Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson forever changed the horror movie landscape when they unleashed Ghostface on an unsuspecting public. Released in 1996, Scream provided a bracing blend of murder-mystery, slasher movie shocks, and playful self-awareness through the plot of a movie-mad killer slashing their way through the fictional town of Woodsboro. The landmark film reinvigorated a flatlining genre, gleefully explaining and then subverting horror movie clichés and spawning a new generation of scary movie fans in the process.
The original Scream isn't only one of the best horror movies of all time, its success also fueled multiple sequels, an MTV series, and – given the $138 million box-office haul made by the 2022 “reboot” – proves that the franchise still has what it takes to slay the competition. So, if you’re looking to stream more movies like Scream, made by horror movie buffs for horror movie buffs, check out our list below of 10 great horror movies like Scream (and where to watch them).
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)
Two harmless hillbillies are besieged by a group of panicky college students in this goofy horror comedy. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil invokes the tropes of rural horror and repeatedly flips them on their head, with the vacationing kids of Eli Craig’s movie clearly having seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Deliverance too many times.
When Tucker and Dave save unconscious teen Allison from drowning, her prejudiced friends automatically assume they’ve got murder in mind. The reality is that Dale prefers board games to menacing banjo solos and the titular duo just want to renovate their cabin. Yet an escalating series of gory accidents only strengthens the conviction that they’re evil incarnate.
Stream Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Amazon Prime Video.
Rent or Buy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on Amazon Prime Video.
Fright Night (1985)
The passé pleasures of Hammer Horror movies invade 1980s suburbia in this hugely entertaining film from Tom Holland. Fright Night follows teenager Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale), an ardent fan of TV host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) whose acting credentials include playing a vampire hunter. After becoming convinced that his new neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) is a bloodsucking killer, Charlie tracks the B-list has-been down and begs him to help stop Jerry’s reign of terror.
The line between “fiction” and “reality” get blurred as gothic horror tropes irrupt in modern suburbia, and there’s some deliciously ironic commentary on 80s horror trends. As Vincent laments, “Nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. […] all they want are demented madmen, running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins.” Immensely fun, Fright Night is one of the decade's best vampire movies alongside The Lost Boys.
Rent or buy Fright Night on Amazon Prime Video.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Directed by Drew Goddard and co-written with Buffy scribe Joss Whedon, The Cabin in the Woods takes the prototypical slasher template and uses it to deconstruct and revitalize the genre. It also functions, as Whedon explained to Total Film at the time, to critique the “devolution of the horror movie into torture porn.”
Almost every horror convention is flaunted as Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Holden (Jesse Williams), and Dana (Kristen Connolly) find themselves brutalized by a “Zombie Redneck Torture Family,” caught up in the machinations of an underground organization to placate some world-destroying deities. Much in the way Scream acknowledges the "rules" of the genre, Goddard’s film offers a funhouse of references – invoking Evil Dead, Japanese ghost stories, even Michael Haneke’s Funny Games – with the ending a gory blitzkrieg showcasing horror cinema's extensive iconography.
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Rent or buy The Cabin in the Woods on Amazon Prime Video.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
Halina Reijn’s English-language debut is a horror satire whose whodunnit setup feels like a feature-length, Gen Z variation of Scream’s house party finale. Resentments are already brewing when Bee (Maria Bakalova) and her girlfriend (Amandla Stenberg) arrive for a “hurricane party” at their friend David’s gigantic mansion. So when the storm kills the power during a Murder in the Dark-style game and one of them is found with their throat slashed, nobody is above suspicion. Bodies Bodies Bodies is a brilliant black comedy and we can’t wait to see how Reijn’s upcoming A24 thriller Babygirl tops it.
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Scream (2022)
Released 11 years after Scream 4 and the first entry not directed by Wes Craven, this “requel” focuses on a generation of characters reared on a movie diet of endless reboots and high-brow A24 horror movies, and whose connection to the original Woodsboro murders makes them the target for another Ghostface killer.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s reverence for the franchise is what makes this movie work, and although it embraces the new – including a fresh cast led by Melissa Barrera – it remains heavily indebted to the OG slasher. The opening scene riffs off of Drew Barrymore’s deadly movie trivia tête-à-tête, while the ending giddily restages the first film’s third-act bloodbath with ballsy legacy characters like Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).
