The 22 Scariest Movies and Horror TV Shows to Watch on Netflix - Netflix Tudum

  • What To Watch

    The 22 Scariest Things to Watch Right Now

    Weak stomachs need not apply.

    By Tudum Staff
    April 18, 2026

There’s never a bad time of year to enjoy a few bumps in the night. In fact, true horror film and television aficionados crave the thrill of a good scare all year long. From gore fests and haunting encounters to existential horrors, there's no shortage of hair-raising content. 

But horror is a spectrum, and when one wants truly goosebump-inducing, hold-your-breath, nightmare fuel, it can be hard to know what shows and movies will deliver. So, to make things a little easier (read: scarier), here are some of the scariest things you can stream now. You might want to grab a friend… and keep the lights on.

Popular Now

  • Here Are the 10 Most-Watched Movies of 2026 — So Far
    Three people: a soldier in camouflage outdoors, a woman in white business attire and sunglasses in a modern building, and a man in dark clothes in an indoor setting, each in a separate vertical panel.

If you want to watch a scary movie …

Apostle

When Thomas Richardson arrives on a remote island off the coast of Wales in an attempt to rescue his kidnapped sister, he discovers something far more sinister is afoot. If you loved the cult shenanigans of movies like Midsommar and The Wicker Man, Gareth Evans’ Apostle should be next on your watch list. Starring Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast) and Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody), Apostle includes some of the most unnerving violence — and an assortment of just downright bad vibes — presented in a beautiful yet chaotic manner.

Apostle
2h 9m   18+   2018
Watch

The Black Phone

The Black Phone
1h 43m   16+   2022

Brick

After experiencing the loss of a pregnancy, Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer) and Olivia (Ruby O. Fee) have been navigating a difficult time in their relationship. Olivia, feeling alone, decides it’s time to move on with her life and tells Tim she is leaving him. But when she opens the door to leave, the couple finds that their unit has been blocked off by a mysterious brick wall. And it’s not just Tim and Olivia who are trapped — their neighbors are also locked inside their own apartments. Now working together to find a way out, the building’s residents learn that there may not be an easy exit. 

Fear Street Part 1: 1994

Got a thing for slasher movies? Does the image of a scary knife-wielding maniac sound like it would add some excitement to your Friday night? Then the Fear Street trilogy is for you. With three stories set in different time periods (1994, 1978, and 1666), the series follows in the tradition of horror staples like Scream, Friday the 13th, and The Witch. It also features one of the greatest on-screen kills of all time. (Watch Part 1 — you’ll know which one.) All three are available to stream, so no need to wait years for sequels. One more note for the horror nerds out there: This trilogy is inspired by the famous Fear Street series of novels by R.L. Stine (creator of Goosebumps), so you can revel in that knowledge while you watch.

Fear Street: Prom Queen

Speaking of Fear Street … Everyone’s dying to be the prom queen in the latest installment. The year is 1988. It’s prom season at Shadyside High, and everything is about to go off the rails. Prom is the most important night of a high school girl’s life, and the senior It Girls are hard at work campaigning for votes. But will they survive the big dance? As the race for prom queen heats up, the competition becomes cutthroat in more ways than one. It turns out that losing may not be the worst outcome.

Gerald's Game

Just one year before his work on The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan did what many believed impossible: He adapted Stephen King’s novel Gerald’s Game for the big screen. Flanagan rendered one of the most chilling interpretations of a story previously thought to be unfilmable. Propelled to the next level by the one-woman show that is Carla Gugino (a frequent Flanagan collaborator), Gerald’s Game proves that with enough talent and perseverance, incredibly complex stories can become haunting works of horror.

In the Tall Grass

Here’s another Stephen King adaptation — only this time, the novella was written with help from his son, and fellow author, Joe Hill. One of the more obscure stories in King’s arsenal, In the Tall Grass follows a brother and sister as they venture into a field after hearing a young boy cry for help. They eventually realize there may be no way out. Filled with twists and turns, the film also features one of King’s strongest endings ever. 

