Best Supernatural Horror Movies on Criterion Channel

Every supernatural horror movie streaming on Criterion Channel in the US right now — 30 films ranked by rating, checked against Criterion Channel’s live catalog.

Updated July 2026 · Availability refreshed from Criterion Channel US

1

Ordet (1955)

IMDb 8.2 🍅 100% Letterboxd 4.3 2h 5m

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

✦ MovieMuse AI takeAmbrose's catatonic faith-healing climax transcends realism, anchoring supernatural redemption in austere visual composition.

The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.

2

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

IMDb 8.0 🍅 100% Letterboxd 4.1 1h 48m

Directed by Victor Sjöström

✦ MovieMuse AI takeSpectral carriage materializes as tangible memento mori, collapsing temporal boundaries between punishment and redemption.

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.

3

Day of Wrath (1943)

IMDb 8.0 🍅 100% Letterboxd 4.2 1h 37m

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

✦ MovieMuse AI takeWitch-trial hysteria manifests through accusation itself, where belief becomes the occult force consuming the innocent.

In a Danish village in the early 1600s, a young woman named Anne, whose mother was thought to be a witch, develops sympathy toward an old woman, Marte, who is accused of witchcraft. The intervention of Anne's older but kindly husband, Pastor Absalon saved her mother -- but now, urged on by his overbearing mother, he refuses to help Marte. When Absalon's son returns home and is attracted to Anne, it's a matter of time before her family destiny catches up with her.

4

Wings of Desire (1987)

IMDb 7.9 🍅 95% Letterboxd 4.3 2h 8m

Directed by Wim Wenders

✦ MovieMuse AI takeAngels observing Berlin's fractured souls create metaphysical geography where the divine witnesses human fragmentation.

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.

5

Kwaidan (1965)

IMDb 7.9 🍅 91% Letterboxd 4.2 3h 3m

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi

✦ MovieMuse AI takeFour tales weaponize folklore's logic—ghosts operate by ancient rules, not modern rationality, subverting viewer expectations.

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

6

Onibaba (1964)

IMDb 7.8 🍅 90% Letterboxd 4.1 1h 45m

Directed by Kaneto Shindō

✦ MovieMuse AI takeDemon mask's transfiguration scene crystallizes body-horror dread: flesh warping into non-human otherness on screen.

While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman and her daughter-in-law survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war, Hachi. The mother disapproves and, when she can't steal Hachi for herself, tries to scare her daughter-in-law with a mysterious mask from a dead samurai.

7

Orpheus (1950)

IMDb 7.8 🍅 97% Letterboxd 4.1 1h 35m

Directed by Jean Cocteau

✦ MovieMuse AI takeUnderworld traversal reimagines Orpheus myth through film's own mirror-logic, cinema as supernatural passage itself.

A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.

8

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

IMDb 7.7 🍅 93% Letterboxd 4.2 1h 38m

Directed by Víctor Erice

✦ MovieMuse AI takeFrankenstein's screening haunts a child through cinema's power to traumatize; the supernatural lives in shadow and suggestion.

In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.

9

Kuroneko (1968)

IMDb 7.7 🍅 96% Letterboxd 4.1 1h 40m

Directed by Kaneto Shindō

✦ MovieMuse AI takeVengeful spirits weaponize seduction, feminine rage transforming into supernatural predation across temporal planes.

In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to quell what is evidently an Onryō ghost. He encounters the two beautiful women in an eerie, beautiful scene. After spiritual purification, he meets the demon in a thrilling fight.

10

All That Money Can Buy (1941)

IMDb 7.5 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 47m

Directed by William Dieterle

✦ MovieMuse AI takeDevil's contractual choreography unfolds through New England folk-lore specificity, making American damnation feel historically rooted.

