2025’s Best Horror Movies Are Here — And 28 Years Later Didn’t Crack the Top 10
Letterboxd has unleashed its top 25 horror movies of 2025, a blood-soaked snapshot of the year’s most argued-over shocks, breakout indies, and studio scream machines. Here’s what made the cut—and what it says about the scares that ruled 2025.
Halloween is basically on the doorstep, and the genre pipeline is still gushing for the rest of the year. Perfect timing for Letterboxd to drop its official Top 25 Horror Films of 2025, which they built from members average ratings on movies tagged as horror. The top spot is no shocker: Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the spring breakout that bulldozed theaters and is sitting at a near-spotless 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. The rest of the lineup mixes obvious hits with a few left-field choices, including indie titles Obsession and The Plague cracking the top 10.
The 2025 Letterboxd Top 25 Horror
- Sinners (Dir. Ryan Coogler)
- Obession (Dir. Cury Barker)
- The Plague (Dir. Charlie Polinger)
- It Ends (Dir. Alexander Ullom)
- Weapons (Dir. Zach Cregger)
- Bring Her Back (Dir. Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou)
- The Ugly Stepsister (Dir. Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt)
- The Long Walk (Dir. Franci Lawrence)
- Frankenstein (Dir. Guillermo Del Toro)
- The Virgin in the Quarry Lake (Dir. Laura Casabé)
- Hysteria (Dir. Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay)
- Redux Redux (Dir. Matthew and Kevin McManus)
- 28 Years Later (Dir. Danny Boyle)
- I Am Frankelda (Dir. Arturo and Roy Ambriz)
- Vash level 2 (Dir. Krishnadev Yagnik)
- Queens of the Dead (Dir. Tina Romero)
- The Black Phone 2 (Dir. Scott Derrickson)
- Rose of Nevada (Dir. Mark Jenkin)
- Companion (Dir. Drew Hancock)
- Dead Lover (Dir. Grace Glowicki)
- Together (Dir. Michael Shanks)
- Dust Bunny (Dir. Bryan Fuller)
- OBEX (Dir. Albert Birney)
- Fréwaka (Dir. Aislinn Clarke)
- Hallow Road (Dir. Babak Anvari)
What stands out (besides Sinners bulldozing at No. 1)
Some of the biggest box office players are here, like Weapons from Barbarian director Zach Cregger, landing at No. 5. More surprising: Danny Boyle's long-awaited 28 Years Later is all the way down at No. 13. And the real eyebrow-raiser is what did not make it. The Conjuring: Last Rites, which is this year's top horror earner in pure ticket sales, is nowhere on the list. Same goes for Final Destination: Bloodlines. If you were expecting a franchise sweep, Letterboxd voters clearly had other plans.
How Letterboxd decided this
Quick rules check, because it does affect who shows up. To qualify, a movie has to be a feature-length narrative with a horror tag, and it needs either its first national release in 2025 or at least a festival screening in 2025. On top of that, it needs 1,000 logged views minimum. From there, the average member ratings do the ranking. So if your favorite is missing, it likely tripped on eligibility or just has not hit the view threshold yet.
One last reminder: this is Letterboxd's crowd-sourced pecking order. Expect Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, and various critics lists to roll out their own rankings, and they won't all line up.
Want more scares? Check out our running picks for the best horror of the year and what spooky stuff is coming up next.