The 10 Best Horror Movies Now Streaming on Shudder

Sure, you could fire up Shudder and watch Halloween again, or The Babadook. Both are benchmarks of different eras of horror, and are perennial favorites for good reason.

But anyone looking to broaden their bloody palette this Spooky Season don’t have to dig too far on the streamer, arguably the leading service for slashers, psychos, zombies and killer clowns.

Amidst Shudder’s array of classics —The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, uh, Maniac Cop — are an impressive clutch of at least slightly under-the-radar flicks that push genre boundaries stylistically, conceptually and/or thematically while still delivering the jolts and laughs we relish during Halloweentime. 

So we perused Shudder’s offerings and found some recent innovators and older gems so you can enjoy a good clutch of stuff outside the norm, presented here in no specific order:  

• Good Boy

  A creepy thriller filmed entirely from the perspective of a dog? Hell yes, please. And it’s more than just Milk Bones and sniffin’ butts — much more. Director Ben Leonberg cast his own pup, Indy, in the title role, enduring the pain of his owner, who’s not only dying of an undisclosed illness, but apparently being stalked by a shadowy something. Leonberg speculates that dogs sense things in the world that humans can’t, giving the film an added narrative layer to go with the cute-pooch stuff (loyalty, floppy ears) and the creepy stuff (jump scares, drawn-out tension). Do a cat next! Do a cat next!!!!!

  Where to stream Good Boy

• Late Night with the Devil

  David Dastmalchian should be the lead in more movies. His kooky persona takes center-frame here, playing Mr. Midnight, the host of a late-night talk show who’s so desperate to lift saggy ratings, he lets his Halloween show go off the rails. So what we get is a delicious spoof of cheeseball ’70s variety shows and Satanic Panic silliness, rich in retro style and vibes — as Mr. Midnight sets things up to summon Satan himself on live TV. FUN.

  Where to stream late night with the devil

• The Ugly Stepsister

  The Substance meets Cinderella in this inventive riff on fairy tale tropes that puts star Lea Myren through the wringer. She plays the wannabe-suitress of a very rich prince, and the wannabe is so intense, she’s willing to adhere to, shall we say, unusual means of meeting accepted beauty standards. Even beyond the stomach-turning nose job scene. I mean, she swallows a tapeworm egg on her way to a you-just-don’t-wanna-know conclusion, and by that I mean you gotta see it. Imagine a classical dress-up period piece shot with nauseating mauve color grading and requiring multiple barf buckets. More fun!

  Where to stream The Ugly Stepsister

• Oddity

  Director Damian McCarthy recently impressed us with the provocative Hokum, but its predecessor more acutely sticks to the memory thanks to eerie atmospherics. It’s the story of a woman who dies under bizarre circumstances, prompting her weirdo twin to show up at the suspicious widower’s home with her apparent supernatural powers — and a big wooden golem-type statue that’ll stare a hole into the wall behind you. There’s enough subtlety and Guillermo del Toro-isms here to thoroughly impress ya.

  Where to stream Oddity

• In a Violent Nature

  This one is for true sickos, a genius-simple stylistic experiment in slasher moviemaking. Director Chris Nash films this stalker-slays-nitwits-in-the-woods story wholly from the killer’s perspective, heavy-breathing Michael Myers-style. I hesitate to say it’s “innovative,” but it’s definitely novel, and Nash gives us an iconic baddie in an old-timey firefighter’s mask who doles out kapital-K Kills with impressively gruesome creativity. Enough creativity to inspire a body to dub one of them The Ol’ Inside-Out, a highlight of a no-bullshit exercise in slaughter.

  Where to stream In a Violent Nature

• Dangerous Animals

  A lack of supernatural nonsense means this isn’t quite Spooky Season fodder, but it has atmosphere, a serial killer, a monster and a gleeful blend of pitch-black laughs and sphincter-puckering tension, so it checks a lot of the best boxes here. In the best role of his career, Jai Courtney plays a demented f— whose go-to move is to snatch women and take them out on his boat so he can chum the waters and slowly dip them in the shark soup. The movie’s not only entertaining, but it also coughs up a little subtext about which species on this planet is more ruthless.

  Where to stream Dangerous Animals

• When Evil Lurks

  Demonic possession is old-hat in horror movies, mostly due to too many films trying to out-The Exorcist The Exorcist with disembodied voices, unnatural crackity-bones human-body gymnastics, propulsive puking and a smorgasbord of miscellaneous blasphemies including, but not limited to, putting crucifixes to unsavory use. Argentine filmmaker Demien Rugna concocts a disturbing fable about possessed people, dubbed “the rotten,” and “cleaners,” the exorcists called in to deal with troublesome supernatural entities, and the result is the most memorable entry in the subgenre in arguably decades. Anyone going to fight me to be first in line for Rugna’s next film?

  Where to stream When Evil Lurks

• Mandy

  Calling Panos Cosmatos and Nicolas Cage an inspired pairing doesn’t seem, well, hyperbolic enough. Sure, this is a fairly standard revenge story, but Cosmatos renders it strange and otherworldly with an occultish undercurrent, and Cage ends up covered in blood — after he spends a rather memorable sequence swilling vodka and howling with grief and rage like a feral gorilla. Perhaps it goes without saying, this isn’t the kind of thing you just watch then set aside and never think about again.

  Where to stream Mandy

• Deep Red

  Now let’s step back a few decades to revisit the work of a master. Dario Argento, the father of the giallo, here channels Hitchcock if Hitchcock had gone there in the graphic manner of a filmmaker unhindered by any pesky written or unwritten standards of taste. The tension is thick and coagulated, the Goblin score is earwormy and the kills are nasty in this thriller about a black-gloved serial killer – but the film tends to be overlooked thanks to Argento’s masterwork, Suspiria. So stop overlooking it, for crying out loud.

  Where to stream deep red

• Possession

  Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 cult masterpiece is horrific down to the marrow in its deeply disturbed bones, a movie about betrayal and desire that manifests a metaphor to end all metaphors: a sub-Chtulhu tentacled slop-demon inhabiting Isabel Adjiani’s bed. And it isn’t there just to sleep. Yes, YIKES. Adjiani acts like she’s literally really possessed, and a pre-fame Sam Neill goes toe-to-toe with her unhinged behavior until he just can’t, he just can’t. This is a story of a ruptured marriage that goes where no film has gone before, and where no film will ever go again.

  Where to stream possession

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.