There are hundreds of cable channels, and instant streaming services with thousands of movies, and somehow it still seems like nothing good is ever on. That may be because you don’t know where to look. Streaming services like Amazon Prime have impressive selections but they aren’t always easy to navigate from your couch, because those searches only bring up so many films at a time. So if you’re looking for a scary movie for Halloween, you may not find the best possible films at a glance. You may not even know what’s available, and that’s where we come in.
Today we present the fifteen greatest horror movies currently available on Amazon Prime, and there’s something for everyone. Gory thrillers, classic spookfests, hilarious horror-comedies, insightful indie nightmares and monster movies that pretty much the whole family can enjoy. Whether you’ve never seen these classics or are watching them for the 100th time, you’re going to have a good night with these films on the Amazon Prime service.
So check out what we’ve got on the slab!
An American Werewolf in London (Watch It Now)
Universal Pictures
Some horror comedies lean so hard on comedy that they forget to be horrifying. John Landis’s iconic werewolf yarn blends the two genres perfectly, with a kooky wit that never gets in the way of the hero’s nightmarish tragedy. And thanks to the Oscar-winning makeup effects by Rick Baker, transforming into a werewolf never seemed less empowering, or more frightening.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Watch It Now)
Decla-Bioscop
This silent classic would barely even qualify as a feature film today – it’s an hour and seven minutes, soaking wet – but it packs a lot of imagination into its short running time. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a hallucinatory experience, about a hypnotist who sends his sleepwalking servant out into the night to commit acts of murder. The film is a milestone, informing many of the eerier cinematic conventions filmmakers still use to this day, and it still plays like a dream.
Carrie (Watch It Now)
United Artists
The classic portrayal of a teen’s repression, exploding via religious zealotry and psychic powers, comes courtesy of Stephen King and director Brian De Palma, who brings all of his trademark visual wizardry to this Oscar-nominated supernatural thriller. Sissy Spacek is powerfully empathetic as a young girl who just wants to be normal, Piper Laurie is electric as her abusive mother, and the supporting cast of vicious young actors (Nancy Allen, John Travolta, P.J. Soles) give uncomfortably real performances as the bullies who push young Carrie too far, sealing their doom.
Final Destination (Watch It Now)
New Line Cinema
One of the cleverest turn of the century slashers, Final Destination abandoned the idea of a serial killer in a creepy mask and instead made death itself the villain. The film stars a cast of likable young actors who all cheat death after one of them has a prophetic vision, but they’re all living on borrowed time. Death comes for them all, transforming everyday objects and minor twists of fate into fatal Rube Goldberg devices. When you gotta go, you gotta go, even if death has to bend over backwards to kill you.
Gremlins (Watch It Now)
Warner Bros.
Half family film, half monster movie, all great fun. Joe Dante’s classic Gremlins is the ultimate worst-case scenario of not taking proper care of your pets. A mild-mannered teen gets a strange new creature for Christmas, doesn’t follow the rules, and accidentally unleashes an army of killer reptilian pranksters who overpower the Capra-esque town. It’s one of the most ghoulish delights in the whole horror genre.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Watch It Now)
Allied Artists Pictures
All the Cold War paranoia of the 1950s was captured, bottled, and distributed to theaters in the form of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a creepy thriller about an alien invasion that replaces the people you know and love with soulless followers of a scary outside force. We’ve all felt this way sometimes. With a great cast and an undeniably suspenseful flair, Invasion of the Body Snatchers brings all of those anxieties to vivid life.
Let the Right One In (Watch It Now)
Magnet Releasing
A bullied child finds a friend in a little girl with secrets in this icy and unsettling vampire drama, in which relationships are corrupted and ancient evils aren’t fully exposed. It’s a powerful film from director Tomas Alfredson, available in both subtitled and dubbed versions on Amazon Prime. Take my advice: don’t watch the dubbed release.
Misery (Watch It Now)
Columbia Pictures
Another classic from the mind of Stephen King, Misery stars James Caan as an author who gets in a car accident and is rescued by a psychotic fan who won’t let him leave the house until he writes her fan fiction for her. One gets the distinct impression that the topic hits close to home for King: Misery is one of the most intimate and frightening thrillers ever adapted from his works, featuring a glorious Academy Award-winning performance from Kathy Bates as a violently disturbed “Number One Fan.”
Nosferatu (Watch It Now)
Film Arts Guild
The original vampire classic, adapted (unofficially) from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is an ethereal silent film from visionary director F.W. Murnau, and a must-see for all fans of the horror genre. The eery use of shadows and warped physicality in Nosferatu created a standard by which almost every other supernatural horror film now follows, transforming our weirdest phobias into grotesque realities.
Rosemary’s Baby (Watch It Now)
Paramount Pictures
A mature and shocking thriller, Rosemary’s Baby Mia Farrow as a young woman whose pregnancy is going extremely, obviously wrong. The worst part is that nobody believes her. The overwhelming condescension she experiences, from those who wish her ill and those who honestly wish her the best, makes all the room necessary for evil to slip into her life, and threaten her body and her baby. One of the great paranoid horror films, with incredible performances and a deceptive cinematic style, at once utterly natural and absolutely calculated.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Watch It Now)
Bryanston Pictures
Chainsaws would never be the same again. Tobe Hooper’s seminal shocker The Texas Chain Saw Massacre plays like a snuff film, grimy and accidental, filled with “heroes” who aren’t lovable and villains who have a twisted affection for one another. It’s a seedy build-up to absolute terror, one of the most despicable and horrifying movies ever made, and an unassailable classic of the genre.
Theater of Blood (Watch It Now)
United Artists
The great Vincent Price starred in a lot of classic horror movies, but in Theater of Blood he appears to be having the most fun. Price plays a hammy actor who takes revenge on his critics using the perverse ideas of that “respectable” playwright William Shakespeare, extracting pounds of flesh and feeding them their beloved pets. Outrageous and funny, cruel and enjoyable, Theater of Blood is a grim treasure.
Tremors (Watch It Now)
Universal Pictures
A fabulous cast of characters inhabits the desert town of Perfection, where subterranean monsters have been unleashed that trap everyone on top of their houses. The creatures, awkwardly dubbed “Graboids,” are inventive creations that rely on sound to capture their prey, forcing Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward to get pretty creative as they try to save as many lives as possible and somehow escape the area without making a peep. Funny and smart, and very suspenseful. Monster movies don’t get much better than Tremors.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (Watch It Now)
Magnet Releasing
One of the great horror comedies, period, stars Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk as good-natured southerners who – through a series of hilariously contrived circumstances – look an awful lot like scary murderers to a bunch of visiting cityfolk campers. Before long, those campers are attacking Tucker and Dale and getting themselves killed in the process. Try to imagine Leatherface just minding his own business, never harming a fly, while the events of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre unfold anyway via cruel twists of fate. That’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, a clever and laugh-out-loud horror comedy with some pointed things to say about how xenophobia turns us into monsters.
The Witch (Watch It Now)
A24
A family of pious pilgrims living in colonial America falls prey to their own sins in The Witch, a film that exploits religious anxiety and repressive historical attitudes for serious drama and serious scares. Atmospheric and impressively acted, Robert Eggers’ film eschews conventional “boo” moments for a more thoughtfully frightening approach, showing us how these people would destroy each other even without the help of an external, supernatural force. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the witch isn’t real…)
Top Photo: A24
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
