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Psst. Hey. You. I’ve got something to tell you; please come over here.
Boom!
You didn’t scare, did you? Okay, now that I see the situation, I can understand.
You’re a “hard-to-scare” kind, aren’t you? Let me know if you need anything else. You may believe you’ve watched all the horror movies and nothing has terrified you, right? Wrong. You’ve seen Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and too numerous Halloweens to keep track of. Walking through the door of the final home on the left, you’ve been to haunted hostels and cottages in the woods.
When comparing the big streaming services, it’s tempting to dismiss Hulu as “the TV-focused one,” but that’s not accurate; the network also has a respectable number of movies available, despite its overall library being nothing like that of Netflix or Amazon Prime. On the other hand, horror fans with a Hulu membership have access to a surprisingly vast collection of high-quality films.
Hulu deserves credit for finally developing a horror-specific area rather than lumping “horror and suspense” into one category that included films like The Babadook and Snowden. At the very least, whatever you see when you go to the “horror” option now makes sense. Hulu has lost access to several excellent films it had access to lately, such as The Monster Squad and A Quiet Place, but they’ve been replaced with other excellent options. Our Hulu horror list has already reached the same number as our Netflix horror list, and it includes three titles from our list of the top horror films.
Bad Hair:
Year: 2020
Director: Justin Simien
Cast: Zaria Kelley, Corinne Massiah, Elle Lorraine, Moses Storm, Madeleine Byrne, James Van Der Beek, Lena Waithe
Runtime: 1h42m
IMDB: 5.6/10
Do not wait anymore; your favourite horror villains will be making a comeback. But you have never seen a villain like the one in Bad Hair, a new Hulu original film. The sarcastic horror film’s where the monster is an evil weave that goes on a deadly rage and anger after being glued to the skull of an aspiring young Black lady attempting to fit into 1980s American society’s physical ideal.
Justin Simien surprised his fans by making a very different kind of movie after Dear White People. This movie, set in the 1980s, is about a killer hair weave. It’s true: Elle Lorraine is a new actress who plays a young woman who works at an MTV-like music channel and rises to the ranks of fame after her new hairstyle helps her get rid of all of her bad people. It’s a unique and exciting piece of filmmaking.
Let The Right One In:
Year: 2008
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Cast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist, Peter Carlberg, Ika Nord, Mikael Rahm
Runtime: 1h54m
IMDB: 7.9/10
Vampires may be the most overused, poorly drained horror villains in movies, except for zombies. But a Swedish novelist and filmmaker came up with a novel and film that turned the whole genre on its head. As a 12-year-old outcast, Oskar has a complicated friendship with Eli, an old vampire trapped in the body of an edgy child who looks like he is his age. The movie Let the Right One In is about their complex friendship and semi relationship. In the movie, Oskar slowly moves into her life, becoming more and more like a traditional vampire’s human “familiar.” The film begins to question the nature of the conflict and whether they can ever truly love each other. At the same time, it’s also a scary movie when it wants to be scary, especially in the amazing final scenes, which show Eli’s frightening abilities with just the right amount of resistance to leave the worst of it up to the viewer’s imagination. Let Me In, a remake of the film that came out in 2010, has been unfairly slammed by film fans who don’t like remakes. It’s another good version of the same story that may even boost a few small parts of the story. Because of the strength of its two leading actors, though, the Swedish version is still the best movie. It may be the best vampire movie ever made, thanks to the intensity of its two main actors.
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The Beta Test:
Year: 2021
Director: Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe
Cast: Jim Cummings, Virginia Newcomb, PJ McCabe, Wilky Lau, Olivia Grace Applegate, Jacqueline Doke, Lya Yanne, Jessie Barr
Runtime: 1h33m
IMDB: 6.1/10
Jim Cummings is, without a doubt, the finest. In 2021, the independent writer/director behind Thunder Road and The Wolf of Snow Hollow released another masterpiece, a horror film about a guy who gets an anonymous invitation. Cummings and his co-writer PJ McCabe weave a gripping story of obsession and toxic masculinity that seems like a 2020s take on David Lynch.
The movie revolves around Jordan Hines, a soon-to-be-married man who loses his balance after receiving an unknown mysterious invitation from a fan. Will Jordan take the Beta Test when he is most vulnerable at this point in his life?
I Am Legend:
Year: 2007
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Willow Smith, Darrell Foster, April Grace, Dash Mihok, Joanna Numata
Runtime: 1h41m
IMDB: 7.2/10
I Am Legend is a 2007 post-apocalyptic film that is even more horrifying when seen on today’s streaming screens since it hits a bit close to home, where the current epidemic is playing out. Based on the 1954 book of the same name, the film stars Will Smith as Robert Neville, a brilliant scientist who is the presumed lone survivor of a man-made epidemic that has transformed humanity into murderous monsters. As he walks his dog around New York City, Neville looks for additional survivors and, potentially, a cure for the plague or pandemic by using his immune blood. Check out I Am Legend if you want to be upset by the frightening exaggeration of what we are dealing with today or if you want to weep because of ‘that’ moment.
