I cannot believe 2026 is already here - God damn.
Anyway, here are 6 horror movies from 2025 that I think are underrated and went a bit under the radar.
The Ugly Stepsister
One of my very favorites of 2025, The Ugly Stepsister is a body horror film that is not stylized or fantastical, it’s tactile, painful, and grounded in the grotesque reality of contemporary beauty culture, but yet, the gore does actually serves a purpose, and these aren’t shock sequences for the sake of i - they’re acts of psychological violence rendered physical.
The Ugly Stepsister offers a challenging, visceral, and disturbingly relevant horror experience.
Hallow Road
Hallow Road is basically 2 people and one car, which could have gone horribly wrong, but it's a movie that reminds you that suspense can come from just watching people unravel under pressure and recognizing something of ourselves in that struggle.
You really do end up forgetting how simple the setup really is - two people in a car, a phone call, a long drive through the night - and yet it never feels repetitive, where the story keeps finding new emotional angles, shifting from guilt to desperation to something almost spiritual, and when the film’s final twist arrives, it feels like a natural consequence of everything we’ve seen.
Match
in 2024, one of my most underrated horror movies was Lowlifes, and featured on my best horror movies of 2024 list, and in 2025, Tubi have done it again, this time with Match.
Despite some flaws, I genuinely enjoyed Match - the humor, Humberly González’s performance, where you really believe in Paola’s fear, her resourcefulness, and her frustrations, while Dianne Simpson’s Lucille is the kind of villain that just gets to you.
I think Match is a film that knows what it wants to be, and mostly succeeds in delivering it.
It’s a mix of suspense, dark comedy, and horror that doesn’t overcomplicate itself.
Cannibal Mukbang
Cannibal Mukbang brings the sexy into eating people.
It is a horror rom-com for the deranged, and I mean that as a compliment, as it’s funny, weirdly sweet, and surprisingly honest about relationships, and while the blood and gore is more entertaining than it is horrific, (Or maybe that's just me?), the film also has a lot of heart, and one I quite liked and appreciated.
Frewaka
Fréwaka is restrained brilliance, where it doesn't overplay a single beat. The cinematography is bleak and beautiful, and the sound design is minimal, often letting silence speak louder than any score.
It’s a slow burn, which might put some people off, but every second matters, and the film makes you sit in all the discomfort and watch what it reveals, and in that way, Fréwaka does what the best horror does, it tells the truth in a way that makes you shiver.
By the end, you’re not left with answers, but with questions. About what we inherit. About what we pass on. And about how much of ourselves is really ours at all.
The Severed Sun
Much like Frewaka, The Severed Sun is another folk horror movie, that is a moody, atmospheric film, and completely uninterested in delivering anything resembling a conventional scare, and I loved it for that, and while it stumbles at times, but when it works, it’s smart, unsettling, and deeply committed to its vision, and most importantly, it haunts you without ever needing to feel loud, and that’s something I really value in horror, restraint.
It's a film that’s willing to be quiet, difficult, and strange, and it understands that fear doesn’t have to be loud to be effective, it just needs to linger with you.