The 15 Best Blumhouse Horror Movies Ranked

There's a "Purge" for every viewer. That might seem like a bold statement given that "The Purge" franchise, first established in 2013, hinges entirely on both graphic depictions of legal murder and increasingly lavish headgear, but it isn't. If you favor small-scale thrills, there's the original home invasion-focused "The Purge." Should the western genre thrill you, take this year's "The Forever Purge" for a spin. Consider yourself more of a TV fan? Two seasons of "The Purge" await you on the USA network. For my particular tastes (which include, yes, brutal stairway battles), the crown jewels of "The Purge" franchise are 2014's "The Purge: Anarchy" and Gerald McMurray's electric Staten Island-set "The First Purge." 

If taken as a pair, these entries present both the before and after of the experiment launched by the franchise's New Founding Fathers and a testament to Blum's promise to let directors bring their singular visions to the screen, franchise constraints and all. "The Purge: Anarchy" is James DelMonaco unhinged, a splatter of blood and ideas onto cinematic canvas. McMurray's film, meanwhile, turns the series' subtext into a smoldering foreground statement. Neither suffers in its approach; both are worth your time. In the words of a dystopian PA announcer, happy purging. 

"The Hunt" was doomed from the start. Its plot, which follows a number of online trolls kidnapped from red states and hunted by sociopathic progressives, felt almost lab-designed to court controversy, and it did. Then-President Trump derided the film on Twitter; a delayed release followed. And when the film finally did land in theaters? COVID-19 struck and shut those theaters down. It doesn't seem fair.

Now, years removed from its bizarre and inflammatory rollout, one can better see "The Hunt" for what it is: a gory, pitch-black comedy that lets Bettie Gilpin be Snake Plissken. Seriously. Her Crystal Creasy is alternatively chill, goofy, and deadly, a heroine as apt to jump-kick elderly villains as she is to squat to pee in public, mid-conversation. Her every action subverts any expectation one could have, revealing the heart of "The Hunt" and its sneakily-layered intentions. 

This is a film about assumptions and misinformation, one which tackles how a reality literally constructed from fake digital news would prove lethal for all involved. That it happens to find empathy with its mostly broad characters was misread as political pandering. But, as director Craig Zobel has since proven with his great "Mare of Easttown," that approach reveals how our darkest commonalities can wisely frame our differences. As "The Hunt" and Zobel riotously suggest, that frame is easily breakable — and what spills out is a bloody mess (and a gift for audiences).

There are four directors who appear twice on this list. Jordan Peele, Christopher Landon, and the aforementioned Mike Flanagan make up the first three, and there can be no doubt that they represent a murderer's row of talent – each has an essential voice; each approaches horror from a singular and aesthetically-divergent angle. But the fourth director might seem like two separate (and equally brilliant) filmmakers based on the two films he managed to land on this lineup. That director is Leigh Whannell.

"Upgrade," which is only Whannell's second full-length film, is arguably more revenge flick or hard sci-fi than it is full-blown horror. It's the story of Grey Trace, a mild-mannered man who's brutally mugged and left for dead after witnessing the murder of his wife ... and the cutting-edge technology which gives him the superhuman strength necessary to pursue and confront the villains that wronged him.  But, in typical Whannell fashion, the movie grows more upsetting and sinister as it unfolds, the terror stemming both from increasingly gory set-pieces and the dark triumph of violent wishes fulfilled. "Upgrade," then, is a sterling reminder that the term "horror" can serve as a skeleton key for the imagination rather than a hindrance. 

More than anything, though, "Upgrade" belongs on this list for Logan Marshall-Green's performance as Trace, which is as physically revelatory as Peter Weir playing Robocop or Jeff Goldblum becoming the Fly. Horror is rich with actors bringing prosthetics and mythic creatures to life, but Green shows you the machinery and budding monster that lurk underneath his skin and makes it look just as easy as breathing. 

We are conditioned to understand that things go bump in the night, whether through the myth of Santa Claus thumping down the chimney or the universal childhood fear that monsters may be hiding in the closet. There's no comfort in this truth, perhaps, but there is a silver lining: If evil mostly reveals itself after dark, then at least our sunlit hours can be free of terror ... which is why it's so jarring and upsetting when a horror film deploys its most frightening moments during daylight. And, reader, "Insidious" has an all-time daylight scare.

Truth be told, if this list were solely about scares, "Insidious" would easily rank near the top (Indeed, so effective are its frights that when the film doesn't totally hang together narratively in the end, it's mostly forgivable). At this point in his career, director James Wan felt far more concerned with sensory experience than story, and while he would flawlessly blend both elements for 2013's (non-Blumhouse) release "The Conjuring," he's yet to make a film which rewires its audience's sense of horror more completely than this one. Things don't just bump in the night; they are with us always.

"Hush" released straight to Netflix in 2016, approximately two years before the streaming service began dropping original films on a nearly-daily basis (and two years before it got into the prestige game with legends like Cuaron and Scorsese). All of which is to say that, in 2016, a great Netflix original film was something of a novelty. 

