The top 10 scary films available on Amazon Prime Video

Black Box (2020)

Mind games are rife in the horror sci-fi movie Black Box, demonstrating how terrible it is to waste the mind. Amnesia has befallen single father Nolan Wright, who survived his wife’s death in a car accident. Nolan, who is having trouble recalling basic tasks at work and in his personal life, contacts a neurologist who believes he would be a good fit for her experimental black box treatment. Nolan is forced to fight the monsters in his memories through repeated mental journeys, but the more he explores, the more he begins to suspect that his past is not what it seems. Black Box, a Blumhouse Television production full of turns, twists, and traumas that force Nolan to come to terrifying conclusions, explores the extent of our mental control and the lengths people will go to in order to preserve the lives of those they love. —Ilana Gordon

Where to watch Black Box: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr.

Cast: Mamoudou Athie, Phylicia Rashad, Amanda Christine, Tosin Morohunfola, Charmaine Bingwa

Bones and All (2022)

If you took Call Me by Your Name, set it in Ronald Reagan’s America, and focused it on two young cannibals falling in love, you’d get Bones and All. Bones, a romantic horror film directed by Luca Guadagnino, stars Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell as young adults attempting to deal with their hunger for flesh and, eventually, each other while living on the periphery of society. These two “eaters” struggle to face their pasts, their familial ties, and their urges after they band together and travel across America in the late 1980s in search of Maren’s (Russell) mother, who abandoned her when she was a young child. The film is described by EW’s critic as “two crazy kids with hope in their hearts and a femur bone, perhaps, in their throats, running as fast they can,” an arthouse elegy to growing up and struggling to fit in. —I.G.

Where to watch Bones and All: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: B+

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, Mark Rylance

The Burning (1981)

The trailer for The Burning, an 80s slasher movie set at an American summer camp, forewarns viewers that “what happened one summer five years ago is about to happen again and again.” Five years before, a group of campers had played a practical joke on Cropsy, the caretaker of Camp Backfoot, leaving him with horrifying and disfiguring wounds. After being allowed to return home from the hospital, Cropsy starts tormenting the campers at Camp Stonewater, another summer camp, with the intention of getting even. Notable for serving as the film debut for young actors like Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, and Fisher Stevens (all of whom appear in small roles), The Burning is violent, sadistic, and gives off strong Friday the 13th vibes. The Burning shares many similarities with its more well-known predecessor, which may disappoint genre snobs, but if you are looking for guts, gore, and garden shears, this movie has plenty to offer. American teenagers suffer at the hands of a deranged lunatic. —I.G.

Where to watch The Burning: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Tony Maylam

Cast: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer, Larry Joshua, Lou David, Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Mary (Candace Hilligoss) wakes up on the banks of a Kansas river, but she has no memory of how she got there or what happened to her friends after an accident forces their car off the road. Mary moves forward with her plans to relocate to Salt Lake City, where she has been employed as a new organist at a nearby church, despite feeling bewildered and uneasy. But wherever Mary goes, there seem to be paranormal activities, eerie characters (including Herk Harvey, the film’s director), and evil spirits. The 78-minute film has a lot of oddities, but none of them will prepare you for the twist at the end. Watching Carnival of Souls today feels like witnessing a slew of easter eggs before they’ve even happened, as many a genre filmmaker has been inspired by the haunting imagery, gothic music, and ending that continues to baffle even decades later. “It is arrestingly odd, with a bats-in-the-belfry 3-a.m. loneliness that you plug into like a private dream,” writes an EW critic, “more than just scary.” —I.G.

Where to watch Carnival of Souls: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: A–

Director: Herk Harvey

Cast: Candace Hilligoss, Sidney Berger

Children of the Corn (1984)

In your opinion, how could one guarantee a prosperous corn harvest? The answer, as far as the kids in the fictional rural town of Gatlin, Nebraska are concerned, is murder. Children of the Corn is a slasher movie that is based on Stephen King’s 1977 short story. It tells the tale of a supernatural being known as “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” whose evil presence drives the Gatlin youth to ritually kill every adult in the area, along with a few extras just to be safe, in order to ensure that year’s corn harvest is abundant. Children of the Corn, the first in a ten-film franchise that includes a 2023 remake helmed by Kurt Wimmer, is a tense, violent, and admittedly cheesy film. —I.G.