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Rent or buy Scream (2022) on Amazon Prime Video.
Totally Killer (2023)
Totally Killer follows Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka), who on Halloween night – the 35th anniversary of the Sweet Sixteen Killings – goes to a rock concert with her friend Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), a gifted student working on a time machine. But when the masked maniac strikes again, a melee in Amelia’s time machine sends Jamie back to Vernon High circa 1987 – giving her the perfect opportunity to prevent the original killings.
Shipka brings a Gen-Z sensibility to proceedings as a time-traveller from a more “enlightened” age, given the unenviable task of keeping a bunch of horny Gen X teens alive. It’s a lively mashup of Back to the Future and movies like Scream, which, from the early demise of Modern Family-star Julie Bowen to the film’s skewering of clichés, pays dutiful homage to the aforementioned slasher classic.
Stream Totally Killer with an Amazon Prime Video subscription.
Freaky (2020)
Freaky is a hilarious hybrid of body-swap film and horror movie. When the Blissfield Butcher (Vince Vaughn) stabs high student Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) with a mystical dagger, the two mysteriously swap bodies. Their surreal predicament allows the infamous killer to wreak havoc as Millie without drawing suspicion, while Millie as the Butcher embraces a brutish strength she finds empowering.
The film's role-reversed take on the gendered slasher formula is ingeniously subversive, standing out as a defiantly inclusive example of the genre. As expressed when Josh declares, “You’re Black, I’m gay. We’re so dead!” to Nyla, the genre hasn’t historically been kind to marginalized individuals, yet Freaky embraces its “otherness” to both sweet and satirical effect. Vaughn, meanwhile, is perfectly cast, and never more endearing than when bashfully entertaining the attention of Booker, Millie’s high school crush.
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Rent or buy Freaky on Amazon Prime.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
A few years before Wes Craven made Scream, he directed what many consider to be his meta masterpiece. New Nightmare didn’t set the box-office on fire, but Craven’s cerebral shocker did receive rave reviews, with Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers calling it “The cleverest, wittiest, most twisted scarefest in ages!”
A film about the making of another A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, New Nightmare found the cast and crew of the 1984 original being terrorized by a Freddy Krueger-like entity, with actress Heather Langenkamp trying to prevent him from crossing over “out of films, into our reality.” It’s an ingenious concept, whose meta layers and "rubber reality" engender a deeply unsettling atmosphere. Freddy even gets listed in the film’s end credits as being played by – *gulp* – “Himself.”
Rent or buy Wes Craven’s New Nightmare on YouTube.
Ready or Not (2019)
Before relaunching the Scream series to critical acclaim, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett directed Ready or Not, a blackly comic thriller starring Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, and Andie MacDowell, and which cemented Weaving’s reputation as one of the all-time greatest horror scream queens. She plays the newly married Grace, who’s hunted by the Le Domas family during a deadly game of “Hide and Seek,” her demented in-laws under the impression that she must be sacrificed to satisfy a Faustian pact. Like Scream, Ready or Not effortlessly combines satire, subversion, and splatter, with Weaving’s transformation from naïve spouse into gun-toting badass a delight to witness.
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Rent or buy Ready or Not on Amazon Prime Video.
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
An American Werewolf in London set the standard for modern horror comedies: balancing shocks, mockish humor, and featuring a soundtrack with an ironic litany of lunar references. The story concerns American backpackers David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), who’re savaged on the Yorkshire Moors by a vicious, wolf-life creature. David survives, waking up in a London hospital three weeks later. But he’s plagued by visions of his dead friend, who urges that he kill himself before the next full moon – or else. It’s a garishly bloody and bloody funny film, featuring one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history thanks to FX artist Rick Baker.
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If you're looking for more to scream about, read here for everything we know so far about Scream 7. Plus, there are plenty of upcoming horror movies planned for 2024, so there'll be no shortage of scares this year.
