Movies
The Best Horror Movies of 2025 So Far
I don’t know about you, but it feels like I stepped out of the theater after seeing Wolf Man, blinked, and suddenly it was September. It’s been a very busy year in general, but as always, especially so for the horror genre. We’ve had some misses and some hits, but overall, I’d say it’s been a strong year (though maybe not quite as strong as 2024 and its deluge of incredible movies).
Though your mind might still be primarily occupied with a more recent release, there have been a lot of incredible movies to hit both theaters and especially streaming services like Shudder in 2025. So, we here at Horror Press have decided to put together a shortlist of the best horror the year has had to offer so far.
The Best Horror of 2025 So Far
Feel free to wave this list in the face of your friends who say that all the horror they’ve watched this year is bad. Or just to celebrate because your favorite made the cut! Without further ado, let’s start with…
Dangerous Animals
Fun and insane animal horror movies are so hard to come across these days, but Dangerous Animals chums the waters with some fresh meat for the subgenre. Sean Byrne, best known for his work on the Australian sleeper hit The Loved Ones, tells a story reminiscent of Wolf Creek on the high seas.
A surfer and her boyfriend fall prey to a boat captain who promises a thrilling cage diving experience, but with a catch: he secretly enjoys torturing people before feeding them to sharks. Jai Courtney shines as the antagonist Tucker, whose mealy-mouthed grins and demented demeanor sell the danger our leads are in.
Clown in a Cornfield
The pick for the best slasher offering this year (until Black Phone 2 releases, #JoeHillHypeTrain) is a no-brainer. Shudder has finally delivered the long-awaited adaptation of Adam Cesare’s Clown In A Cornfield. And helmed by Eli Craig of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil fame no less! In the now dead hamlet of Kettle Springs, Missouri, a group of teens run afoul of its former mascot Frendo. While it initially presents itself as a basic corn-fed killer clown movie, if you stick with it, you’ll find it’s actually much more clever and thrilling than it lets on.
Predator: Killer of Killers
When I say Dan Trachtenberg does not miss, he does not miss in the slightest. The current creative director of the Predator franchise, fans of the series have been eating good ever since his work on 2022’s Prey, and have Predator: Badlands to look forward to early next month.
While Predator: Killer of Killers could have easily been a cheap animated film to tide over fans while they wait for Badlands, it proved to be one of the best films in the franchise yet. An anthology film featuring Yautja hunting throughout human history and across cultures, the animation here is slicker than slick. Killer of Killers delivers the action horror that everyone has been asking for from the franchise for years.
The Ugly Stepsister
When I heard The Ugly Stepsister was a collaboration between a bevy of film institutes and production companies across four different Nordic countries, I wondered what made it so special. What I saw explained it. While it is technically Cinderella, it’s specifically a retelling of Aschenputtel, one of the original and much darker iterations of Cinderella collected by the Brothers Grimm. And dark this is.
Told from the perspective of Cinderella’s stepsister Elvira, we watch her spiral as she tries to beautify herself in the ugliest of ways, all in an effort to secure a wealthy male suitor. Truly inspired costuming, grotesque body horror played for both shock and laughs, and a dead-on sense of comedic timing make this one a very memorable watch.
Weapons
Director Zach Cregger’s sophomore outing in the horror genre following his smash hit Barbarian is well-loved, and for good reason. This time, Weapons shines a spotlight on lives in a small town, and how they intersect, trying to make sense of a horrifying incident: the disappearance of 17 children who run out the front doors of their homes in the dead of night.
Cregger dances deftly on the line between horror and comedy in a way I can only describe as masterful, creating a film that is both viciously funny and aggressively disturbing. Where the film goes is a curveball, even for those who have seen the trailers, and a delightful one at that, since Weapons brings a new horror icon to the stage.
Companion
And speaking of Zach Cregger, this sci-fi horror is another one of his productions. If you’ve somehow avoided seeing anything about Companion until now and don’t know what it’s about, keep it that way and go watch it immediately. The ad campaign spoiled it, but the story is undeniably enthralling even if you know where it’s going. This movie features what is, by far, Sophie Thatcher’s most dynamic performance yet, supported by a stellar cast and the film’s pitch-black humor.
Fréwaka
The first Irish-language horror film is also one of the nation’s best cinematic offerings yet. A gripping and immersive folk horror film, it follows a home nurse named Shoo assigned to a superstitious older woman named Peig who lives on the edge of a remote village. Shoo soon begins to see dark ongoings in her dreams and waking life, plagued by the same mysterious group that Peig has been dealing with her entire life.
