The Best Horror Movies of the 2020s So Far

It’s spooky season, which means that it’s time for us to pull out our old favorite horror movies. Every year, we have to check in with Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger , maybe even throw on Universal and Hammer classics about Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster . As important as it is to remember the past, horror movie fans would be doing themselves a disservice if they ignored the new in favor of the old. The past six years have been a true treasure trove for lovers of all things macabre, as some of our best current filmmakers have put their talents to scaring the crap out of audiences. In their honor, we take on a task just as frightening by trying to narrow down the 15 best scary movies of the 2020s so far. Surely, we’re going to leave off some favorites, but hopefully that will just be proof that the 2020s have been a frightfully good time so far. 15. Host (2020) Were it released any other year, Host would be little more than a clever little gimmick movie with some fun jump scares. But because it was made and released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Host managed to capture general anxieties and turn them into something trenchant and timeless. Written by Rob Savage, who shares co-writing credits with Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley, Host uses the screenlife formatting to show what happens to a group of friends who hold a seance over Zoom and don’t follow the rules. We watch the entirety of Host as it unfolds on the main screen, allowing the characters and premise to feel relatable, if not mundane. Moreover, Savage and his co-creators integrate genuine tensions between the characters, particularly lead Haley (Haley Bishop) and her best friend Jemma (Jemma Moore). Those tensions give weight to the proceedings as the spirit they accidentally invited in begins to attack the participants, all heightened by Savage’s clever use of the screenlife format. Once you watch Host , you will never again look at funny Zoom animations in the same way. 14. The Empty Man (2020) The worst thing to be said about The Empty Man is that it never gets better than its first 20 minutes. But that doesn’t mean that the 110 minutes to follow are bad. In fact, they’re quite good. But the mini-movie that opens the film, about a doomed mountain climbing expedition and the reveal of a terrifying idol, is so perfect that few films could maintain that level of quality. The main portion of the movie follows former cop James Lasombra (James Badge Dale), who gets pulled into a mystery when his neighbor Nora’s (Marin Ireland) daughter disappears, leaving behind the message “The Empty Man made me do it.” As he investigates the strange goings on among the teenagers in his town, Lasombra makes some horrifying discovers about his own identity. Writer and director David Prior, loosely adapting a comic book by Cullen Bunn, manages to let the terror of the cold open linger over the procedural elements of The Empty Man , giving the entire film an unshakable sense of dread. 13. The Substance (2024) What does it say about the development of culture that, in 1985, a horror movie lampooning the decade’s health-food craze, had to be the Larry Cohen cult fave The Stuff , but in 2024, The Substance is a widely-loved hit, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley ? Whatever the reason, Coralie Fargeat followed up her lean and mean debut Revenge (2017) with the glossy body horror extravaganza The Substance and audiences loved it. The Substance owes some of its success to Demi Moore’s fearless, egoless performance as Elizabeth Sparkle, an actress and fitness personality treated like a horrible monstrosity because she’s reached her 50th birthday. In desperation, Elizabeth takes a shady drug that makes her younger (portrayed by Qualley), but with some horrible side-effects, and not just because her younger self, Sue, increasingly takes control. The entire story builds to a stomach-churning climax, the sort of thing you’d have to visit a sketchy video store to see back in the 1980s. 12. 28 Years Later (2025) 28 Years Later should be terrible. Or, at least, it should be a comforting, but unsurprising, retread of a past triumph. After all, T2: Trainspotting isn’t a bad movie, but the last time Danny Boyle revisited a previous masterpiece, no one was particularly impressed. Whether it’s because he’s re-teaming with Alex Garland , or because the Brexit crisis invites strong feelings, but 28 Years Later somehow feels just as urgent as its predecessor, 28 Days Later (2003). Boyle and Garland avoid any legacy sequel shenanigans involving characters from the first movie. Instead, what begins as the story of a father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) taking his son Spike (Alfie Williams) on a coming-of-age mission into the rage-zombie-infested woods outside of the community stronghold becomes a meditation on the nature of death. The movie achieves this shift thanks to Ralph Fiennes’s deeply empathetic Dr. Ian Kelson, who can find the humanity in even the hulking zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) and help Spike deal with his mother’s (Jodie Comer) illness. The move from horror to humanism allows 28 Years Later to feel vibrant and necessary, and not just like shambling, lifeless IP. 11. Nosferatu (2024) Of all the classic monsters, Dracula may be the most difficult to do well, precisely because he’s so popular. Audiences have been inundated with countless variations of Dracula and other blood-suckers to the point that a work needs to be truly unique to catch their attention. Leave it to Robert Eggers , that master of historical verisimilitude, to find a novel approach. Eggers goes back to the first Dracula adaptation and updates Nosferatu , F.W. Murnau’s silent, copyright-violating take on the Bram Stoker novel. A heavily-made-up Bill Skarsgård transforms into the titular monster, the hideous Count Orlok. Where modern vampire tales emphasize the seductive nature of the creature, Skarsgård’s Orlok speaks in a rumbling voice and glowers from wild eyes, desiring first to consume real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), and then Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). Helping the humans stand against Orlok’s evil is Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz, played with the perfect mix of humanity and eccentricity by Willem Dafoe. Eggers mixes the elements together to create a vampire tale at once familiar and utterly unexpected. 