Near-Perfect Horror Movies You Might Have Missed

In this day and age, there are more films being made than ever before. It's easy to miss movies, so many audiences turn to sites like Rotten Tomatoes for guidance, though that may not necessarily have an impact on the box office. There's a common misconception about how that site works, though. The score given to each film isn't a representation of how good the movie is; instead, it represents the percentage of critics who would recommend the film overall. In other words, if half of all surveyed critics loved a movie and half of them hated it, the movie would clock in at 50% Fresh. That may not seem like a great score, but all it indicates is that a movie is polarizing; you might find yourself on either side of that divide.

With that in mind, the films on this list have near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores. That means almost every single critic who wrote about the film thought it was worth watching. While a middle-of-the-road score might not indicate a "middling" movie, glowing scores like these are good indicators that a film is worthwhile. These are lesser-seen movies, ones that got enough attention to juice those Rotten Tomatoes numbers but maybe didn't find wide audiences outside of horror circles. They're all fantastic, though, and for various reasons, they're perfect choices for sleepless nights. There are ghosts and demons on this list, human horrors beyond comprehension, and in a few key cases, things you won't find in any other film. These horror movies are not to be missed!

At first, German horror movie "Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes" feels like a stylistic exercise. Its filmic language is self-consciously old fashioned, the kind of horror movie that draws its atmosphere from great production design, film grain, and slow zooms. It's ostensibly about an unhappy couple (Frederik von Lüttichau and Luisa Taraz) who inherit a castle. As they explore their new home, reality seems to break down, leading to horrific visions, collisions of past and present, and a spiraling, creeping sense of insanity that threatens to consume the film itself.

This is a strange, psychedelic film, one that operates on pure nightmare logic. It's sort of about the end of the aristocracy, using the crumbling castle and couple's fracturing marriage as metaphors that work in either direction. More than that, though, it's a film of harrowing images, visions that seem to drive the film mad just as much as they affect the characters. A lot of horror movies do the reality-blurring thing as an easy excuse for scares, but the imagery in "Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes" genuinely gets under your skin, hoping to deeply unsettle you as much as it "scares" you. By the end, as the dreamlike aura induces a chaotic, visceral dread, you'll come away with the sense that you've experienced a genuinely singular film.

For decades, "The Amusement Park" was George A. Romero's lost film. It was a director-for-hire job, a commissioned film shot in 1973 between "The Crazies" and "Season of the Witch." The movie, which was restored by the George A. Romero Foundation and only shown to the public in 2021, was developed as an educational film by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania. We're lucky that the streaming era's potential to serve as an archive of cinema preservation enabled the wide rediscovery of a film like this, because it is downright terrifying.

"The Amusement Park" is a surrealist, experimental film, one without a straightforward plot. It's a collage of horrifying imagery made all the more frightening by the fact that the horror it depicts is all too commonplace. It follows an elderly man (Lincoln Maazel) in an all-white suit, wandering an amusement park that seems to be located in "The Twilight Zone." There are freak shows, psychics, and old people selling their clocks. The other parkgoers seem grotesque; carnival rides are hellish experiences; and the old man wanders from station to station, seemingly unsure where he is, haunted by visions of a grim reaper among the crowd. It's a depiction of what it's like to grow old and lose your faculties, overlooked by the world and bouncing from one strange, frightening-yet-familiar experience to another. To watch it is to immerse yourself in a primordial stew of emotion and pain, the raw material of a nightmare.

As the world went into lockdown in early 2020, filmmaker Rob Savage went to work. Noticing that everyone was now socializing over Zoom, he conceived, wrote, shot, edited, and released a horror film called "Host" by late that pandemic summer. It remains one of the best films about quarantine, full of isolation and fear, powered by the sense that the rules of the old world no longer apply.

"Host" is about a group of friends who come together online one night, as many of us did in those days. They've hired someone to entertain them: a woman who claims to be able to speak with the dead. At first, this seance is just a way to pass the time, something to do as those first frightening Covid days blurred into boredom. Quickly, though, they realize that this isn't just a gag. Something supernatural has been unleashed by their experiment, and before they know it, they can only watch helplessly as their friends' webcam videos become windows into terror.

Found footage has had to evolve, and "Host" is part of a class of found-footage films like "Unfriended: Dark Web" that all take place on computer screens. It's the best the subgenre has to offer, a film as much about technology's power to simultaneously unite and divide as it is about any sort of paranormal activity. And hey, it only clocks in at 57 minutes!

Australia doesn't get enough credit for its horror industry. "Talk to Me" was a one of 2023's scariest films, and "Wolf Creek" is a classic, but people would do well to recognize that the country is consistently pumping out some of the nastiest, most brutal horror films around. Call it "new Aussie extremity," a whole host of movies that feature torture porn-adjacent depictions of bodily mutilation. Think crusted blood — and so much dirt.

