No doubt, 2025 has provided us with plenty to be scared about. But it also, thankfully, gave us ample opportunities to exorcise those fears through the safety of cinematic horror.
So with that in mind, here is the best of the best in ascending order. From queer folk horror to sapphic antiheroes to obsessed kidnappers, these queer movies chilled, thrilled, and tingled my spine the most this year.
Honorable Mention: Dust Bunny
'Dust Bunny' is a magical, gay-helmed masterpiece you must see on the big screen
Roadside Attractions
Bryan Fuller made his cinematic debut with his dark fairytale Dust Bunny. The film follows a young girl named Aurora, who is convinced that the monster under her bed has eaten her parents and turns to the only person she believes can help her: the assassin (Mads Mikkelsen) who conveniently lives down the hall. PRIDE called it a masterpiece in our review of the film, and we stand by it. It is lush, beautiful, and emotionally resonant, packed with lovable and quirky characters, as well as whimsy and no shortage of irony. The only reason it isn’t ranked higher is that it’s thematically queer rather than explicitly so. Still, it’s an incredibly special film from an out filmmaker and deserves your love and attention.
10. I Don't Understand You
I Don't Understand You
Vertical
Andrew Rannells and Nick Kroll star as husbands on the verge of adopting their first child in the aptly named I Don’t Understand You. In the lead-up to this momentous day, they decide to take a babymoon and head off to Italy for the vacation of their lives, only to be caught in a wild downward spiral of accidental death and violence. This movie is equal parts fish-out-of-water horror and farce. It ratchets up the anxiety as these two seemingly lovely people make increasingly terrible and deadly choices, but I couldn’t help but be charmed by both Rannells and Kroll in their roles, and the two share a sweet, if chaotic, chemistry
9. Abigail Before Beatrice
Abigail Before Beatrice
Exit 44 Entertainment
With cultic thinking high on our list of societal anxieties, it only makes sense that cults would loom large over genre filmmaking this year—take, for instance, this dreamy and aching indie horror from writer-director Cassie Keet. The film follows Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), a former cult member who is trying to put the pieces of her life back together after her cult dissolved following its leader’s arrest. However, when another former member (and her former lover), Abigail (Riley Dandy), returns to warn her that he is being released, all the past—her trauma and her unresolved issues with the cult—rises to the surface. There are some films that just rock you with their powerful performances and intriguing, if opaque, characters, and Dudley’s turn as the troubled Beatrice left me in shambles.
8. The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
Hulu
The original The Hand That Rocks the Cradle will forever remain a camp classic, but in the hands of bisexual filmmaker Michelle Garza Cervera, it recenters and recontextualizes the tension between mother (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and nanny (Maika Monroe). Both stars turn in excellent performances, particularly Monroe, who is enigmatic and simmers with a quiet rage that makes her feel dangerous.
7. Clown In A Cornfield
Clown in a Cornfield
Courtesy of SXSW
While I tend to be drawn to films that are a bit more mournful, disturbing, or meditative, sometimes I just want to have a gory good time, and this year’s surprise treat was Clown in a Cornfield. In it, a new girl Quinn (Katie Douglas) moves to town and finds herself—along with the town’s teenagers—in the crosshairs of a mad and murderous clown who is picking them off one by one. Does this break new ground in the slasher genre? No, but what it does do is infuse it with the kind of joy and silliness—and gory kills, of course—that has kept this subgenre going strong for decades. It’s light, breezy, and goes down easy. Plus, it features a sweet gay twist that, without spoiling things, will not bum you out.
6. Fréwaka
‘Fréwaka’
Shudder
There is something primitive about the fear that folk horror engenders—something that remains in our DNA that reminds us that nature is wild, unpredictable, dangerous, and a bit sinister. Then it combines that fear with suspicion of others, both strangers in a strange land and who our neighbors may be behind closed doors. Fréwaka manages to do all that and make it gay. In it, Shoo (Clare Monnelly), a lesbian palliative care worker, leaves her pregnant partner behind to take care of an elderly woman (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who is none too welcoming of the help. She is convinced that she is under attack by the fey folk, and it doesn’t take long for Shoo to believe it, too. Is it real? Are they going mad together? What’s with that creepy door in the basement? The ending and the film’s coda have haunted me nearly all year long. And I love that.
