Critic Picks 25 Horror Films Of The 2020s

It’s Halloween season, and 2025 has been a great year for horror movies. In fact, we’ve been in a modern renaissance for horror for several years now, so here are my picks for 25 horror films of the 2020s for your 2025 Halloween watchlist. Be sure to also read the other Halloween movie list this week here.

Halloween And Horror Hits

Horror is one of the few genres that hasn’t suffered from extreme drops in attendance for the past six years. If anything, Covid seems to have increased audience enthusiasm for horror in theaters. Meanwhile, inflation might have made ticket-buyers more selective in where to spend their hard-earned dollars, but scary movies seem to carry a built-in guarantee of getting some bang for your buck.

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Black Phone 2 at $84 million and counting in total global receipts is just the latest horror release to enjoy strong box office results in a “post” (still) Covid-era theatrical marketplace that can be unforgiving and often confusing for studios still adjusting to modern audience shifts and preferences.

This year also saw tremendous success for Sinners ($366 million), The Conjuring: Last Rites ($487 million), Final Destination Bloodlines ($315 million), Weapons ($267.5 million), and other varied types of horror productions. That variety is one of the most encouraging things about horror’s popularity, as is its diversity of storytellers and characters.

Upcoming horror releases include the futuristic terror of Predator: Badlands, another shot at Frankenstein but this time from Guillermo del Toro, and the eagerly awaited Good Boy as the first horror film told entirely from a dog’s perspective (not to be confused with the very different 2003 horror film of the same name).

For my picks, I wanted a good assortment of styles, filmmakers, and subgenres, for a fun variety of experiences to choose from. I left a lot of personal favorites off the list out of necessity, and there are many that are as good as others on this list so I often used tie-breakers to pick between finalists.

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I also distinguished between thrillers and horror, because I feel thrillers are a great genre of their own but too often a top-tier thriller that is especially intense winds up categorized as horror. I think The Menu and The Platform are thrillers, as opposed to horror, for example. But I also recognize some thrillers cross the line into horror too, like Companion.

I’m sure some of my omissions or inclusions will not suit everybody, but the end result is a list with more than enough for any tastes and preferences to find a lot to watch and enjoy. And it was wonderful to get to watch so much horror for weeks on end to finalize the list, which is why October is always among my favorite movie-watching months.

So here, in no particular order, are my picks for the best 25 horror films of the 2020s for your scary viewing pleasure. Even picking a few at random, you’re guaranteed to have a great Halloween…

1. Talk to Me
2. Sinners
3. Possessor
4. When Evil Lurks
5. Huesera The Bone Woman
6. His House
7. No One Will Save You
8. Smile 2
9. A Quiet Place: Day One
10. Companion
11. Army of the Dead
12. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
13. Bones and All
14. Nosferatu
15. Bring Her Back
16. Halloween Kills
17. I Saw the TV Glow
18. Strange Darling
19. Alien: Romulus
20. Weapons
21. V/H/S/Beyond
22. The Black Phone
23. Good Boy (2023)
24. Prey
25. The Substance

And there you have it, a collection of some of the finest films in horror or any genre from the past five years. Honorable mention to Barbarian, The First Omen, Scream IV, and Resurrection. Regrettably I didn’t get to see Presence or The Monkey, two notable films I wanted to see but simply haven’t had time to watch yet.

We are a quarter of the way through the 2000s now, as hard as that is to believe, and for all of the challenges facing cinema and all of the ongoing evolution of filmmaking and viewing, horror remains one of the best ways to talk about our world and our fears,

Happy Halloween, dear readers! I hope you have a wonderfully terrifying weekend, and I hope my movie recommendations add to the fun.