5 Must-Watch Summer Horror Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes Score

Horror movies may tend to congregate in the fall around October, but scary flicks are always in season.

This week, I Know What You Did Last Summer is reviving the classic horror franchise with a sequel that doubles as a remake.

It’s too soon to say how that flick will compare with the best summer horror movies as ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score.

But since the Watch With Us team has put this list together, we can tell you that the original I Know What You Did Last Summer didn’t come close to reaching No. 1.

5. ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ (1997)

Rotten Tomatoes rank: 45 percent

The thing you have to remember about horror movies is that even the really good ones tend to get unfavorable reviews. The original incarnation of I Know What You Did Last Summer is a lot better than its low Rotten Tomatoes rank suggests. And for the time, getting Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr. at the peak of their stardom was quite an accomplishment.

After a drunken night of partying on the beach, Julie James (Hewitt), Helen Shivers (Gellar), Barry Cox (Phillippe) and Ray Bronson (Prinze) accidentally hit a man and resolve to hide their crime. One year later, the friends are estranged from each other when they’re stalked by a killer armed with a fish hook who sends them menacing messages that echo the name of the movie. It’s not as great as Scream, but it’s still pretty good for the ’90s.

 I Know What You Did Last Summer is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.

4. ‘Friday the 13th’ (1980)

Rotten Tomatoes rank: 67 percent

Jason Voorhees is in the original Friday the 13th, but not as the hockey mask-wearing serial killer we know and love. Instead, the first movie takes quite a while before letting the audience know who’s been murdering the camp counselors in and around Camp Crystal Lake as it prepares to open for the summer.

Alice (Adrienne King) and the rest of the counselors don’t realize the danger they’re in until it’s far too late. The killer has waited years for this moment, and these teens will be picked off one by one until the last survivor remains. This is an all-time classic horror flick, and it helped shape the genre for decades afterwards.

Friday the 13th is streaming on Kanopy.

3. ‘The Lost Boys’ (1987)

Rotten Tomatoes rank: 75 percent

The Lost Boys is arguably the best movie directed by the late Joel Schumacher and a rare opportunity to see the Coreys — Corey Haim and Corey Feldman — in the same film. The forecast for summer in Santa Carla, California, calls for a lot of sunshine and vampires. Kiefer Sutherland plays David, the leader of a band of vamps who have slowly been drawing a teenager named Michael Emerson (Jason Patric) into their ranks.

To save his older brother, Sam Emerson (Haim) has to turn to Santa Clara’s self-proclaimed vampire hunters, Edgar (Feldman) and Alan Frog (Jamison Newlander). But it may already be too late for Michael if they can’t find the head vampire who made David and the rest of the vamps.

The Lost Boys is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.

2. ‘Midsommar’ (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes rank: 83 percent

Midsommar may be the outlier on this list as it doesn’t feature any slashers or supernatural creatures. But it’s definitely a horror film, even though writer and director Ari Aster characterizes it as a breakup movie. Florence Pugh has a star-making turn as Dani, a young woman whose relationship with her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), is severely strained even before they take off on a nine-day trip to rural Sweden for a rare festival that only takes place every 90 years.

The unhappy couple is accompanied by Christian’s friends, Mark (Will Poulter) and Josh (William Jackson Harper), as well as a few other outsiders. The rituals of the townspeople are extremely disturbing, and there’s an agenda in play that none of the visitors are aware of until it’s their time to participate… whether they want to or not.

Midsommar is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.

1. ‘It’ (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes rank: 85 percent

Stephen King‘s stories aren’t always handled with the care they deserve, but director Andy Muschietti‘s take on It is one of the best horror movies of the last decade. Muschietti and the screenwriters updated the setting to the summer of 1989, and the film is impeccably cast with terrific young actors, including Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves star Sophia Lillis.

Bill Skarsgård has an unbelievably creepy turn as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the ageless entity that stalks the children of Derry every 27 years. Following the death of his younger brother, Georgie, at Pennywise’s hands, Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) and his friends realize that they’re the only ones who can stop Pennywise from hurting any other children. But their pact to destroy Pennywise may cost them their lives.

It is streaming on HBO Max.