Top Horror Movies Streaming This Week

YouTube creator and first-time feature film director Kane Parsons created a series of 25 episodes about the Backrooms creepypasta starting in January 2022, which became a viral hit online. Parsons uses liminal spaces to create terror in the film among a seemingly endless maze of rooms with sickly yellow wallpaper as a furniture owner and failed architect discovers the labyrinth behind a wall at his San Jose store.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia play the characters in the film. Backrooms, which is a highly anticipated title on streaming, went straight to number one upon its release.

Backrooms is now streaming on HBO Max.

For the first time since it was released, Curry Barker's Obsession has left the top spot after a little over two months. This is Barker's second movie and horror film after Milk and Cereal. The writer and director has a new horror comedy coming in 2027 called Anything But Ghosts, which is co-written by Cooper Tomlinson, the co-creator of the YouTube sketch comedy channel, “that's a bad idea”.

Tomlinson, Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter are each part of the cast of Obsession.  Barker's movie came with the most expensive price tag paid for the acquisition of a genre film ever at the Toronto Film Festival, after Focus Features paid between $ 14 and $ 15 million for distribution rights.

Obsession is now streaming on Peacock.

The first movie in the Resident Evil franchise has improved its performance this week, moving up to number three. Although the movie is not available on one of the bigger streaming services, home viewers found it and watched it, powering its continued presence on the list. Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, Martin Crewes, and Colin Salmon play the characters in this prequel to the Capcom game.

A number of genre directors were considered for the film after Constantin Films bought the rights in 1997, including screenwriter Alan B. McElroy, George A. Romero, and Jamie Blank. The curiosity of horror fans about what could have been with Romero directing a Resident Evil movie was so strong that a documentary, George Romero's Resident Evil, was released in 2025.

Resident Evil (2002) is now streaming on Xumo Play.

Even after ten and a half months or 42 weeks on the top ten streaming horror movies list, Zach Cregger's Weapons still has the goods for horror fans.  In fact, the critically revered movie has improved its standing and moved up a notch, even after nearly a year on streaming, and has pulled ahead of another film by Cregger.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but it does include the excellent work by the cast, including Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Toby Huss, Benedict Wong, and Academy Award winner Amy Madigan.  There is also the film's grim humor and grisly gore involving so many cans of soup, needles, and cutlery put to devious and destructive ends.

Weapons is now streaming on HBO Max and Prime.

Zach Cregger's first scary movie has been surpassed on the list this week by Zach Cregger's second scary movie, which isn't a bad “problem” to have. Barbarian, which is a legitimately frightening film, is being revisited by fans of Cregger, fans of the newest Resident Evil movie, and fans of the franchise. It could hardly be a coincidence that this movie has magically reappeared in the top ten since last week's premiere of Cregger's latest film.

Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, and Justin Long star in the story of a woman who picked the wrong Airbnb and ignored some pretty big red flags to find herself in a horrifying trap while she was just trying to get to an interview.  Barbarian is famous for its flipping of the narrative while you are just getting a grip on the horror, which is part of why audiences responded to it so enthusiastically.

Barbarian is now streaming on Fubo.

Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, Nancy Loomis, and Nick Castle star in writer and director John Carpenter's preeminent slasher film with one of the genre's most beloved final girls. The film from 1978 is still so fresh that even after 48 years, it is a classic and a quintessential choice for scary movie lovers year-round as well as being regarded as one of the best horror films ever made.

Twenty years ago, in 2006, the Library of Congress added Halloween to the National Film Registry; when you pop some popcorn and carve your pumpkin, remember that Halloween isn't just a great fright film, but one of cinema's most important films courtesy of writer and director John Carpenter.

Halloween (1978) is now streaming on AMC+ and Shudder.

Johannes Roberts (Primate, 47 Meters Down (2017), The Strangers: Prey at Night) wrote and directed the seventh film in the Resident Evil franchise and the first reboot of the series after Milla Jovovich's last turn as Alice in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter in 2016. The film stars Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, and Neal McDonough in a more faithful adaptation of the video game series that includes many of the series' beloved characters.

The film was based on the first two games in the series and featured locations used in them, Spencer Mansion and the Raccoon City Police Department, and the characters Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, Ada Wong, Sherry, Annette, and William Birkin, among others.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is now streaming on FX Now and Hulu.

This adaptation of the Kotake Create game, which is billed as a walking simulator, achieves its scares with a small cast and limited setting. Kazunari Ninomiya, who plays the main character of the film, The Lost Man, is a gamer and worked with director Genki Kawamura as a script coordinator and provided information to Kawamura from the standpoint of someone who played the game.

Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma, Kotone Hanase, and Nana Komatsu play the other characters in the film who haunt or accompany The Lost Man in his search for his exit. Generally, when men are shown as searching for an exit in films, it is frequently a search to escape a relationship, but in this case, The Lost Man's search is one where he seeks what kind of life he really wants to live and what kind of man he really wants to be.

Exit 8 is now streaming on AMC+ and Shudder.

In one of this week's biggest surprises, Coralie Fargeat's winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Best Screenplay Award and Academy Award-nominated body horror comedy, The Substance, just morphed its way back into the top streaming films for this week. Demi Moore, in her Academy Award-nominated performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid play the parts of the star actress who is suddenly fired and desperately tries to find a way to get her exercise TV show back.

After Sparkle makes a desperate decision to use a mysterious drug, her life spirals out of control. The film is bloody, hilarious, and frightening in a way that catches your breath, and it seems clear that home viewing audiences are rediscovering it again just in time for Halloween.

The Substance is now streaming on Mubi.

The second movie in the Resident Evil franchise has also moved into the top ten. While the film was written by Paul W.S. Anderson, it was directed by Alexander Witt, who worked as a second unit director and director of photography on 33 films, including Ridley Scott's Hannibal, The X-Files on the “Creature unit”, Bird Box, and Terminator Genisys, and it was also his feature film debut as a director.

Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann, Jared Harris, Mike Epps, and Sandrine Holt star in the film, which had several memorable characters who continued in the franchise.  Sienna Guillory played Jill Valentine, and Oded Fehr played Carlos Oliveira, characters from the video game series.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is now streaming on AMC+.