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The Best Scary Movies on Netflix Starring Women

Order a bagel and turn off your phone—an Anne Rice adaptation is waiting for you.
Screengrab via Netflix

Scary movies are one of my favorite things. Like most things that I enjoy, I cannot moderate my consumption of them, and would rather spend 12 hours watching bad thrillers than giving a well-rated comedy a try. The best genre of all is the sci-fi thriller, but I will watch anything that is scary. I just don’t like gore because it’s not scary; it’s disgusting.

One of the worst things in the whole world is trying to find a good scary movie to watch on a Tuesday afternoon while you’re waiting for Seamless to deliver you a bagel from two blocks away. So much precious time can be wasted on Rotten Tomatoes or whatever. Besides, film people don't really know what's good anyway.

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So, put on some $350 sweatpants, order McDonald’s on UberEats, and take a Benadryl. The following seven films are all on Netflix, and they’re all wicked good.

Screengrab via Netflix

1. The Babadook (2014)

The Babadook is not a good movie. It’s a really good movie. I know it seems cliche at this point, given that we’re a year out of "the Babadook is a gay icon" discourse, but that's actually why you should watch it again—queer people immortalized this otherwise temporal indie feature.

If there’s two things I hate its 1) fake scary movies that are part comedy and 2) scary movies that use too much vibration effects on spirits. The Babadook takes itself incredibly seriously, tackles issue of abuse and loss, raises mental health awareness, doesn't vibrate too much, and is fucking terrifying.

The truth is that once you see the thicc bih herself, it’s not that scary anymore, but the first half of the movie is very intense. After that, I appreciate that this fucking absurd entity is just hacking away at the poor mother’s sanity. It’s a modern classic that underscores how terrifying it can be to raise a child, or be a child with a crazy mom and a demon mime on your cieling.

Screengrab via Netflix

2. Queen of the Damned (2002)

If you’re going to read anything I write about culture you need to let go of whatever bullshit society told you about “good” and “bad” art. Queen of the Damned is automatically an incredible film because it is an adaptation from Anne Rice’s series, The Vampire Chronicles, which is the best series of books ever written. But it's also really good for other reasons.

To start, Aliyah is the female star. She plays an ancient fucking vampire who is so old that she stood still for so long that she basically just became a statue in a temple. Lestat, portrayed by sex god Stuart Townsend, is her vampire protege. This movie features Lestat in the 20th century, becoming a rock star and wearing cool leather pants.

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Possibly the best part of Queen of the Damned is when Lestat wears this sexy low rise black skirt and no shirt and has vampire sex with the Queen of the Damned. The end is fucking insane. There is nothing wrong with this movie. Vampires are not over—they never will be, and this 2002 classic is the perfect representation of filmmaking in the early 21st century: It retains the incredible storytelling of 90s films while adding cool emo filters and electronic music.

Screengrab via Netflix

3. The Village (2004)

You’re welcome. I just reminded you that The Village exists. It's easy to be critical of M. Night Shyamalan's work, but his ideas are wicked cool and at least they’re creative. You could be watching some lame musical about matchmaking or you could watch a thriller by filmmaking god M. Night Shyamalan.

The Village is almost as good as The Sixth Sense. I like it because it's about a village of people in olden days who wear cloaks and are separated from society by a lot of forestry. It also boasts supernatural villains, a conspiracy from the highest levels of local power, and is genuinely surprising.

This film has a big twist which is something I usually hate, especially when they invalidate the entire movie plot. But The Village twists in a cool way—not a lame, this-was-a-waste-of-two-hours way. Watch it after you watch The Matrix if you’re looking for a good combo.

Screengrab via Netflix

4. The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy (2010)

Sometimes you don’t want to be scared by vampires or creepy clawed animals wearing clothes. Sometimes you want to be scared by a thrilling drama that involves murder conspiracies, corruption, evil government people and hacking and stuff.

The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy is really good for anyone who likes cool hair, outfits with spikes, and righteous payback to evil fucking abusers and criminals. Hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander is the deeply relatable female protagonist who owns bad people while wearing creepers. The series is also a trilogy and anything that can be three times as long as a regular feature length film absolutely should be.

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The original Swedish version, which also happens so be the better version, is currently on Netflix, so put on your reading glasses and get ready to order delivery twice because it's very long.

Screengrab via Netflix

5. The Invitation (2015)

The Invitation is a 2015 thriller about a weird party in the Hollywood Hills. It’s one of my favorite new movies from the last few years and satisfies an important niche of scary movie: The confusing, enclosed space, chilling-uncertainty kind.

The things people do in this film makes me scared and also resonates on an emotional level—even if I cannot accept their gruesome way of dealing with it. The male protagonist is invited to dinner by his ex-wife, who has been away for a long time out of the country; they were divorced after their son tragically died. The dinner is a reunion between family and friends, with an odd, ominous undertone that becomes increasingly pronounced.

But that is counterbalanced by the uncertainty of the ex-husband; is everyone acting weird, or is he paranoid? Ultimately, everyone learns a hard and terrifying lesson about grief. You never know what's real or not until it all comes out. I understand why the sick freaks do what they do in this movie because life is fucking overwhelming! Also it blends 70s era creepy cult stuff with modern vibes.