18 Best Horror Releases on Netflix
Dead Boy Detectives
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Ah! My Goddess, Amazing Stories, American Horror Story, Angel, Arrow, Baywatch Nights, Birds of Prey, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dante's Cove, Dinner Mate, Erased, Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, GARO, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,
Sherlock Holmes Sonic the Hedgehog, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, Suicide Squad ISEKAI, Tales from the Crypt, The Avengers: United They Stand, The Boys, The Fantastic Four, The Flash, The Incredible Hulk, The Umbrella Academy, X-Men: Evolution,
Dead Boy Detectives is, by its nature, a strange beast. Both a spinoff of MAX’s now-finished Doom Patrol series and Netflix’s own Sandman, it began as a sort of backdoor pilot two and a half years ago in the third episode of Doom Patrol Season 3. However, this series tossed the actors portraying the Boys and their living friend Crystal for an entirely different trio of performers. Now George Rextrew plays Edwin, the uptight turn-of-the-century boy. Jayden Revri steps into the jacket of Edwin's late 80s punk adjacent partner Charles. Finally, Kassius Nelson portrays their modern and still of this mortal plane third wheel, teen medium Crystal Palace.
Soon after meeting and freeing Crystal from the clutches of a demon named David (David Iacono), the boys take her in, although Edwin is less than thrilled at the idea. Missing large chunks of her memory, she is anxious to throw herself into the boys’ work investigating cases for and about ghosts, usually in the name of sending them off to the Great Beyond. Their first case as a trio takes them away from their English home to Port Townsend, WA. Unfortunately, even after they close the case, forces conspire to keep the three stuck in the town. With only time to waste, they decide to make the best of it by solving the problems of Townsend’s surprisingly bustling phantom population.
Kassius Nelson accesses those spooky-ooky powers. (Netflix)
This kind of “neither here nor there” of the show’s beginning and the characters’ “house arrest” soon reveals itself as a kind of meta reflection of the series itself. Steve Yockey, the writer of that backdoor pilot episode and the creator of this series, clearly has enthusiasm and love for the concept and the characters. The central relationship between the spectral friends has a striking sweetness without being cloying. The two's connection never feels in doubt, even as they bicker or revelations of unrequited sexual attraction come to light. The scripting deftly avoids needless "can their friendship survive" melodrama or after-school special syrupiness. It doesn’t hurt that, despite the roster change, Rexstrew and Revri wear the roles like comfortable clothes. They give Edwin and Charles a casual depth that extends behind their simple archetypes. Continue Reading →
Meg 2: The Trench
Ever since James Cameron boldly wrote “S” after ALIEN on a chalkboard and then changed it to a dollar sign, the quickest way to sequel-ize your killer extraterrestrial/reptile/mammal/whatever has been to add more of it. You scored a hit with people fighting one giant mosquito? Great, here’s a sequel with six of them. Continue Reading →
Bird Box Barcelona
SimilarA Christmas Carol (1938), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Die Hard (1988), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016),
Jackie Brown (1997) Live and Let Die (1973) Mystic River (2003),
Rebecca (1940) Shaft (2000) The 39 Steps (1935), The Handmaid's Tale (1990),
The Name of the Rose (1986) The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Road (2009), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Wild at Heart (1990),
Okay, fine, Bird Box Barcelona isn’t exactly a sequel. It’s more of a continuation, as Netflix gets a belated start on making a franchise out of 2018’s Bird Box, a perfectly fine but unremarkable film that inexplicably became a smash hit. Smash or not, five years is a long time, so you might need a refresher course. Much of Earth’s population has been decimated by malevolent beings with visages so emotionally overwhelming that anyone who looks at them immediately commits suicide, and the survivors are forced to navigate what’s left of the world with their eyes covered, lest they see whatever “they” are. That’s really all you need to remember. Continue Reading →
The Purge: Election Year
SimilarDie Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Live Free or Die Hard (2007), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Superman Returns (2006), Twelve Monkeys (1995), War of the Worlds (2005),
When The Purge film series began, it attempted to create a heightened, ultraviolent version of the future that was both laughably over-the-top and an accurate reflection of the current political climes. They created a dystopia that was vaguely familiar but could still leave you rolling your eyes at its implausibility. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the concept is as follows: On one night each year, the US government legalizes all crime, including murder, in the hopes of providing an outlet for Americans’ rage. It ultimately leads to an overall decrease in crime and an (ostensibly) utopian society. Continue Reading →
White Noise
