It’s never easy writing these lists. It was easy back in 2019, before I was writing for Dread Central, and only my mom read about my favorite horror movies of the year. Now, there’s a crushing weight and an impossible task presented to me by the year’s end. I watched nearly 100 newly-released horror movies this year, and narrowing that pool down to just 10 is a fool’s errand.
After all, horror thrives in its diversity, and quantifying what’s “better” than something else isn’t an exact science. It isn’t a science at all, really, since art exists in context with other art, but comparisons are often arbitrary at best. Yet, I managed the impossible, and with my newfound role as Associate Editor, I invite you to check out my picks for the Top 10 horror movies of 2025 in descending order:
10. Went Up the Hill
Samuel Van Grinsven’s Went Up the Hill is the saddest ghost story since… A Ghost Story? Dacre Montgomery’s Jack returns home for his estranged mother’s funeral. There, he meets Jill (Vicky Krieps), his mother’s widow. A psychosexual tragedy ensues as the deceased’s spirit inhabits the bodies of both Jack and Jill, using one as a vessel to communicate with the other.
It’s odd, certifiably not mainstream, and exactly what the horror genre needs more of. In my interview with Montgomery about the film, he referenced horror as a Trojan Horse genre. Bring audiences in with the concept—here, a ghost possessing her living relatives—and then wallop them over the head with gut-wrenching meditations on grief, abuse, and queerness. It’s an excellent ghost story. A fantastic coming-of-age saga. And a tragic love story. All of those things at once, and one of the year’s best because of it.
9. Clown in a Cornfield
As a massive fan of Adam Cesare’s ongoing Clown in a Cornfield series of novels, I had high hopes for Eli Craig’s adaptation. Cesare’s novel accomplished something I hadn’t seen since Wes Craven’s Scream decades ago. It took all the rules and tropes of the subgenre and melded them together into something altogether new and, more importantly, subversive. A slasher with something prescient to say? Wow.
And, sure, Clown in a Cornfield the film pulls its punches more than Cesare’s source material, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the best, purest slasher movies in years. It all feels so effortless, a testament to the incredible performances and Craig’s astute tonal control. It’s funny, bloody, and chock full of so many killer clowns, you’ll wonder if Derry, Maine has collapsed in on itself a dozen times, replicating its most famous terror. Clowns are back, but damn, sure are slashers.
8. The Ugly Stepsister
Body horror has always worked for me. Among all the horror subgenres out there, it’s the most universal and resonant. We all have bodies, and for a lot of us, we hate them. In turn, our bodies hate us back. Aching, groaning, breaking down, and distorting themselves in ways that horrify yet simultaneously leave us helpless. When your body turns against you, there’s nothing you can do but sit there, silently, and let the rot take over from the inside and out.
Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister is a feminist spin on Cinderella with a heaping spoonful of body horror thrown in. Here, Lea Myren’s Elvira is desperate to marry the prince, though compared against her conventionally attractive stepsisters (not to mention a town of suitors), she stands no chance. So, for the duration of the film, she subjects herself to increasingly barbaric acts of cosmetic surgery to render herself a real rival. It’s nasty, funny, heartbreaking, and features a tapeworm that will haunt you into perpetuity (and, hey, our own Matt Konopka might have something more to say about that elsewhere).
7. Cloud
Kurosawa, baby. Kiyoshi Kurosawa could run me over with his car, film it, post it on a cryptocurrency film site, and I’d still probably name it one of the best movies of the year. Cloud, at its simplest, is late-stage capitalism taken to its inevitable, violent ends. An online reseller gets in over his head, wrongs the wrong people, and endures a kind of ludicrous (complimentary) riff on The Strangers as several disgruntled buyers break into his home.
While technically released in Japan last year, Cloud follows the now expected release pattern of Kurosawa films stateside. Much like the aforementioned Chime, Cloud was first available on Delta flights, of all places, before landing on The Criterion Channel in October. Thus, it’s eligible for this 2025 list. And, sure, you might reckon Cloud isn’t quite horror, but horror as a nebulous, at times all-encompassing qualifier certainly applies here. No, it’s not scary in the traditional sense, but what Kurosawa accomplishes here is pure, sensational, propulsive filmmaking, culling from horror, comedy, action, you name it. It’s a kitchen sink, but it’s so perfectly rendered, by the end, you’ll be floating among the clouds, too.
6. The Monkey
Oz Perkins is a good guy and a good filmmaker. Like any Joe Blow who catapults to genre success, his recent slate has been subject to more scrutiny than ever before (mind you, this is the filmmaker who helmed I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House). Broadly, that’s fair. The role of film criticism is to criticize. Perkins, however, seems to often be the target of bad faith criticism. You may not like The Monkey, but to suggest it’s a damning indictment of his lack of talent? Lemme grab my wind-up monkey real quick.
Which, if it isn’t clear, means I absolutely loved The Monkey. I echo the sentiments of our Editorial Director Josh Korngut; it’s the best Stephen King adaptation in years. A little on-the-nose, sure, but who cares? It’s earnest, funny, and genuinely affecting. I teared up, a rarity in the horror genre, and given my lot in life, Perkins’ profound, violent meditation on the matter-of-fact nature of death and grief resonated more than any other horror movie I saw this year. I’ll forgive Keeper– The Monkey is just that good.
