From Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ to ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ these Criterion Collection Horror movies are the editions worth owning.
The best Criterion Collection horror movies are the rare horror films that justify a physical copy. Streaming libraries rotate every October, half of the genre’s classics vanish just when you want them, and the versions that do stay online are rarely the restorations. The New York-based label has quietly built one of the deepest horror catalogs on disc, from 1920s silents to Guillermo del Toro‘s 2025 Frankenstein. These are the 17 we would buy first this Halloween.
We have split the list in two: the 4K upgrades, where the restoration is a real reason to buy, and the Blu-ray essentials that every serious horror shelf needs. If you are starting from zero, our earlier Criterion Collection essentials guides) covers the label’s non-horror canon.
The Criterion Collection Horror Movies Worth Owning in 4K
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1. ‘Frankenstein’ (2025)
DIR. GUILLERMO DEL TORO · 2025 · 2H 30M · R
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Del Toro’s lifelong obsession, finally on disc. Pre-order now, ships October 27.
Guillermo del Toro spent most of his career circling Mary Shelley, and his version finally made his own, and Criterion has already given it a spine number, which tells you how the label sees it. Oscar Isaac‘s Victor is all ego and grief, Jacob Elordi‘s Creature is the most tender monster del Toro has ever built, and the production design is the kind of gothic excess that 4K was made for. If you only buy one new horror release this fall, this is the shelf anchor, and it pairs naturally with his earlier work further down this list.
2. ‘The Others’ (2001)
DIR. ALEJANDRO AMENABAR · 2001 · 1H 44M · PG-13
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Amenabar’s candlelit ghost story in a director-approved 4K restoration.
A haunted-house movie with almost no blood and one of the best twists of the century. Nicole Kidman plays a mother keeping her light-sensitive children in a fog-bound mansion on Jersey after World War II, and Amenabar builds the dread entirely out of curtains, candles and silence. That makes it a demanding film to present at home: the image lives in near-darkness, and Criterion’s 4K handles the shadows far better than the old DVD ever did. It is the ideal pick for the friend who says they do not like horror.
3. ‘Videodrome’ (1983)
DIR. DAVID CRONENBERG · 1983 · 1H 29M · UNRATED
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Cronenberg’s uncut body-horror prophecy, restored from the original negative.
Forty years before every feed was engineered to rewire us, David Cronenberg made a film about a television signal that does exactly that. James Woods plays a sleazy cable programmer who stumbles on a broadcast of real violence and starts to transform, with Rick Baker’s practical effects still among the most unnerving ever put on film. It has aged into prophecy rather than camp. Criterion’s 4K finally gives the grimy video textures and the flesh effects the detail they deserve, and it remains the essential Cronenberg on the label.
4. ‘Godzilla’ (1954)
DIR. ISHIRO HONDA · 1954 · 1H 36M · NOT RATED
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
The original 1954 film in 4K, with the 1956 American re-edit on the same set.
Before he was a franchise, Godzilla was a grieving nation’s nightmare about the bomb, released less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ishiro Honda’s original is somber, black-and-white and far closer to a disaster film than the monster mashes that followed. With Godzilla Minus Zero making noise at this year’s New York Film Festival, it is the perfect moment to revisit where it all started, and the 4K restoration makes the miniature work look handcrafted rather than dated. An essential history lesson that also happens to be thrilling.
5. ‘Eyes Without a Face’ (1960)
DIR. GEORGES FRANJU · 1960 · 1H 30M · NOT RATED
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Franju’s poetic surgical nightmare, the quietest horror film ever made.
A surgeon kidnaps young women to rebuild the face of the daughter he disfigured, and Georges Franju films it with the calm of a fairy tale. That contrast is the point. Edith Scob’s expressionless white mask has influenced everything from Halloween to modern art films, and the infamous surgery sequence still makes audiences look away. It is French poetic horror at its most elegant, and Criterion’s 4K presentation brings out the silvery black-and-white photography. Buy it for the mask; keep it for the strange, lingering beauty of its final shot.
6. ‘Don’t Look Now’ (1973)
DIR. NICOLAS ROEG · 1973 · 1H 50M · R
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Roeg’s Venice mosaic of grief, in a 4K that finally holds its reds.
