The Best Horror Movies to Watch Now

For better or worse, friendship can be the most important relationship a child can have, especially when they move into a new school. Poison for the Fairies takes a look at an unusual friendship, one that’s forged not by regular schoolgirl hobbies, but by witchcraft, spells, and superstition. It’s incredibly unnerving how Flavia and Veronica’s dynamic gets, as each morbid claim gets questioned but is never fully explained, as each unanswered question slowly adds to the terror, and as each boundary gets pushed because of those few moments of calm. But it’s also incredibly tragic, considering the ways Flavia and Veronica are characterized. Writer-director Carlos Enrique Taboada makes it all the more creepy by centering the camera through their eyes, by capturing the uncertainty of this terrible friendship.

“Inner beauty is what counts” is a cliche many films have tried and failed to tackle, but A Different Man manages to make it feel unsettlingly new. The film follows Edward, a disfigured man who lives a normal but lonely life. No one is overtly mean to Edward—in fact, many are nice—but he’s consumed by the thought of What If. What if he looked like everyone else? Would his neighbor Ingrid finally make a move on him? Would he be the actor he dreamed he’d be? Would he finally get fewer stares on the street? Those questions are answered when a medical trial transforms his face, but they’re rarely pleasant. A Different Man is a dark comedy with some hints of meta; Stan’s character provides the tragedy, Pearson delivers the wry humor, while Reinsve, as the playwright in charge of dramatizing Edward’s life, is the source of the film’s meta-commentary. It’s the weakest link of the three–it feels like a cop-out when it forgives itself for being “exploitative” but the rest of the film’s elements gel to make a modern parable of sorts about appearance and contentment.

While based on the Mononoke series, which is in turn, a spin-off of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, it might seem that Mononoke The Movie: The Phantom in the Rain would require some background reading for people new to the story. Thankfully, there’s no need to do homework for this beautifully designed masterpiece, as the Medicine Seller takes on a new case with every installment. 2024’s Phantom in the Rain (also known as Paper Umbrella) unfolds its world with ease, with doors opening and closing to a select few for a high-pressure, hierarchical imperial household. Immediately, the visuals are stunning, with traditional ukiyo ink and paper mixed with modern kaleidoscopic fill and movement, but even without the gorgeous art, the first Mononoke movie works with its eerie horror, intense sound design, and a compelling mystery driven by court intrigue and vengeful spirits.

The Innocents is a Norweigan thriller that follows four kids who discover they have supernatural powers over the summer. They play around and experiment in the woods nearby, but what begins as harmless fun quickly develops into something much more disturbing and sinister.

This unnerving film, a blend of fantasy and horror, doesn’t waste time explaining the origins of its mysticism. Instead, it goes straight into action—bending, twisting, and splitting open anything and anyone that gets in its way. This kind of rawness is shocking given the age range of the characters, but it also works to subvert what we’ve come to expect from kids, youth, and goodness. The Innocents isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you can manage some bloody and unhindged scenes, then it’s sure worth checking out. Directed by Eskil Vogt, co-writer of critically-acclaimed films like Thelma and The Worst Person in the World.

Rarely do we get horror movies that are as dedicated to toying with audience expectations as Barbarian. Even rarer is a horror movie that pays so much attention to setting, and how men and women approach and interact with physical spaces in different ways. It’s a film that’s ultimately about entitlement—except it’s delivered to us with jet-black humor and manic energy, shifting from romantic to ridiculous to raving mad. But with instantly charming performances from Georgina Campbell and Bill Skarsgård—and Justin Long doing a brilliant job playing an absolute jerk—Barbarian never leaves you grasping in the dark, even if it leads you deeper into hell.

After Jackie and Spencer, the dark satire El Conde is a surprise new entry in Pablo Larraín’s stacked filmography. Already, the film has prominent differences– it’s shot in black and white, starting with narration from an unseen and posh Englishwoman that makes the film’s events feel like entries in Bridgerton’s scandalous newsletter. The subject is far from the beloved wives of presidents and princes– it’s centered around a notorious Chilean dictator who remains unpunished for his crimes. However, as his fictional vampire version deals with his rightfully ruined legacy, El Conde proves to be a witty satiric twist to Larraín’s usual themes. Through familial squabbles over ill-gotten wealth, confessions and exorcism conducted by a nun, and certain foreign interventions, El Conde paints an everlasting greed that continues to haunt Larraín’s homeland.

Though it isn’t the groundbreaking slasher movie that it initially seemed to be marketed as, X simply knows how to do its job very well: the gore is plentiful and the build-up to the inevitable kills is just loaded with anticipation. But where the film becomes much more interesting is in the palpable sadness that seems to follow all of its characters. Innocent or murderous, each of these people is just trying to cling to an idea of personal freedom and beauty that never seems to last. It’s a horror movie that takes its portrayals of sex and sexuality very seriously, exploring the limits of sexual liberation in a country that actively tries to punish it.

So far, chemical waste hasn’t mutated amphibious creatures enough to create giant monsters large enough to swallow people whole… yet. This sort of monster film premise is familiar, especially for fans of 1950s sci-fi movies, but in the hands of director Bong Joon-ho, The Host transforms what could have been B-movie schlock into a drama examining the ways generations within a family, as well as generations within a country and within the world, have failed each other. As the Park family try to save their own, the actions they take feel all the more important, knowing what’s at stake on multiple levels. While at the time, there were doubts that Bong Joon-ho and the Korean film industry could pull off the monster, The Host proved that there was more to come from the then emerging film giant.

For the longest time, land was where people formed strength in community, where people were born, lived, died, and was buried in, but it was also how empires grew in power, often at the expense of the people that came before. Exhuma is centered in a haunted burial site of a Korean family that migrated due to the war, but as the shamans try to unearth the casket, they also uncover the psychospiritual ways in which Japan colonized Korea– haunting the land with their own ghosts, dividing its people through belief, and leaving deep scars that hasn’t yet been fully recovered from. While the double exorcism situation can be a tad confusing, Exhuma nonetheless elevates this folk horror drama with their respect and attention to detail for Korean shamanism.

Despite how the title sounds like, the horror of Bedevilled isn’t a devil, a demon, or a spirit. It isn’t even the way childhood friend Bok-nam snaps, taking up a scythe and going on a murderous rampage to kill all the people that wronged her. No, the actual horror of Bedevilled is that everyday people like bank employee Hae-won would hesitate to do what’s right. Reading that sentence can sound cheesy, but writer-director Jang Cheol-soo structures the film, and her visit to Modo, in a gradually escalating manner. When Hae-won first lands, the mean gossip seems ordinary, but the film takes these ordinary, if overcritical, words, and delves into the subtext, especially the darker implications that makes the film difficult to watch. The film does understand Hae-won’s hesitancy– the scenes do acknowledge that reporting could mean retaliation, and the score consistently meets that very fear. But Bedevilled also understands that, if hesitancy allows abuse to be left unchecked, the very same violence that Hae-won was (and many people are) avoiding will inevitably escalate.