The best horror movies of the year, ranked by scariness

The year is off to a great start, at least as far as horror movies are concerned. There are films about family secrets ranging from ridiculously silly to heartbreaking and tragic. There’s also a holiday-themed slasher, a good old-fashioned summer camp slasher, and a few more unconventional movies that might surprise you.

To help you make sense of the wonderful year in horror so far, we’ve put together a list of all our favorite terrifying movies and ranked them by scariness. We’ll update the list as more movies come out, but for now, here’s a list of 2025’s best horror movies, ranked by scariness.

Presence

Run time: 1h 25m
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Lucy Liu, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube

Presence is a horror film in definition more than in practice. The movie is about a family that moves into a new house and is hiding all kinds of secrets from each other, but the whole thing is shot entirely from the perspective of the ghost that already resided there. That ghostliness certainly makes this a horror movie on paper, but it’s more of a family drama with some ghostly elements mixed in than anything else.

More importantly, however, is the fact that it’s just a really excellent movie. Director Steven Soderbergh, ever a master of formal experimentation in film, turns the gimmicky premise of a movie from a ghost’s perspective into an excuse to shoot dramatic scenes with a flurry of wonderful, dynamic camera movements. The ghost zips from one speaker to the next, trying to make sense of conversations based on the secrets it knows. It follows people when they storm out of rooms and leaves the rest of the conversation to play out muffled through walls. It’s a truly terrific filmmaking tactic, even if it only really feels like a ghost when it has to.

Presence isn’t really too tense, and it doesn’t have any gore at all, so this one ranks low on our scariness scale, but high in our hearts.

How scary is Presence?

• Terror: 2/5
• Gore: 0/5

Total scariness score: 2/10

Hell of a Summer

Run time: 1h 28m
Directors: Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk
Cast: Fred Hechinger, Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk
Where to watch: Theaters

Few things in the horror genre are as classic as teens at summer camp having a really bad time, and Hell of a Summer is a movie that’s well aware of that fact. The horror comedy tells the story of a group of camp counselors who show up for orientation at camp Pineway a few days before the season starts and the campers arrive. What they don’t know is that the camp owners have already been murdered, and they’re all the next victims in line.

None of this is exactly reinventing the horror wheel: There’s teen drama, hookups, and camp implements used unsafely, all underscored by a few murders, exactly how you’d expect. One thing you might be surprised by is just how funny the movie is. While it’s a perfectly effective entry in the doomed summer camp canon, it’s funny enough to fit in nicely with more traditional summer camp comedies like Wet Hot American Summer too.

All that being said, the movie doesn’t rank too highly on our scariness scale. Despite some brief glimpses of gore and a couple of jump scares, Hell of a Summer is a lot more funny than scary, and that’s no problem at all.

How scary is Hell of a Summer?

• Terror: 2/5
• Gore: 3/5

Total scariness score: 5/10

Sinners

Run time: 2h 37m
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Miles Caton, Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld
Where to watch: Theaters

Director Ryan Coogler’s vampire musical is one of the absolute best movies of the year so far, and conveniently for this list, it happens to fall nicely in the horror genre as well.

Sinners centers on Sammy (Miles Caton), a preacher’s son in Mississippi with a talent for blues music, who one fateful day gets picked up by his cousins (Michael B. Jordan) who have recently returned from Chicago with a briefcase full of money and a dream of starting their own juke joint — where they want Sammy’s music to be the star attraction. Things go great until a wandering band of vampires catches wind of his music and find themselves suddenly entranced, and very hungry.

The film isn’t quite as scary as others on this list, but it is nice and tense, particularly when Coogler finally unleashes the vampires and the more action-heavy elements kick in. And of course, since this is a vampire story, there’s plenty of blood to go around.

How scary is Sinners?

