Are you a horror movie fanatic with time on your hands this summer? Amazon Prime has quite a selection of tempting options.
Below you’ll find the 11 best horror movies available on Amazon Prime.
11 of the Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime
- A Quiet Place (2018)
- Take Shelter (2011)
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
- Bad Samaritan (2018)
- The Mimic (2018
- The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
- The Thing (1982)
- The Strangers (2008)
- The Lie (2020)
- The Descent (2006)
- I See You (2020)
1. A Quiet Place (2018)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
7.5/10 | 96/100 | FuboTV, Paramount Plus, FXNOW, DirectTV (subscription);Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft, Apple iTunes, Redbox, AMC on Demand, DirecTV (rent or buy) |
Starring real-life couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, A Quiet Place is a suspenseful horror movie that took theaters by storm in 2018.
Evelyn and Lee are young parents who must protect their children in a post-apocalyptic world where alien creatures hunt humans, tracking their prey by sound. The family’s approach to survival is absolute quiet, a complete silence that drastically amplifies jump scares if you love that sudden adrenaline rush.
2. Take Shelter (2011)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
7.4/10 | 92/100 | Hulu (subscription); Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, DirecTV (rent or buy) |
Take Shelter is a thrilling horror film with a slow burn. Curtis (Michael Shannon) is a family man who lives in a small town and leads a relatively simple life.
Suddenly, he begins to experience premonitions of an impending apocalypse. Questioning his sanity, he doesn’t reveal his visions to his wife (Jessica Chastain) or his young daughter (Tova Stewart). Instead, in a Noah-like act, he begins to build a shelter.
As a member of the audience, you slowly question Curtis’s sanity alongside his wife. Has his choice to create an underground bunker resulted from hallucinations and placed undue hardship on his family, or will his premonitions turn out to be correct?
When you think you finally have an answer, the ending packs a punch.
3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
5.8/10 | 46/100 | Roku, Tubi TV (free with ads);Apple iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, Redbox, DirecTV, AMC on Demand (rent or buy) |
If you’re a Jane Austen fan, you’ll appreciate Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a horror parody of the author’s most famous work.
This movie is adapted from the book trilogy by Seth Grahame-Smith and Steve Hockensmith.
In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, during a time in which a plague has turned many into zombies, Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) must partner with the proud Fitzwilliam Darcy (Sam Riley) for the sole reason that he possesses exceptional zombie-killing expertise.
Just as in the zombie-free original, Elizabeth cannot stand the sight of the proud Darcy and writes him off immediately as an arrogant individual. While fate and a common need to kill zombies have brought them together, the gradual development of a romance will keep them together.
4. Bad Samaritan (2018)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
6.5/10 | 53/100 | Kanopy (free); Hoopla (subscription);Vudu, Microsoft, Google Play, YouTube, Apple iTunes (rent or buy) |
In Bad Samaritan, Sean Falco (Robert Sheehan) and his friend Derek Sandoval (Carlito Olivero) are valets at an upscale location. The two young men also run a side gig–using the GPS tracker on each Lamborghini or Mercedes-Benz to drive the vehicle back to the wealthy customer’s garage instead of parking the car. They then burglarize the home.
When Cale Erendreich (David Tennant) drives up to the valet stand in a luxury car, obviously emitting wealth, Sean immediately calls dibs. He valets the car directly back to Cale’s house. What Sean finds is alarming.
Among the many valuables, a woman named Katie is being held hostage in chains. Unable to free the woman, Sean flees the house, returning the luxury car so the psychopathic Cale won’t suspect him, and discreetly alerting the police about Katie’s abduction.
Cale arrives home in time to meet the police in damage control mode and uses his prestige and psychopathic cleverness to convince the cops that nothing is amiss. Once the coast is clear, Cale turns his attention to carefully picking apart and destroying Sean’s life and the lives of all those around him.
You’ll be on the edge of your seats from the very beginning during this cat-and-mouse horror thriller.
5. The Mimic (2017)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
5.6/10 | 83/100 | YouTube, Tubi TV (free with ads); Rakuten VIKI, Hoopla, Hi-YAH (subscription);Vudu, Google Play, Apple iTunes, YouTube, Microsoft, Redbox (rent or buy) |
The Mimic is a South Korean horror film directed by Huh Jung. Huh Jung wrote the plot using a well-known mythological story of the Jangsan Tiger, a mountain beast that can take on human form and emit a human-like cry to lure in its prey: humankind.
