Full-blooded horror fans want nothing more than to spend as much time as possible watching as many creepy, unsettling, gory, and darkly hilarious classics as they can. While this sounds like a pretty expensive habit, a Pluto TV subscription gives one the opportunity to binge hours upon hours of the genre’s finest for the astonishing price of absolutely nothing. Being unsure of where to start is scary, so we thought we would help speed things up by presenting our picks for the best horror movies available to stream for free on Pluto TV right now!
Sinister (2012)
A true crime writer (Ethan Hawke) thinks he has found his next big hit when he moves his family into the site of a horrifying murder, only to realize upon further investigation that some mysteries should be left unsolved.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: The film that made a Scream King out of Hawke is co-writer and director Scott Derrickson’s Sinister — a unique twist on the haunted house movie genre with its incorporation of Super 8-style footage in some scenes and an otherworldly villain who is not tied down to one location.
The Babadook (2014)
A single mother (Essie Davis) becomes increasingly convinced that the unsettling title character of a pop-up book she read her son (Noah Wiseman) is alive and stalking her.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: What makes the title character of writer and director Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook one of the scariest modern horror movie villains is not just its unnerving appearance, but its symbolic properties that also make writer and director Jennifer Kent’s masterpiece one of the best horror movies to address grief.
Stream The Babadook on Pluto TV.
Child’s Play (1988)
A single mother (Catherine Hicks) becomes increasingly convinced that a popular doll she bought her son (Alex Vincent in a strong debut performance) is alive and trying to kill them.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: While rooted in a seemingly ridiculous idea — a toy possessed by the soul of a serial killer (Oscar nominee Brad Dourif) — Child’s Play is one of the scariest ‘80s slasher movies and the pint-sized Chucky is one of the most iconic horror movie villains of all time.
Stream Child’s Play on Pluto TV.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Road-tripping teenagers end up on the menu for a murderous Southern family — including a power tool-wielding killer who wears his victims’ faces as a mask.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: While not really a horror movie based on a true story like it was advertised, writer and director Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is dripping with nightmarish realism that might have you feeling uneasy, despite how little blood there actually is on the screen, which makes it one of the best horror movies of the 1970s.
Stream The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on Pluto TV.
An American Werewolf In London (1981)
After a pair of backpacking students from the U.S. (David Naughton and Griffin Dunne) suffer a vicious animal attack in the English countryside, one dies and the other begins to undergo a curious transformation.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: With Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning makeup effects and a clever wit that also makes it one of the best horror-comedy movies of all time, writer and director John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London is easily one of the best werewolf movies yet.
Stream An American Werewolf in London on Pluto TV.
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)
A San Francisco health inspector (Donald Sutherland) and his friends (Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, and Veronica Cartwright) discover that the strange behaviors they have witnessed throughout the city are related to an alien invasion involving the replacement of humans with emotionless clones.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: Director Phillip Kaufman’s interpretation of author Jack Finney’s seminal sci-fi story is, arguably, the best Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie we have seen, for its masterfully chilling exploration of paranoia and practical effects that are just as unsettling today as they were upon release.
Stream Invasion Of The Body Snatchers on Pluto TV.
Let The Right One In (2008)
A lonely boy (Kåre Hedebrant) becomes infatuated with a mysterious girl (Lina Leandersson) and later discovers that she is not all that she seems, in 1980s Sweden.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: Director Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, Let the Right One In, is one of the finest vampire movies of all time and, not to mention, a great horror movie for date night for the way it believably incorporates the theme of young love into an otherwise brutally grim tale.
Stream Let The Right One In on Pluto TV.
Hellraiser (1987)
A married woman (Clare Higgins) goes to murderous lengths to help her lover revive himself from the dead and escape persecution by a gang of sadomasochistic demonic entities.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: Prolific horror writer Clive Barker made his directorial debut with Hellraiser — an adaptation of his novella “The Hellbound Heart,” which introduced the world to Doug Bradley’s iconic villain, Pinhead.
Stream Hellraiser on Pluto TV.
Mandy (2018)
A heinous, unspeakable tragedy drives a lumberjack (Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage) to wage war against a murderous cult in the early 1980s.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: Cage gives one of his most badass performances yet in director Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy — an otherwise simple tale of revenge enhanced with surreal imagery straight out of a heavy metal album cover.
Day Of The Dead (1985)
Surviving against the undead proves easier than surviving each other — at least at first — for a group of military personnel and scientific researchers holed up together in an underground bunker.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: Some of the most impressive special effects and insightful examples of social satire from George A. Romero’s seminal series of zombie movies can be found in the third installment, Day of the Dead.
Stream Day of the Dead on Pluto TV.
The Exorcist III (1990)
A disillusioned detective (Academy Award winner George C. Scott) begins to suspect a seemingly disparate string of murders have a terrifyingly peculiar connection to one another.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: Arguably, the best Exorcist movie since William Friedkin’s 1973 classic is still writer and director William Peter Blatty’s underrated and unbelievably creepy The Exorcist III, which changes things up by being less of a possession thriller and more of a clever crime drama.
Stream The Exorcist III on Pluto TV.
Starry Eyes (2014)
A restaurant server (Alex Essoe) goes to extreme lengths to achieve her dream of making it big in Hollywood.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: From writing and directing duo Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, Starry Eyes is a brilliant meditation on the pains of being a struggling actor, enhanced to deeply unnerving levels with a dash of Satanic Panic and some brutal body horror effects.
Stream Starry Eyes on Pluto TV.
V/H/S (2012)
The search for a specific videocassette forces a group of petty criminals to check out some bizarre and unsettling footage.
Why it is one of the best horror movies on Pluto TV: In addition to being one of the best found footage thrillers in recent memory, V/H/S is also an instant anthology horror movie classic for its raw and relentlessly scary segments that involve a night of debauchery turning deadly for three bachelors, a woman video chatting with her boyfriend about her haunted apartment, and more.
You won’t have to look so far to find some great scares. Just go to Pluto TV.