• Terror: 3/5
• Gore: 2/5

Total scariness score: 5/10

Opus

Run time: 1h 44m
Director: Mark Anthony Green
Cast: Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Amber Midthunder
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube

In the world of Opus, the 1990s’ greatest pop star, Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich), is releasing a new album, the first one since he mysteriously left the spotlight several decades ago. Ariel (Ayo Edebiri) is a young music journalist who gets one of the few invites to his communion for an early listening review party, but since everyone else has been working in the industry for years, she can’t quite figure out why she’s there. Of course, when she discovers the bizarre cult activity Moretti seems to be leading, she stops being curious and starts getting scared.

Opus is a recognizable kind of movie to anyone who’s seen Midsommar or The Menu. But rather than trying to home in on cultlike activity or even obsession like those movies do, Opus focuses on the concept of information and narratives. It’s a sort of journalistic horror movie that’s interested in asking why reporters of any variety are shown the things they’re shown when they get access, and what exactly it means when the subject of your story tells you something themselves.

This theme gives Opus a nice taste of lingering terror that’s likely to stick with you for a while after the credits roll. Then again, the movie’s one exceptionally gory scene is likely to do that too, ultimately putting this in the middle of our scariness rankings for the year so far.

How scary is Opus?

• Terror: 3/5
• Gore: 3/5

Total scariness score: 6/10

Heart Eyes

Run time: 1h 37m
Director: Josh Ruben
Cast: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Jordana Brewster
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube

Every holiday deserves at least a few horror movies themed after it, but few of those movies will be as good or fun as Heart Eyes. A serial killer who murders couples on Valentine’s Day has been on the loose for years, and he’s come to Seattle just in time to mark a kissing couple for death this year. The only problem, of course, is that these two aren’t actually dating. It’s a hilarious setup that’s anchored by two great performances from the leads, Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, who bring plenty of charm to balance out the movie’s goofiness.

It was co-written by Happy Death Day writer and director Christopher Landon, so it should come as no surprise that Heart Eyes has an excellent balance of horror and comedy. The movie effortlessly bounces between hilarious physical comedy bits (which Gooding particularly excels at) and brutal murders, all broken up with hilarious one-off jokes to keep things fresh.

With all that comedy, Heart Eyes never really tries to be truly terrifying, but its brief tension and heaping helping of gore earn it a spot in the middle of our list anyway.

How scary is Heart Eyes?

• Terror: 2/5
• Gore: 4/5

Total scariness score: 6/10

The Monkey

Run time: 1h 38m
Director: Oz Perkins
Cast: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Rohan Campbell
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube

The Monkey is a Stephen King adaptation by way of Longlegs director Oz Perkins. While that may make the movie sound offbeat and strange, it’s actually a pretty straightforward and silly horror romp with buckets and buckets of blood. The film follows Hal (Theo James), a man whose family has been cursed by a monkey that kills people when the key in its back is turned. Perkins treats this premise with exactly the right mix of serious and silly, and mostly uses it as an excuse to find some of the most creative ways imaginable to kill people on screen. It’s Perkins’ most approachable movie by a mile, but it’s also a very fun horror movie in its own right.

The result is likely the bloodiest movie on this list and one that, while funny, is also gory enough to earn it a pretty high spot on our scariness ranking so far.

How scary is The Monkey?

• Terror: 2/5
• Gore: 5/5

Total scariness score: 7/10

Warfare

Run time: 1h 35m
Directors: Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland
Cast: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis
Where to watch: Theaters

Warfare isn’t exactly your traditional horror film. In fact, it’s about as grounded and realistic as any war movie in recent memory, but that fact is exactly what gives it a spot on this list. If we’re calling scariness a mix of terror and gore, then Warfare is as scary as they come so far this year, clearing the competition by a country mile.

The film follows a platoon of Navy SEALs who have been sent into a house to provide overwatch during the 2006 Battle of Ramadi in the war in Iraq. While they’re holed up inside, the SEALs get ambushed by enemy combatants and find themselves in a terrifying fight for their lives. The movie is absolutely harrowing, and its realistic gore is more unsettling than anything in a more traditional horror movie so far this year. So while it may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you think about horror movies, Warfare indubitably deserves a spot on this list.

How scary is Warfare?

• Terror: 4/5
• Gore: 5/5

Total scariness score: 9/10