Another month, another great excuse to watch horror movies.
Horror movies are a year-long pursuit for us here at Polygon. Sure, we’ve got our list of the best horror movies you can watch right now, or the best horror movies of 2023, ranked by fear. But each month we also put together a smaller list of five perfect picks for that time of year.
This month, we’ve picked out five great horror movies to watch on Netflix. Some have cast members or people working behind the scenes of this month’s most exciting new release, John Wick: Chapter 4. Others come from creatives who recently announced projects. Some of them are adapted to the season. Others just reign and are always a good watcher.
Without further ado, let’s dig into it.
Mist
Image: The Weinstein Society
Year: 2007
Duration: 2h 6m
Director: Frank Darabont
Discard: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden
Mist is among Stephen King’s finest semi-recent adaptations and features one of the best endings of any horror movie of this century so far. The film follows a group of people trapped in a supermarket when a mysterious and seemingly deadly mist suddenly envelops their small town. Leaning heavily on the real-life terror of how different people handle a crisis, the film allows supermarket survivors to transform into their own little lord of the flies situation before revealing that something lurks in the mist that’s way more dangerous and scary than their little differences. —Austen Goslin
field black
Image: American Films
Year: 2000
Duration: 1h 49m
Director: David Twoy
Discard: Vin Diesel, Cole Hauser, Keith David
field black follows a group of space travelers when their ship crashes on an alien planet. Unfortunately for them, one of their passengers is a notorious prisoner: an extremely dangerous alien known as Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel). And he’s not thrilled to have been captured in the first place.
Riddick is one of the weirdest franchises we have, thanks in large part to this neat little movie that introduced the character to the world. Vin Diesel’s half-slasher-movie monster, half-space opera anti-hero, had humble beginnings in field black, where he is essentially a Xenomorph disguised as a human. The first half of the film involves him eliminating the most dangerous of his captors, but the second is about his survival on the inhospitable alien planet, as it turns out there are more dangerous things on this planet than even Riddick. . — HER
resident Evil
Picture: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Year: 2002
Duration: 1h 40m
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Discard: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius
The first Resident Evil movie follows Alice, an elite soldier tasked with defending the Hive, a genetic research facility. But when the hive is broken into and contaminated, and the staff inside have turned into zombies, Alice and a group of special ops commandos must break in and fix things.
It’s been years since the Resident Evil movies got the reappraisal they deserve and the recognition as the fun and often great movies that they are – no matter how closely they follow the games they’re named after. But even though the whole series is great, Paul WS Anderson’s first Resident Evil movie deserves a special mention for its sleek style and horror combo – although it’s not the only one on this list. —HER
Day shift
Picture: Andrew Cooper/Netflix
Year: 2022
Duration: 1h 53m
Director: JJ Perry
Discard: Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, Natasha Liu Bordizzo
Day shift is a delightful action/horror/comedy hybrid and a throwback to a bygone era of mid-budget cinema. In it, Jamie Foxx plays a vampire hunter on the loose with the vampire hunter syndicate, and he’s looking for a big score…but is paired with a hapless office worker (Dave Franco).
The comedy, to be frank, is random in Day shift, but the action beats the whip and the film brings bizarre new moves to the vampires thanks to the contortionists and inventive camera tricks. Director JJ Perry, making his feature film debut, is a legendary stuntman and fight choreographer. Among his many excellent credits, he did stunts on John Wick and was a supervised stunt coordinator for the sequel. He brings that skill and experience behind the camera to create one of Netflix’s best action films to date. Throw in a fun guest role from Snoop Dogg, and you’re in for a genre-mashing good time. And with the new John Wick releasing this weekend, there’s no better time for a JJ Perry action-horror mashup than now. —Pete Volk
army of the dead
Picture: Netflix
Year: 2021
Duration: 2h 28m
Director: Zack Snyder
Discard: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera
Yeah, you get two action-horror recommendations from me, but what can I say? I love action movies.
Two months after the long-awaited release of his Justice League cut, Snyder’s first post-DC Universe project was released on Netflix. The genre mashup in this one goes deeper than just “action/horror” – it’s a zombie movie mixed with a casino heist movie. Anchored by an excellent performance by Dave Bautista, army of the dead is a fun popcorn movie with a sprawling cast (including John Wick: Chapter 4 co-star Hiroyuki Sanada and yellow jackets star Ella Purnell), exciting sets and a strong father-daughter relationship that gives the film an emotional core. It also spawned a spin-off, army of thieveswhich is less good (and not at all horror) but also quite fun.
Snyder recently let it slip that he was creating a “ridiculously large scale” video game RPG based on his upcoming Netflix sci-fi epic. rebel moon. Another reason to watch army of the dead This weekend. —PV
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