(Photo by Paramount / courtesy Everett Collection. SMILE 2.)

50 Best New Horror Movies of 2024

Welcome to the best horror movies of 2024, ranking every dark and dreary delight coming out this year by Tomatometer! We start the list with Certified Fresh films (these movies have maintained a high Tomatometer score after enough critics reviews), followed by the pulp-pounding Fresh movies (these are rated at least 60%), and then concluding with the morbidly Rotten.

October additions so far: Terrifier 3. Caddo Lake. It’s What’s Inside. Smile 2, MadS, V/H/S/Beyond, Daddy’s Head, Azrael, Little Bites.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice kicked off spooky season in September. The Substance became MUBI’s highest-grossing theatrical release. And certain doubts on remaking Speak No Evil so soon after the original were dispelled when it went the film went Certified Fresh.

August saw the return of the Alien franchise in a big way, with Romulus becoming the first Certified Fresh movie in the franchise not to be directed by Ridley Scott since James Cameron’s Aliens. Cuckoo was Neon’s first post-Longlegs offering, and Strange Darling offered some twisty takes on thriller tropes, though both struggled to translate high marks into box office interest.

June was a very strong month with multiple Certified Fresh offerings, including Handling the Undead, New Life, The Devil’s Bath, and A Quiet Place: Day One. July followed up with more in Certified Fresh: MaXXXine (see A24 horror movies ranked), Longlegs, and Oddity.

May saw a few pairs, like low-performing major studio releases Tarot and The Strangers: Chapter 1, and then two critically-acclaimed audience-splitters: I Saw the TV Glow and In A Violent Nature.

In April, spiders got spun out with Infested and Sting. Nic Cage, never too far away from the genre, returned with action-hybrid Arcadian. Universal took another bite out of the vampire genre (following last year’s Last Voyage of the Demeter) with Abigail, while another long-in-the-tooth franchise got an update with The First Omen.

March additions: Larry Fessenden’s back with his werewolf-take Blackout. Night Shift. Imaginary (see Blumhouse horror productions ranked). Indian Hindi-language Shaitaan. Late Night with the Devil. Sydney Sweeney’s Immaculate. You’ll Never Find Me. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.

In February, terror reared its head in the stop-motion animation medium (don’t forget about Phil Tippett’s Mad God in 2021) with the literal titled Stopmotion. 

In 2023, horror kicked off in a big way with M3GAN. There wasn’t a breakout hit in January 2024, with the major genre releases being the COVID-shot Paleolithic thriller Out of Darkness, and the Diablo Cody-penned Lisa Frankenstein, set in the same world as her cult comedy Jennifer’s Body.