriend—who is missing after an attack by vampires—and sent away to a mental asylum. Years later, he returns to his hometown with a mission: to kill vampires and find his girlfriend. It’s a fine pitch for an action-horror movie, but the execution of that premise in Insane Like Me lacks in almost every way.
84. They Turned Us Into Killers
They Turned Us Into Killers is like watching three or four different movies thrown into a blender and dumped onto the screen. The plot is amazingly convoluted which keeps viewers at a safe distance from coming close to anything like tension, excitement, or coherence. The basic idea is about revenge, but trying to explain the full story is pointless. It’s frustrating to watch, and all the detours lead to nowhere in particular.
85. Shadows Side
Shadows Side is bad. It’s Birdemic levels of bad. It follows Sophie as she travels to Brazil with her fiance Cal for a romantic getaway. Cal is originally from Brazil, and the house they’re renting used to belong to his parents. Almost immediately, Sophie starts to have creepy experiences, and soon she is left alone in the house while enduring a wide variety of supernatural happenings. The movie is awkward and awful to the point of humor, if that’s your thing.
Further Reading
- Best Horror Movies of 2023
- Best Horror Movies of 2022
- Best Horror Movies of 2021
- New and Upcoming Horror Movies
- 12 Underrated 2023 Horror Movie Gems That Deserve to be Seen by More People
- 9+ Top Scream Queens of 2023
