17 Netflix Thrillers You Shouldn't Miss B4 Halloween

Netflix 2019 Halloween is Officially Here

Is it the middle of the day and I know I'm not going to be sleeping alone in an empty house tonight? Sure. Regardless, I love a thriller.

We've rounded up the best 17 scares available on Netflix so you can get good and festive before the 31st. You're welcome, and let us know in the comments if we missed any of the best Netflix Halloween movies for 2019.

x Remi

Two Sentence Horror Stories

So apparently this series began in a Reddit thread, which is pretty rad. "What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences?". So began a now-legendary 2013 Reddit thread, which eventually racked up 15,000 comments (including some terrifying super-short stories) and created a whole new genre: the two-sentence horror story. Two Sentence Horror Stories enters a TV landscape saturated with horror anthologies. Amid this crowd of horror anthologies, Two Sentence Horror Stories stands out in its perspective. Save for one episode, all of Two Sentence Horror Stories' leads are women of color. Using supernatural plot devices, the episodes all get at the pervasive anxieties that accompany being a woman in the world. Will this first date end dangerously? Does my boss want to control my identity? How do the effects of an abusive partner linger after the relationship ends?

Bates Motel

After the death of her husband, Norma Bates buys a motel in the picturesque coastal town of White Pine Bay, giving herself and teenage son Norman a chance to begin anew. Shy Norman is reluctant at first, but with the help of his mother -- with whom he shares an intensely close relationship -- the boy begins to open up to others and make new friends. Some locals, however, aren't as friendly and welcoming to the Bates, who discover that because White Pine Bay isn't as peaceful as it appears, they are forced to do whatever it takes to survive. Inspired by the seminal 1960 horror film Psycho, it explores the formative years of Norman Bates and how his complicated bond with his mother forged a serial killer.

Team Freck: This just so happens to be Madison's all-time fav show ;)

Midsommar

For many viewers emerging from the cinema, the first question about Midsommar will undoubtedly be: what the hell just happened? We begin our journey in the relative certainties of the real world – albeit one soured by bereavement for our heroine Dani (Florence Pugh). Nearly two-and-a-half hours later, reality has been warped to the extent that it makes perfect sense to watch Dani, drugged up and dressed as a Jeff Koons puppy, saying goodbye to her asshole boyfriend as he burns to death inside a disemboweled bear, along with other sacrificial victims, in a giant triangular barn, in the middle of Swedish nowhere, surrounded by her cheery new “family”. This is fine!

Team Freck: Only on Netflix DVD, consider this an honorable mention for Halloween movies on Netflix. We're dying to watch Midsommar, you can stream it on Prime for $5.

Rubber

How do you even begin to explain this one.. Rubber is a movie about a sentient tire that goes on a murder spree through rural Arizona. Rubber is also a movie about the nature of film and its relation to an audience. It's pretty high concept stuff. The film was released in 2010 and won a bunch of awards at Cannes. The director’s Wikipedia page refers to him as an EDM artist first, and as a filmmaker only a little bit right at the end. "This is the kind of movie I love. a completely absurd premise (sentient murder tire) with a simple, straightforward thesis. Nothing in movies actually matters. that's the overall point of the movie. its got all these weird meta elements to it, up to and including an actual, in-movie audience that you watch watching the movie". 

Team Freck: We took a community poll and my good friend suggested this. I'll be catching this one for sure, just based on the fact that this is a movie about a tire.. lol. xRemi

Eli

Eli (Charlie Shotwell) is a very sick 11-year-old. He’s forced to wear an astronaut’s suit most of the time because his immune system is so weak that ordinary air could kill him. In a final effort to cure their son, Eli’s parents (Kelly Reilly and Max Martini) take the boy to a creepy old house that has been turned into a medical facility run by the mysterious Dr. Horn (Lili Taylor). She convinces Eli’s mom and dad that she alone can save their son, and Eli begins what appears to be brutal, painful, bizarre medical procedures. What exactly Dr. Horn is doing to Eli—and whether or not she will succeed—is only one of the mysteries at the core of the film that bears his name.

Team Freck: I just tried to watch this one and fell asleep, but it got pretty creepy. And also pretty cheesy. I'm game for a campy thrill this time of year ;) xRemi

The Perfection

The Perfection centers around the increasingly twisted relationship between a troubled music prodigy (Williams) and the new star cellist at her former school (Browning). Netflix dropped the horror-thriller on May 24 and it didn’t take long for the title to dominate internet chatter over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. You’ll find the movie being met with nonstop shock, outrage, and addiction by viewers, the perfect combo that helps propel Netflix genre movies into viral sensations. Throw in many viewers complaining the movie’s body horror elements are making them physically sick and The Perfection is quickly becoming Netflix’s version of a midnight cult movie and one of the top Halloween movies on Netflix in 2019.

