Best Horror Movies on Netflix Right Now (May 2023)

Netflix streams over 3,000 movies at any given moment. The movies change daily. So keeping track of all the best horror and scary movies on Netflix in 2023 can be a chore.

This list though is designed to help you quickly find all the best horror movies on Netflix. It’s updated constantly to ensure every movie is actually still on Netflix. If you’re looking for a good scary movie on Netflix, this is the best place to start.

Also check out our quick guide to the top twelve horror/thriller movies you should be watching in May 2023 on Netflix: 12 Best Horror Movies on Netflix for May 2023

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

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Of the teen horror movies that came out in the late 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer is one of the most fun. Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as final girl Julie James, this slasher movie is about a group of estranged friends whose past comes back to haunt them. Or rather, it’s come back to hunt them down one by one. I Know What You Did Last Summer was written by Kevin Williamson years before Scream (which he also wrote) became a hit, and it was the first of multiple projects he became involved in after the success of Scream.

Resident Evil (2002)

Though video-game purists may grumble about this adaptation of the ground-breaking 1996 game from Capcom, Resident Evil (2002) is a lot of fun. It’s campy while taking itself mostly seriously, there are a bunch of great zombies and various other monsters, and Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez are awesome action/horror stars. The rest of this series from director Paul W.S. Anderson (who wrote all six movies and directed four of them) is uneven at best, but this first entry is quality.

Based on Stephen King’s novella of the same name, The Mist is a standout of late-2000s horror movies. Thomas Jane leads a stellar cast as a father who becomes trapped inside a supermarket when a monster-filled mist rolls into town.

Creep (2014) is a strange and darkly humorous found-footage movie about a man, Aaron (Patrick Brice), who answers an ad offering $1000 for a day of “filming services.” The ad was put out by Josef (Mark Duplass), a man who requests that Aaron spend the day recording him as a video diary for his unborn child. Josef claims he has a brain tumor that will kill him soon, but his strange and erratic behavior makes Aaron believe there is something else going on. Creep is a quirky horror film perfect for when you’re in the mood for something very, very different.

It Follows (2014) is a wonderfully atmospheric horror film that at times feels like a monster movie, but at other times really emphasizes psychological terror. Maika Monroe stars as Jay, a young woman who inherits a curse after having sex with her boyfriend for the first time. Jay is stalked by a slow-moving yet completely relentless entity that can take the form of any person, though only Jay can see it. It Follows is not only a beautifully crafted horror film filled with dread, it also contains more than a few tremendous jump scares.

Before Host (2020), Unfriended was the standard bearer for screenlife horror. In Unfriended, a group of friends in a video chat are unnerved by the presence of a chat intruder who is using the account of a dead classmate. Tensions flare and secrets are uncovered as the conversation, shown completely through a computer screen, becomes supernaturally deadly.

Crimson Peak (2015) is a dark and gorgeous story of a tragic romance. Mia Wasikowska stars as Edith Cushing, an author who marries an inventor named Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). Edith moves into the Sharpe family mansion which is also home to Thomas’s conniving sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain). What follows is a classically-told ghost story involving secrets, betrayal, and, of course, the supernatural brought to life by one of the masters of visual storytelling, Guillermo del Toro.

Verónica is a Spanish film about a teenage girl who becomes possessed after using a Ouija board with two of her classmates. In the days after trying to contact her deceased father, Verónica (Sandra Escacena) is seemingly the focal point of an increasing amount of supernatural activity. Part haunted house movie and part demonic possession story, Verónica feels familiar in many ways, but it is still a highly effective horror movie. Verónica is so effective and scary that some people reported that they couldn’t even finish it.

Cam is a psychological thriller about a camgirl, Alice (Madeline Brewer), whose identity is stolen by woman who looks and acts exactly like her. Is this an extremely convincing case of identity theft, or is there something else going on? Cam is tense and creepy, and it is a great first feature from director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei.

#Alive is one of the high-quality South Korean zombie movies that popped up in the large wake of Train to Busan (2016). In #Alive, a young man named Joon-woo (Yoo Ah-in) is trapped alone in his family’s apartment as a zombie apocalypse rages outside. The movie follows Joon-woo’s struggle for survival as his supplies diminish and his mental state deteriorates until he is forced to either do something or die alone.

Fear Street is trilogy of super-fun horror films that combine to tell one large story. The first movie is set in 1994 and feels like a teen slasher movie reminiscent of Scream (1996). The second film is largely told in flashbacks to 1978 and is made as an homage to campground slasher movies like Friday the 13th (1980). And finally, the final part of the trilogy flashes back to 1666 to tell a story of a witch hunt with a strong resemblance to The Crucible (1996).

Incantation is a found-footage movie about a mother who is cursed after taking part in the desecration of a religious ritual while she was pregnant. Six years later, the mother is plagued by supernatural events that threaten her daughter’s safety. The movie has been touted as one of the most terrifying movies to come out of Taiwan, and it is at least partially inspired by true events. It may also be the scariest movie currently streaming on Netflix.

The Pale Blue Eye is a murder mystery with a gothic-horror twist. After a West Point cadet is found hanged and with his heart cut out, a retired detective by the name of Augustus Landor is hired to find the killer. During his investigation, Landor grows closer to the truth after enlisting the aid of another cadet, Edgar Allen Poe. Most of The Pale Blue Eye plays out as a dark mystery with occasional allusions to Poe’s writings, but by the end of the film we discover the heartbreaking horrors that led to the original crime.