10. Obsession (2026) On the surface, Obsession is a simple indie horror flick, buoyed by a manic central performance and an interesting behind-the-scenes factoid, given its 25-year-old director Curry Barker’s relative lack of cinematic experience. However, one look at the summer box office numbers proves that Obsession is so much more than just an indie movie. Barker and his actors have tapped into larger conversations about women’s bodily autonomy, making Obsession a lightning bolt of a film. Inde Navarrette stars as Nikki, who wants to be nothing more than friends with her close pal Bear (Michael Johnston), despite his desire for more. When Bear uses a mystical One Wish Willow to override her desires with his own, Nikki transforms into the most devoted, doting, and ironically possessive girlfriend who ever lived. Yet, lest anyone mistake this as a horror story for Bear, Obsession repeatedly reminds us that it is ultimately Nikki who suffers. 9. Sinners (2025) In most cases, a multi-award-winning, culturally-transformative movie like Sinners would take the number one spot. But since this is a horror-focused list, we do have to dock Sinners a bit for not being quite so scary as some other 2020s releases. Yes, Ryan Coogler does fill the screen with vampires, and he does feature one of the most magnetic bloodsuckers to ever appear on screen, in the form of Jack O’Connell’s magnetic Irishman Remmick. Yet, Coogler and co. play the monster beats for pathos more than they do for horror. That said, the fact that Sinners sits at number nine on this list is a testament to what it does right, which is just about everything. Michael B. Jordan finally cements his proper movie-star status with a dual turn as twins Smoke and Stack, come back to Clarksdale from Chicago, ready to open their own juke joint. Despite some rough reunions with former loves, played by Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku, the twins get the juke up and running—only for Remmick and his brood to descend upon them. What follows is at once a celebration of the power of music, a warning against cultural hegemony, and a pure cinematic spectacle that deserves every bit of praise it earned. 8. Weapons (2025) Despite some worthy entries such as Mass and the most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre (yes, really), Hollywood still hasn’t figured out what to do about the school shooting crisis. Weapons is a movie that hasn’t figured out what to do with any of the themes and feelings it invokes, which range from the exact time that writer and director Zach Cregger learned of his friend Trevor Moore’s death to fears about children being attacked in school. Yet, somehow, the messiness of Weapons makes it more resonant. Weapons stars Julia Garner as a teacher who comes under fire when all but one of her students runs out of their houses at 2:17 a.m. and disappear. Josh Brolin co-stars as one of the kids’ parents, who demands answers from the teacher. Those answers come in the form of Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), in an Academy Award-winning performance, just one of the many odd and endearing characters that make Weapons a scary, funny, and often moving mess. 7. Talk to Me (2022) When news broke that Aussie twins Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, originally known as YouTubers RackaRacka, were making a horror movie, most expected something gross, kinetic, and shocking. Their debut feature Talk to Me certainly delivers on that promise, particularly with a sequence in which a possessed pre-adolescent batters his own body to a pulp. The story of a teenage party game in which participants allow themselves to be possessed by gripping a statue of a white hand, Talk to Me has plenty of disturbing content. No, the surprising part about the Philippou brothers’ first movie is its emotional depth. The primary teen Mia (Sophie Wilde) isn’t your average horror movie victim. Rather, she’s a fully fleshed-out character, as are the members of the family who takes her in after her biological family’s dissolution. That grounding makes Mia’s decisions at once frustrating and understandable, and it makes the fate of those around her feel true and truly terrifying. 6. Pearl (2022) Like Host , Pearl was a film that seemed initially driven by its gimmick. Filmed alongside and released shortly after Ti West ‘s ’70s slasher X , Pearl promised to tell the story of that movie’s killer, the titular Pearl (portrayed there by Mia Goth under heavy make-up). Whether or not anyone wanted to know more about an elderly crone whose sexual desires drive her to murder, that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because Pearl exceeds all expectations. Part origin story, part slasher, and part homage to The Wizard of Oz , Pearl stars an absolutely magnetic Goth as a woman whose big dreams drive her to cut her way out of her small town. While West and Goth, both credited as writers on the movie, include some shocking horror scenes, the real power of Pearl comes from the pathos given to the title character, making her somewhat sympathetic and at least relatable—at least until she flashes that unhinged smile of hers. 5. