The best horror films streaming on Shudder

Jaws not only scared people from going into the water back in the summer of 1975, it also ushered in an era of “man versus beast” knockoffs such as Grizzly, Orca, and Piranha. One of the best creature features to come out of that killer animal craze was Alligator, an exaggerated cautionary tale about what might happen if you flush a baby gator down the toilet. Screenwriter John Sayles (Piranha, The Howling) ups the fear factor by exposing his titular beast to discarded lab animal remains pumped full of growth hormones, resulting in a 36-foot mutant alligator rampaging under and through the streets of Chicago. Robert Forster (The Black Hole, Jackie Brown) stars as a disgraced detective who becomes hell-bent on eliminating the roided-out reptile after it kills his partner during a sewer search.

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As its title implies, Castle Freak is a gothic horror tale about a troubled family who inherits a creepy 12th century castle in the Italian countryside—but there’s a nasty little secret lurking in the dungeons. Known for going a long way with often miniscule budgets, Castle Freak was directed by the late-great Stuart Gordon (From Beyond, Re-Animator), who makes yet another effective and ghoulish H.P. Lovecraft adaptation here (in this case, very loose adaptations of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” and “The Dunwich Horror”). Not only that, but the film also reunites Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) and scream queen Barbara Crampton (Chopping Mall, Re-Aninamtor), two beloved horror thespians who are no strangers to Gordon’s delightfully demented Lovecraftian obscurities.

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Don’t let its poster art fool you. Despite seeing a bloody bag filled with heads and limbs and a clever tagline that reads “Where shopping costs you an arm and a leg,” there’s absolutely zero chopping going on in Chopping Mall. This uproarious comedy-horror flick centers on a group of horndog teens who work at an indoor shopping mall that’s protected by state-of-the-art security robots. One night after closing time, a lightning storm triggers a security system malfunction as the teens are throwing a “good times to the max” all-night bash. As is often the case with techno-horror flicks of the ‘80s, the robots’ directives were scrambled during the incident, making everyone in the mall a target. What follows is a robo-rampage filled with hot-pink lasering, tasering, and lots of explosions (and an exploding head!).

Backed by an absolutely manic synth score, Chopping Mall is a sleazy and cheesy “slasher” with laugh-out-loud dialogue and ridiculous special effects, but it’s not your traditional slasher formula either. Sure, it’s got your typical teens who are ultimately two-dimensional fodder, but besides the obvious fact that this slasher film lacks the usual humanoid maniac, these teens make use of the mall setting’s endless resources and actually fight back. There’s a survival horror vibe going on, so no matter how spectacular the robots’ kills are, you’re sort of rooting for the teens to make it out alive, whereas in a Friday The 13th movie, you’re rooting for Jason to slaughter them all. Clocking in at a brisk 76 minutes, Chopping Mall is one of those perfect party movies if you’re looking for more laughs than scares.

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Based on the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft, Color Out Of Space finds a rural New England family coming face-to-face with a cosmic threat that could very well threaten the entire planet. After a meteorite of extraterrestrial origin crashes in their front yard, it seeps into the earth, emitting an otherworldly glow. It soon alters the surrounding fauna and flora, even distorting the fabric of space-time. As each day passes, things get weirder, and they soon discover—in very fucked up ways—that humans in close proximity to the strange phenomenon are mutating, too. Color Out Of Space is a nightmarish mindfuck indeed, stylishly directed by Richard Stanley (Hardware, The Island Of Doctor Moreau) who returned to helm his first feature-length film after a 24-year hiatus.

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Let’s start by saying that Death Spa is by no means a horror masterpiece—in fact, it’s far from it—not even B-level, maybe C-level. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not an uproarious sight to behold. The plot is as batshit as it sounds: set in the late-1980s, a pissed-off entity who wants revenge on a gym owner (and all of his spandex-wearing clientele) wreaks havoc in a state-of-the-art fitness center. This ghost in the machine hacks all of the gym’s computerized equipment, turning everything from tanning beds and ellipticals into literal death traps—talk about a killer workout! If you want to liven up your horror night in a so-bad-it’s-good way, queue up this pure slice of ’80s cheese and laugh your asses off as oiled-up gym rats with big hair (you can almost smell the Aqua Net) are dispatched in glorious, over-the-top ways.

