The Highest-Rated Horror Anime of All Time

Horror anime is a small genre with a towering ceiling — when it hits, it produces some of the most acclaimed anime ever made. So we let the numbers talk: these are the highest-rated horror anime in our catalog, ranked by community score, limited to one entry per franchise. No recency bias, no vibes — just the scariest stuff the ratings agree on.

1. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

MOVIE · 2025 · ★ 9.0

The rare horror film where the quiet scenes scare you most.

Denji — the boy with a chainsaw devil for a heart — meets Reze, a disarmingly sweet girl from a café, and for once his life feels almost normal. It isn't. The movie continues Chainsaw Man's story after Season 1 with devils that feel genuinely wrong, body horror with real weight, and a romance that hurts worse than any of it.

2. Monster

Monster

TV · 2004 · ★ 8.8

No demons, no curses — just Johan.

Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a brilliant surgeon in Germany, defies his hospital to save a dying boy instead of a politician. Years later, that boy has grown into a serene, charming serial killer — and Tenma crosses the country hunting the life he saved. A 74-episode slow burn about the scariest thing anime has ever produced: a perfectly calm human being.

3. Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul

Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul

MOVIE · 2020 · ★ 8.5

The adorable art style is the trap.

Riko, Reg, and Nanachi push into the Abyss's fifth layer — a place explorers don't come back from — where the legendary White Whistle Bondrewd waits with open arms and a research agenda. A direct sequel film to the series, it pairs storybook visuals with one of fiction's great monsters. Wholesome-looking. Is not.

4. Perfect Blue

Perfect Blue

MOVIE · 1998 · ★ 8.5

Reality dissolves one cut at a time.

Pop idol Mima Kirigoe quits music for an acting career, and her fans don't take it well. Between a stalker who knows too much, a website narrating her life, and roles that blur into memory, Mima loses hold of which self is real. Satoshi Kon's debut predicted internet-age horror decades early — and still does it better.

5. Berserk

Berserk

TV · 1997 · ★ 8.4

You know the Eclipse is coming. It doesn't help.

Guts, a wandering mercenary raised on the battlefield, joins the charismatic Griffith and his Band of the Hawk as they climb from sellswords toward a kingdom. The 1997 series builds its dread patiently — brotherhood, ambition, one ominous red pendant — before delivering the most infamous ending in anime history.

6. Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro Season 2

ONA · 2026 · ★ 8.3

Horror that grins at you.

In the Hole, a slum where sorcerers from another world test their magic on the poor, an amnesiac with a lizard's head named Caiman bites down on every sorcerer he finds, hunting the one who cursed him. Filthy, funny, splattered in gore and weirdly great cooking — start from Season 1 and thank us later.

7. The Promised Neverland

The Promised Neverland

TV · 2019 · ★ 8.3

Isabella is all-timer villainy.

Grace Field House is an idyllic orphanage with perfect grades, loving caretaker, and one rule: never go beyond the gate. When 11-year-old Emma learns what actually happens to the children who get adopted, Season 1 becomes a flawless cat-and-mouse thriller — the smartest kids alive plotting an escape under the warmest smile in the building.

Just missed the cut

Still 8.0+ and still nightmare-certified: Mononoke (a paper-textured fever dream of exorcisms and human sin), The Summer Hikaru Died (your best friend came back from the mountain... mostly right), Hellsing Ultimate (Alucard, unleashed), and Parasyte -the maxim-, where hands have never been less trustworthy.

Parasyte -the maxim-

TV · 2014 · ★ 8.1

Parasyte -the maxim- — ★8.1 and the best cold-open jump-scare of the 2010s.