{"id":885378,"date":"2026-10-17T09:46:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T09:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/885378\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T09:46:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T09:46:26","slug":"the-13-scariest-movies-streaming-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/885378\/","title":{"rendered":"The 13 Scariest Movies Streaming Right Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"audition\"<\/p>\n

\u201cAudition\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re a big horror fan, sometimes you have to turn to some hardcore s\u2013t to get scared. If the slashers and the hauntings aren\u2019t cutting it for you anymore, try checking out Takashi Miike\u2019s delightfully depraved \u201cAudition.\u201d The Japanese horror flick follows Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a middle-aged widower who enters a relationship with a young woman, Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), after posing as a casting director for a series of fake auditions to find his perfect girl. I\u2019d hate to spoil any more of what happens in this truly disturbing film, but rest assured: Shigeharu gets his punishment. (Kanopy) \u2014 Casey Loving<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Sutherland in \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures)<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that, with a few clicks of your remote (or mouse), you can watch Nicolas Roeg\u2019s masterpiece \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now,\u201d is truly miraculous. For years, the movie, which early print campaigns described as a \u201cpsychic thriller,\u201d was difficult to get ahold of. It was released the same year as \u201cThe Exorcist<\/a>\u201d but didn\u2019t have the same cultural purchase. It would routinely show up on the lists of the scariest movies ever made but remained elusive. Now, thanks to digital outlets and an induction into the Criterion Collection, \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d is easier to see than ever and as it should be. It\u2019s incredible. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play a young married couple who have just lost their daughter in a terrible accident (the accident serves as the film\u2019s haunting prologue). They then travel to Venice, where he is working on a project restoring a cathedral, as they attempt to piece their life together. But she\u2019s consumed with guilt and begins consulting with a pair of psychic sisters, while a string of strange murders grips the village in fear. Based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier, who inspired the Alfred Hitchcock classics \u201cThe Birds\u201d and \u201cRebecca,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Look Now\u201d is an unforgettable film, full of emotion and terror. (Good luck shaking off the final shock.) Almost as famous as any of its scares was the film\u2019s chronologically jumbled sex scene, which was so vivid that people assumed that it was, er, unsimulated. Jumping from the couple getting ready to go out to deep passion, it also served as the inspiration for Steven Soderbergh\u2019s similarly memorable love scene from \u201cOut of Sight.\u201d Hey, if you\u2019re going to steal, steal from the best. (Kanopy) \u2014\u00a0Drew Taylor<\/p>\n

\""The\u201cThe Exorcist\u201d (Warner Bros.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Exorcist\u201d<\/p>\n

Long considered (and rightfully so) the scariest movie ever made, William Friedkin\u2019s blockbuster adaptation of William Peter Blatty\u2019s bestselling 1971 novel is just as shocking as it was 53 years ago. Ellen Burstyn plays an actress working on a movie just outside of Washington, D.C. Her daughter Regan (Linda Blair), after communing with something (Ouija boards will do that to you), appears to suffer from a medical issue. An underrated aspect of \u201cThe Exorcist\u201d is the intensity of the procedures and tests that Regan goes through as her mother searches frantically for an answer; it might not be as creepy as the actual demonic stuff but it will make your skin crawl just the same. Of course, it\u2019s eventually discovered that Regan is possessed by an ageless force and an exorcism is required to cleanse her soul. <\/p>\n

Friedkin\u2019s plainspoken direction, coupled with escalating tension, is key to the movie\u2019s elemental power. There\u2019s a reason filmmakers are still chasing the high of the original \u201cExorcist\u201d (a new movie, authored by \u201cCarrie\u201d showrunner Mike Flanagan, debuts next year). Often imitated, never duplicated, \u201cThe Exorcist\u201d remains a true wonder of modern horror. (HBO Max) \u2014\u00a0DT<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Backrooms\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Toni\u201cHereditary\u201d (A24)<\/p>\n

