In the mood for a good ol’ fashioned scare? There’s a treasure trove of excellent horror movies to stream on Prime Video. Critic Travis Johnson has found the best of the best.
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American Mary (2012)
Watch on Prime VideoKatharine Isabelle’s broke medical student finds herself performing backyard surgery for the extreme body modification subculture in this boundary-pushing feminist flick, from Jen and Sylvia Soska. American Mary flips the body horror formula on its head, giving us a tale in which the weirdos are sympathetic and its privileged straight men who are the real villains.
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOAmerican backpacker (David Naughton) is mauled by a werewolf while holidaying, cursed to transform into a monster on the full moon. In terms of plot there’s not much to John Landis’ classic, but it threads the comedy/horror needle perfectly and boasts the single greatest transformation in werewolf movie history.
The Babadook (2014)
Watch on Prime VideoThe uncanny arrival of the titular picture book cranks the tension between a harried single mother (Essie Davis) and her troubled son (Noah Wiseman), but who’s really the danger here? In her debut film, Jennifer Kent tips the ‘creepy kid’ genre on its head, using the form to examine a regrettably common dysfunctional family dynamic. A modern Australian genre classic.
Colour Out of Space (2019)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEODirector Richard Stanley brings us this fairly faithful adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s short story, starring Nicolas Cage as the patriarch of a farming family who find themselves helpless in the face of a strange alien infection. It first poisons their water, then their farm animals, and ultimately the family themselves. A slowly building sense of dread eventually gives way to full-blown body horror.
Coming Home in the Dark (2021)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOThe debut feature from New Zealand filmmaker James Ashcroft sees teacher Hoaggie (Erik Thomson) and his family terrorised by a pair of menacing strangers. Dark secrets are soon uncovered and it becomes clear that, even if the family do survive, the weight of their new knowledge may tear them apart in this grim, bloody, and uncompromising film.
Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOThis old school British anthology uses Peter Cushing’s tarot-dealing Dr Schreck to weave five tales of terror. Christopher Lee and Donald Sutherland turn up in different stories, along with a wealth of character actors, as various familiar tropes—werewolves, vampires, voodoo, etcetera—get the big screen treatment. It’s gleefully bloody and histrionic.
Excision (2012)
Watch on Prime VideoSuffering delusions and growing more and more adrift from reality, a disturbed high school student with surgical aspirations decides the best way to earn her parents’ affections is by curing her little sister’s cystic fibrosis with an at-home double lung transplant. This lurid tale of suburban horror is criminally under-appreciated, but its commitment to the point of view of its unhinged central character is admirable.
Ginger Snaps (2000)
Where to watchMorbid high school outcasts Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle discover some changes are more traumatic than puberty when one is bitten by a werewolf and the other is forced to search for a cure, and deal with some truly feral mood swings. Director John Fawcett and screenwriter Karen Walton, who both went on bring us Orphan Black, milk their scenario for every ounce of dark comedy and adolescent angst.
The Head Hunter (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoSeeking vengeance for his murdered daughter, a Dark Ages warrior (Christopher Rygh) works as a monster hunter, slaying the various creatures that plague the kingdom in the hopes of one day encountering the beast that killed his child. Think The Witcher on a microbudget and you’re on the right track. Utilising a small cast and extremely limited locations, but wonderful production design, director Jordan Downey implies a whole world beyond the confines of the frame, while keeping us focused on the action within it.
Hellraiser (1987)
Watch on Prime VideoCult horror author Clive Barker made a big, bloody splash with his feature directing debut. Adapting his own story, The Hellbound Heart, Barker weaves an unsettling tale of what are essentially supernatural BDSM aficionados, summoned by a magic device—Lemarchand’s Box or The Lament Configuration depending on who’s talking—to subject humans to pain beyond pleasure and pleasure beyond pain. Groundbreaking for the time and still impressive now, it spawned a surprisingly long-running franchise, of which maybe three sequels are worth your attention.
Hellraiser II: Hellbound (1988)
Watch on Prime VideoKicking off immediately after the events of the first film, the best of the Hellraiser sequels sees the Cenobite Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his fellow BDSM demons invade the psychiatric hospital where poor Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) has been sequestered after the recent horrors. Smartly expanding the first film’s mythology, this is a worthy follow up to writer turned director Clive Barker’s landmark debut film. Shame about what came after, though.
The House That Jack Built (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoMatt Dillon is a serial killer who recounts a litany of horrifying crimes committed over the course of his life in this typically provocative piece from Danish troublemaker Lars Von Trier. The stepping off point may be John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but von Trier’s unflinching brutality will make even the staunchest horror fan squirm in places, while the gradually growing metaphysical subtext raises philosophical questions that remain unanswered by the time the credits roll.
I am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOMoody teen John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) has been pegged as potential school shooter material, so when bodies start piling up, he has motive to try and find the killer. The truth is unsettling and weird in director Billy O’Brien’s tight, controlled study of teen alienation and supernatural horror.