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) Early in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma , young director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) explains that the third act of her debut movie Jouissance was a remake of Psycho , from the perspective of the shower curtain. With that joke, anyone worried that Schoenbrun was just interested in doing an artsy-fartsy riff on ’80s schlock like Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp could relax. And yet, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is an artsy-fartsy riff on ’80s schlock. But it’s a riff that’s both in on the joke and in love with that schlock. At its core, Teenage Sex and Death follows Kris as she tries to recruit one-time final girl Billy Presley ( Gillian Anderson ) to star in her remake of the slasher franchise Camp Miasma . But as Kris and Billy bond, they explore both the pleasures of trash and the vulnerabilities of sexual expression, making Teenage Sex and Death perhaps the most thrilling movie of the year, even if its kills come with a Counting Crows needle drop. 4. Malignant (2021) Let’s get this out of the way right up top: Malignant is about a lady who has a whole other person growing out of the back of her head. Sometimes, that other person takes over the lady’s body and uses it to kill people. If that premise is too silly for you, then skip this entry. But if you find that premise even a little intriguing, if it makes you wonder how anyone could pull something like that off, then you must check out Malignant . Working from a script by Akela Cooper, director James Wan pulls off the conceit by leaning all the way into its ridiculousness. Annabelle Wallis plays the lady in question, Madison Mitchell, who has almost no memory of her imaginary friend Gabriel or the surgeries she underwent as a child. After hitting her head during an accident with her husband, Madison begins blacking out and seeing visions, visions that turn out to be the actions of Gabriel, the parasitic twin who surgeons did not entirely remove. Yes, it’s a ridiculous concept, but it’s one Wan and company fully embrace, especially in an unbelievable sequence in which Gabriel takes control of Madison to slaughter a cell full of inmates. 3. Godzilla Minus One (2023) Perhaps befitting a franchise based on giant monsters battling each other, Godzilla fans love to fight. They fight about their favorite eras, the virtues or lack thereof of American vs. Japanese movies, serious or silly kaiju movies, and so on. It’s surprising, then, that so many people agree upon Godzilla Minus One ‘s excellence—that is, until you realize that Minus One embraces Godzilla’s many contradictions. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One takes us back to the years after World War II, where former kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) lives in disgrace over not sacrificing himself in the war or during an earlier kaiju attack. When Godzilla resurfaces, Kōichi goes back into action. But as he and his countryman weigh the horrible options to stop Godzilla and try to find a method that embraces life, Godzilla Minus One becomes a movie at once bleak and hopeful, goofy fun and deadly serious. 2. The Invisible Man (2020) All horror movies have themes that can speak to our political moment, even the goofiest and trashiest of the bunch. And sometimes, when a filmmaker tries to make that subtext too firmly into text, the themes lose their strength and the horror dies under the didactics. So when Leigh Whannell remade The Invisible Man and focused on the perspective of a woman ( Elisabeth Moss ) terrorized by a male abuser no one can see, we all worried that another classic would be turned into a political tract instead of a horror movie. How wrong we were. To be sure, The Invisible Man spares nothing in showing how the wealthy and respected Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) uses his privilege to demoralize his girlfriend Cecilia Kass (Moss). But Whannell pairs that depiction with expertly-crafted horror sequences and camera movements so deliberate that the audience fears Griffin’s presence, even when he’s not on screen. Between the stillness of Whannell’s camera and Moss’s commitment to playing an unraveling woman, The Invisible Man succeeds at being a real-world warning and real horror. 1. Nope (2022) The most shocking thing about Jordan Peele ‘s brief filmography is that Get Out is somehow his “worst” movie, and Get Out is a five-star masterpiece. The thrilling thing about Peele’s filmography is that, despite coming out of the gate with a culture-defining, critically-lauded film, he’s only become more playful and audacious, which makes his most recent film his best. With all its talk about the curse of spectacle and the danger of fame, Nope serves as both a comment on Peele’s career and the next step in his artistic evolution. All that makes Nope sound like a suffocating bit of metatext, and it’s anything but. Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya play mismatched siblings, desperate to save the family ranch after the death of their father (Keith David, who is introduced riding a horse!). When they recognize that a UFO has been visiting their valley, drawn by a nearby show run by a former child actor (Steven Yeun), the duo think they’ve found their big break, if they can survive the experience. As much as Nope invites parallels between the various fame-seekers and Peele himself, the movie’s expertly-crafted horror and compelling characters make it worthwhile as an excellent horror movie first, and a comment on the state of the industry second, if at all. The post The Best Horror Movies of the 2020s So Far appeared first on Den of Geek .

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