The Ritual

Consider adding a dash of Norse mythology to your spooky film fest. This movie follows a group of reunited college friends on a trip into a Swedish forest, but what they don’t know is that insanity and horror await. From rising star director David Bruckner (The Night House), The Ritual is a first-class lesson on why you should probably go to a campsite instead of into the darkness of the woods (just saying).

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Leatherface returns in the sequel to the classic 1974 slasher film — and this time, he’s taking down urbanization one gentrifier at a time. When a group of young social media influencers and foodies travels to a Texas ghost town, they arrive bright-eyed and ready to capture content. Looking to transform the lone town into a social media paradise, the group’s plans are disrupted when Leatherface emerges. He immediately falls back into his bloody past as he hunts the young crowd disrupting his hiding spot. We hope they snapped all their selfies first.

Time Cut

The time-travel genre gets a chilling twist in this film about a young woman who goes back in time to try to save her sister from a grisly fate. When Lucy (Outer Banks’ Madison Bailey) discovers a time machine, she decides to go back to 2003 to stop a masked killer from murdering her older sister, Summer (Ginny & Georgia’s Antonia Gentry). Directed by Hannah Macpherson (T@gged) and written by Macpherson and Michael Kennedy (Freaky), Time Cut is sure to get your heart racing — while also channeling all that early millennium nostalgia. 

Until Dawn

Loosely based on the 2015 PlayStation video game of the same name, Until Dawn is a survival horror that is sure to keep you up all night. In this case, that’s not such a bad thing. The film follows a group of friends who head to a remote valley in search of a family member who went missing there one year earlier. Upon their arrival, they are each picked off one at a time by a masked killer. But there’s a catch — when they mysteriously wake up at the start of the same night, the group soon realizes that they are fated to relive the horrors on a loop unless they can stay alive until dawn. 

Veronica

Horror is at its scariest when it’s based on a true event, even loosely. This Spanish supernatural tale follows 15-year-old Verónica (Sandra Escacena), who cares for her three younger siblings while her single mother works multiple jobs. Believing it will amplify a connection to the dead, Verónica and her school friends use a Ouija board for a seance during a solar eclipse. In her attempt to contact her father, she unknowingly lets something evil into herself, leading to bizarre happenings and a desperate descent into the occult in search of a way to save herself. The film is based on an unsolved case with the same circumstances, and was the first police report in Spain to ever cite a supernatural occurrence.

If you want to watch some horror TV shows …

All of Us Are Dead

In this South Korean horror series, a local high school becomes ground zero for a zombie virus outbreak. The trapped teens must protect one another and make it out of campus alive — or risk becoming one of the infected. Even amidst a bloody zombie apocalypse, the students continue to navigate messy love triangles, school bullies, and teen angst. 

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Do you remember Archie comics? The ones that serve as the foundation for the phenomenal Riverdale? Well, in 2018, Sabrina the teenage witch — one of the original Archie members — received her own modern update. It could’ve gone in many directions, but what we got in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a horrific, satanic retelling of the teenage witch’s exploits — filled to the brim with gore, teen drama, and more than enough pentagrams and goats. So make the room dark, light some candles, and get the séance going.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Mike Flanagan’s limited series follows twin siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher and the pharmaceutical empire they’ve built together. Wealth, greed, and privilege collide in this family drama as each of Roderick’s heirs die in gruesome freak accidents. Their deaths are no coincidence, and the ruthless patriarch is forced to reckon with his shady past.

The Haunting of Hill House

Inspired by Shirley Jackson’s seminal 1959 novel, Hill House follows the turbulent history of the Crain family and their encounter with the titular haunted house. Expertly written by Mike Flanagan (there’s that name again!) and featuring standout performances by Victoria Pedretti (You) and Kate Siegel (Midnight Mass), The Haunting of Hill House provides a terrifying and emotional update on a horror classic for the modern era. Just make sure you keep those tissues close.