The film begins with a nighttime scene of a man who has driven into the mountains with the bodies of his wife and the family dog. He’s hiding the bodies as he hears the voice of his wife beckon to him from a distance.
Movie viewers get a glimpse into the life of Hee-yeon (Jung-ah Yum), a young mother unable to give attention to her daughter Jun-hee (Yu-sul Bang) as she’s still mourning the loss of her son Jun-seo who disappeared without a trace some five years prior.
Looking for a change to improve the family’s emotional well-being, Hee-yeon, her husband Min-ho (Park Hyuk-kwon), Min-ho’s mother, and Jun-hee move to a more rural area. Hee-yeon begins to see her lost son Jun-seo everywhere she looks.
Failing to find Jun-seo, Hee-yeon encounters a young girl in the forest and her motherly yearning for her second child encourages her to bring the unknown girl into her family’s home. Here, the young girl begins to show disturbing behavior, eerily imitating Jun-hee’s voice.
The family begins to doubt everything–including that the young girl is human.
For a carefully crafted thriller that neatly ties all pieces together by the end, give this Korean-language movie a try.
6. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
6.7/10 | 44/100 | Vudu, Apple iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, Redbox, DirecTV, AMC on Demand (rent or buy) |
The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a classic supernatural horror movie based on an actual event from history.
The real Emily Rose was Anneliese Michel, a young German woman, born in 1952, who suffered from seizures and unfortunately didn’t receive appropriate medical care for her epilepsy. Instead, she underwent years of ineffective psychiatric treatments, after which her family turned to the Catholic Church for help.
Two priests eventually performed more than sixty exorcisms on the young woman until Anneliese ultimately wasted away, dying from malnutrition. In the legal case that ensued, the priests received charges for negligent homicide.
In The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the story begins shortly after the death of Emily (Jennifer Carpenter). Erin Bruner (Laura Linney) is a lawyer seeking to make a name for herself and takes the messy case of Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson), charged with negligent homicide for the young woman’s death following an exorcism.
The audience watches as the court case gives glimpses via flashback scenes into the teenage girl’s life who first began to see demons as a college student away from home.
Father Moore pleads his case in court that demonic possession was to blame. He believed that the only cure was through exorcisms as Western medicine had failed.
The movie contains countless creepy scenes that hint at the presence of the supernatural torturing the existence of those here on earth.
Likely the most disturbing part of the film is the audio from the exorcism tapes.
The real version of these tapes exists. More than an hour and a half of this audio is on YouTube.com:
The audio is in German, but no translation is needed to comprehend the distressing nature of these utterances.
7. The Thing (1982)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
8.1/10 | 86/100 | Starz, DirecTV (subscription);Apple iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, AMC on Demand, Vudu, Microsoft, Alamo on Demand (rent or buy) |
The Thing is a science fiction horror movie starring Kurt Russell as R. J. MacReady, the helicopter pilot for a research team in Antarctica.
A group of American researchers in Antarctica first notices that strange events are afoot when they encounter members of the Norwegian team who appear to be in distress and chasing a husky by helicopter.
After one Norwegian pilot fires at them, the Americans respond by firing back, killing the pilot, and ending their chance to communicate and understand what’s happening.
The American research team travels to the Norwegian base to determine what has happened and find absolute carnage and the carcass of a strange human-like being.
Clark (Richard Masur) walks the husky that the team found earlier being chased by the Norwegian team, and he places the dog with the American team’s other sled dogs. The husky absorbs the bodies of the other canines and morphs into a terrifying creature that the team quickly puts down.
Setting out to discover more about this entity, the American researchers use the deceased Norwegian team’s notes and discover an alien ship.
A sense of doom overcomes the team as they realize the implications of their discovery. This thing is extraterrestrial and could potentially morph and assimilate to overtake all life forms on earth.
The fate of the world is in the researchers’ hands.
