4 Horror Anime Series To Binge After Watching Weapons
Zack Cregger’s Weapons is dominating movie theaters right now, racking up $92 million at the box office in under a week and staking its claim as one of 2025’s biggest horror hits. If you’re craving more chills and thrills after watching it, horror anime could be your next fix.
Like more recent live-action films, horror anime isn’t just about cheap jump scares and big frights anymore. Over the years, it’s gone darker, twistier, and, honestly, a lot more unsettling than most people probably expected. Fans aren’t watching just for talking ghosts, beautiful vampires or haunted houses anymore. They want to see grotesque monsters, body horror, and psychological nightmares that keep them up at night and checking their locked doors twice or thrice. Think of some of the most twisted fantasy characters you’ve seen ripped straight from the best horror manga. That’s exactly what you can expect.
So, if your idea of a good time includes extra tentacles, splintered minds, and a healthy dose of gore, these four titles deliver.
Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre
Netflix’s animated horror anthology, Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, drops viewers right in the middle of the terror by stitching together a dozen 20–30 minute stories, each one a self-contained story that sticks with you longer than your last bad dream. The opener, “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings,” is particularly special and sets the tone with grotesque visuals that make you squirm and probably look away a few times. However, what really separates this from other horror anime series and makes it perfect for fans of Weapons is just how well it balances creepiness with curiosity. You don’t just jump at shadows or monsters. You pause and wonder, “What’s actually happening in this guy’s head?” and “Why did that just happen?”
Hell Girl
Another horror anime anthology series, Hell Girl has a great hook. When the clock strikes midnight, you can visit Hell Girl’s website and have her punish anyone who’s wronged you. But unlike Death Note, here Ai Enma (the Hell Girl) drags their soul straight to Hell. There’s one catch, however. Once you die, your soul will go to hell too.
If that crazy plot isn’t enough to convince you, you’ll be happy to know that, just like Zach Cregger’s Weapons, the show doesn’t shy away from grotesque or unsettling visuals and acts. And, honestly, some of the stories are downright disturbing, exploring the darkest extremes of human cruelty. And that’s probably part of its appeal for horror fans looking for something more intense than just the standard jump scares offered in horror movies these days.
Another
If the puzzles and mystery of Weapons is what hooked you, Another delivers a similar thrill.
The story follows Koichi Sakakibara, who transfers to Class 3-3 at Yomiyama North Middle School in the spring of 1998. What seems like a normal classroom actually hides a really dark secret. See, two decades earlier, a popular student named Misaki died. With the entire class devastated, they decide to leave her desk untouched, in order to honour her memory. If that wasn’t chilling enough, things take a sinister turn when Misaki actually shows up in the class photo at the end of the school year. That’s when the curse becomes real, and Koichi finds himself caught in a web of secrets.
Another slowly builds tension by peeling back layers of the mystery while keeping viewers on edge.
Shiki
Set in a small and remote village, the story in Shiki begins like how most horror films do- with a strange family moving into the creepy abandoned mansion on the top of a hill. Soon after, mysterious disappearances start thinning down the town’s already small population.
Like Weapons, Shiki also thrives on atmosphere. Jump scares land hard, but the real terror actually comes from watching the seemingly ordinary people. The character design here, particularly the unsettling eyes of the town’s folk, keeps you on edge throughout the series. You’ll notice subtle shifts in expression that make you question their intentions, which turns nearly every interaction into a guessing game.
If you liked the puzzles, suspense, and creeping dread of Weapons, Shiki offers the same thrills.
