If you’ve been dying to catch a good horror movie, you’re in luck. Amazon Prime Video is home to films of every kind, and if animated family fare and silly studio comedies have been making you loopy, a solid unwinding with vampires, ghosts, and deadly demons sounds like it’s in the cards.
We’re big genre fans ourselves, which is why we’ve put together this rotating monthly roundup of all the best horror movies on Prime Video that you can watch right now. Happy streaming, friends! We hope you find something new and terrifying.
If you don’t see anything of note on Amazon Prime, we’ve also rounded up the best horror movies on Netflix and the best horror movies on Hulu.
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Smile2022
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Halloween Ends2022
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Beast2022
The feature film debut of writer-director Parker Finn, Smile stars Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who finds herself haunted by disturbing specters and other supernatural phenomena after one of her patients ends her life right in front of her. As the days and weeks go by, Rose starts losing her grip on reality, leading her to do a bit of investigating into her client’s demise.
Her discovery: a morbid and long-spanning connect-the-dots of self-mutilation. Leaning on jump-scares (albeit some very good ones) and measured performances to spin its terror threads, Smile may feel familiar to many fans of the genre, but who said wearing your influences on your sleeve has to be a bad thing?
Serving as the bookend to writer-director David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween films (made up of 2018’s Halloween and 2021’s Halloween Kills), Halloween Ends decides to go totally off-formula for its final run with the infamous Michael Myers character, focusing instead on two returning characters: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), one new face (Rohan Campbell), and three intertwined stories of survival in the wake of tragedy.
Don’t worry fans, for even though it takes Myers a solid forty minutes-plus to join the fray, once he makes himself known, we’re treated to one of the gutsiest and most polarizing depictions of the madmen once billed as “The Shape.”
Cropsey is the kind of documentary that has us wishing there were more documentaries just like it; and even if you’re a horror fan who never treads the waters of non-fiction, we highly recommend giving this one a go. Produced and directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio, Cropsey explores the titular urban legend, a monster of a man who preyed upon five New York City children through the ‘70s and ‘80s.
But far more than a wandering wraith, the filmmakers discover that the horrible acts of convicted child kidnapper Andre Rand may be at the root of the decades-old myth. Profound and disturbing, Cropsey has gained quite the following over the last 15 years or so, and for good reason: it’s a sensational and disturbingly horrific doc that’s worth your time.
A cult classic for the ages, Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a masterful campfest that follows the townies and local law enforcement of a community besieged by extraterrestrials who look a whole lot like circus clowns. Even their “mothership” is a gigantic circus tent. As the community begins getting harvested by the otherworldly fiends, the citizens must band together to fight back against the invaders and their perilous hijinks. Written and directed by the Chiodo Brothers, who also designed the practical effects for the film, Killer Klowns isn’t a film to be taken seriously, but if you go into it expecting a cheesy amalgamation of gags and big-top slaughter, you won’t be disappointed.
If you’re in the mood for an extra-painful kind of horror (you’ll never look at your Achille’s heel the same way again), Pet Sematary is a powerful adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. The 1989 version of the film stars Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed, a doctor who has been transferred to a rural town in Maine. Moving into a new home with his wife (Denise Crosby) and two children (Blaze Berdahl and Miko Hughes), Louis is warned by his neighbor Jud (Fred Gwynne) to be mindful of the speeding 18-wheelers that barrel down the road. When an unexpected tragedy strikes the Creeds, Jud tells Louis of a place where the dead can be brought back to life, which sets into a motion a horrific chain of events that should remind us all to stay away from ancient burial grounds.
Based on the Peter Genoway play of the same name, director Cody Calahan’s The Oak Room stars Breaking Bad alum RJ Mitte and Peter Outerbridge as Steve and Paul. Hoping to settle a long-ago score, a homecoming Steve (Mitte) returns to a bar he once frequented, where he decides to trade harrowing stories with the miserly barkeep. It’s these chilling words that possess a greater part of the film, with the various vignettes delivering countless twists and turns throughout the runtime.
If monster movies are your bag, The Relic is a solid bit of genre filmmaking that doesn’t pretend to be serious for one second, but it’s the jovial B-movie approach that cements the flick as one with at least some replay value. Starring Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller as a detective and biologist trying to hunt down a giant beast that’s wreaking havoc at a museum in Chicago, it may not be the most intellectual film you’ve watched (or revisited) all year, but The Relic is pure popcorn fun from start to finish.
Nocturne stars Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, White Lotus) and Madison Iseman (I Know What You Did Last Summer) as twin sisters Juliet and Vivian. Accomplished pianists attending a prestigious music school, Vivian’s abilities are near-virtuoso and always a step above Juliet’s hands. That is until Juliet comes into the possession of a music theory book from a student that had jumped to her death. As the tome begins granting Juliet newfound confidence and dedication to the piano, her inflated ego meshes with a series of supernatural events that threaten her own life and the safety of those around her.
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