8. The Strangers (2008)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
6.2/10 | 48/100 | Netflix (subscription);Apple iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, DirecTV, Microsoft, Redbox (rent or buy) |
The Strangers is a slasher horror film that features everyone’s worst vacation experience.
James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) are a young couple, angrily arriving at a summer vacation home after Kristen rejected James’s engagement proposal. Eager to escape, James arranges for a ride from a friend the following day.
His hasty plans soon go awry. In the wee hours of the morning, a woman loudly knocks on the door, rousing the couple, asking for someone by the name of “Tamara.” Believing the woman has knocked on the wrong door, James sends her away without a second thought.
A few hours later, James leaves the house to run to a local convenience store, leaving Kristen alone. As the audience, we watch as Kristen begins to note that things are amiss.
Then we see it: a masked man, hidden in the shadows.
The movie’s plot takes from the infamous murders in which Manson Family members Charles Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel murdered Sharon Tate and her friends at 10050 Cielo Drive.
The first step the Manson Family members took in their murderous rampage was to cut the phone lines. Similarly, in The Strangers, the masked intruders that lurk in the shadows steal the couple’s phones.
This cruel psychological game plays on the nightmare of a home becoming a prison as you’re cut off from all chances to communicate for outside help and are hunted ruthlessly in isolation.
This film will have chills running down your spine as you catch glimpses of masked predators hiding in wait to lunge out at James and Kristen.
9. The Lie (2018)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
5.8/10 | 43/100 | N/A |
As a horror drama, The Lie contains countless crescendos of twists and turns as the web of lies grows thicker.
Jay (Peter Sarsgaard) is driving his daughter Kayla (Joey King) to an event and giving a lift to her friend Britney (Devery Jacobs).
Britney begs Jay to make a pitstop so she can relieve herself in the woods. Jay obliges, and both girls hop out.
Only a few minutes later, Jay hears Kayla scream. Rushing to her aid, he discovers a distressed Kayla insisting that the teenage girl has murdered her friend, pushing Britney off the bridge into the water.
Frantic, Jay ushers Kayla back into the car, where they race to the house of his lawyer ex-wife Rebecca (Mireille Enos).
In the remainder of the movie, the more brutal events occur at the hands of the adults in the family as they try to conceal the truth through layers of lies.
What truly was the truth though?
The big reveal at the end will make you gasp in horror.
10. The Descent (2005)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
7.2/10 | 86/100 | Vudu Free (free with ads); Kanopy, Plex (free);Apple iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft, Redbox, DirecTV, AMC on Demand (rent or buy) |
The Descent is an action-packed fan favorite that puts a horror twist on the adventure genre.
After the tragic death of her husband and daughter, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) embarks on a therapeutic wilderness adventure with long-time friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid) with three additional acquaintances.
The group decides to go caving in a North Carolina location. Tensions arise as the spelunkers enter a passageway within the cave, only for the rocks to give way and block off the exit.
Trapped, members of the group become frantic. Holly attempts to escape but instead breaks her leg. While the others are distracted, Sarah catches sight of a human-like creature.
The cavers aren’t alone. An unknown species is hunting them.
11. I See You (2019)
IMDb Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Rating | Where Else to Watch |
6.8/10 | 79/100 | Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft, Redbox, Apple iTunes (rent or buy) |
I See You adds some mystery to the mix and includes an element of the unique subculture of phrogging.
Greg Harper (Jon Tenney) is the lead investigator on the case of a series of abductions in a small town. His relationship with his wife Jackie (Helen Hunt) is on the rocks due to her past affair. Not only does disharmony dwell at home but strange things have begun to happen with the disappearances of kitchen utensils and other small items.
While Greg is away, heavily involved in the abduction investigation, Jackie’s former lover, Todd, visits and is accidentally knocked out during an accident. She drags his unconscious body down to the basement and then hurries to take her son Connor to school to conceal the fact that Todd was visiting.
When she returns home, she’s horrified to discover that Todd is no longer unconscious but deceased. Believing that her son has committed this crime due to Connor’s hatred of the other man, Jackie asks Greg to help her hide Todd’s body.
In a startling turn of events, Jackie and Greg next discover Connor tied up in the bathtub. If he’s not to blame for the murder, then who is?
Someone else is in the house, but is the person the most dangerous character present?