The 10 Best Horror Movies of the 2010s

Witches! Cannibalism! Plague!

Index to Best of Horror by Decade.

It’s hard to evaluate a decade that didn’t end that long ago. But from the vantage of the beginning of the 2020s, the 2010s look like a watershed. The most exciting films in the genre were created by a younger generation of directors— Jordan Peele, Robert Eggers, Julia Ducournau, Anna Biller—many of whom, unlike their predecessors, were not white men.

How influential or far-reaching the 2010s focus on different horrors and different perspectives will be is difficult to say. But films like Titane and Candyman in the current decade suggest it’s not a fluke, but a permanent and welcome shift. 

10. Under the Skin (2013)

Not Scarlett Johansson’s most famous or most iconic role, but perhaps her best. She casts off most of the trappings of stardom and charisma to play an impassive alien predator who lures men to her for sex and then—maybe disembowels them for food?

The exact mechanics are unclear, but director Jonathan Glazer gives the film’s violent gender reversal its own ruthless dream logic. Bodies disintegrate into red meat, babies are abandoned crying helplessly on the beach; insect creatures crawl out of some human skin. As Johansson’s character tries to stop being the predator, she becomes prey, a bleak commentary on how gender roles close around even the strangest, least human, and most implacable creatures.