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For a proper dose of trashy Italian gore and violence, there’s nothing better than Lamberto Bava’s Demons. The plot centers around a group of random people, including a crew of punk rockers, who are invited to a movie screening hosted by a mysterious masked man. During the film, select audience members are transformed into hideous bloodthirsty demons. Trapped and barricaded inside a theater infested by a growing demonic horde, the moviegoers must fight for their lives and seek a way out in order to survive the bloody chaos. Punctuated by gnarly makeup effects and a kick-ass score and soundtrack featuring Mötley Crüe and Billy Idol, Demons is a bizarre and widely entertaining ’80s Italian horror gem.

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With Demons 2, Lamberto Bava dialed every level up a notch: the gore, the mayhem, the overacting, the ridiculousness (that baby demon sequence!)—it’s an absolutely demented sequel that many argue is far more entertaining than the first. This time an entire high rise apartment building is infested with demons after a mysterious broadcast airs a documentary about the events that took place during the first film. The tagline on the U.S. version’s poster says it all: “Let’s Party.” That’s what this movie is—a pure blood-drenched party which, like its predecessor, sports a synth score and a rockin’ ’80s soundtrack including The Cult, Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets, and The Smiths.

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Set in the Scottish Highlands, Dog Soldiers is about a band of British soldiers who think they’re about to engage in a routine training exercise with a Special Operations squad, but when they discover nothing but entrails and a wounded lone survivor at their rendezvous point, nearby howls and the accompanying full moon indicate that they’re up against a deadly (and furious) pack of adversaries. Dog Soldiers is basically The Howling meets Aliens—an action-packed werewolf movie loaded with blood, guts, and just the right touch of cheeky humor (the memorable cast all get their fair share of zingers). When it comes to lycanthrope design and effects, films like An American Werewolf In London and The Howling tend to hog the spotlight, but Dog Soldiers’ towering bipedal beasts are indeed cool to look at and they move with an strange blend of elegance and grace.

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When Drag Me To Hell first hit theaters in 2009, it marked the long overdue horror homecoming of Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead), who had stepped away from the genre for a good 17 years (his last horror contribution at the time was 1993’s Army Of Darkness). Raimi was moving on up in Hollywood and had been preoccupied with a trilogy of films involving a webslinger you might know as Spider-Man. So, was Drag Me To Hell worth the wait? Hell yes. In it, Alison Lohman stars as a loan officer Christine Brown who denies an old woman a third extension on her mortgage. Facing the threat of home repossession, the old woman begs and pleads for Christine to reconsider. But since Christine is eyeing a big promotion, she sticks to her guns to impress her boss. Later, the old woman attacks her in the parking lot and hexes her on the spot. Soon, she’s tormented by a violent entity and learns that she’s been inflicted by a demonic curse that will result in her being dragged to hell in three days.

Desperate to break the curse, she’s willing to try anything to prevent her grim fate—and boy does she do some really fucked up things. Gory, gross, demented, but always with a hint of sick humor, Drag Me To Hell was exactly what we expected from the horror master who invented splatstick. It was Raimi’s love letter to his fans and the genre that launched his career. At the time (and this was still six years before we got Ash vs. Evil Dead), fans were really pressuring him to do Evil Dead 4. While it wasn’t exactly a fourth Evil Dead film, Drag Me To Hell was the next best thing and certainly feels like the spiritual successor to those movies.

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Set in the 18th century frontier, a reverend and his followers are chased out of their village after being accused of polygamy. Fleeing deep into a deserted valley, they settle near a forest haunted by ancient evil spirits and a nefarious tree witch. Eyes Of Fire is a 1983 folk horror film directed by acclaimed photographer Avery Crounse—aside from rare VHS copies that survived the ’80s and some bad quality YouTube uploads (it never saw a DVD release), it remained virtually unseen until Severin Films restored and remastered this rare gem in 2021. Now you can experience this long lost hallucinatory fever dream in all its HD glory on Shudder.

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What do you get when you toss The Hunger Games and slasher films of the 1980s into a blender? You get The Furies, a thrilling survival horror flick about a bunch of women who are abducted and taken to a desolate reserve populated by masked maniacs. Monitored and observed by mysterious onlookers, a deadly cat-and-mouse game ensues with some surprising twists and turns along the way.

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Steeped in Irish lore and set in a remote house in Ireland’s backwoods, two parents must fight off a tribe of imp-like forest creatures that are hellbent on kidnapping their infant son. Full of dread, tension, well-executed scares, and some truly fiendish practical effects, The Hallow is a well-shot and highly effective folk horror/home-invasion thriller drenched in dark atmosphere. It also has a satisfyingly creepy and tragic climax that sticks with you.

