The best horror films streaming on Shudder

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.

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. 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.

What do you get when you toss The Hunger Games and slasher films of the 1980s into a blender? You get , 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.

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, 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.

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 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.

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,” 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.

At the time of its release, 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?).

Clive Barker sure had some sights to show us with —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.

You have to admire —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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Dreamy and beautifully shot, 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.

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.

The film that cemented Jamie Lee Curtis’ status as the queen of all scream queens, 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.

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.

Based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story and directed by Stuart Gordon (From Beyond), 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.

Warning: 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.

This remake of the 1982 slasher cult classic is the perfect example of how you do a modern-day reimagining the right away. In , 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.

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.