Marianne

This French horror series was universally lauded by critics and even endorsed by the King of Horror himself when it came out in 2019. The story follows horror author Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois), who found fame through her book series about a witch named Marianne. Ready to move beyond the character who gave her her start and write other books, she ends the series. But Marianne has become so much more than a character in a book, and when Emma is called back to her coastal hometown, she discovers the witch is possessing people close to her, determined to stay “alive” through Emma’s writing.

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen

If you like your scares to be dread-inducing, working their way up to a shocking end, this show is for you. Created and showrun by Haley Z. Boston, and produced by the Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things), the eight-episode series follows Rachel (Camila Morrone), who is meeting her fiancé Nicky’s (Adam DiMarco) family for the first time, a few days before their small wedding ceremony. Rachel’s unease over the big day grows as Nicky’s family commandeers the planning, and strange things keep happening. When she discovers astonishing information about her own family, Rachel is forced to seriously consider the potential consequences of marrying the wrong person.

Stranger Things

Hawkins, Indiana, isn’t like other small towns. Set in the 1980s, the Duffer brothers’ series follows a group of young friends who encounter supernatural forces that turn their rural town upside down. Since its premiere in 2016, Stranger Things has seen the characters battle bone-chilling monsters like the Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer, and Vecna, and save their friends from near-death experiences. Now that this epic sci-fi series has wrapped up with its fifth and final season, fans can see the full extent of this twisted universe with its many horrors laid bare. 

Wednesday

In Wednesday, the Addams Family is as creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky as ever. The series tells the story of the eccentric family through the eyes of the morbid yet witty Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega). After she’s sent away to boarding school at Nevermore Academy, where her parents first met, Wednesday investigates a string of mysterious murders while also working to master her psychic abilities. Now with two seasons streaming, the series features plenty of familiar faces, including the passionate Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones), strange Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen), and a helping hand in Thing (Victor Dorobantu), as well as new friends, like Wednesday’s werewolf BFF, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers). 

By Erin Corbett, Reyna Cervantes, Ananda Dillon, and Phillipe Thao
Related Tags

Shop

Go to Netflix Shop

Based on What You Watched

  • Meet the Celebrity Cast of the Competition Reality Show Lock Upp
    These celebs are going behind bars to earn their redemption.
  • Plus: The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare tops the English TV list.
  • Take a walk(er) down memory lane and relive these unforgettable moments.
  • A doctor has an affair with his son’s girlfriend in this sexy British series.
  • Tobias Santelmann and Joel Kinnaman star in the Nordic noir series.
  • Plus: Ransom Canyon makes a strong debut, and I Will Find You hits a milestone.
  • Skyscraper Live thrills, and Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart is a riveting survival tale.
  • A doctor has an affair with his son’s girlfriend in this hot and heavy British series.

What To Watch

  • That’s how you know they’re great.
  • Kevin Costner, Geena Davis, and more knock these films out of the park.
  • Man your battle stations while watching these depictions.
  • The comfort watch you’re looking for is only a click away. 
  • Promising connections, steamy seductions, shocking breakups, and more.
  • Because you’re never too old for cartoons.

Horror

  • “If the camera’s rolling, I’ll do it. I’ll do almost anything.”
  • Plus Ricky Gervais Alley Cats, A Child of My Own, Our Sticky Love, and more.
  • These series are hits with audiences worldwide.
  • A gamer, a mountain climber, and a doctor tackle deadly games in this series.
  • All three seasons of the sci-fi horror series are streaming now.
  • Keep an eye out for spirits, demons, cryptids, and other beings beyond the veil.

Related Videos

  • Haley Z. Boston and The Duffer Brothers unpack the deadly rules.
  • Watch Haley Z. Boston counsel Adam DiMarco and Camila Morrone.
  • Starring Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco, the limited series premieres March 26.
  • Executive produced by the Duffer Brothers, the horror series premieres March 26.
  • “Nothing gives me more anxiety than watching 12-year-old me speak words.”
  • “It’s Vecna or us. And we’re not gonna stop until we have saved the world.”

Popular Now

  • A season that began with unknowns ended on an ominous cliffhanger.