The 25 Best Horror Movies Of 2025: Vampires, Witches, And Zombies Ruled The Screen

No surprise here, Ryan Coogler shows us what a talented filmmaker with an excellent script can do with a proper budget. There are about a million reasons why Sinners took home multiple FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards, seven Golden Globe nominations, and is poised for Oscar noms as well. Fango’s BJ Colangelo called this “a sweaty, sexy, blood soaked success” singing the praises of the incredible ensemble cast (with Michael B. Jordan pulling double duty as twins Smoke and Stack).

Colangelgo sums it up nicely in her original review: “Sinners paints a captivating portrait of the resilience, love, and joy found in Black communities while highlighting the world-altering art they’ve created, without downplaying the bloodshed, violence, and full-throated bigotry endured along the way.”

Zach Cregger’s follow up to his hit Barbarian makes him two for two. Aunt Gladys was one of the most popular Halloween costumes this year, proving that Weapons broke out of the horror bubble and into the mainstream.

Amber T wrote “Weapons carries over that uneasy sense of suburban sickness from Barbarian, languishing in the creeping dread that untold nightmares could, and probably are, unfolding behind neatly-painted front doors and in basements built for boring appliances.” Hear, hear. Now pass the soup.

Personally, my biggest surprise of the year (last year, it was Oddity), and I know I’m not alone on this one. Emilie Blichfeldt won us over with her feature directorial debut, a dark and twisted take on the Cinderella story. But in a climate thick with public domain horror adaptations, I promise you, this movie is not what you think.

This gorgeously grotesque take on the fairytale returns to its dark roots before pushing it firmly into epic body horror territory. Dare I say, it's classy? Because it is. But don't be deterred by that. There's also a hefty amount of worms going in (and coming out of) places worms have no business in.

As Kimberly Leszak said in her review, “Any individual trigger warnings on Blichfeldt’s feature debut are futile; there’s more than enough stomach-churning trauma for everyone packed into its 110-minute runtime.”

Body horror is enjoying a moment, and we are enjoying watching it all unfold. Michael Shanks’ co-dependency horror stars real life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco and uses body horror as a vehicle to illustrate their relationship.

“Together doesn’t tack on the body horror as some sort of tired gimmick; it’s the cinematic language that this story demands to be told in,” wrote FANGORIA critic BJ Colangelo. “The gross-out effects work as well as they do because they match the overwhelming level of emotion. When you love someone, I mean truly love them, trying to explain to another person what that feels like in your body is an impossibility, so it’s only fitting that their bodies contort in impossible ways to tell the audience how much they love each other.”

A feel good movie this is not. But I wouldn’t expect less from the Philippou brothers in their follow up to mega hit Talk To Me. The duo takes us to even darker places in their sophomore feature, a meditation on grief and the lengths one might go to get something back while failing to realize their own metamorphosis into a monster.

Fango's BJ Colangelo called this a “psychological endurance test,” and I’d say that’s about right. I don’t know that I’ll be rushing to rewatch this a dozen times, but it is the rare sort of movie that I sat quietly with for quite some time after. The Philippous are adept at crafting hauntingly beautiful work that follows you home and sticks to your insides like tar.

In the era of often ill-advised prequels, requels and legacy sequels, eyebrows were raised when Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later was first announced. How exactly do you follow up what is arguably the defining zombie movie of the modern era, especially one that spawned an entire subgenre of 28 Days Later clones? The answer is simple.

Put Jack O’Connell in a ratty blond wig and a tracksuit, slap on some Teletubby metal, and watch your audience explode. Bonkers ending aside, 28 Years Later is an epic of Arthurian proportions, blending delicious gore and Infected that are scarier than ever with a heart-swelling central theme of unconditional love in the face of imminent death.

As the Fango news team’s resident Brit, it would be remiss of me not to choose 28 Years Later as one of our top horror movies of the year, but it’s my own personal number one. See you at The Bone Temple, very soon. – Amber T

Read more on this “distinctly British horror movie” here.

As a massive fan of horror comedy (and rom coms too) Heart Eyes is a wonderful blend of rom com meets slasher horror. With multi-hyphenate comedian, director, Chainsaw Awards host Josh Ruben at the helm and Chris Landon (Happy Death Day), Michael Kennedy (Freaky) and Phillip Murphy (Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) writing the script, this felt like a meet cute made for me.

Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding play our leading lady and man who go from loathing to love with a stylish (and “sexy” according to Devon Sawa) slasher wreaking havoc on their Valentine’s evening, making for a fun and very rewatchable favorite for the February rotation.

Fango critic Richard Newby wrote, “Heart Eyes is in very good and experienced hands that know exactly how to play an audience,” in his original review.

Cementing himself as the hardest working man in horror, Oz Perkins came straight out of the Longlegs gate with not one but two new movies in 2025, the first of which was the splatstick Stephen King adaptation The Monkey.

While Keeper is the thinking man’s Oz of the year, The Monkey is just straight up fun for everyone: blood and guts galore, Theo James playing twins, some truly deranged set pieces, twin Theo Jameses, unexpected cameos, and did we mention that Theo James plays twins? What’s not to love?

Fun fact: when I attended a press screening of The Monkey, my scrawled-in-the-dark notes were so illegible (fellow journos will sympathize) that I could only really make out two words: Uncle Chip. Long may his memory and muttonchops live on. – Amber T

Another horror comedy has entered the ring. Tucker And Dale Vs Evil director Eli Craig adapts Adam Cesare’s hit novel for the big screen, injecting it with a horror comedy twist.

Clown In A Cornfield is a modern slasher for contemporary teens with timely, relevant social commentary and killer clowns. I actually cried during multiple theater viewings, thanks to the consistent audience reaction to a certain reveal. I grew up in a time when horror movies were being made specifically for my peers (and me). It’s nice to see a new slasher created for today's teens. Nostalgia can’t have all the fun.

Not everyone was wild about Guillermo del Toro’s take on Shelley’s monster, but that’s bound to happen when adapting a classic. It sure worked its magic on me. Achingly gorgeous (as expected), del Toro honed in on all the reasons this story has always spoken to me. He’s waited his whole life to make this film, and it shows.

In Michael Gingold’s original review, he says del Toro “makes Frankenstein grandly cinematic from its opening frames, as Tamara Deverell’s sumptuous production design and Kate Hawley’s swoon-worthy costumes immerse us in a 19th-century milieu merging heightened reality with streaks of the fantastical.”

In a year where AI continues to threaten every artistic outlet we have as humans, former Blue Mountain State writer Drew Hancock took it upon himself to create a film that questions what exactly makes us human, and what we’ll do to preserve that humanity — all told from the perspective of a robot.

With Sophie Thatcher coming off the success of Yellowjackets to star as the robot Iris, it was a no-brainer that Companion was going to be a resounding hit for me. As an exploration not only of Iris’s humanity, but of the bodily autonomy women continue to see stripped from them in this day and age, Hancock’s remote, isolated thriller is gut punch after gut punch, with Thatcher and co-star Jack Quaid perfectly matched as the world’s most toxic couple.

Fango critic BJ Colangelo called Companion a “terrific, thrilling takedown of entitled tech bro losers,” while also stating “Companion has set the bar as the best horror film of the year (so far).” Eleven months later, it's easily claimed a spot in our top picks of the year. – Maggie Boccella

2025 ushered in something of a creature feature renaissance, with Morihito Inoue’s hilarious horror-comedy Hot Spring Shark Attack, the Justin Long-starring Coyotes and Fantastic Fest opener Primate to name but a few.

Top of the crop for us, however, was easily Dangerous Animals, the shark-attack-meets-serial-killer-thriller from The Loved Ones’ Sean Byrne. Featuring an unforgettable supporting performance from Jai Courtney (and his tiny pants), a final girl for the ages in Hassie Harrison’s Zephyr and, of course, blood and guts galore, Dangerous Animals further cemented Byrne as a director who favors quality over quantity (although we do hope we don’t have to wait 10 years for his next feature!) – Amber T

For those of you whose parents never warned you about talking to strangers growing up, just pop Dead Mail on and that’ll do the trick. This lean, mean horror film centered around a man who ends up kidnapped just because he disagreed about synthesizers will absolutely chill you to the bone, and make you think twice about talking to that random guy at the post office.