What makes a novel “unfilmable”? Often, it’s because it’s simply too large in scope and scale, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which depicts the lives of seven generations of the same family. Or, as with Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, it’s too dense and labyrinthian. The more successful attempts, such as Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman, have been filmed in multiple parts, while failures like 2017’s The Dark Tower condense the story down to its most basic components, checking off the most salient points (“there was a tower, it was dark”) and nothing more. Continue Reading →
The Pale Blue Eye
Scott Cooper’s sense of place and his sense of dread go hand in hand. He was born in Abingdon, Virginia, a city with a population under 10,000, and the place’s melancholy struck him like lightning. Every one of his films is concerned with the impossibility of calling somewhere home, and he shows that even places meant to hold promise are forbidding and corrupt. From the dying factory town of Out of the Furnace to the blood-soaked frontier in Hostiles to the addiction-ravaged backwoods of Antlers, nothing can make Cooper’s America feel anything but haunted. And that's the case in his latest, The Pale Blue Eye. Continue Reading →
Mr. Harrigan's Phone
SimilarEdward Scissorhands (1990),
StudioBlumhouse Productions,
Stephen King is best known for his massive novels that require weight training just to hold. Entire forest ecosystems have been destroyed so we can have The Stand on our bookshelves. These epic tales are his bread and butter, but if you want to get a pure distillation of what makes King a gifted horror writer and storyteller, check out his short story collections. They provide the strong, grounded characters facing terrifying circumstances that he’s famous for in his longer novels, but in a digestible format. He can be hit or miss (even the best writers may have stinkers when they write an astonishing ten pages a day like King) but if one short story is garbage, chances are the next one will be a fun time. Continue Reading →
Day Shift
SimilarBack to the Future Part III (1990), Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), True Romance (1993),
Watch afterTop Gun: Maverick (2022),
It’s fascinating to watch a movie that could have been made any time within the past 30 years. That’s not the same thing as “timeless,” I’m talking about a movie that just feels like the script lingered in development hell for possibly decades before finally getting made, with only the slightest bit of tweaking to bring it up to date. Netflix’s new horror-comedy Day Shift could have been made in 1996, 2005 or 2012, and the only thing that would need to be changed is the cell phone technology. Like a lot of Netflix’s original content, it’s polished, yet dull, with a budget that doesn’t explain how forgettable it is. Continue Reading →
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Try as they may (as of today we’re up to the ninth film in the series), no other film in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has come close to the original. Oh, a few of them have been entertaining in their own bananas way, like part 2, but no sequel, remake, or origin story can recreate the bleak grittiness of the first film, no matter how many new members of the cannibalistic Sawyer family they add to it. Continue Reading →
Night Teeth
Adam Randall’s Night Teeth, Netflix’s latest foray into vampire mythmaking, finds the streaming giant betting big on name recognition and slick visuals as blood splatters across Los Angeles. Following Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), a broke college student who picks up two vampires on a mission to take over the city, the film leans on its bright, exciting initial energy. It constructs a world in which vampires and humans have coexisted peacefully for decades, giving enough information to intrigue but not enough to answer all necessary questions. Continue Reading →
Nightbooks
SimilarThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005),
As evil witch Natacha (Krysten Ritter) exclaims in Nightbooks, she doesn’t like stories with “happy endings.” While it’s refreshing to have a children’s horror movie that doesn’t coddle the audience, Netflix's latest is hardly the spectacular, spooky adventure it packages itself to be. Instead, it’s more like the off-brand Halloween candy a kid might get trick or treating. It technically passes as a treat, but not one that will leave kids and parents coming back for more. Continue Reading →
Malignant
While we spent a lot of time debating whether or not “elevated horror” is a real thing or just something film snobs made up so they didn’t have to be embarrassed about liking a scary movie, gore fell to the wayside. There was a period when we weren’t getting an acceptable amount of blood and guts, in favor of understated chills and psychological trauma. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but it’s left something lacking in the genre. With Nia DaCosta’s take on Candyman and the upcoming Halloween Kills, however, it looks like old-fashioned look-between-the-fingers horror is back in all its splattery glory. Add to that list James Wan’s Malignant, often very silly, but always with a self-aware wink at the audience, with a body count that will satisfy even the most jaded horror fans. Continue Reading →
Fear Street: 1666