Case in point: "The Loved Ones," a horror film from 2009. It's about a depressed teenager named Brent (Xavier Samuel) who turns down a prom invitation from an awkward girl named Lola (Robin McLeavy). That was a bad idea, because now Lola and her creepy father Eric (John Brumpton) want revenge. Before Brent knows what's happening, he wakes up strapped to a chair at Lola's kitchen table, an unwitting participant in her own twisted prom party.

This is a relatively low-budget affair, but it's impressive what a demented atmosphere director Sean Byrne is able to achieve with some pastel-colored balloons and paper crowns. McLeavy's gonzo crazy-girl performance is unforgettable, as is "Not Pretty Enough," the cutesy Kasey Chambers song that becomes a recurring motif throughout the film. That tune will trigger memories of some of the gnarliest kills this side of "Saw," and you'll be humming it long after the credits roll

"The Bold Type" star Aisha Dee plays the title role in "Sissy," an Australian slasher from 2022. She's a semi-popular influencer, a confident, charismatic young woman who teaches her followers how to meditate and set up "safe spaces" for themselves. Sissy's confidence is rocked when she runs into Emma (co-writer and co-director Hannah Barlow), a girl who used to bully her. Emma invites her to tag along on her bachelorette party, a retreat at a cabin in the woods, and soon Sissy finds herself slipping back into her old, socially-awkward ways. Around all these people from her past, she loses touch with who she is now, struggling to maintain her newfound confidence amid reminders of who she used to be. Also, there's a killer on the loose.

This is a fun, candy-colored film, zipping along from kill to kill with gleeful energy. It's also a smart reflection of the way we perform online, fracturing ourselves into various identities for various audiences. Plenty of slasher films are about a past trauma rearing its head into the present, and the mystery of what, exactly, these people did to Sissy is a compelling hook to hang the film on.

Mostly, though, it's just plain enjoyable. This is a slasher film where several kills happen in the daylight, but it's also happy to conjure up a thunderstorm to make things seriously spooky. That playfulness makes it well worth your time.

In 1993, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper linked up to direct "Body Bags," an anthology film centered around tales told by morgue attendants. (That one's great fun; the segment where Stacy Keach grows a scary amount of hair is an all-timer.) In 2019, Shudder released director Ryan Spindell's "The Mortuary Collection," yet another anthology narrated by an undertaker. When a girl (Caitlin Custer) comes to enquire about a job, the undertaker (Clancy Brown) gives her a tour of the mortuary and tells stories of people who have died in the building.

The stories are all period pieces, with segments set in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. That's a fun excuse for Spindell to flex his filmmaking muscles, and it gives each vignette its own distinct identity. This is a gleefully-demented movie, full of delicious shocks and twisted scares. 

The standout segment is called "Unprotected," which features Jacob Elordi, making this one of the best movies starring the "Euphoria" cast. He plays Jake, a frat bro who drunkenly hooks up with a girl at a party. The consequences he faces for one night of pleasure push body horror to its absolute limits; fans will have trouble looking at Elordi the same way again after seeing what happens to his ... nether regions. "Saltburn" obsessive Oliver Quick would despair.

These days, director James Whale is best remembered for his Universal Horror monster films like "The Bride of Frankenstein" (which almost didn't make it past censors) and "The Invisible Man." He's also remembered as the director that Ian McKellan portrayed in the excellent 1990s film "Gods and Monsters," opposite Brendan Fraser. Those other movies are great, but Whale's 1932 film "The Old Dark House" is a masterpiece, too. It was actually considered lost for decades, but Universal eventually found a print and restored the film to beautiful quality. 

This is one of those classic old horror movies where a bunch of high-society types are invited into a mysterious old building by a mysterious man with mysterious motives. In other words, it's the sort of film that "Clue" was parodying. Thanks in no small part to the meticulous restoration, the black and white photography is gorgeous. This is a funny film too, one that leans into the thrill-ride, William Castle-esque potential of the horror genre. Boris Karloff plays a hairy, mute, lumbering servant, and the cast also includes numerous Golden Age greats like Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, and Raymond Massey. It's simply a pleasure to watch them stumble around a spooky old castle, jumping and shrieking at various frights and jolts. James Whale was one of the first to ever do it, and nearly a century later, he's still one of the best.

In "Anything For Jackson," Julian Richings and Sheila McCarthy play an elderly married couple grieving the loss of their grandson. They also happen to be Satanists, and they devise a plan to perform a "reverse exorcism," kidnapping a pregnant woman and inviting Jackson's ghost to possess her baby's body. The ceremony inadvertently opens a gateway, and soon their house is overrun by spirits and entities hell-bent on mayhem.

Horror-comedies can be difficult to get right. Too funny, and the film feels like it doesn't take its horror components seriously. Too scary, and it's tough to muster the energy to laugh while you're on edge. "Anything For Jackson" gets both sides of the coin right; it's both funny and frightening in equal measure. Director Justin G. Dyck has made dozens of family-friendly television films with titles like "A Puppy For Christmas," so at first glance, it's surprising that he'd make a horror film where a dead woman flosses her own teeth out. This is his calling, though, because it's simply a blast.