Directors Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy use a shoestring budget to pull together what feels like an old ‘80s VHS tape discovered at the back of your local video store, an analog gem that feels incredibly fresh despite all its throwback vibes — probably because it isn’t scared to make you feel like you want to crawl out of your own skin by the end of it. – Maggie Boccella

Leave it to Japan to deliver one of the most bizarre and unsettling movies of 2025 with Yûta Shimotsu’s Best Wishes to All. While the psychological horror has been making the festival rounds for a while, it wasn’t until this year that audiences wide got to see Shimotsu’s WTF-tinged take on fake social niceties when it hit Shudder in the summer.

That Best Wishes to All was produced by J-horror master Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge) should be enough to prove Shimotsu’s chops as one of Japanese horror’s most exciting new names, but if you need more convincing, check out Best Wishes to All before the year is out. You’ll never look at miso soup the same way again. – Amber T

I've written at length about why Tina Romero’s horror comedy is one of the most important movies I saw this year, and as we approach the last day of 2025, that sentiment remains true. Disco drag queens and zombies in Brooklyn, Queens of the Dead has all the high camp you’d expect from such a premise, while also delivering far more heart than you could ever anticipate. Unlikely antiheroes banding together in ways both relatable, hilarious, and heartwarming. Funny enough, it shines like a glowing beacon of hope in a time that has had more than its fair share of darkness.

Fango EIC Phil Nobile Jr. had some great things to say about it (he also put the movie on the cover!), which you can read here.

2025 was truly a banner year for Stephen King on screen, with Mike Flanagan’s existential delight The Life of Chuck, Edgar Wright’s dystopian actioner The Running Man and, most bleak of them all, Francis Lawrence’s no-holds-barred take on The Long Walk.

Without exaggeration, this poignant, harrowing adaptation of one of the author's most brutal novels instantly earned its place as one of the all-time great Stephen King movies. Lawrence delivered an unflinching look at what desperate people will do for a mere chance at no longer living a desperate life. Despite his YA reputation from The Hunger Games movies, he went admirably hard.

It’s intimately violent, blisteringly paced, and uncompromising in its commentary. From stellar performances by Mark Hamill and David Jonsson to a gut-punch of an ending, what Lawrence and Lionsgate pulled off was nothing shy of a minor miracle. It’s a tremendous feel-bad movie that is both entertaining and has a lot to say. It’s the real deal. – Ryan Scott

In 2011, Final Destination 5 upended Death’s design in such paradigm-twisting fashion that it effectively shut down the franchise for well over a decade. Fans couldn’t even complain – the ending was so marvelously clever and unexpected, creating a tidy, closed loop that filmmakers seemed loath to re-open without careful consideration.

Thank goodness Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein (with writers Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor and Jon Watts) waited until they had an equally compelling idea for the sequel.

In May, Final Destination: Bloodlines added a new dimension to Death’s lore, which had always been about simple rules and an easily understandable pattern. When a franchise entry complicates straightforward canon, it’s almost never this successful. This sequel is like its own Rube Goldberg device, as mystifyingly effective as any of Death’s booby traps. And among all the swings and swerves, Bloodlines never forgets that the heart of this series is Tony Todd’s Bludworth, codifying his legacy with love and respect. – Meredith Borders

After three decades of making some of genre fans’ favorite television (Star Trek, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal and more), writer/director Bryan Fuller unleashes his feature film debut this month. Dust Bunny is a lush, hyper-saturated, deliciously dark fairy tale, a gateway horror film for kids and a heartstrings-strumming nostalgia trip for adults.

The hero of the piece is Aurora (Sophie Sloan), an embattled foster kid who hires her hitman neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster under her bed. That monster is the Dust Bunny, and he’s my favorite creature from any feature this year.

