10 Must-Watch Horror Movies on Netflix (October 2025): 'The Elixir' and More

In an Indonesian village, a dysfunctional family runs a popular business selling herbal medicines. But when the family patriarch (Donny Damara) attempts to innovate a new potion, it ends up triggering a deadly (and insanely gruesome) zombie outbreak. The Elixir mixes complicated family drama with terrifying zombie horror into a fast-paced action film with a surprising amount of emotional depth.

If you’re looking for a horror film that actually makes you care about its characters (in turn, creating characters that actually matter when they get killed), look no further than The Elixir. In addition to some truly revolting and nightmarish imagery, The Elixir boasts a great story, character-writing and engaging drama that blends genres to create something unique.

A disgraced content creator named Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) mounts his comeback by pulling off an intriguing stunt: by spending the night livestreaming in an alleged haunted house where multiple people have died. Shot in found footage format to simulate the character filming himself, Deadstream follows Shawn as his stunt becomes deadly when he unleashes a malevolent spirit, and his comeback becomes a fight for his very life.

Deadstream combines horror and comedy to effective results while satirizing the influencer industry. While low-budget, it’s an extremely clever film that nevertheless utilizes impressive special effects, creates a believable atmosphere and has a strong lead performance from Winter. Some viewers even compared the mix of comedy and gore to The Evil Dead. 

The creators of Smile asked, “What if there was a movie about how scary it is when a character makes a creepy smile in a horror movie?” In the end, the result was a success — the $17 million budgeted film ended up grossing over $200 million worldwide from this simple premise, and it doesn’t hurt that the execution is stellar as well. Deeply creepy visuals elevate an otherwise familiar plot, as well as jump scares that actually deliver.

Smile follows Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a therapist who witnesses a traumatizing incident with one of her patients. Suddenly, Rose starts seeing visions of horrifying grins emerging on ordinary people she encounters. As the visions worsen and a looming terror seems to be following her, she discovers that she has to face herself to break the “smile curse” and survive.

Before The Strangers franchise spun off a standalone trilogy (the second installment of which hit theaters in September), it terrified audiences back in 2008 with a simple home invasion premise starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman. The plot follows a couple whose stay at a family vacation home is interrupted by the unwelcome arrival of three masked strangers. The intruders want a bit more than the couple’s money and valuables — they want to have some fun with them.

The Strangers became a sleeper hit at the box office, with critics praising it for its tense sense of dread and minimalist filmmaking style. While some regarded its villains as too sadistic, others felt that it was admirably restrained in its depiction of violence. Instead of focusing on blood and gore, The Strangers excels as a psychological workout that forces the viewer to be chillingly complicit in its own crimes.

A young boy is plagued by mysterious noises that seem to be coming from the inside of his walls, in this new horror film co-starring Lizzy Caplan (Now You See Me 2) and Antony Starr (The Boys). The film blends haunted house thrills with slasher scares and familial tension. The screenplay was written by Chris Thomas Devlin, who wrote 2022’s updated take on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Peter (Woody Norman) swears he hears a tapping in the walls of his house, although his parents (Caplan and Starr) insist that it’s just a young kid’s imagination. But the tapping isn’t going away, which only makes Peter more fearful. Eventually, his fear mutates into a paranoia that his parents are hiding something terrible from him.

In the film that started it all, Cillian Murphy stars as Jim, a London bike courier who wakes up in the hospital from a coma one month after an infected chimpanzee escaped from a lab, spreading a dangerous virus. This “Rage Virus” leaves people with a frenzied thirst for blood and London a deserted wasteland. Jim teams up with a group of survivors on the hunt for a haven in the post-apocalypse.

28 Days Later is as frightening as it is imbued with affecting pathos, and the relationships Jim builds with cohorts Selena (Naomie Harris), Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Frank’s daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) give the film a heightened sense of stakes as well as a dense emotional throughline. After watching, you’ll have to watch the two sequels, 28 Weeks Later and this year’s 28 Years Later.

In this entertaining entry to a newfangled subgenre of Valentine’s Day horror, a masked maniac with glowing red eyes makes an unwanted appearance in different cities every year. On that fateful day of love, “the Heart-Eyes Killer” slaughters unsuspecting couples. But when two Seattle coworkers doing overtime at their job are mistaken as lovers by the killer, they decide to fight back and end this yearly reign of terror.

From the creatives behind the Happy Death Day films and Werewolves Within comes this slasher-romantic comedy hybrid that will leave you both laughing and shrieking in terror. The film has been praised for its seamless genre fusion and killer chemistry between lead actors Mason Gooding and Olivia Holt.

Father and overworked fund manager Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) take a train with his young daughter to visit her mother in Busan for her birthday. Unbeknownst to the train’s crew or other passengers, an ill woman has boarded the train who has been infected with a zombie plague. When the woman becomes a bloodthirsty beast, the train suddenly becomes a deadly super-spreader event, and Seok-woo must fight to protect his daughter.

This South Korean horror-thriller is full of well-staged action sequences, offering a nail-biting thrill ride that creates a unique take on the zombie film. Blending horror, social commentary and pathos, Train to Busan will leave you with a gratifying cinema experience. The success of the first film spurred a prequel, a sequel and a forthcoming American remake. 

Jaws is considered an untouchable classic for a reason. This creature feature instilled a worldwide fear of sharks into the hearts of all who watched it and cemented fledgling director Steven Spielberg as a major up-and-coming filmmaker. Keeping the shark hidden and maintaining an ominous atmosphere, the film alludes to more than it really shows — but it only makes the threat that much scarier.

While swimming at the beach of the New England tourist town of Amity Island, a young woman is killed by a shark. While the town police chief (Roy Scheider) wants all the beaches to be closed, the mayor gets in his way, choosing lost profits over human lives. An ichthyologist and a boat captain team up with the police chief to kill the beast once and for all.

Strapped-for-cash videographer Aaron (Patrick Brice) responds to an online job request that takes him to a remote house in Crestline, California. There, he meets his client, Josef (Mark Duplass), a strange man who wants Aaron to help him film a video diary for his unborn child, as he claims he is dying from an inoperable brain tumor. As the direction for the video becomes more bizarre, Aaron slowly realizes that Josef brought him out there for a very different reason.

Directed by Brice and co-written by Brice alongside Duplass, Creep is a psychological horror that uses the found footage style of filmmaking, with the story being presented through the videos that Aaron shoots. Clever, funny, and extremely tense, Creep also succeeds at creating a suffocating atmosphere and unsettling tone, bolstered by Duplass’s unnerving performance. If you enjoy Creep, be sure to check out the sequel, Creep 2.

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