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If you’re reading a best horror films to stream list, no matter what streaming service it is, are you really surprised to see John Carpenter’s Halloween make the cut? Whether it’s trick-or-treat season or not, Halloween has been deemed one of the greatest horror films of all time and it stars one of the most instantly recognizable and iconic faces in the boogeyman pantheon, Michael Myers. It also has the queen of all scream queens, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, not to mention Carpenter’s unforgettable, spine-chilling score.

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Let’s face it—the convoluted Halloween series has become the “choose your own adventure” of all horror franchises. But of all the Halloween sequels, even those following 1998’s H20, Rob Zombie’s maligned remake, and 2018’s “requel,” Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers is still best of the bunch (just ignore the dopey mask design), no matter how many reboots try to pretend it never happened. The fourth entry of the original timeline takes place 10 years after the 1978 original, with Laurie Strode dead after a car wreck, leaving her orphaned daughter Jamie Loyd (Danielle Harris) in the care of a foster family. Even though Michael Myers seemingly burnt to a crisp during the finale of Halloween II, it’s revealed he survived and has been comatose ever since. But of course, he once again wakes up on Halloween night and returns to Haddonfield for yet another night of slaughter.

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At the time of its release, Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers was considered an upset for several reasons: it killed off a very likable character in the first act, the promise of Halloween 4’s shocker of an ending was never really fulfilled, and they introduced some cult mythology that left some fans groaning. But after the mess that was Halloween 6 and Busta Rhymes’ karate-kicking antics in Halloween Resurrection, was it really that bad? It’s got a few things going for it: Donald Pleasance once again delivered a passionate performance as fan-favorite Dr. Loomis, and up-and-coming scream queen Danielle Harris totally carried the film with her memorable and very believable performance as Jamie Loyd. And even though they got the iconic Myers house all wrong (a gothic mansion, really?), that last act is still awesome (laundry chute scene, anyone?).

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Clive Barker sure had some sights to show us with Hellraiser—his outlandish and sexually charged directorial debut. The story follows the hedonistic Frank, who solves the Lament Configuration—a mysterious puzzle box that opens gateways to Hell. That’s when we’re first introduced to Pinhead (then known as Lead Cenobite), an eloquent “demon to some, angel to others’’ who brings pleasure seekers back to Hell so they can endure the limits of physical experience (basically ​hell’s twisted version of sadomasochism). Hellraiser was a fantastical new breed of horror film when it ravaged theaters in 1987, one that steered away from the common slasher genre cliches and tropes of the time. Imaginative and perverse, it’s a wild ride that still holds up, and it spawned a franchise that eventually led to a remake in 2022. But nothing beats the original.

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You have to admire Hellbound: Hellraiser II—it sure is ambitious. Director Tony Randel, scribe Peter Atkins, and Clive Barker (who only returns with a story and producer credit) expand their vision of hell and take us deeper into the inferno. This time, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) finds herself in the labyrinthine corridors of Hell to search for her father, who perished during the events of the first film. Of course, Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his cenobites are back as well as Julia and a new big bad named Dr. Channard, and Hell isn’t big enough for the both of them. If you look past the jagged pacing issues, and some of the needless explaining of Pinhead’s origins (a flaw a lot of horror sequels are guilty of—demystifying the villain), it’s worthy sequel with some spectacular visual effects.

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If you’re a cult film enthusiast looking for a B-movie exploitation horror in the vein of Galaxy Of Terror, then Humanoids From The Deep is just for you. From producer Roger Corman, the ultimate schlockmeister and undisputed champ of camp, comes this trashy tale about lustful deep-sea mutants who terrorize a small seaside town. Their purpose? To propagate their species by killing all the men and copulating with human women. It’s trashy, schlocky, gooey, and filled with loads of gratuitous nudity, but it’s also endlessly silly and entertaining, full of laughs, and it has some pretty great practical effects by Chris Walas (The Fly, Gremlins) and creature design courtesy of Academy Award-winning effects legend Rob Bottin (The Thing, Total Recall).

Some of the violence might be over the top and in poor taste for some—in fact, it was even too much for director Barbara Peeters, who famously requested that her name be removed from the film after she learned that Corman had second-unit director James Sbardellati (Deathstalker) film and insert additional sexually explicit scenes to up the shock value. Still, the film ultimately gained a cult following and even renowned film critic Leonard Maltin gave the film a three-star rating and described it as “fast, occasionally hilarious gutter trash from the Roger Corman stable. The finale is not for squeamish viewers.”

