It's Top 10 list season again! We bring 2025 to a close while everyone's favorite genre continues to evolve and improve.
The end of the year means delivering on our opinions of the Best Horror Movies of 2025. I have now been playing horror journalist for my ninth year at The Scariest Things. Every year, I exclaim that we are in the midst of a Horror Renaissance. Never has that feeling felt more impactful than this past year. 2023 was close, but 2025 delivers the box office rewards as well as the critical praise. This was a year for new, fresh stories, supported by the studios and justified by the audiences. It also helped that a few franchises performed well, and we are likely to see the fruits of their success come Oscar season.
On with the list!
Horror is back! The studios are cranked up. Writers are writing. Genre was the word on the tips of Hollyweird's collective tongues.
People really love horror and it shows. While horror didn't crack the top ten highest grossing films of 2025 (unless you count the Japanese animated film Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle), it did amazingly well.
Check out the octet of oddness that is the first wave of feature films for MidWest WeirdFest!
Can it be? The first Sam Raimi horror flick since Drag Me To Hell (2009)?
If you're in the mood for some throwback Spanish horror, check out the trailer for LILY'S RITUAL!
★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Hot take: It's time to shelve the V/H/S franchise and do an autopsy scrub. V/H/S Halloween is the latest iteration of the venerable horror anthology franchise. V/H/S has become an enabler (and, by way of production, Shudder and Bloody Disgusting as well) of ugly, uninspired, and dull shaky-cam short films. With one exception, I don't think any of these segments would be good enough to make an average horror-film festival short-film block. It's a sad indictment of a once-proud series.
Consider Feel Good Horror as a palate cleanser for those of you looking for a bit of optimism and good vibes in your horror movies. For those of you who may have followed up on our recommendations from Episode 205: Mean Horror, we're making it up to you now. Triumph over evil! Protagonists for the win! Fist pumps all around. It's time for some emotional healing through horror with Episode 206: Feel Good Horror.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Kombucha brings body horror to the workplace. Symbio is a company that positions itself as a place where struggling Liberal Arts creative types can achieve the same professional success as those who went into the technical fields and prospered. Luke is a struggling musician who takes the bait. Soon, he will find out that Symbio's secret to success lies in the mysterious drink Kombucha.
★★ out of ★★★★★
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False start. Production team. Five-yard penalty. Retry third down. Him (2025) is a rare commodity: a sports horror film, and sadly, it fumbled the opportunity away. The production is artistically very ambitious, but it fails to make much of its visual assertiveness. Too weird for your average football fan. Too much football for your average horror fan. Him proudly bears the backing of horror mogul Justin Peele, has the cinematic flair of a Peele film, but it lacks the skilled storytelling that the producer is known for.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Final Destination has taught us that you can't cheat death. In Bloodlines, we reset the clock back to what might be the original sin for cheating death. It is 1969, and the site of the impending disaster is the Space Needle-like Sky View Tower. As is tradition for this series, a premonition of disaster saves all the would-be victims. Death is nothing if not patient, and it pursues the lucky survivors... and their descendants. This was a breath of fresh air into a series that had become stale.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Australian shark shocker Beast of War balances its drama and creature feature elements impressively, boasting good performances and plenty of great-white gore.
Merry Christmas from the Scariest Things Podcast!!! In honor of 2025's Silent Night Deadly Night reboot we’re giving you the gift that no one asked for, ever expected, and certainly one that no one ever put on their Christmas wishlist. It’s free and it’s here waiting for you. Totally unwrapped and ready to go…
We give you all seven of the Silent Night Deadly Night films ranked! And…you’re welcome.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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A film that roils in equal parts gore, humor, and the paranormal, Silent Night Deadly Night is a true Yuletide crowd pleaser. By playfully pulling apart the most sacrosanct holiday figure of all time — Ol’ St. Nick — this film manages to have something for the entire family to enjoy on Xmas morning.
Great Horror movies can often be a bummer. Vicious, unrelenting, and cruel films that deny us the happy ending and the victorious fist pump. Many horror fans, and a couple of the podcasters for The Scariest Things in particular, seek these films out. We are crossing bridges too far. No punch pulling. Beware and behold Episode 205: Mean Horror.
