Best Spanish-Language Horror Movies Ranked by Tomatometer
Hot off our guide to the 125 Essential Spanish-Language Movies, we’re galloping into the night for all things spooky en Español!
Here you’ll find only the Freshest scary selections from Mexico (Cronos), Spain (The Orphanage), Uruguay (The Silent House), Chile (The Wolf House), and Argentina (Cold Sweat). Inside each film, an underworld teeming with our favorite monsters. Zombies in [rec]! Mad scientists in The Skin I Live In! Vampires in Dracula! (Yep, there was another version to the Universal classic.) Creepy kids in The Orphanage! And In the Devil’s Backbone, maybe something beyond…
We gathered virtually every Spanish-language horror movie we could find, separating the Fresh and Certified Fresh. If you’re wondering about the decided lack of chucapbras and La Llarona on this list, it’s because there hasn’t been a critically-noted movie made yet. Though KM 31 comes closest with its take on Mexican folklore.
And most recently we’ve added the Certified Fresh films La Llarona and The Platform. See where they place with our guide of the Best Spanish-Language Horror Movies by Tomatometer!
#1
Adjusted Score: 103598%
Critics Consensus: Tigers Are Not Afraid draws on childhood trauma for a story that deftly blends magical fantasy and hard-hitting realism - and leaves a lingering impact.
Synopsis: When a girl's mother disappears leaving her on her own, she goings a gang of street children, leading to a...
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#2
Adjusted Score: 102406%
Critics Consensus: La Llorona puts a fresh spin on the familiar legend by blending the supernatural and the political to resolutely chilling effect.
Synopsis: Alma is murdered with her children during a military attack in Guatemala, but when the general who ordered the genocide...
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#3
Adjusted Score: 98930%
Critics Consensus: Surreal, unsettling, and finally haunting, The Wolf House is a stunning outpouring of creativity whose striking visuals queasily complement its disturbing story.
Synopsis: A young woman takes refuge in a strange house in the woods after escaping from a German colony in southern...
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#4
Adjusted Score: 97509%
Critics Consensus: Creepily atmospheric and haunting, The Devil's Backbone is both a potent ghost story and an intelligent political allegory.
Synopsis: After losing his father, 10-year-old Carlos (Fernando Tielve) arrives at the Santa Lucia School, which shelters orphans of the Republican...
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#5
Adjusted Score: 90812%
Critics Consensus: Smart, suspenseful, and visually distinctive, Julia's Eyes marks another modern Spanish thriller that quickens the pulse while engaging the mind.
Synopsis: The closer she gets to solving her sister's death, a woman (Belén Rueda) with a degenerative eye disease becomes increasingly...
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#6
Adjusted Score: 90876%
Critics Consensus: Plunging viewers into the nightmarish hellscape of an apartment complex under siege, [Rec] proves that found footage can still be used as an effective delivery mechanism for sparse, economic horror.
Synopsis: A reporter (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman record the horrifying outbreak of a disease that turns humans into vicious cannibals....
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#7
Adjusted Score: 92284%
Critics Consensus: Timecrimes is a low-budget thriller that's well-crafted and loaded with dark humor and bizarre twists.
Synopsis: Nacho Vigalondo's time-travel thriller opens with Hector spying on a beautiful woman undressing in the woods near his property. Investigating,...
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#8
Adjusted Score: 93258%
Critics Consensus: Guillermo del Toro's unique feature debut is not only gory and stylish, but also charming and intelligent.
Synopsis: Antique dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) stumbles across Cronos, a 400-year-old scarab that, when it latches onto him, grants him...
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#9
Adjusted Score: 94341%
Critics Consensus: Deeply unnerving and surprisingly poignant, The Orphanage is an atmospheric, beautifully crafted haunted house horror film that earns scares with a minimum of blood.
Synopsis: Laura (Belén Rueda) has happy memories of her childhood in an orphanage. She convinces her husband to buy the place...
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#10
Adjusted Score: 90945%
Critics Consensus: The Untamed attempts some ambitious tonal juggling between fantastical and disturbing -- and draws viewers in with its slippery, inexorable pull.
Synopsis: A couple in a troubled marriage locate a meteorite, initiating an encounter with a mysterious creature. Their lives are turned...
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#11
Adjusted Score: 88664%
Critics Consensus: The Skin I Live In lacks Almodovar's famously charged romance, replaced with a wonderfully bizarre and unpredictable detour into arthouse ick.
