Horror as a genre is a fiction whose meaning is to create fear, repulsion, tension and horror in the audience, and often the main threats and antagonists in horror fiction are actually a metaphor for greater or deeper fears of society in general. Horror fiction aims to provoke an emotional reaction that includes an aspect of fear or repulsion. The aim of this paper is to check the availability of horror films in the film collections of four public libraries in Croatia: the City Library of Rijeka, the City Library of Marko Marulić in Split, the Library of the City of Zagreb and the City Library of Zadar. The first part of the paper defines the stylistic and thematic determinants of the horror genre, as well as the historical development of the genre. The second part of the paper investigates the availability of horror films in public libraries, comparing film collections with a selection of the 200 best horror films chosen by Rotten Tomatoes, the 100 best horror films chosen by IMDb users, and the 100 best horrors chosen by the critics of Time Out magazine.