5. Dead Mail
‘Dead Mail’
Shudder
Dead Mail may have been the strangest film I saw all year and perhaps my favorite surprise. This hidden gem takes place in the heyday of electronic synthesizers and follows Trent (John Fleck), a man obsessed with the instrument and, more so, another man’s (Sterling Macer Jr.) quest to perfect it. When his obsession drives him to violence, it’s up to a Dead Mail investigator at the local post office—no, really, stay with me here—to track him down before it’s too late. What makes this film so special is not just its wonderfully bizarre plot or Fleck’s aching and terrifying performance—though those certainly help—it’s the film’s quirky tone and unique structure. It’s truly unlike anything else I’ve seen this year, or am likely to anytime soon.
4. The Restoration of Grayson Manor
Chris Colfer in The Restoration of Grayson Manor'
Bankside Films
High camp, melodrama, and body horror mesh beautifully in The Restoration of Grayson Manor, a darkly hilarious and arch horror film about Boyd, a generationally wealthy gay man (Chris Colfer), and his mother (Alice Krige), who will go to great lengths to get herself the grandchild she feels she is owed. After a hookup leads to a grotesque accident, Boyd finds himself at the mercy of his mother, who has hired a doctor to test out an experimental new technology on him to heal his wounds—but as it turns out, it has murderous potential. This film harkens back to and pays homage to the golden era cinema of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and the works of James Whale—something I didn’t know how much I was craving until the verbal sparring and violence began.
3. Queens of the Dead
Still from 'Queens of the Dead'
Vanishing Angle
Out DJ turned filmmaker, Tina Romero made her directorial debut this year by following in her father George Romero’s footsteps, by which I mean taking the zombie genre and making it distinctly hers—which in Tina’s case means making it awesomely queer. Queens of the Dead takes place on a night in Bushwick, Brooklyn, when a group of queer nightlife promoters and performers are getting ready to kick off a queer party. However, even before hordes of the undead come gnawing at their door, the night begins to go sideways, forcing friends and rivals to team up. That only gets more intense when the zombies shuffle in. The film is packed with beloved queer actors, including Katy O’Brian, Jack Harlow, Margaret Cho, Nina West, and Cheyenne Jackson. But what makes it special is just how much the perspective and strength of the characters are rooted in queer life and lived experiences. It’s queer joy through and through.
2. Companion
‘Companion’
New Line Cinema
One of the tests of a great film, horror or otherwise, is how long its impact lasts—particularly in a time when there is just so much content coming at you at any given moment. Companion, which dropped all the way back in January, remains just as potent and memorable today, reaffirming what I felt at the beginning of the year: this movie is incredible. Set in the near future, Josh (Jack Quaid) takes his girlfriend Iris (Sophie Thatcher) to a remote lakehouse to spend time with his friends, but when the host tries to assault Iris, she fights back lethally, and soon secrets about her identity and the dynamic of her relationship are revealed, leading her into a life-and-death struggle. The film also features a delightful gay couple, Eli and Patrick, played by the equally delightful Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage.
1. Influencers
Cassandra Naud in 'Influencers'
Shudder
A sequel topping a best-of list is a rare occurrence, but here we are. Influencers, which follows 2022’s Influencer, once again picks up the story of CW (Cassandra Naud), a lesbian identity thief and, well, to put it bluntly, serial killer, following the events of the first film, which seemingly saw her left for dead by her last target, Madison (Emily Tennant). But CW is not one to go down easily, and when we pick up with her, she is living her dream life in France with her beautiful girlfriends, Diane (Lisa Delamar). However, unable to resist her old ways, she finds herself drawn back into the hunt and back into Madison’s crosshairs. What follows is a brutal and thrilling game of cat and mouse that crosses the globe. CW is the most intriguing villainess we’ve met in a very long time—a tech-savvy Tom Ripley for sapphics. One can only hope that this isn’t the end because Kurtis David Harder has created a world and characters we’d love to revisit (at least) one more time.
Reed Birney as Hank Grant and Kieron Moore as Aaron Eagle in Blue Film.Fusion Entertainment
Kieron Moore as Aaron Eagle in Blue Film. Fusion Entertainment 
Reed Birney as Hank Grant in Blue Film.Fusion Entertainment
Kieron Moore as Aaron Eagle in Blue Film. Fusion Entertainment 
Reed Birney as Hank Grant in Blue Film.Fusion Entertainment
Director Elliot Tuttle at the premiere of Blue Film at 2025 NewFest at SVA Theater in New York City.Rob Kim/Getty Images
The official poster for Blue Film.
