15 Best Horror Movies On Tubi, Ranked

While many streaming services are shrinking their once vast catalogs of classic films in favor of chasing original content (not to point fingers, but we’re looking at you, Netflix), Tubi is becoming an increasingly attractive option. Although it’s a free service, it has a surprisingly well-rounded collection of older films, especially in the horror department. While you may not always be able to find the most recent horror films fresh from their theatrical run (although they do have some newer movies), they have a well-curated selection of offerings that run across several different subgenres. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fan of zombie films, Italian giallo, slashers, or goofy 1980s horror comedies — Tubi has you covered. And whether you’re a horror movie amateur looking to catch up on some classics or a long-standing fan of the genre hoping to find something a little more obscure, there’s plenty to catch your eye here. Dim the lights and make sure you have your blanket ready to hide behind (just in case). Here are some of the best horror films on Tubi.

Released in 1986, “Vamp” is a horror comedy that, although it goes really hard at times, never falls into the trap of taking itself too seriously. It stars Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler as a pair of frat boys who, in search of strippers for an upcoming Greek party, find themselves in a mysterious dance club that is utterly infested with vampires. And what’s more, AJ (Rusler) quickly becomes infatuated with the star of the show, Katrina (Grace Jones), leading to a one-night stand that … well, changes his life.

Makepeace and Rusler are an easy-to-like duo of college bros, with Gedde Watanabe tagging along for good measure. But the most compelling performance comes from Grace Jones, who puts in a hypnotic turn as the ancient, animalistic Katrina. Her strange, otherworldly dance scene alone is worth the price of admission. (And we’re not just saying that because Tubi is free!)

Although “The House By the Cemetery” is set in small-town New England and indeed was filmed on location in Massachusetts, this is an Italian horror production through and through. Blending a Frankenstein-style medical narrative with a good, old-fashioned haunted house story, “The House By the Cemetery” uses primarily Italian actors with English dubbing to tell the tale of a family who have moved into a large, spooky mansion that just isn’t quite right. 

The family’s son Bob becomes friends with a ghostly little girl, warning him to stay away from the house. And with good reason, since its former owner conducted gruesome experiments in its basement, giving the entire place a gloomy atmosphere. If the production is a trifle unbalanced, spending the majority of its time luxuriating in the oppressive mood the house has built around it before turning on a dime to go into full “Frankenstein” mode, it deserves credit for style, which — like most of the best Italian horror films — it has in abundance. It may not have received the best reviews, but it’s still worth a watch.

Let’s be real: “Chopping Mall” deserves a spot on the list for that banger of a title alone. (The pun was too good to pass up, even though the villains of the piece are robots and don’t actually do any chopping, as it were.) This ’80s horror comedy takes place in a typical American mall, where the security team has brought in a new take on the mall cop that will surely not backfire at all: Militarized killbots designed to keep order by any means necessary (mainly tazers and tranquilizer guns, which feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen). 

Although they come preset with protocols that prevent them from going full-Rambo on misbehaving mall patrons, problems (inevitably) arise when a lightning storm overrides their programming and sends them into kill mode, especially since there’s still a group of teenage employees in the mall having a party after closing. The assault on the teens is pure camp, as the killbots shoot them full of lightning that looks almost as though someone simply drew squiggly lines on the celluloid. Let’s be real, though: That’s all part of the fun of “Chopping Mall.”

Out of all the Italian giallo horror films, “Black Sunday” is probably one of the most memorable and accessible to mainstream viewers, with its atmospheric black-and-white cinematography and hypnotic lead performance from Barbara Steele. She takes on a dual role, playing both Princess Asa, a 17th-century woman who was executed for witchcraft along with her lover, and Katja, her living reincarnation in the 1800s. 

When a doctor discovers Asa’s tomb, the blood that he carelessly spills after cutting himself on a shard of glass brings Asa back to life, determined to claim Katja’s body for her own. With stark and stunning imagery, especially in regards to Asa’s death mask, “Black Sunday” embraces an artistic visual sensibility unique within the genre. It cemented director Mario Bava’s reputation in Italy especially, and influenced an entire generation of horror filmmakers who followed in his footsteps, including Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.

The now-iconic imagery of Pinhead (Doug Bradley) speaks well enough for “Hellraiser” all on its own. But we’ll speak for it anyway.