The ensuing action is inventive, fast-paced and hilarious, but there’s still plenty of room for pathos here. Dust Bunny is a movie about believing kids and finding your family, and Fuller’s typically splendid production design reminds us – as he said in a Q&A at Telluride Horror Show – that it’s okay to “candy coat your trauma.” Sometimes that’s the best armor we have (well, that and nunchucks). – Meredith Borders

Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s Bone Lake is a carnally charged destination romcom for sickos, but it could also be the groundbreaking answer to couples therapy—a weekend away at an escape room run by maniacs. The opening sequence lands somewhere between Cannibal Holocaust and Caravaggio and unravels into an experience informed by splatter and Giallo greats. With a heart built on campiness, a very tactical use of gore, and hypnotically rich cinematography, it was also just plain refreshing to watch a film with smart characters. – Kimberly Leszak

Filmmaker Mike P. Nelson didn’t need to do all this. A remake of the infamous ’80s slasher guaranteed a certain number of asses in seats. But Nelson’s clever update comes up with a very funny and unexpected reason to have us on Billy’s axe-wielding side, and in a meta twist I sure didn’t see coming, the film seems to have replicated the controversy of the original, but in a way that has its MAGA decriers telling on themselves.  – Phil Nobile Jr.

I sat down to this film wondering what on earth was left to be said about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. To my delight, Alexandre O. Philippe’s film is no making-of rehash, but instead turns its gaze on the audience members of Tobe Hooper’s classic in pursuit of something deeper — which it finds.

The film probes the emotions and psyches of five viewers (Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, Karyn Kusama, Takashi Miike and Patton Oswalt) of the 1974 masterpiece, all of whom have been deeply impacted by the film, and who each describe their personal relationship with the movie in ways that will have you running to watch Chain Saw again. It’s deeply thoughtful, highly entertaining, and utterly essential. – Phil Nobile Jr.

This year, the great David Cronenberg heard there was a body horror renaissance and had to come and show the kids how it’s done. But in The Shrouds, the body horror doesn't mean “fear of a human body sprouting slimy alien appendages”, and instead means “the anxious acceptance of inevitability that a human body that will get sick, age, and eventually die.”

A deeply personal film (it doesn’t take a film scholar to realize who Vincent Cassel’s Karsh, with his shock of silver hair and curious command of the flesh, is partially based on), The Shrouds is a melancholic meditation from a director reckoning with his own legacy. Darkly hilarious, truly unsettling, and will have you thinking twice about what it means to be a human in our modern world – yep, The Shrouds proved that Cronenberg’s still the master. – Amber T

Here’s a film that, on paper, sounds like a recipe for “should’ve been a short” first-time filmmaker tedium: A group of friends in a car slowly realize the road they’re on isn’t going anywhere, and never ends. Every time they stop the car, crazed strangers descend on the vehicle trying to get inside. And so they drive, and drive, and drive. But writer-director Alex Ullom surprises us with nuance, emotion and craft, turning the simple premise into something existentially terrifying and ultimately beautiful. – Phil Nobile Jr.

It Ends is currently available to stream thanks to Letterboxd Video Store. We just got word that it was picked up by Neon for theatrical release in 2026.

One of the best international horror films of 2025 snuck in under the wire this December, arriving in North America more than a year after its domestic release. A Spanish-Argentine-French co-production, director Pedro Martín-Calero’s The Wailing is a creeping slow-burn about three women separated by place and time, and the unseen entity that connects them.

Elements of the film will feel familiar to a genre-savvy crowd, but part of The Wailing‘s power lies in its ability to shock and unsettle through non-linear storytelling that keeps the viewer on the back foot. Main characters prove as vulnerable as apparent heroes, and sometimes there is no clear solution, especially to a curse that has plagued women for generations. Thoughtful, gripping, and eerie, The Wailing will raise goosebumps as you watch it, and sit with you long after you’re done. – Samantha McLaren

Apologies, but I am biased here—I believe that I experienced the only 4DX screening of Good Boy. The movie streamed on Shudder, my living room lights were off, and I sat on my couch for the entire 73-minute runtime clutching my dog (named Indiana, just like the film’s protagonist).

Good Boy’s hook is genius, its scares quite effective, and the whipsmart budget filmmaking is on constant display by first-time director Ben Leonberg. While Indy’s owner in the film is nominally experiencing some sort of demonic possession, it does suggest more than that—this may be a depressive episode that you cannot save yourself from, but your dog is going to sure as hell try. – Brandon Wainerdi

As we bid 2025 farewell, we hope you'll spend some time with the above movies that may have slipped under your radar (and revisit your favorites). Speaking of that, stay tuned for our most loved underrated horror films of the year, and of course… all the new horror movies we are most looking forward to in 2026. Cheers.