Where to watch Children of the Corn: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Fritz Kiersch

Cast: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, John Franklin, Courtney Gains, Robby Kiger, Anne Marie McEvoy, Julie Maddalena, R. G. Armstrong

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)

Elvira, a character created by comedian Cassandra Peterson, is one of the greatest additions to the horror canon of the 1980s. Her popularity as the hostess of the local television show Elvira’s Movie Macabre led to her own film, the 1988 horror comedy Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. In the movie, Elvira, a TV host, decides to pursue a career as a performer in Vegas after being the victim of sexual harassment at work. Elvira travels to the East Coast to collect her inheritance from her great aunt Morgana in order to finance her show, but she soon finds that the puritanically-minded people of Fallwell, Massachusetts, do not like the way she dresses, the unintentional witchcraft she tends to commit, or her general attitude. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, which also stars the ’80s treasure Edie McClurg (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), is a classic witch hunt with a lot more humor than stonings. —I.G.

Where to watch Elvira: Mistress of the Dark: Amazon Prime Video

Director: James Signorelli

Cast: Cassandra Peterson, W. Morgan Sheppard, Daniel Greene, Jeff Conaway, Susan Kellermann, Edie McClurg

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)

Many dubious things are done by YouTubers to gain views, but in Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, a livestream by one channel ends with more viewers dead than alive. The Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital serves as the setting for this South Korean found footage horror film, which centers on a web series creator and the six individuals he enlists to investigate the abandoned structure. The group is drawn to room 402, a former intensive care unit, where they come across dangerous situations and unexplainable supernatural beings. Taking inspiration from the actual Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital, a South Korean asylum that was once regarded as one of the nation’s most haunted structures before it was demolished in 2018, the movie begins slowly but by the time the credits roll, you will be running for the lights. —I.G.

Where to watch Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Jung Bum-shik

Cast: Wi Ha-joon, Park Ji-hyun, Oh Ah-yeon, Moon Ye-won, Park Sung-hoon, Yoo Je-yoon, Lee Seung-wook, Park Ji-a

Goodnight Mommy (2015)

Horror films abound with creepy twins (“Come play with us, Danny!”), but the most frightful one in recent memory is Austria’s Goodnight Mommy, which debuted at the Venice International Film Festival in 2014 and went on general release the following year. Goodnight Mommy is a psychological horror story about twin boys, age nine, who start to wonder who their mother is after she returns from extensive cosmetic surgery looking very different from the parent they knew. The boys swear to destroy the impostor and track down their real mother’s whereabouts, but their investigation reveals things that are too terrible to comprehend. We called for a “inevitable remake” in our review from 2015, and the movie gods delivered in 2022. The American version of the film, which stars Naomi Watts alongside Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti from Big Little Lies and The Boys, is eerie, but fans of the original agree it lacks the poignancy and potency of the original, which are both credited to Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the film’s codirectors. Though you should definitely start with the original, feel free to binge both versions. —I.G.

Where to watch Goodnight Mommy: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: A

Directors: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala

Cast: Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz

Hell House LLC (2015)

The reputation of Stephen Cognetti’s low-budget mockumentary Hell House LLC—a haunted house attraction where tragedy strikes—has been somewhat tarnished by the mediocre sequels. That is regrettable. The eerie Hell House LLC revolves around a group of friends who purchase an old, abandoned hotel with the intention of turning it into a successful haunt, only to discover that a sinister force resides in the basement. The best independent horror comes from Hell House LLC, which forgoes grandiose storylines and fireworks in favor of nuanced, periphery scares that beg for repeat viewings (or, at the very least, a lot of rewinding). Clearly as unsettling in real life as it is on film, even standard scares, such as a mannequin’s head that turns when the camera is not looking, are given a new meaning in this setting. —Randall Colburn

Where to watch Hell House LLC: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Stephen Cognetti

Cast: Ryan Jennifer Jones, Danny Bellini, Gore Abrams, Jared Hacker, Adam Schneider, Alice Bahlke

Hellraiser (1987)

Jamie Clayton played Pinhead, one of the most iconic and meme-worthy figures in horror, in David Bruckner’s 2022 Hellraiser revival for Hulu. Prior to delving into that, though, it would be prudent to rewatch the franchise’s debut 1987 picture, which presents the Cenobites—a group of monstrous, sadomasochistic weirdos who enjoy suffering—which is why the pins are there. Hellraiser is a horror film written and directed by Clive Barker, which is based on his own story “The Hellbound Heart.” It offers us a unique and captivating story that draws from the taboo iconography of kink and BDSM. There is also the gore, which, in its meaty, unblinking exploitativeness, calls to mind the masters of the Italian genre such as Lucio Fulci. —R.C.

Where to watch Hellraiser: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Clive Barker

Cast: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence