The 15 Best Horror Movies of the 2020s, Ranked

Ryan Coogler's most ambitious film and the year's biggest non-franchise horror hit. Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as twin brothers running a juke joint in Jim Crow-era Mississippi when the night turns supernatural. Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Jack O'Connell. The soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson is the year's best.

The vampire reframing is the framework, but the film is about Black music, Black autonomy, and the price of putting yourself on a stage. Coogler may have just made the best horror film of the 21st century. An awards-season force that changed the conversation about what mainstream horror can do.

Zach Cregger's follow-up to Barbarian. An entire third-grade class disappears one night, simultaneously, except for one kid. Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Amy Madigan, Benedict Wong. Cregger keeps escalating the dread without ever giving viewers a moment to catch their breath, and then the third act detonates the entire premise.

The kind of horror movie that earns the Hereditary comparisons. Cregger is two-for-two and the third one is going to be a Cregger event film.

Coralie Fargeat's body-horror social satire. Demi Moore as a fading aerobics-show star who takes a black-market drug that creates a younger duplicate of herself (Margaret Qualley). Won Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars and got Moore her first major nomination after a 40-year career. Genuinely one of the most disgusting and pointed films of the decade.

The third act is one of the most committed acts of cinematic excess in recent memory. Watch on an empty stomach.

Danny and Michael Philippou's directorial debut, made for under $5 million, with Sophie Wilde in the lead. Teenagers use an embalmed hand to communicate with spirits at parties. The metaphor for substance abuse is clear and never preachy. The scares are organic to the premise. Wilde's lead performance is one of the best in recent horror.

The first 20 minutes of this movie are some of the best horror filmmaking of the decade. The Philippous followed it up with Bring Her Back in 2025 (also on this list).

Parker Finn's debut feature, expanded from his short film Laura Hasn't Slept. Sosie Bacon as a psychiatrist who watches a patient die by suicide and inherits the curse. The smile-as-warning visual hook is one of the most memorable horror images of the decade, replicated on TikTok thousands of times. The film made $217 million on a $17 million budget.

The follow-up, Smile 2 (2024), somehow improved on the original by going bigger and meaner. Smile 3 is filming.

Jordan Peele's third feature. OJ and Em Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) running a horse-training ranch in California when something they can't fully see starts hunting from the sky. The Steven Yeun subplot about a child star and a chimpanzee is one of the best things Peele has ever filmed.

The film's central question about the cost of capturing spectacle is the metatext that makes the whole thing land.

Ti West's trilogy with Mia Goth. Three films, three eras (1979, 1918, 1985), one central character whose origin story turns into a slasher's origin story turns into a serial-killer-survivor's revenge story. Pearl is the best of the three. Goth's monologue at the kitchen table is one of the great pieces of horror acting this decade.

Watch in release order: X → Pearl → MaXXXine. Not chronological.

Zach Cregger's first solo feature. A woman (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb in Detroit to find it double-booked with a stranger (Bill Skarsgård). What happens next can't be spoiled. The film's structural pivot at the 30-minute mark is one of the boldest in recent horror.

Justin Long shows up. The third act is bananas. Go in cold.

The Philippou brothers' Talk to Me follow-up. Sally Hawkins as a foster mother whose grief over her dead daughter has turned to something darker. Sora Wong and Billy Barratt as the foster kids who arrive at her door. Joe Bird as the boy who chews on a butcher knife in the scene that broke horror Twitter for a week.

Less commercial than Talk to Me, more devastating. Not for everyone. Worth it for anyone who can take it.

Leigh Whannell's domestic-violence horror with Elisabeth Moss. Released February 2020, three weeks before the pandemic shut down theaters. The metaphor (an abusive ex who turns out to literally have the power to be invisible and continue the abuse) lands every single time.

Moss is doing some of her best work. The kitchen-knife scene is engraved on the decade.

Hugh Grant playing against type as Mr. Reed, a chillingly polite suburban man who invites two young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) into his house and then locks the doors. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods writing and directing. Mostly a three-hander in a house. Mostly dialogue.

Some of the most precise psychological horror filmmaking in years. Grant should have been nominated.

Guillermo del Toro's lifelong passion project. Oscar Isaac as Victor, Jacob Elordi as the Creature, Mia Goth as Elizabeth. More gothic romance than straight horror, but the body-horror sequences are some of the most upsetting of del Toro's career.

Won three BAFTAs. The Creature's final monologue may be the best monologue del Toro has ever written.

Remi Weekes' directorial debut, released on Netflix in October 2020. A South Sudanese refugee couple (Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku) granted asylum in a small UK town, placed in a council house that has something inside it. The metaphor about the weight of survivor's guilt is built into every frame.

The most underrated horror film of the decade so far. Watch tonight.

Osgood Perkins' breakout. Maika Monroe as an FBI agent investigating a serial killer (Nicolas Cage in maximum Nicolas Cage mode) whose crimes involve the occult. The marketing campaign was one of the most effective in horror history. The film delivered on the unease.

Cage is unhinged in exactly the way the part requires. Monroe is the still center.

Robert Eggers' third feature after The Witch and The Lighthouse. Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe. A remake of the 1922 Murnau film that committed to the gothic horror aesthetic harder than any film since the silent era.

Depp's performance is the best of her career. The film is heavy. The film is gorgeous. The film knows what kind of film it is.