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Move over, Arachnophobia, Infested may have just dethroned you as the greatest creepy-crawler flick ever made. And that’s not just hyperbole; seriously, even if you consider yourself to be a quasi-arachnophobe, this spider flick is sure to induce some major heebie-jeebies. As its title makes perfectly clear, Infested’s premise is pretty simple: A massive apartment complex becomes overrun by spiders after an exotic insect collector brings home a venomous and rapidly reproducing new species of arachnid. Soon after the little bugger escapes, neighbors start dropping like flies, becoming hosts for hordes of more eight-legged menaces. These agile arachnids are also stealthy webweavers, making escape somewhat futile for our band of lead characters. There’s a scene involving a long spider-infested corridor where our leads have to make it from point A to B—and let’s just say it’s the most hair-raising, edge-of-your-seat sequence you’ll see in a horror film all year. And the impressive, photorealistic spider effects, both CGI and practical, take the terror up a notch. You know that feeling you get when you walk through a spider web? That’s exactly how Infested makes you feel for its entire 106-minute runtime. It’s a damn good time that’ll make your skin crawl and you’ll never look at spiders (or shower drains) the same ever again.

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In Late Night With The Devil, David Dastmalchian plays a grief-stricken talk show host long past his prime. With his dwindling ratings on the downward spiral, he decides to shake things up with an occult-themed Halloween special and his invited guests include a psychic who claims to be able to commune with the dead, a former magician/bullheaded skeptic, and a parapsychologist and her latest subject: a young girl possessed by a demon. Part possession horror, part found-footage, part showbiz satire, and oozing with lo-fi style, Late Night With The Devil succeeds in what it sets out to do: it makes you feel like you’re actually watching a lost taping of a 70s-era late-night talk show that escalates from hokey to horribly wrong (think The Tonight Show if Johnny Carson had invited Regan MacNeil as a guest). From start to finish, there’s an unnerving slow-burn buildup and a sense of dread as you watch everything unfold. And when the WTF-level satanic scares finally kick in, these genuine jolts are triggered by authentic visual design and some pretty cool throwback-style special effects—never cheap jump scares aided by a blaring score.

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Gaze in wonder as the mute Assassin traverses through the post-apocalyptic landscape of a twisted world populated by monstrosities handmade by stop-motion master Phil Tippett, best known for his claymation work in the original Star Wars trilogy. Alluring, haunting, and always mesmerizing, it’s a sight to behold (it took Tippet 30 years to complete this macabre masterpiece)—one that will certainly spark conversations as you attempt to dissect and decipher the meaning of it all. Mad God may be devoid of plot and dialogue, but it makes up for that with captivating imagery that will keep you glued to the screen.

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Dreamy and beautifully shot, Mandy is a phantasmic tale of vengeance starring Nicolas Cage as Red Miller, a lumberjack who lives in a secluded cabin in the woods with his girlfriend Mandy. When a crazed cult leader becomes transfixed by the very site of Mandy, he sends his demonic biker gang to abduct her. But things go south when one of the cult leader’s disciples murders her in front of a bound and gagged Red, who survives the ordeal. Armed with a badass axe and cross bow—and at one point, a giant chainsaw—he then goes on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge, in that wild-eyed way that no one does better than Nic Cage.

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On a Halloween night, a group of rowdy teens decide to throw a party at Hull House, an abandoned funeral parlor rumored to have been built on cursed land. After the witchy Angela (Mimi Kincade) conducts a seemingly innocent seance as a spooky party game, she unwittingly unleashes forces straight from Hell. One by one, the teens are possessed by diabolical demons. Their only hope for survival is to live until sunrise. Night Of The Demons is pure campy ’80s schlock—a raucous, mean-spirited Halloween treat that’s actually a good party movie any time of the year.

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The film that cemented Jamie Lee Curtis’ status as the queen of all scream queens, Prom Night is a textbook ’80s slasher that opens with a group of kids playing an innocent game of hide and seek in an abandoned building. But when 10-year-old Robin falls to her death after being taunted and teased by the older children, they make a pact to not tell anyone and deem it an accident. Fast forward six years later, it’s prom night and those pact-making kids are now sex-crazed teenagers. Soon after they all start receiving obscene prank calls, and are plucked off one by one by an assailant wearing a ski mask. Could it be someone who knows their dark secret? Aside from a painfully long disco dance floor scene, Prom Night is an enjoyable high school-set horror flick with a whodunnit twist, but it’s Curtis’ likable final girl who makes it worth the watch.