Grief as a horror film. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play parents who travel to Venice after the drowning of their daughter, where a blind psychic insists she can still see the girl. Nicolas Roeg’s fractured editing turns the city into a maze of omens, and the small red coat that keeps flashing through the frame is one of cinema’s great visual motifs. The ending is still a gut punch fifty years on. Criterion’s 4K restores the wintry Venetian color, which matters in a film where every shade of red is a warning.
7. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)
DIR. JONATHAN DEMME · 1991 · 1H 58M · R
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
The Best Picture winner that proved horror could sweep the Oscars.
The only horror film to win best picture, and one of only three movies to sweep the five major Academy Awards. Jodie Foster‘s Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter remain the definitive odd couple of the genre, and Jonathan Demme’s habit of having actors stare straight into the lens still makes audiences squirm. Its low spine number reflects how early Criterion championed it. The 4K edition is the version to own now, and it belongs on any shelf that claims to take either horror or the Oscars seriously.
8. ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968)
DIR. GEORGE A. ROMERO · 1968 · 1H 36M · NOT RATED
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Romero’s original, from the Museum of Modern Art 4K restoration.
George A. Romero and a group of Pittsburgh friends made the modern zombie on a shoestring, and in casting Duane Jones as the resourceful lead they made one of the most politically charged horror films of the era, intended or not. Every walking-dead story since owes it a royalty check. For years the film circulated in murky public-domain copies, which is exactly why this edition matters: Criterion’s restoration makes it look like a real movie again rather than a late-night broadcast. If you have only seen bad copies, this is a revelation.
9. ‘Peeping Tom’ (1960)
DIR. MICHAEL POWELL · 1960 · 1H 41M · NOT RATED
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
The film that ended Michael Powell’s career and started modern horror.
The film that nearly ended Michael Powell’s career in Britain is now regarded as one of the most daring studies of voyeurism ever made. Carl Boehm plays a shy camera operator who films women as he kills them, and Powell implicates the audience in every frame, which is what so offended critics in 1960. Released the same year as Psycho, it is the more uncomfortable of the two. The saturated Eastmancolor is gorgeous in 4K, a perverse beauty that makes the subject matter land even harder. Essential for anyone who loves films about filmmaking.
10. ‘Cronos’ (1993)
DIR. GUILLERMO DEL TORO · 1993 · 1H 34M · R
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Del Toro’s first feature, a vampire story told through a clockwork insect.
Guillermo del Toro’s feature debut already contains everything that would make him a master: clockwork gadgets, insects, a monster that is sadder than it is scary and a deep love for the genre’s history. Federico Luppi plays an antiques dealer who discovers a golden device that grants eternal life at a terrible price, with Ron Perlman beginning his long partnership with the director. It is a vampire story reinvented through Catholic guilt and family love. Shelve it beside Frankenstein and you have the beginning and the latest chapter of one of cinema’s great horror careers.
11. ‘Altered States’ (1980)
DIR. KEN RUSSELL · 1980 · 1H 42M · R
4K UHD + BLU-RAY
Ken Russell’s sensory-deprivation trip, loud in every sense of the word.
William Hurt’s film debut is a delirious trip through sensory-deprivation tanks, hallucinogens and devolution, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Ken Russell at his most unhinged. It is less a horror movie than a full-body experience, with transformation effects that hold up beautifully and a love story buried underneath the chaos. It is also one of the most visually extreme films of its decade, which makes the upgrade to 4K a real event rather than a box to tick. Ideal for the collector who already owns the obvious classics and wants something wilder.
The Criterion Horror Blu-rays Every Shelf Needs
12. ‘House’ (1977)
DIR. NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI · 1977 · 1H 28M · NOT RATED
BLU-RAY
Obayashi’s candy-colored haunted-house freakout, unlike anything else on the shelf.
There is nothing else like House. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s story of seven schoolgirls visiting a haunted country home is part slapstick, part music video and part genuine nightmare, with a hungry piano and a cat that may be the real villain. Its origin is part of the legend: Obayashi drew ideas from his young daughter, which explains its dream logic. Criterion is the reason most Americans know it exists at all, and it has become one of the label’s most beloved cult discoveries. Put it on at a Halloween party and watch the room lose its mind.