"Hush" has a simple pitch — "Wait Until Dark," but make it hearing-impaired. The story of a deaf writer who's retreated into the woods to live a solitary life only to find herself fighting for her life against a psychopathic masked killer, Mike Flanagan's thriller is built from basic elements (in some ways, that's an argument for why it's one of his best efforts). What could have been a tableau of hastily assembled cliches instead realizes itself like vintage Hitchcock on protein powders: endlessly muscular, fiendishly clever, and a subtle showcase for two actors thirsty to make a strong impression. Few would've gone out of their way to cast John Gallagher Jr. as the heavy before "Hush," but his menacing take on "The Man" changed that. And in the role of "Maddie," Kate Siegel firmly established why she's one of Mike Flanagan's muses. Her performance is a triumph of "show don't tell" acting, and watching her think, fear, and wordlessly fight her way through the menace is never less than incredible. 

What was the first moment Zoom scared you? A seemingly silly question, but maybe not. At the height of 2020's worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the little video-conferencing software that could was one of the precious few ways humans could safely connect with one another. That reliance revealed a certain reality: "This isn't getting better, not anytime soon." With every passing week, this platform — which previously offered the relief that came with knowing that my loved ones were ok — filled me with deeper and deeper dread. No wonder filmmaker Rob Savage and a team of incredible performers made a Zoom-set horror film called "Host" only half a year into 2020. The software is, and was, frightening. 

"Unfriended" does not take place over Zoom, not exactly. Director Levan Gabriadze's film predates both the pandemic and the rise of Eric Yuan's now-legendary program, but it locates the parallel voids of menace which underlay even our most casual encounters on video chat — that we are only approximating real interaction, and that the Internet can distort those interactions with awful (and sometimes very real) consequences. 

A mysterious user named "Billie227" infiltrates a group chat. The members of that group chat then start dying in real-time. The horror builds — not just on the group's increasingly awful deaths, but how tied they are to the pervasive toxicity which informs the online world and what can occur when that toxicity manifests itself into reality. Rewatching "Unfriended," it doesn't just feel like a movie ahead of its moment: It seems like a field guide to moments we haven't even lived yet, but will. 

It's hard to write anything about "Get Out" that hasn't been more impeccably articulated elsewhere by writers of color whose words should absolutely be prioritized over anything this writer could say. That being a given: With every passing year, it becomes harder to overstate — for audiences of all races, creeds, or religions — how masterful "Get Out" is. 

It is an all-time best first horror effort from genre impresario Jordan Peele. It is more than great cinema; it's essential iconography. For many, "Get Out" kickstarts discussions of what micro-aggressions and white privilege look like. For others, it might be where those discussions start and end. The truth is, it's a film that leaves many awash in discomfort. It represents the moment many audience members encountered the bomb-cyclone talent of LaKeith Stanfield and (now Oscar-winner!) Daniel Kaluuya. It was the first Oscar win for Jordan Peele. "Get Out" is all of these things and many more, and it was rightfully met with a tidal wave of accolades.

The accolades aren't what make "Get Out" great, of course, but they do indicate that criticism or evaluation of where the film stands in a "Best Blumhouse" list is largely irrelevant. Though there are two other films ranked above it in this article, that's entirely a matter of preference. Only one movie discussed here made an eternal impact on popular culture, the kind that may reverberate until pop culture simply becomes The Sunken Place, and that's "Get Out." 

Twenty years after its release, the growing consensus surrounding Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg's "A.I." is that it represents one of both filmmakers' most misunderstood and underappreciated works. In many ways, it was a film audiences simply weren't ready for, an uneasy reconciliation of Kubrick's clinical brilliance and Spielberg's warm, magic-tinged scope. It plumbs the depths of both love's nature and how technology obfuscates the word's meaning into oblivion. One year removed from Y2K-mania, the whole long, ambitious, and anything-but-crowd-pleasing package failed to connect with mainstream audiences and was quickly dubbed a disappointment.

Jordan Peele's "Us" isn't exactly his "A.I." But like "A.I.," it is undoubtedly a floor-to-ceiling masterpiece released before its moment. If "Get Out" kickstarted a conversation about race that audiences were ready for but often unwilling to have, "Us" starts talking points that make most people's heads spin. Can there ever be a truly United States of America when the country feels so thoroughly divided? Can the chains of classism ever be broken, or should one attempt to Trojan Horse their way through the caste system? What would it look like if marginalized Americans actually joined hands? 

These themes are revealed through Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke's career-best performances and filmmaking that is only comparable to, yes, Steven Spielberg. "Us" is a two-hour set-piece assembled from dozens of tiny, brilliant set-pieces. It interlocks, like a Hands Across America line, with goofy yet iron-clad precision. It deserves to be thought of on the level of "Get Out" and then some, and when all is said and done this writer suspects it could go down as the best film Blumhouse ever released.