1Us
Jordan Peele is an expert at figuring out what gets under people’s skin. With Us, he brought to life many people’s greatest fear: their doppelgänger. And these doppelgängers don’t want to hang out and grab coffee...they want to hunt you down. The film’s tranquil beachfront environment definitely doesn’t alleviate the tension.
2Friday the 13th
We can’t talk summer horror without mentioning the one that kicked off the slasher genre’s massive uptick in popularity: Friday the 13th. There wouldn’t be quite as many creatively masked killers out there if it hadn’t been for Jason (or really, Mrs. Voorhees) and his scary masks. This film is a classic for a reason—and the thrills still feel fresh even decades later.
3Fear Street: 1978
Netflix’s entire Fear Street trilogy works perfectly well as a summer horror marathon. But Fear Street: 1978 taps into the beloved seventies slasher genre and gives it a modern sense of humor. Starring Sadie Sink from Stranger Things, this second installment of the series takes place at Camp Nightwing, where a summer of fun games turns into deadly fight for survival.
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4The Blackening
From director Tim Story—who created the Barbershop and Ride Along movies—comes a summer horror film that you shouldn’t miss. In The Blackening, a group of friends meet up at a cabin to celebrate Juneteenth but quickly discover that they're being hunted by a mysterious killer who is using racist horror-movie tropes against the protagonists. It features laugh-out-loud moments along with classic slasher-film references that will delight any horror-genre fan.
5X
In 2022, X hit the horror scene with a splash thanks to its seventies exploitation style, plus its all-too-familiar setting in a remote Texas farmhouse. Mia Goth plays a double role as Maxine, an adult-film actress with big ambitions, and Pearl, an old woman who spies on the members of the young crew trying to shoot a pornographic film on her property. Things take a dark turn as the group realizes that their elderly hosts are not what they seem.
6It: Chapter One
When it debuted, 2017’s It became the third-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. It's all due to stellar performances from the young cast—who comprise the Losers Club—and Bill Skarsgård’s unsettling approach to the iconic villain Pennywise. We can all relate to the precious memories made with our childhood friends in the summer between the school years. The group’s charming chemistry and the spine-tingling visual scares make It a must-watch for summer movie nights.
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7Torso
Sergio Martino’s Italian giallo is considered by some to be the first slasher film ever made. Torso found popularity in the United States, often showing at drive-ins as a double feature with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (We highly recommend replicating this at home for an extra-spooky night.) Here, a group of college girls leave their campus to escape a serial killer preying on young women. They end up at their friend’s country villa, but it turns out that the killer has followed them there. What happens next is a cascade of violence that will leave you breathless—and make you think twice about going on a remote vacation with your friends.
8Midsommar
In the summer of 2019, this folk-horror venture from A24 auteur Ari Aster was an instant hit. Have you ever gone through a horrible breakup? Well, imagine experiencing that while being trapped in a weird Swedish cult that’s performing increasingly disturbing rituals. Midsommar’s villains may be the cult members participating in the abhorrent acts, but the real antagonist is Dani’s negligent and uncaring boyfriend, Christian. The rituals ramp up to a horrifying climax, which (like the rest of the film) takes place in a picturesque Swedish countryside under the warm summer sun.
9I Know What You Did Last Summer
This Jennifer Love Hewitt–led movie was released near the end of the teen slasher wave in the nineties. I Know What You Did Last Summer received criticism for its formulaic story and (sometimes) overwrought acting. Hopefully, enough time has passed that viewers can appreciate its campiness. The story focuses on high school seniors who are looking forward to their bright futures after graduation—but on one wild drunken night, they end up running over a pedestrian. A year later, someone who claims to know what they did begins stalking them. Tune in for some all-time-great horror scenes, including Sarah Michelle Gellar screaming at a beauty pageant for someone to save her boyfriend, as well as Hewitt’s iconic reading of the line “What are you waiting for?”
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10Jaws
Jaws wasn't just a mega-hit thriller that put creature features on the map. It was also the blueprint for future summer blockbusters. Millions of people paid for a good summertime scare at the movies—and that many people can’t be wrong, can they? You’re probably already familiar with the plot of Jaws: A great white shark stalks sleepy beach town Amity Island, and a ragtag team of residents hunts the bloodthirsty predator. The suspense that the lurking creature creates in the film—while barely ever showing itself!—still manages to raise the hair on people’s necks.
11The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
No horror movie evokes summer horror better than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s the film’s hotter-than-hell small Texas town, with the sound of crickets and flies in the air, that plants the audience firmly in its suffocating atmosphere. Against all odds, this low-budget exploitation film—which was banned in several countries—became one of the most influential horror films of all time. Compared with the franchise’s gory installments of the early aughts, the explicit violence in this film is dialed back a bit in favor of an unsettling ambience and unhinged performances. At the very least, it’ll have you looking at farmhouses in a different light.
12The Meg
Jason Statham, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, and ancient prehistoric sharks? This is 2018’s The Meg, which is short for Megalodon, an extinct species of shark that was once one of the largest predators that ever dwelled on earth. However, that doesn’t seem to daunt the oceanographers—played by Li Bingbing and Winston Chao—who are conducting research next to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. Not that any of that is truly important. What really matters is that there are plenty of impossibly huge sharks terrorizing innocent sunbathers, plus Jason Statham going mano a mano with what is basically a shark dinosaur. You won’t want to skip one minute of this fight.
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13The Burning
There’s no such thing as too many horror films about teens who are stalked by a killer in the woods! Especially if those teens are at a summer camp. I know, you’re probably thinking to yourself, I’ve already seen Friday the 13th. What could this film possibly have to offer? The answer is lots of laughs and a young Jason Alexander as a scream king. Think Wet Hot American Summer meets Jason Voorhees.
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