Fréwaka is a precision-made film, chock full of high impact editing and cinematography. It evokes a kind of existential monster, both man-made horrors of human cruelty and the mythological ones that lie deep in belief and the dark corners of Irish folklore. In short, unsettlingly effective.
Ash
Flying Lotus’ directorial career has been a point of interest for me ever since the genre shapeshifter that was Kuso and the demented parody that was his segment “Ozzy’s Dungeon” in V/H/S/99. And even with the high hopes those ventures gave me, Ash is so much more than I could have expected.
After astronaut Riya wakes up to nightmares of bodies being melted and screams of agony, she finds herself as one of only two survivors in a mission to colonize a planet gone horribly wrong. Ash is a lovely middle point between Event Horizon and The Void, a mixture that is sure to please those of us who like our science fiction dripping with an evil atmosphere and dark visuals. It also boasts some of the best color grading and lighting in any film this year.
Sinners
If you haven’t seen Sinners already, what have you been up to? Brain science? Rocket surgery? Here, visionary director Ryan Coogler tells the tale of a repressed young black man in 1930s Mississippi, trying to break away from his preacher father’s restrictive ways. His journey to do so lands him a performance at a juke joint out in the woods, one he plays so well that it lures in an ageless and relentless vampire.
Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, and Wunmi Mosaku lead an all-star cast through a mystical horror story with purpose. It explores the meaning of culture, religion, music, and the Black American experience—all while delivering one of the best vampire films of all time. The showstopping original soundtrack by Ludwig and Serena Göransson that it boasts isn’t half bad either.
Bring Her Back
I won’t mark this with the caveat of “so far”—this will be the most disturbing film you see this year. Bring Her Back blew any expectations you might have had from the Phillipou Brothers’ Talk To Me out of the water. While the premise of an orphaned brother and sister who are sent to live with an off-kilter foster mother and another mute child she’s fostering might seem predictable, this film is anything but.
It’s truly an emotionally draining watch, blow after blow with both the physical and emotional trauma it puts its characters through, and forces you to watch. It refuses to let you breathe for even a minute in its final act. It’s definitively Sally Hawkin’s finest hour as an actress, and beyond this short list, it’s firmly some of the best horror of all time.
Two of today’s most celebrated horror luminaries, Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger, launched their careers with sketch comedy. David Gordon Green directed big-budget comedies like Pineapple Express before polarizing fans with his Halloween reboot trilogy. And after John Krasinski played a beloved sitcom character for nine years before he made his directorial debut with A Quiet Place, kickstarting one of the genre’s most durable franchises.
It’s no wonder a slew of modern horror creators got their start in comedy. Horror and comedy are two sides of the same screaming mutant baby. Both genres deal in extremity. They both rely on the build-up and release of tension. They both inspire physical and often visceral reactions in viewers. Since the 2000s ’ American Psycho and 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, the horror comedy genre – once anathema to play-it-safe Hollywood executives – has exploded in popularity. Here are the best horror comedies of the last two decades, guaranteed to inspire shrieks of laughter and revulsion.
The Best Horror Comedies of the Last 20 Years
10. In Fabric (2018)
Peter Strickland’s giallo-inspired arthouse oddity about a killer dress is “every frame a painting” gorgeous – and totally bonkers. The first half follows Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whose charisma quotient grows the more she works to downplay it, as demure divorcee Sheila, who purchases a mysterious red dress that wreaks havoc on her humdrum middle-class existence.
In the second half, the dress falls into the possession of working class repairman Reg (Leo Bill), who possesses the odd ability to lull people into a trance whenever he drones on about washing machines. In Fabric is a droll yet unsettling send-up of fashion, consumerism, and how capitalism weaponizes desire. Like a flowing wrap dress and dazzling statement clutch, this movie perfectly pairs with this year’s fashion-fixated ghost tale, Mother Mary.
9. Drag Me To Hell (2009)
In terms of pure popcorn-munching thrills, this unhinged Sam Raimi yarn remains an undeniable banger. A wealth of horror comedies, including many on this list, code-switch between horror and comedy: funny scenes are funny, scary scenes are scary. The tonalities take turns politely. Drag Me to Hell is of the rare breed in which the horror and comedy are intertwined like DNA helices.
