Netflix is brilliant, but its user ratings are extremely unreliable, which makes it tricky to find a great horror movie to watch. You can pretty much guess that Pegasus vs Chimera isn't going to be a masterpiece but when you're flipping through reams of similar-looking straight-to-DVD horror, how can you tell which will be corkers?
Here's how! We've trawled the service and collated a list of 16 genuinely excellent horror movies available to watch on Netflix now.
Related: 12 great Netflix original series that you might never have heard of
Creep (2014)
No, not the one set on the tube. Absolutely brilliant and like nothing you've ever seen, this "mumblegore" movie looks like it's going to be a found-footage flick for the first couple of minutes. Then it looks like a weird comedy. And then it turns into something altogether stranger. Deeply, deeply unsettling while still being vaguely hilarious. Written by and starring Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice.
Hush (2016)
Mike Flanagan, who made Oculus with Karen Gillan, directs this tense home-invasion movie with a twist, namely that the resident of the house being broken into by a maniac is profoundly deaf. The opening 20 minutes, while he's stalking her without her knowledge, is chilling – it subverts the genre while hitting all the right beats.
The Invitation (2015)
Interesting and tense chiller from Karyn Kusama who made Jennifer's Body. It's actually nothing like Jennifer's Body, rather a kind of horror of manners where Logan Marshall Green and his new girlfriend have to attend a reunion dinner party hosted by his ex-wife and her new fellow. It's totes awks. And then it gets creepy.
The Cabin in The Woods (2012)
Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's love/hate letter to the horror genre stars Chris Hemsworth and Haley Bennett as teens who with a group of friends head to said cabin and start behaving very strangely. Meanwhile, in an office somewhere Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins are up to something... Brilliant, game-changing meta-horror, featuring, at one point, a merman.
The Perfection (2019)
In The Perfection, a troubled musical prodigy (Allison Williams) and a new star pupil (Logan Browning) embark down a sinister path. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus reads "Led by a pair of compelling performances, The Perfection is a smart, gripping thriller that barbs its wild twists with cutting wit."
Digital Spy is inclined to agree, our review said: "The Perfection certainly isn't an easy watch though and requires a strong stomach in parts, with body horror, viral infection and dismemberment all on display. Fortunately, it's not excessive and relentless, so you could just get through it by watching through your fingers if it gets too much.
The Hole in the Ground (2019)
It's a familiar set up, but one with big pay off for horror fans. The Hole In The Ground follows Sarah, whose young son disappears into the woods behind their rural home one night.
When he returns, he looks the same, but his behaviour grows increasingly disturbing. Sarah begins to believe that the boy who returned may not be her son at all. We gave it four out of five stars.
Cam (2018)
The first film for both director Daniel Goldhaber and screenwriter by Isa Mazzei, Cam is a psychological thriller set in the world of webcam porn. It follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), an ambitious camgirl, who one day discovers she's been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself.
As this copy begins to push the boundaries of Alice's internet identity, the control that Alice has over her life, and the men in it, vanishes. While she struggles to regain what she's lost, she slowly finds herself drawn back to her show and to the mysterious person who has taken her place.
Happy Death Day (2017)
"A slasher version of Groundhog Day" according to Digital Spy, Happy Death Day was followed by a sequel, but we're only here to talk about the first film. College student Tree (the charismatic Jessica Rothe of La La Land) gets brutally murdered, only to find she's reliving the day of her death over and over again.
We told you!
Ghost Stories (2017)
You may not know that the horror film Ghost Stories is actually based on a play, directed by the same duo who brought the story to the stage, Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. The story follows Professor Phillip Goodman (Nyman) who devotes his life to exposing phony psychics and fraudulent supernatural shenanigans.
His skepticism soon gets put to the test when he receives news of three chilling and inexplicable cases – disturbing visions in an abandoned asylum, a car accident deep in the woods and the spirit of an unborn child. Even scarier, each of the macabre stories seems to have a sinister connection to the professor's own life.
Unfriended (2015)
A film that takes place entirely on social media, Unfriended gets four out of five stars from us. Six friends get a shock of their lives when they receive a message from one of their deceased friends while video chatting. While they think it is a prank, they are soon exposed to some unruly events.
Final Destination 5 (2011)
Not one, two, three OR four, but five. Yes, Final Destination 5 is one of the best horror movies on Netflix. In it, a premonition helps Sam and his colleagues escape a fatal accident. Death, however, is not quite ready to part with its victims and decides to come after them.
Annihilation (2018)
This is an honourable mention because despite being listed in the horror section on Netflix, it's really a psychological sci-fi thriller. It stars Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Oscar Isaac.
The story (from Ex Machina's Alex Garland) follows Lena, a biologist and former soldier, who joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband (played by Isaac) inside Area X, a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.
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