The best horror to watch on Netflix this December
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
We’ve made it to the final month of 2024, and for many people, that means holiday traditions, family gatherings, and time off work that should be filled with movies on the couch. So to help you figure out how to spend your Netflix hours this month, we’ve picked out a list of some of the platform’s best horror movies, in case you’re in the mood for some fright this holiday season.
Our picks this month include an excellent home-invasion slasher you may have missed, one of the scariest found-footage movies of the last decade, and an undisputed classic that should be perfect to put on at the right kind of family gathering.
Editor’s pick: You’re Next
Run time: 1h 35m
Director: Adam Wingard
Cast: A.J. Bowen, Sharni Vinson, Joe Swanberg
Directed by Adam Wingard (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire) and written by Simon Barrett (Azrael), the duo who worked together on The Guest, You’re Next follows Crispian Davison (A.J. Bowen), a young man who reluctantly agrees to go to a remote house in the country with his new girlfriend (Sharni Vinson) to meet his rich parents and siblings for the holidays. However, midway through dinner one night, a group of masked assailants starts terrorizing the family and killing them off one by one.
You’re Next is a wonderful Frankenstein’s monster of a movie. Part comedy, part horror movie about going home to your terrible family for the holidays, and part home-invasion thriller, the movie bounces between these modes perfectly without missing a beat. —Austen Goslin
As Above, So Below
Run time: 1h 33m
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Cast: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge
As Above, So Below is about a group of urban explorers sneaking into the roped-off parts of the Paris Catacombs — a massive underground ossuary that holds the bones of over 6 million people — to explore just how deep the tomb goes. As it turns out, it goes deeper than they thought, and it might go all the way to hell itself. The premise and setting alone should be enough to convince you to watch the movie, but in case it’s not, it helps that the movie is genuinely scary.
This film is the last dying gasp of the found-footage era, and it makes the most of its perspective. The first half is full of intensely claustrophobic moments. Watching the intrepid explorers squeeze themselves through piles of human skulls or get stuck in a tangle of bones is undeniably creepy, and the film’s nearly first-person perspective adds an extra layer of tension and dread. In the second half, the spaces open up and the movie shifts gears into something stranger and more supernatural, but no less effective. —AG
Jaws
Run time: 2h 4m
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Look, no one really needs to be recommended Jaws. It’s a veritable classic, one of the greatest movies ever made, and absolutely fantastic. However, what we’re doing here is reminding you that it’s a movie on Netflix. Perhaps even more importantly, reminding you that it’s a terrific movie to turn on at a family gathering this holiday season, particularly if you want to cut the conversation for a little bit and just enjoy some excellent filmmaking and cinema’s best musical tension-building. —AG