As Christine (Alison Lohman) finds herself under more and more extreme attacks from evil forces, Raimi’s signature Evil Dead-style frenetic direction – including coked-up camerawork, slam-bang edits, and gotcha-good haunted-house jump scares – are designed to leave viewers laughing while watching through splayed fingers. It all coalesces into one of the genre’s most stunning and sidesplitting finales.
8. Climax (2018)
This dance-driven horror excursion comes from the mind of Gaspar Noé, so you know it’s going to be unhinged. But is it a comedy? That depends on you. You might not find anything funny about a troupe of excitable dancers drinking from a punch bowl spiked with LSD during a rehearsal and inflicting total mayhem and brutality onto each other. But for the gleeful sadists and masochists out there, this experimental film isn’t not a comedy. There’s something mordantly witty about the way Noé first celebrates the art of dance (and by extension art) as the product of humans working in concert with each other to create magic… and then turns the equation on its head by reveling in nightmarish entropy brought on by unseen circumstances.
Climax perches itself on the blurred line between collaboration and chaos: it’s no coincidence that this en masse maniacal breakdown looks like one extended piece of bizarre modern dance in and of itself, inviting the viewer to ponder the film on a meta-textual level: how much of Climax’s comedy of grave errors was choreography, and how much of it truly was pure unplanned chaos?
7. Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Time has been merciful to Jennifer’s Body, despite the emo aesthetics, pop culture references, and presence of Adam Brody as a would-be teen heartthrob, all of which plant this horror comedy firmly in the late 2000s. A box-office bomb castigated by viewers and critics upon release, it’s since gained cult status as a seminal text in the modern queer horror canon. Writer Diablo Cody regards the central relationship between Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and Jennifer (Megan Fox) as seriously as a devil’s pact. As their friendship descends into its inevitable breakdown, the horror lies not so much in the newly demon-possessed Jennifer ripping her unsuspecting paramours to shreds – that’s just good-natured fun!
The true terror lies in how Needy’s world destabilizes as she works to decipher how once-bestie Jennifer now codes in her life: Friend in need? Social threat? Object of desire? The movie might be named after Jennifer’s body, but the real thrill ride here is Needy’s mind – and these two actresses do wonders in embodying this tender and toxic friendship. Seyfried is heartbreaking with every uncertain glance and stutter, and Fox loads her performance with a captivating undercurrent of guilt and quiet woe.
6. You’re Next (2011)
A wealthy family gathers at a cabin in the woods, where they’re besieged by masked intruders wielding crossbows and gnarly booby traps galore. You’re Next doesn’t spend too much time pausing the blood-soaked action to hit the viewer with didactic satire, unlike future “eat the rich” horror narratives such as The Menu. Instead, director Adam Wingard relies on his nimble improv-forward cast to deliver grounded performances that both humanize and skewer these characters to killer effect. Sharni Vinson commands every moment as fish-out-of-water Erin, who must endure a tense first meeting with her boyfriend’s family.
Genre icon Barbara Crampton is a hoot as the family’s wound-up matriarch. The stalwart supporting cast also includes mumblecore auteur Joe Swanberg and horror favorite Ti West. Some Letterboxd reviewers mistakenly believe You’re Next has nothing to say, that the story ends without ramping up to a “point.” Those critics may do well to consider: perpetrators don’t always need to write on the wall for us to understand their motives. Consider this movie as a sort of pre-Succession romp, with amplified bloodshed. The humor and horror lie in poisoned family dynamics that mutate cutthroat behavior into literal cut throats.
5. The Substance (2023)
Jordan Peele nabbing the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Get Out punched desperately needed holes in the Academy’s historical exclusion of horror comedies. The Substance made those holes even bigger as it poured through them like a wild, unstoppable geyser, with Demi Moore leading a fiery Best Actress campaign (ultimately losing to Mikey Madison) and the effects team picking up a statue for Best Makeup thanks to the film’s crowning achievement, the beautiful abomination Monstro Elisasue. Coralie Fargeat’s ribald exegesis on aging subverts the “fountain of youth” trope. The story’s cardinal sin (for every great horror narrative is built around sin) isn’t Elisabeth Sparkle’s obsession with youth, but that of a broken culture that debases anyone who falls outside its cruel and unusual beauty standards.
The psychological horror of Elisabeth waging war on her own self has serious resonance in today’s modern society that leaves us toggling between fractured selves (online self vs. IRL self, work self vs. home self). But this movie’s true miracle is how it managed to garner accolades from the Academy, despite its gut-busting finale that mocks the timeworn ritual of media professionals dressing up in spiffy formalwear to gather and self-congratulate.