5. The Plague
There’s a very specific, early aughts fear that every millennial gay man knows—the gym locker room. For me, sixth grade was the first time I had to strip down in front of my peers and change into a uniform. Maybe the fear persists among young queer persons, but that core experience has never really, fully gone away. Suffice to say, Charlie Polinger’s feature debut The Plague scared the ever-living hell out of me because its “boys-will-be-boys” psychological terror felt all too real.
Polinger has more aces than just nascent trauma to render his debut such an uncomfortable, disturbing watch. The core cast of largely newcomers are all remarkable, adroitly tapping into a very distinct, Lord of the Flies kind of hierarchy and cruelty. There are jabs about speech impediments, weight, chubbing out at the pool, and more. The cruelest of them all is the eponymous plague, an unspecified skin condition that boys claim spreads through contact. It’s body horror meets coming-of-age tragedy, and its bloody conclusion will leave you breathless.
4. 28 Years Later
I was never really convinced 28 Years Later was going to happen until it suddenly did. And then, in its final moments (you know), I’m again unconvinced that this needs to be a new trilogy of films. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, though those few quibbles notwithstanding, 28 Years Later is a masterpiece. Plain and simple. It’s terrifying, gorgeous, heartfelt, and so deeply tender, so earnest and honest in its human truths, it transcends undead convention and feels like the first of its kind.
Boyle’s kinetic filmmaking is in full force, and Garland’s script is the tightest his writing has been in years. Thematic cores of grief, masculinity, nihilism, onward and onward, yes—28 Years Later has a lot on its mind. Still, it’s the fierce, dynamic filmmaking that impresses most. This is cinema in its purest form, a bona fide blockbuster masterpiece, whether there are Power Rangers or not.
3. Presence
Steven Soderbergh’s Presence was a knockout when I first caught its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. At the time, I wrote, “Steven Soderbergh’s latest is a remarkable technical achievement that flips the haunted house subgenre on its head.” We are all familiar with the cycle. In that review, I was very clear that while Presence is a horror movie, it’s a very different kind of horror movie. Did that stop Neon from marketing it as the scariest film of 2025? No. Not at all.
Resultantly, audiences everywhere rolled their eyes at a marvel in filmmaking and paranormal POV simply because it wasn’t (and never intended to be) viscerally terrifying. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t linger, however, and Presence haunted me more than anything else this year. Will it make you jump? No, probably not, but the final shot of Lucy Liu in front of a mirror, wailing ceaselessly, dug deeper into my psyche than any literal ghost or monster could.
2. The Rule of Jenny Pen
Jenny Pen is an icon. She is, in the wise words of Wendy Williams, the moment. She’s also just a doll, one wielded by John Lithgow’s Dave Crealy to menace the many residents of a New Zealand an elderly care home. Of particular interest is Geoffrey Rush’s Judge Stefan Mortensen, a cantankerous and nasty new arrival whose declining mental state makes it all too easy for Dave, and his puppy, to terrorize him.
At its core, The Rule of Jenny Pen is pulverizing, and all too rare, elderly horror. James Ashcroft, adapting Owen Marshall’s short story of the same name, lets his residents run wild, a scathing indictment of modern elderly care and end-of-life nihilism. Dave and his puppet are obviously, conspicuously monstrous, yet no one really cares. The scariest suggestion is the collective concession that these residents are going to be dead soon anyway, puppet or not. Gotta love that puppet, though.
1. Weapons
Weapons is the best horror movie of the year. An obvious pick, sure, but the right one. I felt things I’d never felt before with Zach Cregger’s sophomore outing. I was certain it was going to kill me. Literally. I had to step out of the theater briefly during the climax, unable to contain the sheer panic bubbling up inside me. That makes Weapons sound dangerous, a kind of horror movie dare. Yet, at the same time, it’s disarmingly funny, riotously absurd, and simply fun.
I’ve bemoaned plenty of times before the undercurrent of irony infecting the horror genre. The need to be in on the joke, to undercut scares lest the audience take you too seriously and laugh at you. It’s noxious, and it’s the antithesis of how horror and comedy should work together. The two disparate genres should augment one another, but irony kills comedy. Cregger, against all odds, maintains a sincere, breathless pace and severe tragedy with several earnestly funny moments. This is not just a genre mash-up at its best. It’s a monster mash masterpiece.
Conclusion
There are some notable absences here. I loved Sinners as a movie, but didn’t really care for it as a vampire movie. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein was visually stunning, emotionally stunted. Festival titles like The Virgin of the Quarry Lake and The Holy Boy might have ranked here, though they’re not releasing until early 2026. The beauty of these lists every year is that very subjectivity. If nothing else, this captures my year in review, and while I’m certain yours will be different, I want to hear about it. You can connect with me over on Twitter and Instagram and share your favorite horror movies of the year. Please be kind, however. Weapons almost killed me, remember? I’m just a sensitive little guy.
Categorized: Editorials
