From A Quiet Place (2018) to Rosemary’s Baby (1968), here are some of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime.
Most streaming services including Amazon Prime Video have a great line-up of titles perfect for a scary movie night. From slashers, ghost stories to creature features, horror comes in many forms. Let’s not forget the paranoia-inducing horror that gradually gets under your skin with an original premise. Whether you are in the mood for a gore fest or a slow-burn horror with overarching themes, it’s going to take you a long time to sift through all the titles and chaff out the really good ones. We’ve made your job easier and come up with some great stream-ready horror titles on Prime Video.
Our list features horrors with iconic imagery like the blood-drenched Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976). We’ve also included socially relevant modern horrors like The Witch (2015) and Get Out (2017). And then there are subtle, spooky features like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and A Quiet Place (2018). So turn those lights off and get ready for the chills! Take your pick and stream away some of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime Video, streaming as of December 6, 2023.
Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime
3. Hereditary (2018)
Writer-director Ari Aster’s debut indie horror was an unnerving supernatural drama that revolves around a grieving family who begins to be haunted by disturbing occurrences. Toni Collette gives the performance of a lifetime as Annie, a miniatures artist. Her screams will give you sleepless nights. I remember being impressed by Aster’s writing which goes for scares that are emotionally justified instead of traditional ‘jump scares.’ Hereditary is among the best horror films in recent times streaming on Prime Video.
4. A Quiet Place (2018)
John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place is a masterful exercise in horror. It has a fairly simply and familiar story involving alien monsters terrorizing the planet. But Krasinski avoids violent confrontations and conventional dialogues in favor of a unique set-up that allows us to closely experience the terrors of a family. The aliens in A Quiet Place are highly sensitive to sound and would kill anything that makes sound.
The Abbot family is one of the few families that exists in silence and struggles to avoid a possible death sentence that awaits them each day. This is a remarkably intense film because it largely focuses on characters who are easily relatable. It’s a rare kind of artful genre filmmaking from Hollywood studios.
6. Tumbbad (2018)
Set during the British Raj and divided into four chapters, the central premise of Tumbbad rests on a family secret. A metaphor for man’s greed, the film combines psychology, storytelling, mythology, and morality into a visually potent and sordid combination.
The visuals are rich and remind one of a graphic novel spilling over into film. The notion of evil is stitched into the fabric of every frame, and presents a despondent and dreary world. Hunger, both literal and metaphorical, is utilized to depict a void that is so great it threatens to consume.
I feel very proud of Indian cinema in recent times for churning out truly thought-provoking and experimental stuff. Yes, Tumbbad is a horror film, but it is also much more than that. Try and watch this one for your next movie night, it’ll be a heady ride.
7. Pari (2018)
A tale of love’s triumph over hatred, Pari takes a simple concept and weaves it into a folklore-inspired horror story that is amazingly realistic and surreal at the same time. One could say that the film is based in the realm of magic realism. It takes the concepts, images and structures of reality and introduces us to magical elements.
These magical or fantastical elements may or may not be real at all. It all depends on the subjective perspectives on truth. The insistence on the existence of multiple truths and the shunning of absolutism becomes the chief characteristic of the film. The main proof of this theory is the amazing twist ending which leads us to question the existence of the supernatural elements in the cosmos of the film itself. This interesting and open-ended take on a horror movie makes Pari stand out as one of the best Indian horror films.
12. The Tall Man (2012)
Pascal Laugier’s Tall Man is a lot conventional and less bloody feature than the director’s disturbing first film Martyrs. Nevertheless, Laugier designs a wonderful bleak setting and novel, psychological scares for Tall Man. The movie focuses on single mother Julia, living in an impoverished small town named Cold Rock in Washington. The town is infamous for numerous child-abduction cases. The local people blame it on urban legend: a mysterious figure called Tall Man.
Julia’s life becomes frenzied as her only son goes missing. The frantic search makes her grapple with the town’s mysteries. The film lacks a dramatic urgency, but is fairly unpredictable than your average horror film.
14. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs features the well-mannered psychopath Hannibal Lecter, one of the most iconic characters in cinema. Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal might appear on the screen for less than 17 minutes. However, his pitch-perfect portrayal of the cannibalistic serial-killer puts him alongside other deadly horror cinema characters like Norman Bates and Jack Torrance.
Based on the best-selling crime novel by Thomas Harris, Silence of the Lambs revolves around Clarice Starling, an ambitious FBI rookie trainee. She is sent to interview the captive serial killer Hannibal in order to understand the mind of an active serial killer, known as ‘Buffalo Bill’. What follows is tense mind games and a darkly fascinating police procedural.
16. Carrie (1976)
Carrie was renowned American author Stephen King’s first published novel. The brilliant film adaptation by Brian De Palma still retains the status of being one of the all-time great horror movies. Played by Sissy Spacek, the titular character is an isolated and bullied adolescent, who is brought up by a zealot mother. Soon, Carrie discovers that she is literally different from other teenagers. She has telekinetic powers, which she hasn’t yet learnt to control.
Carrie deals with themes of misogyny and taboos related to female sexuality. Besides, De Palma perfectly captures the fears and uncertainties of an adolescent. The bloody and violent climax of the movie would go down as one of the most disturbing endings in horror cinema.
Conclusion
There you go! These are some of the best horror movies on Amazon Prime Video for a fright-filled scare fest. If you’ve ticked all these off your list, check out Open Water (2003), Suspiria (2018).
Over to you now! What did we miss? Tell us your favorite horror movies streaming on the platform.
