Well, we’ve made it. This is my final week of reminiscing over this past year on my blog before officially moving forward and fully embracing 2026. Before we get to all that excitement though, it’s time to talk about some horror movies! So with that said, we are rounding out the ‘Top of 2025’ lists with my personal top 5 horror movies of 2025. Now, quick reminder that this is just my list, it’s not the definitive list and it certainly doesn’t have to be your list. I say that for every rankings list that I make but the internet is a crazy place, so I like to leave the reminder before we get started always. I’d love to hear your list or picks though as well so message the page on social media or comment on the post to let me know what some of your favorite horror movies of 2025 were! Now, let’s get into it!
Honorable mention: Nosferatu
Now, I technically can’t include Nosferatu on this list because it came out Christmas Day in 2024 so it’s a 2024 release, but Christmas Day releases are always in that weird spot for me because I, and I’m sure many others, didn’t see this film till 2025 and it came out at the tail end of 24. Nonetheless, I was a little late to the party on this one and didn’t get to talk about it on the blog, but I highly enjoyed this movie. Robert Eggers is one of my very favorite directors working today because he has such his own style of movie and you can always feel when it’s one of his works. Nosferatu lent itself perfectly to Eggers, a centuries old Gothic tale full of blood, lust, carriages, accents, and fangs. The atmosphere, storytelling, and cinematography are absolutely what sold me on this one and made it feel like something special and like no other kind of movie you see nowadays. This probably ranks up there as one of my favorite Eggers movies to date, this or ‘The Northman’ is my favorite and it would absolutely place highly on this list if it could, but alas it cannot. Kudos though to all involved. Lily Rose-Depp acted her ass off in this movie, she was incredible. It was really fun to see and hear Bill Skarsgard as Count Orlok as well, and Eggers nailed yet another gothic horror story.
#5: Hell of a Summer
I feel like this was one that really fell under the radar this year because I hardly see it talked about since it came out really, especially for a Neon release, they’re one of the bigger horror studios releasing movies today. It was actually quite a bit of fun though. It really played like a throwback to old summer camp slasher movies of the 80s, but the tone was a lot more comedic than horrifying I would say. What was really impressive about this movie though was that it was written, directed, and starred in jointly by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk. That’s honestly pretty crazy considering how young those dudes are, so something to hang their hats on for sure. This movie was actually made in 2023 but didn’t come out till this past year so if you look it up online it’ll say 2023 next to the title but the release date was in April 2025. That means Finn was 21 and Billy was 24 when they made this movie and that’s pretty damn cool. Movie has some good bits of gore and plenty of laughs though, so I’d recommend giving it a go if you haven’t yet. I made a full review of this movie as well last year so go give it a read if you’d like to hear more! After finishing this list of course…
#4: Dangerous Animals
This movie was really cool and one of a kind. Again, you won’t see a lot of movies really like this one so scoring points for originality right off the bat. It’s an Australian horror movie that’s part shark horror and part serial killer/kidnapper horror. It draws you in and then grabs you with its intensity and doesn’t let you go once it has you. The acting performance of Jai Courtney who played the unsettling character of Tucker was really, really well done and I’d never heard of Hassie Harrison before, but she played the character of Zephyr, and she was a really cool and unique character as well. I feel like we don’t see a lot of new ‘final girls’ that we can really get behind and that we remember (not saying there’s none, just less), and Zephyr kind of accomplished that in this film. She was like a hippie beach bum girl who ends up being quite a resourceful badass when she’s put to the test and seeing her counter-parting Jai Courthey’s Tucker made for some tense and captivating moments of film. This makes for a good summertime horror watch and it comes in for me at #4 on the year!
#3: The Long Walk
This was actually one of Stephen King’s early short stories that he wrote at like 19 but it was just brought to film this year. Man, this one was deep and heavy at times, but the story was enthralling while remaining rather simple. It plays more like a dystopian drama film to me, but there are certainly horrifying moments, and it’s listed as a horror film so therefore it has every right to make this list. The movie really is just a group of young men walking with a military escort, but it’s the message that the movie is displaying and the dialogue and friendships that develop between the guys on the walk that make this one so captivating and at times, so emotional. I hadn’t really heard of many of the young actors in this movie, but they felt real and the story felt real and raw and believable and that’s what made you grab onto it and feel the horrifying parts along with the characters so heavily. This is a good one, it’s a movie I’d like to show and recommend to people, but it’s not a movie I feel I will always want to go through if that makes sense. Very well done though.
#2: Black Phone 2
I dug this movie and it felt right up my alley. If you’ve seen the first Black Phone movie and not this one yet, just know you can expect something entirely different out of this aside from the main set of characters. This film (at times blatantly) used ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ like tactics and utilized nightmares and dream world sequences to ‘The Grabber’s’ advantage. Seeing as this was a Scott Derrickson work as well, the dream scenarios played out in those trippy, nightmare like home video sequences he made famous in ‘Sinister’ and that upped the un-comfortability of ‘The Grabber’ ten-fold compared to the first movie. Well, that and the fact that he was a dead/undead demon entity from Hell this go around as well. I may be in the minority when I say this, but I actually enjoyed this one more than the first movie in the series and I’ve heard many people say differently. I just thought The Grabber was cooler and overall scarier, the level of violence shown on screen was definitely upped from the first film, and it was a cold, winter camp horror and those are very few and far between. I have a full review over this one as well so go check it out…after checking out #1!
#1: The Monkey
Another Stephen King short story brought to life, and another one making my Top 5 list of 2025. This was Osgood Perkins next film following up his highly successful ‘Longlegs’ last year and I have to say I enjoyed this one a lot more. Perhaps I’m in the minority there, but that’s what this is all about! Give my rankings and say my hot takes with my chest. Not that I even disliked ‘Longlegs’ by any means, I’m due for another watch of it here soon honestly, but this was just the most fun I had watching a horror movie in 2025 and one that I immediately said, “I need to add that one to my personal collection” after finishing it. I even went onto Neon’s shop this past year and bought ‘The Monkey’ collectible as a personal little gift to myself. This movie was just insane in all the right ways. It had genuinely tense moments, but it also had genuinely funny and absurd moments, and so much gore and death but almost played out in a ridiculous and funny way. This was cursed object horror done right, just picture ‘Final Destination’ on cocaine and you probably wouldn’t be too far off. If you haven’t seen this one, you should. Don’t take it too seriously but just let it take you on that ride and you’re almost certain to have a good time.
Well, that wraps up my reminiscing on 2025 and now it’s just time to look ahead I suppose. Yuck, right? Now I will say that I know this list has some hot takes most likely to the general horror fan. I get it. I follow the horror pages, and I know that a few of the movies that people really raved over this year didn’t make this list, but like I said before this is just my list anyways and it absolutely carries no weight outside of my own personal opinion. I just like to do these kinds of lists and enjoy having a platform to share them with you all. What fun would it be if we all had the same opinions and you just read the same rankings lists over and over anyways? Let me know what some of your favorite horror films of the year were though and until next time, be good to one another.