Insidious

Insidious is a 2010 American-Canadian supernatural horror film. It is the first installment in the Insidious franchise, and the third in terms of the series' in-story chronology. The story centers on a couple whose son inexplicably enters a comatose state and becomes a vessel for ghosts in an astral dimension who want to inhabit his body. The film is followed by a sequel, Chapter 2 (2013) and two prequels, Chapter 3 (2015) and The Last Key (2018). 

Carrie (1976)

Carrie White, a shy, friendless teenage girl who is sheltered by her domineering, religious mother, unleashes her telekinetic powers after being humiliated by her classmates at her senior prom. Her mother, Margaret, emotionally and physically abuses her, as do her high school peers. Carrie ultimately seeks a very bloody revenge on all of her tormentors at prom, and then her mother back home. The film is terrifying from the starting sequence in the girls locker room until the film’s shocking conclusion. Carrie is a horrifying look at supernatural powers, high school cruelty, and teen angst -- and it brings us one of the most memorable and disturbing prom scenes in history. 

Team Freck: Carrie is our COO Des' doppelganger. And this is Netflix 2019 Halloween after all, don't miss this classic.

Coraline

While exploring her new home, a girl named Coraline (Dakota Fanning) discovers a secret door, behind which lies an alternate world that closely mirrors her own but, in many ways, is better. She rejoices in her discovery, until Other Mother (Teri Hatcher) and the rest of her parallel family try to keep her there forever. Coraline must use all her resources and bravery to make it back to her own family and life.

The Sixth Sense

Young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is haunted by a dark secret: he is visited by ghosts. Cole is frightened by visitations from those with unresolved problems who appear from the shadows. He is too afraid to tell anyone about his anguish, except child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis). As Dr. Crowe tries to uncover the truth about Cole's supernatural abilities, the consequences for client and therapist are a jolt that awakens them both to something unexplainable.

Team Freck: If you haven't watched this one, what are you doing with your life. If you have, it might be time for a rewatch yafeelme?

Panic Room

Trapped in their New York brownstone's panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her young daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders - Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto) - during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.

Team Freck: This was the movie that scared the living hell out of me when I was a kid. Snuggled up at a 5th-grade sleepover, my friend's stepdad jumped out from behind the couch and made us all cry. My first panic attack from Panic Room? Good times, don't miss this one. xRemi

Fracture

Fractured tells the story of a family whose six-year-old daughter ends up in hospital after an accident on the way back from a Thanksgiving celebration leaves her with a fractured arm. However, the father, Ray, finds himself at the center of a mystery after his wife and child disappear while she is being treated.

Hush

Hush is a tense, breathless horror film full of things we've seen before but can never get enough of when they're done well, including a kickass heroine, an inherently frightening premise, and a creepy stalker in a white mask. It also has a few terrific things we don't see very often, like an awareness of how modern technology actually works and a deaf lady defending herself with kitchen knives. So really, there's something for everyone in the film.

Team Freck: Omg so good. SO good. 

American Psycho

In 1991, Bret Easton Ellis’ book American Psycho took the literary world by storm with its shocking depiction of the excesses of the 1980s as told through the devious actions of serial killer Patrick Bateman. Nearly a decade later, Mary Harron’s filmic adaptation of Patrick Bateman’s self-love, self-loathing, and precisely calculated murders took the narrative to the next level. The sterile performances of greedy capitalist nature of young Manhattan investment bankers, ambivalence mixed with serial killing, makes American Psycho makes 80s insanity a thrill to watch in any decade.

Team Freck: Duh, but we couldn't leave this one off the list.

Scream

Wes Craven re-invented and revitalized the slasher-horror genre with this modern horror classic, which manages to be funny, clever and scary, as a fright-masked knife maniac stalks high-school students in middle-class suburbia. Craven is happy to provide both tension and self-parody as the body count mounts - but the victims aren't always the ones you'd expect.

The Conjuring

Before there was Amityville, there was Harrisville. The Conjuring tells the horrifying true story of Ed and Lorraine Warren, world-renowned paranormal investigators, who were called to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in a secluded farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful demonic entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives. Vera Farmiga (also in Bates Motel) and Patrick Wilson (from Insidious) play the investigators while Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor play the Perron family plagued by sinister spirits in this dark chiller from the writers of The Reaping and the creator of the Saw films.

Friday the 13th (1980)

Crystal Lake's history of murder doesn't deter counselors from setting up a summer camp in the woodsy area. Superstitious locals warn against it, but the fresh-faced young people -- Jack (Kevin Bacon), Alice (Adrienne King), Bill (Harry Crosby), Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) and Ned (Mark Nelson) -- pay little heed to the old-timers. Then they find themselves stalked by a brutal killer. As they're slashed, shot and stabbed, the counselors struggle to stay alive against a merciless opponent.