Despite setting out a stall to conquer every imaginable aspect of film and television, Netflix haven’t invested the same sort of resources into horror as they have other genres. Mike Flanagan is almost single-handedly carrying the streaming service’s lineup of episodic scares thanks to The Haunting of Hill House, sequel series Bly Manor and upcoming projects Midnight Mass and The Midnight Club, but the feature-length side of the library has been a little lacking.
There are exceptions to the rule, though, with last year’s His House retaining a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and gaining a reputation as the most frightening film of 2020. Still, the platform is making efforts to add more horror and given that the first of the month is typically when the content libraries across all of the major streaming services tend to get a whole host of new arrivals, three flicks from the genre have just arrived to whet your appetite.
First up, James Wan’s Insidious has gone on to spawn a franchise that’s hauled in almost $540 million at the box office, with star Patrick Wilson set to make his directorial debut on the upcoming fifth installment. The first chapter in the saga is now on Netflix, and it still holds the best reviews in the series a decade later. So, if you need to cherry pick one to watch, then this is it.
1993’s Leprechaun, meanwhile, is hardly terrifying, and endures as an ironic cult classic more than anything else, but if you want to see a young and unknown Jennifer Aniston being terrorized by Warwick Davis dressed as a creature from Irish folklore, then by all means add it to your watch list. And last but not least, the third newbie is The Possession, which hails from Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures and delivers exactly what you’d expect from the title. It was a decent-sized hit when it first hit the big screen in 2012, and can now call Netflix its new home.