Memories of Murder:
Year: 2003
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Kang-ho Song, Kim Sang-kyung, Roe-ha Kim, Jae-ho Song, Byun Hee-Bong, Seo-hie Ko, Tae-ho Ryu, No-shik Park
Runtime: 2h12m
IMDB: 8.1/10
Bong Joon-Ho’s take on the crime series is a case study of South Korea’s first serial murderer. The tension originates from a conflict of styles between an impulsive rural investigator and his more professional urban counterpart deployed to speed up the investigation, which slowly deviates due to missed chances and unjust arrests. Two people are cultural icons: one uses his hands, and the other uses forensics. Their actions are shown in a way that fits with the military dictatorship of the 1980s. People don’t always laugh when they kill people, even though it sounds like they do. The laughs are both coarse and piercing. When Zodiac came out a few years later, Memories of Murder kept taking advantage of the audience’s assumption that it would end with a neat, gift-wrapped ending.
Little Monster:
Year: 2018
Director: James Plumb
Cast: Matthew Batte, Stacey Daly, Rose Granger, Matthew Hickinbottom, Wyn Hopkins, Chris Josty, Isobelle Plumb
Runtime: 1h13m
IMDB: 5.8/10
This movie is very relevant right now because it’s about a teacher who fights to protect her students from an awful virus. There’s nothing new about this. It’s not a disease of the lungs in this scary movie: it’s zombies! Star Lupita Nyong’o plays Miss Caroline, a kindergarten teacher who leads a field trip that gets swarmed by zombies that have escaped from the government lab where they were being kept. Shaun of the Dead with a great cast: In the movie Frozen and The Book of Mormon, Josh Gad plays a deadbeat children’s entertainer who isn’t very helpful in the fight to get away from zombies and save the kids from being killed.
The Host:
Year: 2006
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Go Ah-sung
Runtime: 2h
IMDB: 7.1/10
It was Bong Joon-big ho’s work and calling card before he made Snowpiercer and Parasite, which both won many awards. Among other things, it’s a sci-fi, family drama, and horror movie, but there’s a lot of scary stuff with the monster scaring little kids in particular. It’s been a huge hit in his home country. This is one of the unique horror films of the last few decades. The genetic mutation monster in this film looks like a giant frog with teeth and legs, which makes it even cooler than it sounds. Song Kang-ho, who also starred in Snowpiercer and Parasite, is the movie’s real star. He plays a father who doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing as he tries to keep his parents together during the catastrophic event. That’s a familiar role in a horror movie, but the production and how the family works together really make The Host stand out from other horror movies.
The Omen:
Year: 1976
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Gregory Peck, Harvey Spencer Stephens, Lee Remick, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw
Runtime: 1h51m
IMDB: 7.5/10
There are only a few “creepy kid” movies that haven’t been ruined by the terrible 2006 remake of The Omen. It has a strong sense of ill intent because of how restraint and extremes are intermixed in it. In the movie, Damien isn’t this little devil boy running around stabbing people. Instead, he’s full of trickery, lies, and, most of all, patience. He knows that he’s playing the long game. It will be years and years before he reaches his goal on Earth, which makes him act like an adult (and a pure evil one) in a child’s body. The movie is brooding and sullen, but it also has short bursts of shocking violence. A sheet of glass, for example, leads to a man’s head being cut off. This is one of the most well-known parts of the movie. If you’re a parent, the Omen can get under your skin.
Possessor:
Year: 2020
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Tuppence Middleton
Runtime: 1h43m
IMDB: 6.5/10
Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor shows a familiar view of the deserted, sad, and moderate cityscapes. Besides being the son of David, Brandon is interested in psychological horror, physical transformations that represent mental changes, and viruses. He also has a lot of knowledge about viruses, making him a little scary and exciting. Brandon doesn’t cut as deeply as daddy, but he does so with a level of precision that makes the imagistic creepiness coursing through Possessor even more unsettling.
Tasya (Andrea Riseborough) is an assassin who works for a shady group that carries out its attacks through a remote intellectual link between the assassin and the target. In this case, Colin is the target (Christopher Abbott). Cronenberg shows a terrifying journey from the mind to the body, which he shows by using neural pathways and physical routes. It turns into a journey through the heart, with small vessels that hold the stuff of life and death in a bigger body. Sci-fi fans will enjoy this movie, but it feels like a big sci-fi movie that has been reduced to a dark, dingy miniature. Cronenberg talks about how a foreigner can change a mischievous soul in a highly toxic society.
Censor:
Year: 2021
Director: Prano Bailey-Bond
Cast: Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Michael Smiley
Runtime: 1h24m
IMDB: 6.0/10
This movie is the ultimate “have cake and eat it, too.” It’s both well-made and full of everything that makes horror worth watching, including sneaking fear, paranoid delusions, completely disgusting violence, and inspired fits of craziness. Censor is also a dismissive response to the conservative lateral crowds who have tried to blame the organization for all the world’s problems. Enid spends her days watching graphically staged dramatizations of violence in a film censor, then cutting them down to a size that isn’t too bad. One portrait closely follows a horrible event from her childhood, one that led to her sister’s disappearance. The young actress in the picture looks too much like her sister. Enid is now on a quest to find her long-lost sister, which takes her down a path of madness and a few horror shots. The encounter set her on this path. They criticize sheer terror for the existence of darkness because they can’t stand to think about their flaws. People who watch horror movies know who the real bad guys are, and Bailey-Bond knows that. Don’t be afraid, though: Censor isn’t ponderous or judgmental, not at all. It’s why we go to see scary movies in the first place.