In “Hellraiser,” Frank the Hedonist (Sean Chapman) gets out of his depth when he messes around with a puzzle box that winds up summoning the Cenobites to Earth. As fans of the franchise well know, the Cenobites are a sadomasochistic race of interdimensional travelers whose perception of pain and pleasure have become so warped that they’re barely recognizable as humans. And when they’re summoned, they have a tendency to take a victim home with them to torture for all eternity. Seems like a bad deal, but the puzzle box probably doesn’t disclose these details at the start. 

And when Frank manages to escape their clutches, they plan to take his young niece Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) in his stead — unless, of course, she can bring them Frank. Horror audiences responded positively (well, in a manner of speaking) to the Cenobites, and “Hellraiser” spawned a huge horror franchise with nine sequels and a 2022 remake.

The success of “Insidious” has, like many popular horror films, generated its own franchise, but for our money, the original is still the best. When the Lamberts (played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) move their young children into a new home, they’re optimistic that it will be a great place to raise their family. But almost immediately, things start feeling … wrong. Especially after their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) falls into a strange coma, and paranormal activities start occurring around the house. 

It turns out, as we learn from the powerful medium Elise (Lin Shaye) that Dalton’s mind is trapped in the Further, and demons are attempting to use his empty body as a vessel. And what’s more, it’s a family trait — the same thing happened to Josh (Wilson) when he was a boy. There are plenty of quality scares in “Insidious,” but none of them come close to the first time the Lipstick-Face Demon makes his first horrifying appearance.

Most of us are probably familiar with the classic urban legend about the babysitter taking care of two children alone at night. She receives mysterious phone calls encouraging her to check on the children, and when she finally gets freaked out enough to contact the police, they trace the number and report, to her alarm, that the call is actually coming from inside the house. That’s the basic premise of 1979’s “When a Stranger Calls,” a horror film starring Carol Kane as the intrepid babysitter. As the calls increase in frequency and urgency, the tension rackets up masterfully as well, filling the audience with dread as we careen towards the story’s inevitable conclusion. 

But while the urban legend usually stops after the babysitter is rescued, “When a Stranger Calls” extends its gaze into the future, when Jill (Kane) has to do battle with the murderer for a second time as an adult when he comes after her own family. Although it didn’t exactly have a great reputation when it was first released (audiences, perhaps, were more taken with “Halloween”), it has since developed a devoted following of its own.

Although “Return of the Living Dead” sounds like it could be a sequel to “Night of the Living Dead,” don’t be fooled — they have extremely different vibes. “Return of the Living Dead” is more of the earlier zombie film’s punk rock cousin, and it’s more concerned with having a good time than making much of a social or political statement. When a pair of workers at a medical supply warehouse stumble across a barrel of Army goo that contains a contaminated corpse now hungry for brains (sorry, braaaains), they unleash an epidemic of the walking dead. 

Unlike Romero’s zombies, these ones are capable of speech (albeit with a limited vocabulary), primitive trickery, and possess the concept of pain. As their numbers rise, they zero in on the two workers and a group of local punks who have taken refuge at a funeral home — not exactly the place you want to be when the dead reanimate. Bold and brazenly funny, “The Return of the Living Dead” endeared itself to audiences everywhere with a quirky new take on zombies.

After “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity” showed the world that you could make a hit out of extremely low-budget found footage horror films, they became a huge trend in both Hollywood and abroad. “Quarantine” is one of the better examples of the subgenre, creating naturalistic footage that feels real while building a palpable sense of tension and even including a few jump scares for good measure. 

An English language remake of the Spanish film “Rec,” “Quarantine” takes place in Los Angeles, where reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) head to an apartment building with a group of firemen to investigate a strange new strain of rabies. But shortly after they arrive, the building goes under lockdown, as the infectious disease that was thought to be rabies has horrifyingly violent symptoms. And so Angela and Scott are left to fend for themselves. Claustrophobic, tense, and legitimately scary (especially in a post-COVID-19 world), “Quarantine” packs an out-sized punch.

At times, “The Slumber Party Massacre” doesn’t seem to know whether it’s lampooning the sex-heavy, somewhat exploitative slashers that were all the rage at the time, or if it simply is one. But this disjointed nature almost works in its favor, as it moonwalks into something more interesting than either a straight horror film or a total parody. At the title suggests, “The Slumber Party Massacre” revolves around a teenage girl (Trish, played by Michelle Michaels) hosting a sleepover with her friends, where they smoke weed, drink, talk about boys, and get hunted by a serial killer armed with a power drill. Never let it be said that Trish’s parties are uneventful.