\u201cHereditary\u201d<\/p>\n

Is \u201cHereditary\u201d the best modern horror movie? The questions were asked right after Ari Aster\u2019s<\/a> film landed in 2018 and, by now, most are in agreement that yeah it probably is. The film just weighs on you from the moment it starts until its brutal end. There are few true jump scares in \u201cHereditary\u201d \u2013 instead it goes for a suffocating bleakness \u2013 but when it decides to turn up the volume on those scares it\u2019s extremely effective and unsettling. And Toni Collette? She should have been showered in far more awards and praise than she got for her role in the film. (Hulu, Prime Video, HBO Max) \u2014 Jacob Bryant<\/p>\n

\"jacobs-ladder\"Tri-Star Pictures<\/p>\n

\u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve never seen \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder,\u201d time to buckle up. Tim Robbins plays a man who returns from the Vietnam War\u2026 different. He starts having horrific hallucinations and interactions as he stumbles around early-1970s New York City. Was something done to him during the war? Is he having a complete mental breakdown? Or are the demons he is carrying with him more literal than psychological? It leads to one of the biggest twists in cinema history \u2013 and one that doesn\u2019t feel tacked on or corny or unearned. Instead, it\u2019s the perfect, melancholic button on a movie that has more layers, symbols and meaning than it appears at first glance. (Multiple viewings helps unlock some of its mysteries.) <\/p>\n

With a dynamite supporting cast including Elizabeth Pe\u00f1a, Danny Aiello, Jason Alexander, Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames and Pruitt Taylor Vince, along with a brief appearance by Macaulay Culkin, \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder\u201d is an all-time, nerve-shredding classic. And the movie seems even bolder when you consider this was director Adrian Lyne\u2019s follow-up to his blockbuster erotic thriller \u201cFatal Attraction,\u201d and that it was released the same year as screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin\u2019s far cuddlier \u201cGhost.\u201d But hey, sometimes you need to get freaky. (Paramount+) \u2014\u00a0DT<\/p>\n

\"IndeFocus Features<\/p>\n

\u201cObsession\u201d<\/p>\n

It might be the most recent film on the list but the scares in \u201cObsession\u201d speak for themselves. The runaway hit of 2026, Curry Barker\u2019s \u201ccareful what you wish for\u201d story of a man who wants more than anything for a friend to have feelings for him that quickly goes south when she becomes \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 obsessed with him entirely. Much of the scares in the film are thanks to Inde Navarrette\u2019s breakout performance as Nikki. There\u2019s a physicality to the way she moves, screams and even just goes still and stares that is bone-chilling from the jump. Beyond just that, she infuses a sadness to the character, who is forced to feel this way against her will, which might be more unsettling than when she\u2019s at her most manic and obsessed. (Peacock) \u2014\u00a0JB<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Alien\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\""Perfect\u201cPerfect Blue\u201d (Rex Entertainment)<\/p>\n

\u201cPerfect Blue\u201d<\/p>\n

In one of the more charming bits of promo for \u201cThe Social Reckoning\u201d involved Aaron Sorkin, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White putzing around a French video store<\/a>. Madison clutched \u201cPerfect Blue,\u201d Satoshi Kon\u2019s masterpiece of psychological horror, and attempted to explain it to Sorkin, who she said had never seen a Japanese animated movie before. (\u201cThere are freshmen at NYU who are better cinephiles than me,\u201d snarked Sorkin.) \u201cIt\u2019s very frightening,\u201d said Madison. What we\u2019re getting at here is that you should listen to Mikey Madison (obviously). It follows a former pop star who begins a second career as an actress but is stalked by an obsessive fan, who might also be responsible for a series of horrifying murders. This, of course, sends our dear Mima Kirigoe down a psychological rabbit hole. Can she even hold it together enough to get out of this thing alive? <\/p>\n

