Anya Taylor-Joy’s Horror Movie Roles, Ranked
A scream queen for A24 devotees.
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This year marks a decade since the arrival of two major talents in genre cinema: The Witch writer-director Robert Eggers and star Anya Taylor-Joy. In the ten years since that modern folk-horror classic, Taylor-Joy has become a cross-genre superstar, earning acclaim and a devoted fan base for her work on everything from action epics to animated movies. But she’s also never left horror behind, embracing it as not just the genre that made her, but a place where she can explore the darkest parts of her characters. And since she continues that exploration with The Gorge — the latest from Sinister director Scott Derrickson — this month, it feels like a great time to look back.
In a decade of work, Taylor-Joy has devoted much of her filmography to horror roles, or at least roles that traffic in horror elements, making her one of the genre’s most visible talents, a scream queen for A24 devotees. Her best horror roles are very often defined by a sense of transformation, of innocence morphed into something more powerful, something she carries in her expressive eyes and knowing smile. It’s a talent she’s used to work with some of the best genre storytellers in the game, and it’s won her legions of fans in horror and beyond.
So, to celebrate ten years of Anya Taylor-Joy, here’s every horror (and horror-adjacent) film she’s made so far, ranked from worst to best.
Morgan (2016)
One of Taylor-Joy’s earliest acting roles is also one of her weakest, through no real fault of her own. Set in an old house that’s secretly home to a genetic-research facility, Morgan follows the scientists and risk-management specialists within the facility as they decide what to do about the title character (Taylor-Joy), a genetically engineered humanoid being who’s also become a killing machine. Taylor-Joy pays her dues in the Creep Kid genre with this film, and her expressive eyes do her a lot of favors, but apart from the occasional cold-blooded murder there’s really not much for her to do here, and the film doesn’t add much to its chosen genre by the end.
Glass (2019)
There’s really not much in the way of horror storytelling happening in Glass — it’s more of an overstuffed superhero thriller — but because we included Taylor-Joy’s performance in Split further up the list, it feels important to close the circle and include her work in its sequel. She returns as the sensitive survivor Casey Cooke in M. Night Shyamalan’s follow-up to both Unbreakable and Split, but the movie’s general congestion drowns out much of the emotional depth that made Split so compelling. But hey, it’s an M. Night Shyamalan superhero-crossover movie, and that kind of thing has to be seen to be believed no matter how rough the ride.
Marrowbone (2017)
Marrowbone plays now like a class photo of all the kids who’d go on to be massive successes a few years after high school. The story of a secluded group of siblings who harbor a dark secret, and the local librarian (Taylor-Joy) who forms a bond with them, Marrowbone also features rising stars Mia Goth, George MacKay, Charlie Heaton, and Kyle Soller. Everyone does solid work, but the problem — at least for Taylor-Joy fans — is that she doesn’t get much to do until the very end of the film, by which point Marrowbone has revealed itself as a fairly by-the-numbers, muted Gothic chiller.
The New Mutants (2020)
By the time it finally hit theaters, X-Men spinoff The New Mutants had become something of a punchline, a film with a constantly shifting release date that was also the last gasp of a dying cinematic universe. That meant that it would be viewed as a mess no matter what it actually had to offer, and while it is undoubtedly a mess, there’s still a surprising amount to enjoy here. The horror elements are on point, the comic-book accuracy is there, and Anya Taylor-Joy gets to wield the Soulsword and fight the Demon Bear as Illyana Rasputin, a.k.a. Magik from Marvel Comics. It was a long walk to get there, but in a movie with a lot of things that don’t work, Taylor-Joy plays the resident Mutant Mean Girl with relish.
The Gorge (2025)
Packed with monsters and action and action with monsters, The Gorge is just plain fun, and it’s clear that the film’s two stars had fun making it. Scott Derrickson’s latest genre picture is part horror, part romance, part spycraft, and as a Lithuanian sniper sent to the middle of nowhere who must bond with her American counterpart (Miles Teller) if they’re going to stay sane, Taylor-Joy is clearly having a ball. She wears mysterious, sexy international assassin well, she sells the love story with Teller, and her ability to meld the vulnerable human moments with the high-concept ones helps make the film something well worth seeing, especially if you love good old-fashioned creature adventure films.
Last Night in Soho (2021)
Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho is a complex, heady mix of influences, characters, and meditations on the way that time shifts our perceptions. As aspiring nightclub singer turned reluctant sex worker Sandie, Taylor-Joy is a crucial part of that mix, and she’s a vision as an avatar of Swinging ’60s glamour. It’s a great film, and the reason it’s so low on this Taylor-Joy-specific list is because she’s often outshone by the ensemble led by Thomasin McKenize, Matt Smith, and the late, legendary Dame Diana Rigg.
Split (2016)
Split blew up when M. Night Shyamalan fans found out it was a stealth sequel to Unbreakable, but even before that connective tissue emerged, this film was one of Shyamalan’s strongest. The concept is tight and concise, the tension palpable, and the themes of vulnerability as strength run throughout the saga of a man with multiple alternate selves and the young girl who fights to escape him. Best of all, though, it has James McAvoy and Anya Taylor-Joy dancing around each other in a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat psychological game. McAvoy is (literally) a beast in this one, but even in the earliest years of her career, Taylor-Joy proved she could hang with him and create one of the best Final Girls in 21st-century horror.
The Witch (2015)
The film that put Taylor-Joy on the map is still pretty damn good! Both writer-director Robert Eggers and his star have gone on to bigger things since The Witch, but the simmering, folklore-laden dread of this film remains potent, and Taylor-Joy’s performance as the misunderstood Puritan teen Thomasin is still one of her best. You can see so much of the star she’s become — the quiet fury of Furiosa, the mystic allure of The Northman — in this film, and she plays Thomasin’s emotional transformation with the assured grace of a born actor.
The Menu (2022)
As Margot, the most mysterious of a group of guests headed to an exclusive island restaurant for what turns out to be its final night in business, Anya Taylor-Joy achieves everything we’ve come to expect from her, and then some. Ever since The Witch, she’s proven a master of transforming characters from subdued to assertive, but The Menu asks her to do something else: Play that same transformation, but make us feel that she knew all along what was about to happen. There’s an element of inevitable surprise hanging over everything that goes down at Ralph Fiennes fine-dining (Fiennes dining?) establishment, and as Margot, Taylor-Joy has to play that in every look, every bite, every subtle smile. She pulls it off, and though Fiennes gets the flashier role, she is key to the film’s incisive power.
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