Farmer Jabez Stone, about to lose his land, agrees to sell his soul to the devil, known as Mr. Scratch, who gives Jabez seven years to enjoy the fruits of his sale before he collects. Over that time, Jabez pays off his debts and helps many neighboring farmers, then becomes an advocate for the upstanding Sen. Daniel Webster. When Jabez's contract with Mr. Scratch concludes, he desperately turns to Webster to represent him in a trial for his soul.

11

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

IMDb 7.4 🍅 92% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 47m

Directed by Peter Weir

✦ MovieMuse AI takeHanging Rock's temporal vanishing generates cosmic dread—landscape itself becomes agent of inexplicable supernatural theft.

In the early 1900s, Miranda attends a girls boarding school in Australia. One Valentine's Day, the school's typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It's not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously.

12

Vampyr (1932)

IMDb 7.4 🍅 98% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 14m

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

✦ MovieMuse AI takeVampire's subjective cinematography collapses viewer into protagonist's dawning horror; we see through cursed perception.

Allan Gray, a young man fascinated by the supernatural, goes to a small village where he feels a sinister force descending upon him. There, Allan meets an old man who asks him to protect his two daughters, for one of them has been bitten by a vampire.

13

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

IMDb 7.3 🍅 66% Letterboxd 4.3 2h 15m

Directed by David Lynch

✦ MovieMuse AI takeBOB's possession-dwelling inhabits Twin Peaks' mythos as pure malevolence, trauma manifested through supernatural corruption.

In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.

14

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

IMDb 7.3 🍅 70% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 35m

Directed by Tony Ching Siu-Tung

✦ MovieMuse AI takeGhost-love-story mines tragedy within supernatural seduction; the woman's spectral nature transforms romance into inevitable, beautiful damnation.

A naïve young tax collector for the imperial government winds up spending the night in a haunted temple. There he falls in love with a beautiful woman who, unfortunately, is dead. With the aid of a powerful Daoist Swordsman, he must defeat undead hordes, overcome a sinister Tree Demoness, and descend to the pits of hell, to fight for the spirit he loves.

15

Carnival of Sinners (1943)

IMDb 7.3 Letterboxd 3.7 1h 20m

Directed by Maurice Tourneur

✦ MovieMuse AI takeSevered hand as talisman literalizes transaction with dark forces; object becomes proxy for Faustian guilt.

A struggling artist buys a talisman that gives him love, fame and wealth. The talisman is a severed left hand, and it works perfectly, in fact, magically. But of course there is nothing free in this world, and after one year the devil comes and asks for his due.

16

Rouge (1987)

IMDb 7.3 🍅 83% Letterboxd 3.9 1h 36m

Directed by Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang

✦ MovieMuse AI takeGhost-courtesan's spectral longing across decades embodies romantic haunting—love itself becomes the supernatural curse.

Amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong, a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family fall in love and embrace death by suicide pact. Fifty years later, her ghost returns to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself.

17

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975)

IMDb 7.3 Letterboxd 3.8 1h 35m

Directed by Masahiro Shinoda

✦ MovieMuse AI takeEnchanted forest geometry traps the protagonist in mythic violence; landscape enforces supernatural logic over morality.

A mountain man beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest.

18

Ring (1998)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 98% Letterboxd 3.6 1h 36m

Directed by Hideo Nakata

✦ MovieMuse AI takeCursed videotape's inevitable transmission creates systemic dread—supernatural contagion spreads through technology itself.

A mysterious video has been linked to a number of deaths, and when an inquisitive journalist finds the tape and views it herself, she sets in motion a chain of events that puts her own life in danger.

19

House (1977)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 90% Letterboxd 4.0 1h 28m

Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi

✦ MovieMuse AI takeHouse's mutations transform domestic space into organism; walls breathe, geometry warps, sanctuary becomes predatory.

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

20

Cat People (1942)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 92% Letterboxd 3.7 1h 13m

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

✦ MovieMuse AI takeCurse's psychological entanglement binds desire to transformation; the supernatural lives in intimacy's forbidden threshold.

