It’s getting near Halloween, the perfect time to stream some horror movies. I dug up 15 of the scariest, weirdest, freakiest, and funniest flicks from horror-only streaming service Shudder. I’m leaving off the obvious choices like Psycho and Halloween—if you subscribe to Shudder, you’ve probably seen all the “classics” at least twice—to focus on movies guaranteed to make you hide your eyes, laugh out loud, or say “what even is this?”
A Dark Song (2016)
If you like intelligent, slow-burn horror, check out A Dark Song. Like its characters, the debut feature from director Liam Gavin goes places few films dare to tread. Sophia is a grieving mother whose longing for her murdered child compels her to hire Joseph, a self-proclaimed occultist, to try and bring him back through an arcane ritual. Locked in a house together for months, the pair enact a series of grueling rites that grows increasingly dreadful.
Mads (2024)
Mads feels dangerous. This frantic nightmare of a movie follows a group of fast-living French teenagers who snort a drug that turns them into bloodthirsty killers. Or maybe they’ve been infected with a contagion, and the armed troops hunting them are trying to stop a world-ending event. Or maybe the mayhem is all a product of their drug-addled imaginations. Whatever the case, the story unfolds in a single frenzied take that grows more and more unhinged as the world slides off its moorings.
The Crazy Family (1985)
If you want to watch something obscure but unforgettable, check out The Crazy Family. Until recently, this Japanese horror/comedy was all but unknown in the United States: after a limited theatrical run in the mid 1980s, the violent, pitch-dark family comedy was never released on any format here. But it’s a great film. The social commentary in this tale of a family becoming unglued just as they achieve material success probably landed harder in 1980s Japan, but it’s still a hilarious and unnerving family portrait unlike anything else ever made.
Oddity (2024)
Unlike some movies on this list, Oddity doesn’t try to reinvent the horror wheel. It’s a good, old-fashioned gothic ghost story about a blind psychic searching for the man who murdered her sister. Oddity is filled with creepy characters, unexpected plot twists, and a palpable sense of rising dread that’s almost suffocating until it’s released in the finale. It may not be the most novel movie, but Oddity’s intelligent writing, confident performances, and taut direction add up to a wonderfully creepy little scare flick.
Late Night With the Devil (2023)
This is one of the best horror films I’ve seen in the last decade. Late Night With the Devil purports to be the final broadcast of 1970s late night talk show Night Owls With Jack Delroy. To win his perpetual ratings war with Johnny Carson, Delroy invites a possessed girl to his Halloween broadcast. She proves to be a terrible guest. Late Night With the Devil‘s innovative found footage concept, slavish attention to period detail, and top-rate performances (particularly David Dastmalchian’s starring turn) add up to a must-see horror movie.
Irréversible (2003)
Cinematic provocateur Gaspar Noé’s harrowing masterpiece Irréversible is the scariest movie on this list, and maybe the scariest movie ever made. It’s not scary in a fun way—there’s nothing fun about Irreversible—it’s scary because its violence feels real. We’ve all seen countless brutal crimes in movies and on TV, but the atrocities in Irréversible make the viewer feel the queasy, empty, insanity that you should feel if you see someone truly harmed. Don’t put it on for a Halloween party, but if you want to go to a very dark place, Irréversible will take you there and make you sorry you asked to go.
Grabbers (2013)
Grabbers is the opposite of Irréversible. Delightful from frame one to frame last, Grabbers is a hilarious and scary tribute to monster movies, the soul of Ireland, and the power of positive drinking. When gooey, murderous tentacle monsters invade an isolated Irish village, the townspeople learn that the only way to keep from being grabbed and eaten is to poison their blood with alcohol, so everyone locks themselves into the local to get proper fluthered, meanwhile, the grabbers are gathering outside. Good horror-comedies are an almost impossible tonal tightrope walk, but Grabbers makes balancing between scary and funny look effortless.
The House of the Devil (2009)
The House of the Devil is set around 1983, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think it was shot in the early ’80s too. Tai West’s first feature has a classic setup: College student Samantha takes a babysitting job at a remote country house, and the weird creeps who hire her reveal that they don’t actually have a baby, but Mother is sleeping upstairs, and she should not be disturbed. From there, the slow-burn tension and dread builds. It’s a master class in horror movie pacing and mood that you shouldn’t miss.
Slaxx (2021)
Given the number of horror movies like Death Bed: The Bed that Eats, it’s not hard to believe that someone shot a horror movie about a possessed pair of jeans, but that Slaxx is actually good is a huge surprise. A horror-comedy that satirizes the fashion industry, modern employment, and horror movies themselves, Slaxx’s rises above the “Attack of the Killer Whatever” genre by managing to actually be both clever and scary.
What do you think so far?
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021)
If you’re the type who takes horror seriously, you’ll love Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror. This exhaustively researched, three-and-a-half-hour-long documentary takes a deep dive into horror heavy on rural settings, paganism, and the clash between ancient and modern belief. It’s the kind of movie that will make horror nerds pull out a notebook: if you’re a fan of Midsommar, The Wicker Man (original only), and/or The Witch, Woodlands Dark will introduce you to the dozens of movies that inspired them.
Frankie Freako (2024)
Self-aware, campy parody movies are difficult to pull off, but Frankie Freako sticks the landing perfectly. An homage to rubber-puppet movies of the 1980s like Gremlins, Ghoulies, and Critters, Frankie Freako tells the story of a nerdy square who invites a gang of “freakos” into his life, with disastrous results. Filled with inventively cheesy practical effects and propelled by a funny script and great performances, this nostalgia trip is definitely worth a watch.
In a Violent Nature (2024)
If you’ve even heard of slasher movies, you know the plot of In a Violent Nature already: a masked lunatic in the woods murders a group of teenagers in gruesomely inventive ways. But In a Violent Nature turns the genre upside-down by telling that tale exclusively from the point-of-view of the killer. It’s not exactly a scary movie—slasher movies aren’t suspenseful to the slasher; what’s he got to be scared of?—but it is a fascinating and hypnotic film that wins bonus points for one of the most gruesomely original kills ever filmed. (If you’ve seen it, you know the one I’m talking about.)
Dog Soldiers (2002)
If The Howling and The Evil Dead had a baby, it would be Dog Soldiers. When a squad of hapless British soldiers on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands find themselves trapped in a remote cabin by a pack of murderous werewolves, things go off-the-chain crazy. Dog Soldiers blends claustrophobic survival horror, dry British humor, and just enough story so you care about who is getting eaten, and the result is an all-time favorite for fans of action-horror.
V/H/S: Halloween (2025)
The eighth(!) movie in the V/H/S franchise may be the best. A collection of six found footage shorts loosely themed around Halloween, V/H/S Halloween comes off like a group of talented filmmakers were given total freedom to shoot their most twisted visions. The tone veers wildly with each short, from the horror-comedy in Casper Kelly‘s “Fun Size” to Alex Ross Perry’s grueling and bleak “KidPrint,” but the quality is consistently high, putting V/H/S Halloween a cut above most anthology movies.
Rare Exports (2010)
It’s not going to be October forever, so consider Rare Exports a bridge between Halloween and Christmas. In it, a mining company digs an ancient frozen corpse from beneath the ice in Northern Finland, but when they melt him, they learn he’s not dead, and he’s not a man. He’s an elf and he’s bringing death instead of toys, especially when he learns the mining company is also defrosting his terrifying boss: Santa.