Synopsis: Ever since his beloved wife was horribly burned in an auto accident, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a skilled plastic...
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#12
Adjusted Score: 85179%
Critics Consensus: While it may feel muddled at times, The Platform is an inventive and captivating dystopian thriller.
Synopsis: In the future, prisoners housed in vertical cells watch as inmates in the upper cells are fed while those below...
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#13
Adjusted Score: 76776%
Critics Consensus: Visually striking and aggressively confrontational, We are the Flesh may prove as difficult to watch as it ultimately is to forget.
Synopsis: After wandering a ruined city for years, two siblings enter a building and find a man who makes them a...
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#14
Adjusted Score: 40017%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Soon after beginning work for Conde Dracula (Carlos Villarias), the clerk Renfield (Pablo Alvarez Rubio) learns that his employer is,...
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#15
Adjusted Score: 95687%
Critics Consensus: A smart homage to genre filmmaking, The Similars is a fun and frightening film that balances socio-political issues with aplomb.
Synopsis: Eight people experience a strange phenomenon while waiting for a bus at a remote station on a rainy October night....
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#16
Adjusted Score: 94526%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Monte's agoraphobia keeps her secluded in her apartment until a young man is injured in a stairwell and crawls to...
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#17
Adjusted Score: 91616%
Critics Consensus: The strong lead performance, clever plot turns, and the unsettling ending makes Sleep Tight worth stalking.
Synopsis: César is the superintendent of an apartment building and keeps very close tabs on the tenants. He secretly enjoys inflicting...
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#18
Adjusted Score: 84483%
Critics Consensus: Dark, nasty, and delightfully subversive, Witching and Bitching is gross-out genre fun with a heaping helping of warped comedy for good measure.
Synopsis: Jewel thieves flee into the Basque forests and are captured by a coven of witches....
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#19
Adjusted Score: 83120%
Critics Consensus: Filled with wild splatter slapstick, Juan of the Dead also deftly uses its zombie premise as an undead Trojan horse for insightful political commentary.
Synopsis: When the dead rise and attack the living, Juan starts a zombie-killing business, until he has to save his small...
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#20
Adjusted Score: 45120%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A Spanish film student (Ana Torrent) finds a videotape showing the torture and murder of a missing coed....
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#21
Adjusted Score: 51981%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A blacksmith holds a demon in captivity, torturing it as revenge for his troubles. One day, an orphan girl stumbles...
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#22
Adjusted Score: 55669%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A female psychologist who has stopped practicing medicine decides to take the case of Veronica de la Serna, a young...
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#23
Adjusted Score: 76551%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A heavy-metal fan (Santiago Segura) and a psychic (Armando De Razza) help a priest (Alex Angulo) seek the infant Antichrist...
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#24
Adjusted Score: 43368%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Cowled skeletons of Spanish knights ride again, blinded by crows for their 13th-century savagery....
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#25
Adjusted Score: 73129%
Critics Consensus: We Are What We Are is elevated horror that combines family drama and social politics, with plenty of gore on top.
Synopsis: When his father dies unexpectedly, Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro) must step up and become the man of the house, providing for...
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#26
Adjusted Score: 40634%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A young man's search for his missing ex-girlfriend leads him to an old house filled with stolen explosives and two...
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#27
Adjusted Score: 69216%
Critics Consensus: It lacks the surprising jolt of the first installment, but [REC] 2 almost maintains the original's chilling momentum -- and proves not all horror sequels were made equal.
Synopsis: A doctor and a SWAT team enter a quarantined building where a virus has turned the residents into a pack...
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#28
Adjusted Score: 69249%
Critics Consensus: Shot in a single take, The Silent House may be a gimmick movie, but it's one that's enough to sustain dread and tension throughout.
Synopsis: Laura and her father stay in a house overnight, but a mysterious noise makes her very frightened....
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#29
Adjusted Score: 68004%
Critics Consensus: After a lackluster third entry, [REC] 4 gets the series back on track, at least to the level of the first sequel.
Synopsis: Survivors of a strange contagion which turns humans into ghouls find themselves aboard a ship where a doctor is trying...
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#30
Adjusted Score: 27320%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Years after committing atrocities as a torturer of interned children during the Holocaust, Nazi doctor and certified pedophile Klaus (Günter...
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