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The Prowler opens in 1944, during World War II, with a woman named Rosemary writing a break-up letter to her enlisted boyfriend. One year later, while attending a graduation dance, she and her new main squeeze are killed by a mysterious stalker wearing U.S. army fatigues. Fast forward to 1980, when the first graduation ball since the 1945 murders is about to take place. That’s when this vicious veteran appears again, this time slaying college kids attending the dance—but who is it, and why? Look, The Prowler is no Halloween, but it is one of the most satisfactory and well-made slashers to come out of the golden era of the genre. But the real star here is the practical effects created by prosthetic makeup artist extraordinaire Tom Savini (Friday The 13th, Maniac)—the kill scenes are hyperrealistic. It’s no wonder Savini often cites The Prowler as his best work.

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Based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story and directed by Stuart Gordon (From Beyond), Re-Animator follows Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a seemingly crackpot medical student who is obsessed with reanimating dead flesh with his secret serum. After an experiment of his goes sideways at a med school in Switzerland, he transfers to Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, to continue his studies. That’s when he befriends housemate and fellow med student Dan Cain, who he lets in on his unorthodox experiments. After the two successfully revive a dead cat, which returns in a vicious state, they soon up their test subjects to human cadavers—with disastrous results. Wildly entertaining with deadpan humor throughout (and an absolutely bonkers third act), Re-Animator is a marvel of practical effects and a gooey good time.

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Warning: The Sadness is not for the squeamish. It might even test the gag reflex of the most seasoned of gorehound horror fans. Set in Tapei, The Sadness is about a mind-altering virus that amplifies your deepest, darkest, and most twisted desires. As the streets fill with bludgeoning sadists, a couple must navigate their way from one sick and depraved situation to the next in order to reunite and escape a city that has succumbed to carnage and chaos. If you can get past the relentless violence and obscene gore (there’s a scene involving a certain appendage and an eye socket that you’ll never unsee), The Sadness is grim, gripping, and an effective slice of survival horror.

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This remake of the 1982 slasher cult classic is the perfect example of how you do a modern-day reimagining the right away. In Slumber Party Massacre, a group of best friends are hitting the road for a “girls weekend,” but after their car breaks down in Jolly Springs, they rent a nearby secluded cabin. It turns out the renamed town of Jolly Springs was once the home of a drill-wielding killer who drowned in a lake years prior, but his body was never recovered. Of course, that driller killer resurfaces and takes up his old horrific hobby. But don’t expect this to be a by-the-numbers rehash of the original. Slumber Party Massacre is full of pleasant surprises and it flips slasher cliches and gender stereotypes on their head with refreshing and, at times, hysterical results.

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Not sure if you’re in the mood for a good whodunnit, a comedy, or a werewolf flick? How about a film that successfully tosses all three genres into a blender with gut-busting results? Based on the video game of the same name, Werewolves Within is about residents of a small town who are trapped in a local inn during a snowstorm. The problem is, there’s a killer amongst them and it isn’t human. So basically, imagine Clue but with a mystery lycanthrope in the mix. One of the strongest things about Werewolves Within is its colorful and memorable group of characters. Even better is that these goofy but mostly loveable misfits are all brought to life by a stellar ensemble cast with comedic acting chops including Sam Richardson (Richard Splett from Veep!) and Harvey Guillén (Guillermo from What We Do In The Shadows!) to name a few—and let’s not forget the scene-stealing dog named Cha-Chi. Werewolves Within is an outright chucklefest with bite. Well-timed zingers are tossed left and right as are all the many, many red herrings that’ll keep you guessing who the furry culprit is all the way to the film’s outrageously ferocious finale.

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Just when you thought possession films were getting tired, When Evil Lurks comes along and flips the genre upside down by throwing exorcism and contagion movies into a blender. Set in a dystopian world that’s suffered some sort of demonic plague, When Evil Lurks begins with two brothers who discover a “Rotten” in their village: a bloated and horribly disfigured man who is basically an incubator for a demon. If not disposed of correctly, this diabolic infection can spread to others, even infecting the behavior of animals. Their only hope is to track down a “Cleaner” to dispose of these ungodly vessels before they advance to a far more sinister stage of their metamorphosis (think of Cleaners as exorcists specially trained to eliminate the Rotten with strange gizmos and contraptions that are never fully explained, but still cool nonetheless). Of course, the reckless actions of the two leads result in an outbreak that threatens the locals and their loved ones, putting them on a grueling, carnage-filled race against time that’s oftentimes tough to stomach. Mouth-agape moments are plentiful in When Evil Lurks and certain scenes will be etched in your brain for weeks to come.

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