Although “The Slumber Party Massacre” was released to middling reviews, it generated enough interest to establish a franchise, with two direct sequels, a 2021 reimagining, and even a few films that existed in a wider Massacreverse. With all those films, however, it still stands out as an underrated slasher classic.

This claustrophic, action-packed zombie flick out features both compelling performances and imaginative action set pieces, giving “Train to Busan” long enough legs to make it a hit both inside and out of its native South Korea. It begins inauspiciously enough: A workaholic dad takes his daughter on a special birthday trip to see her mother in Busan. But before the train can leave the station, another woman boards — one who is infected with a terrifying disease that turns its victims into bloodthirsty zombies.

What’s worse than a bunch of zombies slowly lumbering across a field towards your house? A bunch of zombies trapped with you in tight quarters on a moving train. As one zombie turns into 10, the survivors struggle to fight them off while only gradually learning of the chaos unfolding outside the train. They discover with growing dread that what’s happening to them on the train is also unfolding all across Korea, and the world that awaits them in Busan is not the same world that existed when they started their journey.

For most horror aficionados, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” likely needs no introduction. But for those who are perhaps dipping their toe into the world of horror and are looking to Tubi for a bit of genre education, it’s a great option. Set in the backwaters of Texas, it revolves around a group of friends who run afoul of a cannibalistic family, of which Leatherface is the most prominent. As his name suggests, Leatherface wears a gruesome mask made of human skin, giving him one of the most terrifying visages in all of horror cinema. 

Director Tobe Hooper uses all the sick little tricks at his disposal to build a perverse, violent hellscape out of rural America, giving “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” a brash, cynical social commentary entirely in line with what young people were feeling at the time. Now a definitive horror text, “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” saw eight follow-up films created, in which Leatherface became a genre icon.

If you’re a fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” you should take a moment to say thanks to “Night of the Comet,” without which the popular teen supernatural show probably wouldn’t have been made. “Night of the Comet” doesn’t have any vampires in it — it’s filled with zombies, the result of a devastating comet coming too close to the Earth — but it does have the archetype for the Buffy character. Two of them, in fact. 

Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Sam (Kelli Maroney) are a pair of sisters growing up in southern California when they find themselves two of the only non-zombie people left on the planet. In lots of ways, they’re ordinary teen girls, leaning into the Valley Girl stereotype. But they were also raised by a Green Beret father, and know their way around a machine gun. As the unlikely survivors of a zombie apocalypse, they are utter captivating. Shot on a shoestring budget in downtown LA but with a razor sharp script and compelling performers, “Night of the Comet” was destined to become a cult classic pretty much the minute it hit theaters.

Zombie flicks have been around since the early days of cinema, but when it comes to the modern zombie, director George A. Romero pretty much wrote the book. In “Night of the Living Dead,” a group of strangers gather in an abandoned farmhouse when the dead mysteriously begin to rise from their graves, looking for human flesh to feast upon. If our intrepid heroes hope to survive, they’ll have to work together to keep the zombies at by — no small task, considering that their number seems to grow by the minute. 

“Night of the Living Dead” is a tense, nightmarish slow burn of a horror film, the death and devastation as relentless and inevitable as the hordes of zombies that make their slow march across the fields towards the farmhouse. And it was slightly controversial upon its initial release in that the calm, cool, commanding hero of the piece is a Black man (Ben, played by Duane Jones), who quickly establishes control over his white fellow survivors (by virtue of being the only one with any common sense). Filmed in eerie black and white, “Night of the Living Dead” cultivates a ghoulish sense of atmosphere that makes it utterly terrifying, even though its gore is tame by modern standards.

Loathe as we are to give any type of credit to John Landis, the rare director whose on-set negligence has a tragic body count, “An American Werewolf in London” is close to perfection. A fresh take on the werewolf mythos, the film is capable of moments of genuine humor and pathos as well as terror. David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are two American graduate students who decide to take a relaxing vacation in the north of England. Unfortunately, this is interrupted when they’re attacked by a mysterious animal, and Jack is savagely murdered. 

And while David recuperates from his own considerable wounds in a nearby hospital (and flirts with his nurse, played by Jenny Agutter), he begins to notice something strange. First of all, the fact that the recently deceased Jack has begun making appearances to counsel him, explaining that he’s now a werewolf. The film is filled with great horror beats and even some surprisingly funny bits, but its greatest triumph is the transformation sequence, complete with top-notch practical effects and a note-perfect use of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.”