A Serbian émigré in Manhattan believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves will turn her into a feline predator.

21

Mr. Vampire (1985)

IMDb 7.2 Letterboxd 3.7 1h 38m

Directed by Ricky Lau

✦ MovieMuse AI takeHopping vampire's choreographed combat subverts horror gravity itself; physics bends to supernatural will.

After the planned reburial of a village elder goes awry and the corpse resurrects into a hopping vampire, a Taoist priest and his two disciples attempt to stop him.

22

The Devil's Envoys (1942)

IMDb 7.2 🍅 100% Letterboxd 3.6 2h 1m

Directed by Marcel Carné

✦ MovieMuse AI takeDevil's tempters seduce through courtly performance; supernatural corruption operates through seduction's aesthetic power.

At the end of the 15th century, a man and a woman, posing as traveling minstrels, are sent by the Devil to a castle to seduce its inhabitants.

23

The Grandmother (1970)

IMDb 7.1 Letterboxd 3.6 0h 34m

Directed by David Lynch

✦ MovieMuse AI takeGrotesque grandmother birth sequence renders the surreal mundane; body-horror emerges from parental void.

To escape neglect and abuse from his parents, a young boy plants some strange seeds and they grow into a grandmother.

24

Carnival of Souls (1962)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 87% Letterboxd 3.8 1h 18m

Directed by Herk Harvey

✦ MovieMuse AI takePost-accident dissociation visualized as spiritual limbo; Carnival blurs psychological horror with genuine spectral displacement brilliantly.

Mary Henry ends up the sole survivor of a fatal car accident through mysterious circumstances. Trying to put the incident behind her, she moves to Utah and takes a job as a church organist. But her fresh start is interrupted by visions of a fiendish man. As the visions begin to occur more frequently, Mary finds herself drawn to the deserted carnival on the outskirts of town. The strangely alluring carnival may hold the secret to her tragic past.

25

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 81% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 13m

Directed by Jaromil Jireš

✦ MovieMuse AI takePuberty's supernatural acceleration warps time and flesh simultaneously; womanhood becomes occult transformation.

Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.

26

Blithe Spirit (1945)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 78% Letterboxd 3.5 1h 36m

Directed by David Lean

✦ MovieMuse AI takeMaterializing ghost anchors spectral presence through drawing-room comedy; wit becomes supernatural resurrection's tone.

A harmless séance at a novelist's home summons the ghost of his glamorous first wife.

27

Empire of Passion (1978)

IMDb 7.0 🍅 80% Letterboxd 3.6 1h 45m

Directed by Nagisa Ōshima

✦ MovieMuse AI takeMurdered husband's vengeful ghost enforces moral consequence through supernatural jealousy spanning death itself.

In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.

28

Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980)

IMDb 7.0 Letterboxd 3.7 1h 42m

Directed by Sammo Hung Kam-Bo

✦ MovieMuse AI takeTemple's supernatural gauntlet escalates through accumulated ghostly trials; fear becomes cumulative physical ordeal.

"Big Guts" Cheung, a man well known in his local village for his lack of fear, is put to the test after being tricked into spending the night in a temple full of spirits, zombies, and vampires.

29

The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)

IMDb 7.0 Letterboxd 3.7 1h 17m

Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa

✦ MovieMuse AI takeBetrayal's supernatural reckoning manifests through wife's spectral vengeance; wrong-doing summons wrathful consequences.

This horror tale adapts the Japanese legend which tells of a man who faces the consequences of betraying his wife in order to acquire wealth and power.

30

Demon Pond (1979)

IMDb 7.0 Letterboxd 3.7 2h 4m

Directed by Masahiro Shinoda

✦ MovieMuse AI takeDemon-pond myth penetrates village through water itself; landscape becomes supernatural threshold harboring ancient malevolence.

When a lone traveler stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town’s inhabitants, including lovers Akira and Yuri, in their hands.