It Comes At Night (2017)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOSet in the wake of some ungodly plague, this thoughtful post-apocalyptic horror follows a family holed up in an isolated rural home, visited by a young couple and their baby who are seeking refuge. There’s a heavy atmosphere of mistrust, with simmering tensions gradually bubbling to the surface—building to a devastating finale.
Immaculate (2024)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOSydney Sweeney plays a novice nun who uncovers sinister secrets at the remote Italian convent she’s been hied off to. Combining themes of bodily autonomy with body horror, Immaculate’s shaky grasp of theology doesn’t stop it from being a thoroughly unsettling Catholic chiller.
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Watch on Prime VideoThe best of the various adaptations of Richard Matheson’s incredible novel I Am Legend, this black and white Italian film from 1964 sees horror icon Vincent Price as the eponymous lonely survivor struggling to make it through the night in a world where everyone else is a vampire. Gets closer to the bleak, shocking final reveal of the novel than any other version since.
Long Weekend (1978)
Watch on Prime VideoBickering couple John Hargreaves and Briony Behets take off for a weekend camping trip, only to find nature itself seemingly turning against them in an escalating series of ‘accidents’. Allegorical ecological horror is the name of the game here, with director Colin Eggleston never quite letting the audience know exactly what’s going on.
Lost Gully Road (2017)
Watch on Prime VideoA lone woman comes under supernatural attack while vacationing in an isolated cabin in this unsettling piece of Australian Gothic. Director Donna McRae does a lot with a little, turning invisible assaults into a potent metaphor for domestic violence.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Watch on Prime VideoThe dead rise from the grave to consume the living, and a mixed group of survivors hole up in an abandoned farmhouse to try and live through the night. George A. Romero’s black and white original 1968 low budget masterpiece spawned an entire subgenre—you owe it to yourself to find out why. Also available in colour, for no justifiable reason.
Night Tide (1961)
Watch on Prime VideoDennis Hopper is a sailor on shore leave who falls in love with a young woman (Linda Lawson) who may or may not be a mermaid. Think a psychological horror riff on Splash and you’re on the right track. Night Tide is a low budget effort from the Roger Corman stable and at times it looks it—but the seaside carnival setting, dreamlike black and white photography, and lurid plot give it a hallucinatory charge that’s hard to shake.
Razorback (1984)
Watch on Prime VideoRussel Mulcahy brings music video verve to this tale of a man-eating pig terrorising the outback, and what could have been a rote schlocker becomes artier, weirder, and often downright mesmerising. The plot is pretty much Jaws on trotters, but this Ozploitation gem punches well above its weight in terms of sheer filmmaking nous and visual style.
The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOThe other sequel to Night of the Living Dead (it’s a whole thing) and the directorial debut of underappreciated genre legend Dan O’Bannon. Zombies go punk in this gruesome horror comedy as a secret military experiment raises the hungry dead from the grave, much to the surprise of the wasted youth partying in the graveyard. Gleefully anarchic and gory.
Society (1989)
Watch on Prime VideoTroubled rich teen Billy Warlock discovers his alienation from his high society family and friends is not rooted in class consciousness, but in the fact that they are inhuman monsters that literally eat the lower classes. You have to wade through a lot of soap opera-level nonsense in this satire by Brian Yuzna to get to the grand slam climactic scene but, holy hell, is it worth it.
Suspiria (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoArthouse darling Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) tackles Dario Argento’s giallo classic and, miraculously, manages to pull it off. Dakota Johnson is the ingenue who arrives at a German dance academy run by Tilda Swinton, who finds herself caught up in a power struggle among a coven of witches. But is she their victim or their messiah? This is a remake done right, using the bones of the original to do something new and transgressive.
The Wind (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoIn desolate 19th century New Mexico, two pioneering families endure increasingly bizarre and inexplicable hardships and accidents. Is it just prairie fever, or are they the victims of some unseen supernatural force? Writer Teresa Sutherland and director Emma Tammi craft a superbly sustained atmosphere of paranoia and mounting dread in this frontier horror, redolent of both the madness of loneliness and the loneliness of madness.
The Woman (2011)
Watch on Prime VideoAn abusive family patriarch (Sean Bridgers) captures a feral woman and tries to ‘civilise’ her, not knowing she is the last survivor of a backwoods cannibal clan. Lucky McKee adapts Jack Ketchum’s pitiless novel with an adroit eye for both gore and gender politics, with McIntosh giving a performance that is ferocious in every sense.
Totally Killer (2023)
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEOCombining horror, comedy and sci-fi is ambitious, to be sure. But Nahnatchka Khan’s time-travel slasher is a gleefully gory and funny success. Starring Kiernan Shipka as a teen who travels back to the 80s to stop the serial killer who murdered her mother, the film nails its numerous genres, infusing a Back to The Future-esque narrative with nail-biting beats.
This guide is regularly updated to reflect changes in Prime Video‘s catalogue. For a list of capsule reviews that have been removed from this page because they are no longer available on the platform, visit here.
