30 Classic Horror Movies to Stream

The horror movies that endure understand that panic and peril are best served through universal stories and singular monsters. That can be a child on a tricycle, a masked figure standing still across the street or a knock from down the hall at midnight.

Here’s a streaming guide to some of the best and most beloved scary movies that will knock both socks and pants off, whether for the first or umpteenth time.

‘The Shining’ (1980)

Stream it on Shudder.

Jack Nicholson stars in Stanley Kubrick’s masterful psychodrama as a struggling writer who takes a job as a grand hotel’s off-season caretaker. (The film is based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name.) A snowstorm cuts him and his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd) off from the world, and with that disruption comes spectral twins, a blood tidal wave and other horrific happenings that turn the hotel into a hellscape. Duvall gives an indelible, visceral final-girl performance — one of horror’s best — most memorably in that scene when Nicholson comes at her with an ax through the door and births horror’s unforgettable epigram: “Here’s Johnny!”

‘The Omen’ (1976)

Stream it on Hulu.

Richard Donner’s supernatural thriller is fueled by one of my favorite kinds of horror movie villains: the evil kiddo. The moppet here is Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens), the naughty church-hating son of a wealthy American couple (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick). After a series of deathly happenings including a suicide, the well-meaning parents come to realize that their terrorizing little one might be the Antichrist. The film was a box office hit that kicked off a franchise actually worth completing. It also turned Damien into a synonym for a devil child.

‘Hellraiser’ (1987)

Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.

A magic puzzle box, skin-ripping hooks and a monstrous entity named Pinhead: These are just some of the ominous and oddball elements in Clive Barker’s fantasy-forward, supernatural melodrama. Based on one of Barker’s own novellas, the film draws a joyously kinky sensibility around a darkly romantic story that asks this central question: What’s the difference between pleasure and pain? While not as much of a household name as Michael or Jason, Pinhead is a one-of-a-kind villain: grandiose, sensuous, sinister and, for some horror fans, decidedly queer.