The final installment in the Fear Street trilogy takes things back. Way back. While the first two entries were set in the 1990s and 1970s, Fear Street Part 3: 1666, as the title implies, shifts the backdrop to 1666. Going this far backward allows the audience to discover the true story of Sarah Fier (Elizabeth Scopel), a local woman who was reportedly a witch and still curses the town of Shadyside. However, as you’d expect if you’ve seen anything ranging from ParaNorman to The VVitch, this origin yarn reveals that Fier was a much more complicated figure who was doomed due to society’s innate desire to punish women perceived as “different.” Continue Reading →
Blood Red Sky
SimilarMemento (2000), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), Twelve Monkeys (1995),
Nadja (Peri Baumeister, The Last Kingdom), a cautious, brittle woman battling a terrifying illness, boards an overnight flight from Germany to the United States. With her is Elias (Carl Anton Koch), her sweet, precocious son. They're hoping to make a new start in America, where a talented team of doctors wait to help Nadja find a cure for her sickness. While at the gate, Elias befriends Farid (Kais Setti, Dogs of Berlin)—a kind young man bound for a conference. Continue Reading →
Fear Street: 1994
Much like the Backstreet Boys or white nationalism in American politics, the Fear Street movies are technically “back” even though they never had a chance to leave. Fear Street Part 2: 1978 is the second in a trilogy of Fear Street films being released weekly on Netflix. While its predecessor was a pastiche of both Amblin and Kevin Williamson horror, this next entry is directly inspired by slasher movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The summer camp setting alone makes it so clear that the project is paying tribute to Friday the 13th that one may be surprised Kevin Bacon doesn’t show up for a quick cameo. Continue Reading →
Army of the Dead
In the not too distant future, Las Vegas has become even more of its own world. A wall of armored shipping containers has sealed off the Entertainment Capital of the World. Sneering armed guards patrol a vicious hybrid of quarantine and refugee camp at the wall's edge. And on July 4th, on the orders of a dopey, malignant, unnamed president, Sin City will burn in nuclear fire. Why? The zombie apocalypse. Fortunately for the world, the plague of undeath was stopped in the sleepless city. With the zombies contained, Vegas was left to rot. But while the city crumbled, its infamous fortunes were preserved - sealed away in counting rooms, slot machines, and vaults. Why risk going in to retrieve it when insurance covers disaster (brain-eating or otherwise)? Because it's money. And that is the pitch Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) gives to haunted, lonely, zombie war hero Scott Ward (Dave Bautista).When Tanaka abandoned the Bly Casino, he left $200 million untaxable, untraceable dollars in its vault. If Ward assembles a team to go into Vegas, crack the vault, and retrieve the money, $50 million of the haul is his to do with as he will. Ward, a lost man searching for some sort of purpose and looking for a way to make things right with his estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), agrees. Ward gathers his crew - his war buddies Maria Cruz (Ana de La Reguera) and Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick), bitterly caustic helicopter pilot Peters (Tig Notaro), zombie-killing influencer Mikey Guzman (Raùl Castillo), Guzman's warrior pal Chambers (Samantha Win), oddball safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) and, at Tanaka's insistence, oily security man Martin (Garret Dillahunt). Kate, the mercenary coyote Lilly (Nora Arnezeder), and a loathsome guard called Burt (Theo Rossi) join them at the city proper. Continue Reading →
Coming Home in the Dark
James Ashcroft's hostage horror is nought but bland, sour sadism.
Before the premiere screening of the New Zealand import Coming Home in the Dark, the festival programmer introducing it led off by admonishing viewers that the following film was “not for the faint of heart.” Of course, for a violent thriller appearing in the midnight slot at Sundance, such words are not so much a warning as they are a come-on designed to lure in those with more outre tastes hoping to find the next gory hit to emerge from the festival. Although the film is certainly gruesome enough, there is nothing here that average viewers will find to b that far beyond the pale. Instead, they are more likely to be put off by James Ashcroft’s hollow and increasingly tiresome exercise in empty sadism whose utter pointlessness is further underscored by its delusions that it is saying something profound.
Alan “Hoaggie” Hoaganraad (Erik Thomson) is a blandly pleasant-looking teacher who is off on a car trip with his wife, Jill (Mirama McDowell )and her teenaged sons Make (Billy Paratene) and Jordan (Frankie Paratene) to the coast. All seems perfectly normal until they, in the time-honored tradition of bad cinematic car trips, decide to stop for a hike and a picnic lunch. It is while completing the latter that they are approached by two men, the extremely loquacious Mandrake (Daniel Gilles) and the more taciturn Tubs (Mathias Luafutu). After a few minutes of vaguely menacing talk, Mandrake produces a rifle and the two interlopers are soon on the road with Alan and the family—at least what remains of it—as their captives. Continue Reading →