Sure, you could fire up Shudder and watch Halloween again, or The Babadook.
uncertain
you → fire → Halloween
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.
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anyone → look → slashers
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.
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we → push → 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:
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A creepy thriller filmed entirely from the perspective of a dog? Hell yes, please.
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you → peruse → dog
And it’s more than just Milk Bones and sniffin’ butts — much more.
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it → ’ → Bones
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.
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who → cast → 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).
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humans → speculate → stuff
Where to stream Good Boy
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David Dastmalchian should be the lead in more movies.
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Dastmalchian → stream → 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.
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show → take → rails
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.
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Midnight → get → TV
Where to stream late night with the devil
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The Substance meets Cinderella in this inventive riff on fairy tale tropes that puts star Lea Myren through the wringer.
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that → stream → 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.
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we → play → standards
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.
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you → mean → it
Where to stream The Ugly Stepsister
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Director Damian McCarthy recently impressed us with the provocative Hokum, but its predecessor more acutely sticks to the memory thanks to eerie atmospherics.
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predecessor → stream → 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.
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that → ’ → you
Director Chris Nash films this stalker-slays-nitwits-in-the-woods story wholly from the killer’s perspective, heavy-breathing Michael Myers-style.
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stalker → film → perspective
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.
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who → hesitate → creativity
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.
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it → mean → boxes
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.
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he → play → soup
The movie’s not only entertaining, but it also coughs up a little subtext about which species on this planet is more ruthless.
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species → ’ → planet
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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.
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possession → try → 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.
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result → concoct → decades
Where to stream When Evil Lurks
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Calling Panos Cosmatos and Nicolas Cage an inspired pairing doesn’t seem, well, hyperbolic enough.
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Calling → stream → Cosmatos
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.
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he → render → gorilla
Perhaps it goes without saying, this isn’t the kind of thing you just watch then set aside and never think about again.
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you → go → thing
Where to stream Mandy
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Now let’s step back a few decades to revisit the work of a master.
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’s → stream → 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.
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Hitchcock → channel → 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.
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film → tend → masterwork
Where to stream deep red
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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.
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that → stream → bed
And it isn’t there just to sleep.
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it → sleep → ?
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.
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he → act → behavior
This is a story of a ruptured marriage that goes where no film has gone before, and where no film will ever go again.
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film → go → marriage
Werner Herzog hugged him once.
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Herzog → hug → him
The Aporia