★★.5 out of ★★★★★
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We return to Southport in the reboot/sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer. A new crew of pretty teens is put through very similar paces to the 1997 cast. Bad decisions lead to murderous revenge from an assailant in a fisherman's slicker, wielding a meat hook. It's a better-looking movie than its predecessor, but it lacks the star power and charisma of the original. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return to lend credibility to the film, and the writing struggles to effectively use the legacy cast. Unfortunately, like its source material, The Fisherman is an uninspired generic villain.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
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Judge Stefan Mortensen suffers a stroke during a trial and is sent to a nursing home to recover. As the wheelchair-bound judge struggles with his physical ailments, he encounters Dave Crealy, a psychopathic resident who bullies all of the other residents with a puppet-clad fist. Stefan clings to reason and rules but is overwhelmed by Dave's chaotic presence and has become the focus of the madman's rage. Two great actors, Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, bring their A-games to this elder-care thriller.
★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
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In Keeper, a dating couple takes the next step by going to the boyfriend's lodge in the woods, which, given the opening credit montage of screaming women, might not be the best idea. Osgood Perkins delivers a stylish modern thriller delivered on the bones of a folk horror skeleton. Tatiana Maslany is in top form as a horror actress, delivering quirk, pathos, and proper survivor smarts. The plot hides its secrets well. Perhaps too well, as you might leave the theater still trying to fill in the mental puzzle pieces.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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The revisioning of the Predator franchise is in full swing and continues to impress. Dan Trachtenberg is revitalizing what was a brand that was stuck in neutral, and now bristles with excitement and fresh turns. In Predator: Badlands, we flip to the Yautja (the name now given to the Predators) point of view. Dek is a young Yautja looking to redeem his honor by claiming a trophy prize from an unkillable creature of legend. On his hunt, he partners with an unlikely android on a planet where every living thing is out to kill them. The movie is much more action-hero than horror, and it uses the Marvel M.O. of destroying lots of non-humans to stay in the PG-13 category. It's still plenty violent, despite the lack of human bloodshed. Predator: Badlands makes up for the lack of gore with a superior story and wonderful character interactions.
★★★★.5 out of ★★★★★
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The Dangerous Animals of the title are sharks, but they are the weapons, not the killers. Jai Courtney is Tucker, a serial killer who uses his shark dive boat as an excuse to take victims on a one-way trip out to sea. Zephyr is a target who proves to be a greater challenge than most of his prey, and Tucker likes a victim with some spunk. Oz horror is notoriously brutal, where happy endings are rare. The man who brought you The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy has returned with a highly entertaining and original variant of the serial killer film.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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The Long Walk delivers exactly what it promises: a death march competition across the backroads of Americana, where fifty young men look to be the last one standing, where death awaits the rest of the competition. Themes of brotherhood and complacency within an autocratic society are explored. Primarily, however, it's a pretty thin plot bolstered by a pair of terrific leading young actors.
You know? That movie was better than I remembered. How often do you tell yourself that? Or, alternately, "What was I thinking? This movie was awful!" We've all been there. The movies don't change, but we do. We get older. Our tastes change. Sometimes we weren't in the right headspace to appreciate a film for the first watch. The Scariest Things gets contemplative in Episode 204 and reviews movies that we believe should be re-evaluated... for better... or worse.
PARASOMNIA is a solid entry in the horror subgenre of night terrors.
Here's the mind blowing trailer for the new release of Yoshihiro Nishimura’s HOLY MOTHER!
The Scariest Things has some more FilmQuest short film recommendations for you!
The Scariest Things has our first installment of short film recommendations from FilmQuest 2025!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Chain Reactions is an incredibly intellectualized love letter to one of the most gruesome films ever laid down on celluloid. Unlike the varied nature of many of Alexandre O. Philippe films — save for Leap of Faith William Friedkin on the Exorcist — the film is a straight forward and linear affair.
Horror movies love sequels and reboots. So, a recast is always around the corner. The Scariest Things is going to do what everybody fears: recasting movies that really shouldn't be rebooted. BUT WE'RE DOING IT ANYWAYS! Redoing A Nightmare on Elm Street with blockbuster casts. Check! A reboot of Jaws with women in the lead? Done! Extending the It story to 27 years, for a Chapter 3 using a senior citizen cast. You betcha! And Hereditary, but swapping out for an all black cast? We can do that! Sacrilege? Absolutely, but you know you want to know who we picked!
The Scariest Things has the trailer and poster reveal for Argentinian sci-fi horror MAR.IA.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Messiah of Evil offers a deliciously confusing early 70s cross between art film and horror, setting the stage for horror tropes to come.