Writer/director Ted Geoghegan's chilly debut film "We Are Still Here" is a haunted house movie. It takes place in the 1970s, centering on a couple who move to an old home in New England after their son is killed in a car accident. Anne (horror legend Barbara Crampton) isn't coping well, while Paul (Andrew Sensenig) is looking forward to starting over. Unfortunately, as happens in these sorts of movies, the home seems to be haunted by spirits both literal and emotional. It isn't long before Anne learns the history of their home from a neighbor: it used to be a funeral home, one where the bodies who came through its doors were desecrated. The psychological scars of this evil still mar the house, manifesting in frightening apparitions.

Actor/director Larry Fessenden shows up (like he did in "Killers of the Flower Moon") and gets some fun material to chew on, while Crampton seems to relish her nuanced character arc. In addition to being a vehicle for great performances, the genius of "We Are Still Here" is in its tonal escalation. It starts out feeling like a restrained character study, but as supernatural events pile on top of one another, the film builds to an all-out bloody climax. Indelible creature design and genuinely grotesque practical effects put the cherry on top of an excellent horror experience.

Creepy-kid horror movies are a dime a dozen, stretching back to "The Bad Seed," "The Omen," and "The Exorcist." We love watching children misbehave in horrifying ways, but these movies can easily go wrong if the child actor isn't necessarily up to the task. Even more difficult to pull off are movies where kids are in peril. It's one thing to watch a kid commit atrocities, but it's quite another to watch someone commit atrocities to a kid.

Enter "The Boy Behind The Door," a movie that features not one but two phenomenal child performances. Ezra Dewey and Lonnie Chavis play Kevin and Bobby, two kids who are snatched by a kidnapper on their walk home. Bobby wakes up in the trunk of a parked car and manages to escape, but before he can run to safety, he hears Kevin calling him from a foreboding house. Instead of saving himself, he decides to save his friend. Bobby breaks into the home and must move unseen through its darkened hallways and sinister spaces, using his ingenuity to free Kevin.

Dewey is great, but Chavis is the standout. His Bobby is brave and resourceful, a modern update of Brandon Adams' Fool from "The People Under the Stairs." That movie is great, but where it dresses up its class satire in ooky-spooky horror movie shenanigans, "The Boy Behind The Door" is more straightforward. This is a dark film, and thanks to those performances, an unmissable one.

Too many horror movies these days function mostly as metaphor, their genre trappings merely an excuse to explore concepts like grief and trauma. Think "The Babadook," or "Halloween Kills," if you believe Jamie Lee Curtis. When it's done well, however, this can be a powerful vehicle for a story. The 2020 film "My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To" does it very, very well.

The movie is about Dwight (Patrick Fugit) and Jessie (Ingrid Schram), two siblings who look after their younger brother Thomas (Owen Campbell). He has a chronic health condition that prevents him from going out into the sunlight and also requires that he drink blood. (You might be tempted to call him a vampire, and we wouldn't stop you.) Because they can move through the world easier than he can, Dwight and Jessie have fallen into a routine where they find victims to drain the blood from, feeding their brother with the pain of others. Over time, the situation becomes untenable.

This is a quiet, contemplative horror movie punctuated by bursts of violence. It's about never being able to escape the baggage given to you in childhood, whether literal or psychological. It's also about how draining it can be to care for a family member, which is an uncomfortable topic addressed with surprising sensitivity, given the vampirism of it all.

Valeria (Natalia Solián) and Raúl (Alfonso Dosal) are overjoyed to learn that she is pregnant, having wanted a baby for a long time. Valeria busies herself making furniture for the nursery, eagerly looking forward to the baby's arrival. One night, however, unable to sleep, she witnesses a woman leap from a balcony, her body lying broken and bloodied on the sidewalk... and then she begins to crawl... but when Raúl looks, she's gone. Soon, Valeria spirals. She's convinced that the broken woman is stalking her, while everyone else thinks it's just a manifestation of pregnancy nerves. "When you become a mother, you feel like you are split in two," a well-meaning woman advises. The movie literalizes this, often shooting Valeria in mirrors, sometimes broken ones; she is reflected and refracted in the frame, her identity fracturing like the broken bones of the woman on the ground.

The scary sequences in "Huesera: The Bone Woman" are downright chilling. Solián is a perfect scream queen, staring in wide-eyed, open-mouthed horror at scenes beyond her comprehension. The movie's sound design is critical, too; the bone-crunching noises that accompany the apparition are guaranteed to make your skin crawl. This is a movie that succeeds on the strength of its imagery, and as the action reaches a nightmare pitch in the movie's final moments, its imagery is unforgettable.

Looking for more scares? Take a look at our list of underrated horror movies that are worth checking out.