13. ‘Kuroneko’ (1968)
DIR. KANETO SHINDO · 1968 · 1H 39M · NOT RATED
BLU-RAY
Shindo’s ghost cats in the bamboo grove, black-and-white at its most beautiful.
A mother and daughter-in-law murdered by samurai return as cat spirits who seduce and kill warriors in feudal Japan. When a young soldier comes home and is ordered to destroy them, Kaneto Shindo turns a ghost story into a devastating anti-war tragedy. The black-and-white photography is exquisite, full of drifting fog and impossible leaps through the bamboo groves. Fans of Kwaidan and Onibaba will find it even more haunting. It is one of the most beautiful films in the collection and a perfect gateway into classic Japanese horror.
14. ‘Cure’ (1997)
DIR. KIYOSHI KUROSAWA · 1997 · 1H 51M · NOT RATED
BLU-RAY
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s hypnotist procedural, the film that defined J-horror dread.
Long before streaming made Japanese horror a global obsession, Kiyoshi Kurosawa made a film that still feels a step ahead of everyone. Koji Yakusho plays a detective chasing a series of murders committed by strangers who have no memory of why, all linked to a drifter with a disturbing talent for suggestion. There are almost no jump scares. Instead, Cure creeps under your skin through long takes, empty rooms and the sense that something contagious is spreading. Criterion’s long-awaited release finally gave American collectors a proper edition of a modern masterpiece.
15. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968)
DIR. ROMAN POLANSKI · 1968 · 2H 17M · R
BLU-RAY
Polanski’s apartment-bound paranoia, still the model for every slow burn since.
The definitive New York horror film. Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes play a young couple who move into a grand Manhattan apartment building, shot at the Dakota on Central Park West, where the friendly elderly neighbors take a very keen interest in Rosemary’s pregnancy. Ruth Gordon won an Oscar as the nosiest of them. Polanski’s genius is that the city’s ordinary irritations, the noise through the walls and the drop-in visits, become the horror. Every New Yorker who has ever doubted a too-good-to-be-true lease should own it.
16. Trilogía de Guillermo del Toro (Cronos / The Devil’s Backbone / Pan’s Labyrinth)
DIR. GUILLERMO DEL TORO · 1993 TO 2006 · THREE FILMS · R
BLU-RAY BOX SET
‘Cronos,’ ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ in one box, the set that explains his whole career.
Guillermo del Toro’s dark fairy tale won three Academy Awards and remains his most perfectly balanced film, setting a girl’s journey through a mythical labyrinth against the brutality of Francoist Spain. Doug Jones’s Pale Man is the single most terrifying image in the director’s career. It is back in theaters this month for its 20th anniversary, as we noted in our roundup of the week’s best premieres, which makes now the moment to own it. Shelve it with Cronos and Frankenstein for a complete del Toro trilogy.
17. ‘Carnival of Souls’ (1962)
DIR. HERK HARVEY · 1962 · 1H 18M · NOT RATED
BLU-RAY
Herk Harvey’s one-and-done indie, 78 minutes of dreamlike unease.
Made in a few weeks by an industrial filmmaker from Kansas, Carnival of Souls became one of the most influential low-budget horror films ever. Candace Hilligoss plays a church organist who survives a car accident and is pursued by a pale, smiling figure toward an abandoned lakeside pavilion. Its eerie organ score and dreamlike pacing paved the way for David Lynch and George A. Romero. Spine 63 puts it among Criterion’s earliest champions of American independent film. It is proof that atmosphere beats money every time, and it rewards a late-night viewing with the lights off.
How to Shop the Criterion Horror Shelf
Criterion’s twice-yearly half-off sales at Barnes and Noble usually arrive in July and November, so patient collectors can save on the Blu-rays. The 4K editions tend to discount less, which is why we lean toward buying those first. Prices and stock on Amazon change daily, so check the listing before you buy, and look for the black Criterion spine number to make sure you are getting the label’s edition rather than an older release.