4. Obsession (2026)
Horror comedy’s newest buzzy darling on the block is also one of the subgenre’s best. Curry Barker’s debut feature doesn’t necessarily dazzle on its premise alone: the idea of wishing a crush into reciprocating romantic feelings against their will has been explored everywhere from The Twilight Zone to Buffy to The Fairly OddParents. Yet similar to The Substance (see above), Barker’s crackerjack script interrogates the insidious implications of the narrative “magic bean” that fulfills the protagonist’s greatest desire. Lead actor Michael Johnston has the unenviable task of embodying a main character whose demise many in the audience will clamor for – but he fulfills the assignment with aplomb.
As his character Bear caves deeper into his own cowardice, his regrettable actions come off as disturbingly human. But the real star is Inde Navarrette as Nikki. Her swing-for-the-fences performance is akin to a modern-day conjuring of Isabelle Adjani’s epic turn in Possession. See this one with an audience for the complete horror comedy experience: you’ll likely witness the crowd’s nervous laughter growing more raucous as the story grows more disturbing. Obsession pulls no punches as it forces viewers to contend with what we really want out of our partners – and how much we’re willing to take from them to get it.
3. Get Out (2016)
View Jordan Peele’s contemporary classic from one angle, and there’s not much funny about it. The movie doesn’t play this hellish meet-the-parents scenario for overt laughs. Once Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris discovers the terrible secrets of his partner’s family the Armitages, the movie coaxes the viewer into his mounting dread, starting with an unnerving (and visually arresting) depiction of the so-called Sunken Place, followed by his encounters with the Armitages’ other victims (all displays of brilliant work from the supporting cast), and eventually his heartpounding effort to escape from the Armitages’ secluded property. Yet in a grim gallows-humor kind of way, Get Out is a laugh a minute – and not only because of its scenes of comic relief from Lil Rel Howery as Chris’s exuberant buddy Rod.
Get Out is one of the most rollicking social satires of the 21st century. Ten years on, the phrase “would have voted Obama for a third term” remains in our cultural lexicon as a wry bit of shorthand for a well-to-do white liberal who over-fancies themselves “one of the good ones” – perhaps the most potent sign of this movie’s enduring legacy. Too many filmmakers have since tried and failed to play in the “social horror” subgenre popularized by this movie; their hearts might be in the right place, but they lack Peele’s deft understanding of how to build tension – and humor – with visual composition, editing, and especially music to bring horrific social satire to bear.
2. Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Drew Goddard’s send-up of the horror genre itself is a stuffed cornucopia for horror comedy lovers: with fierce wit and so-clever-it-hurts story machinations, Cabin in the Woods embraces and explodes shopworn horror tropes before throwing everything into the kitchen sink and burning everything down in a blaze of glory. Five years before Bradley Whitford’s turn as the sinister patriarch in Get Out, he leads a winning cast here as a project manager with corny “corporate dad” swagger who has to deliver results – or the whole world will pay the price.
15 years after its release, the genre commentary of Cabin in the Woods doesn’t feel dated: in fact, it feels prescient. Goddard’s pristine script argues that horror will remain forever essential to culture, but creators mustn’t be afraid to discard shortsighted cliches in favor of bold new storytelling ventures. A mere three years after this movie’s release, the genre did indeed experience a kind of evolution with the simultaneous rise of prestige horror, social horror, and horror comedy – proving that the genre has power beyond stories about horny teenagers getting hacked to pieces at a cabin in the woods.
1. Beau Is Afraid (2023)
Since the rise of horror’s mainstream popularity, researchers have been fascinated with the unlikely role the genre plays in allaying viewers’ anxiety. Coltan Scrivner, a psychologist at Arizona State University, writes in a review paper on the subject: “Horror entertainment content allows people to experience fear in a safe, controlled environment, providing an opportunity to practice cognitive reappraisal.” Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid feels like a valentine to horror’s most loyal audience: those with debilitating anxiety. Joaquin Phoenix’s perpetual worrywart Beau is all but crippled by fears and phobias, and the movie revels in his warped vision of the world: he’s plagued with threats bursting from all corners, from spiders to knife-wielding assailants to missed appointments to guilt-inducing calls from Mom.