Slyly satiric, with barbs at consumer culture and the parasocial relationship fans form with their idols, and indebted to Alfred Hitchcock films, \u201cPerfect Blue\u201d made a stamp all its own. (Perhaps most famously it has gotten a second wind when people started realizing how much Darren Aronofsky \u201cborrowed\u201d from the movie for \u201cRequiem for a Dream\u201d and \u201cBlack Swan.\u201d) In the last few years, it has rightfully been singled out as one of the greatest, most disturbing animated films of all time. Kon only made a handful of films before he died, tragically, of pancreatic cancer at 46 (Aronofsky wrote a eulogy to him that was published in Japan). Each one of his films is a precious jewel. But \u201cPerfect Blue,\u201d his first as a director, might be the most special of them all. (HBO Max) \u2014\u00a0DT<\/p>\n

\"\"Universal<\/p>\n

\u201cPrince of Darkness\u201d<\/p>\n

One of John Carpenter\u2019s best and most underappreciated movies, \u201cPrince of Darkness\u201d follows a group of graduate students who are conducting an experiment underneath a seemingly ancient church. What they find could have implications for the entire human race. Eventually, the students and scientists uncover a glowing green canister that they believe could hold Satan. Like actual Satan. Liberally mixing philosophy with scientific mumbo jumbo (lots of talk of antimatter and parallel dimensions), it\u2019s equal parts hangout movie and horror show. (You can imagine Richard Linklater getting a real kick out of it.) <\/p>\n

\u201cPrince of Darkness\u201d has a lurching, woozy mood all its own, along with a creeping sense of dread that Carpenter\u2019s best work always maintained so well. Featuring a great group of character actors (including Carpenter regulars Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong and Peter Jason, along with Alice Cooper as a possessed street person) and one of Carpenter\u2019s best scores (composed with Alan Howarth), it\u2019s often seen as a minor Carpenter work, but it shouldn\u2019t be. This was released in the director\u2019s unstoppable creative heyday, and feels uniquely ahead-of-its-time, particularly with its found footage elements of a pirate transmission from the distant future, that remains some of the creepiest stuff in Carpenter\u2019s filmography and arrived more than a decade before \u201cThe Blair Witch Project.\u201d If for some reason you have skipped \u201cPrince of Darkness\u201d after all these years, time to correct the mistake. Before it\u2019s too late. (Prime Video) \u2014\u00a0DT<\/p>\n

\""Pulse"\u201cPulse\u201d (Toho)<\/p>\n

\u201cPulse\u201d<\/p>\n

In Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa\u2019s masterful, underrated 2001 horror effort \u201cPulse,\u201d ghosts use the internet to invade the world of the living, infecting humanity with their sorrow. The most \u201cDon\u2019t go in there!\u201d film you may ever see, \u201cPulse\u201d follows its characters as they encounter rooms marked with red tape, warnings of the ghosts that lurk inside and watch helplessly as the world around them slowly starts to disintegrate and fall apart.<\/p>\n

A kind of spiritual cousin to Kurosawa\u2019s 1997 masterpiece \u201cCure,\u201d which also tells a horror story of quietly apocalyptic size, \u201cPulse\u201d gets under your skin and stays there. Its ghostly encounters range from unsettling to genuinely, uncannily terrifying, with one sequence in particular ranking high among the scariest things ever put to screen this century. \u201cPulse\u201d is, in other words, the rare contemporary horror film that is as thoughtful as it is legitimately scary. As a movie about the internet becoming a vessel for hopelessness (imagine that!), \u201cPulse\u201d also has the unfortunate honor of having aged incredibly well over the last 25 years. (Philo, AMC+ and Arrow Video Channel) \u2014 Alex Welch<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\""Coraline"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\""The\u201cThe Ring\u201d (DreamWorks Pictures)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ring\u201d<\/p>\n

Like \u201cThe Grudge,\u201d \u201cDark Water\u201d and a number of other films released around the same time as it, 2002\u2019s \u201cThe Ring\u201d was a central part of the sudden wave of J-horror remakes that Hollywood produced throughout the early 2000s. A remake of the 1998 Japanese film of the same name, director Gore Verbinski\u2019s \u201cThe Ring\u201d follows a journalist (Naomi Watts) who comes into possession of \u2014 and begins to investigate \u2014 a cursed VHS tape that supposedly causes its viewers to die seven days later. <\/p>\n