Personal Shopper:
Year: 2016
Director: Olivier Assayas
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie
Runtime: 1h45m
IMDB: 6.1/10
Olivier Assayas’s mystery story of Maureen, a woman who may be in touch with her dead twin brother, isn’t easy to follow, but that’s part of the fun. Or maybe she’s being haunted by a person who can’t be seen. Perhaps both. To explain how Personal Shopper goes is to repeat plot points that don’t appear as they reside in the same movie. On the other hand, Assayas is working on a depth, more symbolic level. Instead of following strict narrative cause-and-effect logic, he lets us see Maureen’s life through the lens of different experiences. When text messages show up that could be dangerous or suggestive, they could be seen as a real threat or as a sign from the universe of other, more subtle anxieties bubbling up in the background. When you read Personal Shopper, you can feel like you’re having fun. It goes from dark ghost stories to thrillers to erotic character studies out of the blue, making you want to play. But Assayas can bring a lighthearted tone to severe issues about grief and disillusionment by switching between different genres and making the movie’s design intentionally unclear. As a result, Personal Shopper is more interesting because it doesn’t stay still. It never lets us get used to its shifting narrative, making it even more enjoyable.
Jacob’s Ladder:
Year: 1990
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello
Runtime: 1h53m
IMDB: 7.4/10 In the beginning, Jacob’s Ladder was not very well-liked. It is considered one of the best “psychological horror” movies ever made. In some ways, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce, is based on this movie. After the credits roll, the true nature of that connection is revealed. This movie is about a Vietnam veteran who has nightmares and surreal visions even after returning home from the war. To be our main character, Tim Robbins should be haunted. He’s a man who sees reality melting all around him during a Salvador Dasli painting. Because he was in the military, does he have terrible PTSD? He and the men in his old platoon were the victims of an elaborate conspiracy that completely ruined each of their lives. There is a lot of nihilism in Jacob’s Ladder, and there doesn’t seem to be much respect for man’s ability to feel for other people. It’s a frightening head derivation into an individual’s subconscious who had to go through more than he could handle.
Southbound:
Year: 2015
Director: Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath
Cast: Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Fabianne Therese, Hannah Marks, Larry
Runtime: 1h29m
IMDB: 5.9/10
These are some of the things that the book series film Southbound is produced of: Con artists, devils, murderers, and the hope of redemption. To satisfy even the most specific horror fans, the film has a singular vision but is built on many different horrific and frightful twist endings. This is why even the most niche horror fans will be satisfied. Most importantly, the wild changes from one part of the image to the next to make the viewing experience better than worse. It helps that there are a lot of common themes in the movie, like loss, remorse, and shame, and that the movie as a whole looks at how to take it for granted make their suffering. But Southbound is first and foremost a movie about speed. It’s a fun ride through Hell worth getting in your seat for.
Oculus:
Year: 2013
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, Garrett Ryan Ewald
Runtime: 1h44m
IMDB: 6.5/10
When you hear that the main point of Oculus is a haunted mirror, you think it’s going to be a simple ghost story. But this recent movie from a promising horror director, Mike Flanagan, was a lot more ambitious than you might think. It switches back and forth between stories about the mirror’s harmful effects in two different timelines, with about the same actors as children and adults. The parts when you’re a child are a little predictable. Still, the adult parts, where a young woman tries to report experimentally and then take revenge on the person who caused her family to be miserable, are especially fun. The two stories become so intertwined that it’s hard to tell which one is which. In general, it’s a stylish, creepy horror movie that goes out of its way to break the rules. There’s no need to look much beyond the spiritual ending, which leaves the door open for future ideas if Flanagan ever desires to rethink the concept.
Castle Rock:
Year: 2018
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, Garrett Ryan Ewald
Runtime: 1h44m
IMDB: 6.5/10
As long as you’re already a big fan of Stephen King’s kind of campfire story, you’ll love Castle Rock. It has all the crazy laughs and palm-sweating that come with it. During the pilot, Michael Uppendahl pushes the art and literary accuracy into its well-drawn mystery, and the hooks keep getting stronger through the rest of season one, so it’s a good start. The plot and the setting use Stephen King’s stories as their knitting fibre. They weave both meta- and textual characters and themes into the town of Castle Rock, which supernatural events have plagued. Castle Rock is part of the Bermuda Triangle of fictitious that King keeps going back to repeatedly. The show sees religion and the supernatural as two forces that don’t seem to be on the same level, but they do help each other. When Castle Rock’s soul is at stake in the movie, there’s a mix of misguided morality, dangerous excitement, and real goodness. This is a fun twist on the typical Exorcist-style questioning of faith.
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