The nightmarish absurdism, pushed to delirious heights, both mocks and sympathizes with Beau’s anxiety, making for an unforgettable first 40 minutes. Then the movie relaxes into a strange and picaresque character study of Beau, which may alienate viewers who wish that Aster had simply kept the frenzied train rolling. But in switching gears to explore Aster’s deeper fears around belonging, desire, and family, the film takes a sincere dive into what makes Beau’s fears so terrifying – and funny. Even as the movie trolls Beau, it resists dehumanizing him. In fact, despite all the terror, guilt, and shame that Beau endures, Beau Is Afraid likely takes the prize for most humane horror comedy of the 21st century.
Shudder knows summer is the perfect time to watch scary things in air-conditioned places. Which is why the beloved streamer is giving us newer movies like Heresy, Whistle, This is Not a Test, and Smothered. While it’s always fun to see recent titles arrive alongside classics and deep cuts, my eye isn’t on the films this month. Most of my picks this May are television series and documentaries. Maybe that means I want longer comments with my media and an open library. Or perhaps I’m just reminding myself that I’m a cool nerd and making it your problem too. Whatever the case may be, I have curated another list of titles that I believe deserve our attention. Check out my top five priorities while surfing our favorite streamer below.
Tales From the Crypt (1989 – 1996)
Our beloved 90s anthology is finally making its way to our most cherished streamer. As someone who hasn’t seen Tales From the Crypt since I was a tyke, I’m so giddy that I get to watch it as an adult. More importantly, I get to binge it as John Kassir (the voice of our favorite ghoul) intended. I have been floating since this news was announced at the Overlook Film Festival in April. My insomnia and my Crypt Keeper are about to be reunited, and all is going to be alright in my little world. Come for the celebrities and stay for the puns and wicked deaths. I sincerely hope you call out of work each Friday as a new season gets added to Shudder.
You can watch Tales From the Crypt: Season 1 on May 1st. Subsequent seasons will premiere on Fridays, concluding with Season 7 on June 12
Horror Noire: History of Black Horror (2019)
Based on Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman’s book of the same name, Horror Noire: History of Black Horror is simply that girl. It unpacks the complicated history of Black people in the genre with humor, honesty, and heart. It even gets into the conversations no one seems to want to have and makes room for Black horror icons to actually be heard for once. You could hear the record scratch on Bluesky when this Shudder Original disappeared a few months ago. So, we can all rest easy knowing that it’s coming back home and we can continue to have it in our regular rotation. Horror Noire made many of us feel seen and made us better cinephiles and critics. It’s worth the Shudder subscription on its own if we’re being completely honest.
You can watch Horror Noire: History of Black Horror on May 4th.
The Terror: Devil in Silver (2026)
Your favorite unsettlingly stoic anthology has returned for a new season, and this time, Dan Stevens is in the mix. Stevens plays Pepper, a man with bad luck and a bad temper who gets himself committed to a psychiatric hospital. Any horror fan knows that’s the recipe for many horror bangers, and that’s why I will be sat. The cast also includes CCH Pounder, Judith Light, and Marin Ireland. However, my heart belongs to Karyn Kusama, who is in the director’s chair and the queen of tension. As a Momma Kusma stan account, I am so ready for her to raise my blood pressure and send me to the ER. The demonic duo of AMC+ and Shudder is cooking with this one.
You can watch episode one of The Terror: Devil in Silver on May 7th. Subsequent episodes will premiere weekly, concluding with the season finale on June 11th.
In Search of Darkness 1990-1994 (2024)
We all love to see our faves get together and discuss the horror eras we have romanticized. Which is why watching genre royalty unpack the “lost” decade of horror is something we all probably want to see. As a 90s kid, I feel like we ate pretty well in my day. So, I want to collect all of these stories like infinity stones. Some of the faces we can expect to see are Heather Langenkamp, John Carpenter, Frank Henenlotter, Tim Balme, and Michael Gross. My little nerd heart could bust, and I am happy Shudder is opening the library this May.
You can watch episode one of In Search of Darkness 1990-1994 on May 11th.
Something Is About to Happen (2023)
Things take a turn for a woman who loses her job as a computer programmer. The only movie in my roundup this month goes to the one I perhaps know the least about. Truthfully, I am just here for horror movies about women going through it. Excuse me as I gesture to the world and my bank account. More importantly, Spanish-language horror rarely fails me. So, I am willing to look past the two-hour and two-minute runtime. I am ignoring that it is listed as a romantic horror. I’m doing this because I expect my kind of chaos, and I hope I am right. From one down girl to another, I am rooting for this character on sight.
You can watch episode one of Something Is About to Happen on May 15th.
That is what I plan to use my Shudder Saturdays for this month. Let us know what you’re plotting to hit play on in the comments because we’re nosy.