Featuring one of the most iconic and viscerally terrifying climaxes of any horror film of the last 30 years, \u201cThe Ring\u201d is a film which grows its scares from unsettlingly suggestive to outright, invasively assaultive. It is atmospheric, immersive and beautifully paced, a horror movie that forces you to lean in and then \u2014 like all great horror films do \u2014 punishes you for doing so at the exact moments when you are least expecting. It is the rare horror remake that is just as deserving of your time as its parent film, and yeah, it is really scary. (Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock and Kanopy) \u2014 AW<\/p>\n

\""The\u201cThe Shining\u201d (Warner Bros.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Shining\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen King may have no more confounding opinion about his own work than his well-known, infamous distaste for director Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 1980 adaptation of his acclaimed horror novel, \u201cThe Shining.\u201d An epic of intimate and yet supernatural, ghostly horror, Kubrick\u2019s film is a masterpiece of nausea-inducing, infectious cabin fever. Anchored by a ferocious, unhinged lead performance by Jack Nicholson, the film follows a husband (Nicholson), wife (Shelley Duvall) and their young son (Danny Lloyd) as they spend a winter taking care of a mountain resort only to find themselves relentlessly terrorized by the hotel\u2019s ghostly inhabitants. <\/p>\n

Rich with metaphors about the demonic effects of addiction and the claustrophobia-like impact of domestic violence and abuse, \u201cThe Shining\u201d pulls no punches. It uses simple editing tricks to create unforgettable moments of startling horror, which cumulatively leave you on edge and completely in Kubrick\u2019s control. Here is a horror film that well and truly feels like a slow, unstoppable spiral into a kind of insanity that feels both human and otherworldly. (HBO Max) \u2014 AW<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Austin\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\""SpeakThe original \u201cSpeak No Evil\u201d (Credit: Everett Collection)<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeak No Evil\u201d (2022)<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeak No Evil\u201d sneaks up on you. At first, the film doesn\u2019t come off as particularly scary, with around the first hour of Christian Tafdrup\u2019s 2022 Danish thriller playing more as a dry comedy about a painfully polite family falling into more and more uncomfortable situations as they stay with a Dutch family they met on vacation. As the depths of their hosts\u2019 depravity comes to light (a reveal spoiled in trailers of \u201cClayface\u201d filmmaker James Watkins\u2019 remake), the horror of this story starts to come into focus. Then Christian Tafdrup and co-writer Mads Tafdrup pull out all the stops for one of the most haunting, wrenching finales in a horror movie this century. It\u2019s a bleak, disturbing film, one that has more in common with Michael Haneke\u2019s \u201cFunny Games\u201d (another great watch for those looking for hardcore horror) than your classic slasher. For my money, it\u2019s the scariest movie of the decade. (AMC+, Hoopla, Shudder) \u2014\u00a0CL<\/p>\n

\"TexasVortex<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre\u201d<\/p>\n

This list wouldn\u2019t be complete without at least one classic slasher \u2014 and Tobe Hooper\u2019s \u201cThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre\u201d is the scariest of them all. This film, featuring the iconic serial killer Leatherface, is a groundbreaking, highly influential entry in the horror subgenre while also managing to be more terrifying than possibly any slasher that followed in its wake. \u201cThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre\u201d is haunting in its simplicity, a story about the horror that can befall anyone who happens to stop in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hooper and Kim Henkel\u2019s classic may be more than 50 years old, but I imagine it\u2019s just as terrifying today as it would\u2019ve been in 1974. (Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock, Tubi, Shudder, Pluto TV) \u2014\u00a0CL<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Texas\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAudition\u201d When you\u2019re a big horror fan, sometimes you have to turn to some hardcore s\u2013t to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,6842,206,85043,67346,142219,146377,5135],"class_list":["post-885378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-movies","tag-obsession","tag-texas-chainsaw-massacre","tag-the-exorcist","tag-the-shining","tag-what-to-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}