These horror movies are guaranteed to make you shudder, and shudder hard. Maybe not has hard as Elon Musk’s recent Twitter (ugh, I mean “X”) antics might make you shudder. Or as hard as you might shudder while contemplating the amount of time it must have taken for this sweet summer child to recreate the entirety of Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour in Minecraft. The first of those examples is an Antarctic-level shudder. The second is more of a Patagonia-level shudder. Still cold, but warm enough for those sweet little penguins to swim.
Oh, and all of these horror movies are available to stream on Shudder. The streaming service is a treasure trove for horror-heads, offering everything from deep cuts to foreign-language frights and indie gems. Below you’ll find our picks for the best modern horror movies to stream on Shudder right now.
The House of the Devil (2009)
The House of the Devil will make you shudder like you just ordered a frozen margarita at Applebee’s. You know how they just LOVE to keep the temp subarctic at the Applebee’s. In Ti West’s film, a college student decides to take a housesitting job at a spooky old mansion in the middle of nowhere. The proprietor of the house seems … nice? Maybe a little creepy. He told her to never go up to the attic, which is a horror movie red flag. But he left her some money for pizza! Too bad the pizza is drugged and … well, we don’t want to spoil the surprise.
Let the Right One In (2008)
Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In will make you shudder with the feeling of young love! And ice cold Swedish temperatures! Set in Europe’s frozen north, a lonely young boy makes friends with a quirky little girl in the suburbs of his little town. What he doesn’t realize is that the little girl is a vampire, and she needs to feed. After figuring out her affliction, he decides to support her and help her find sustenance. Because that’s what real love is.
Skinamarink (2022)
Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink is so shudder-worthy that it revived an entire genre of horror. Abstract, slowburn nightmare fuel. Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find out that their father is gone. They soon discover that dad isn’t the only thing that disappeared from the house; the doors and windows are slowly disappearing, too. The children realize that they are at the mercy of a malevolent demonic force that wishes to torture them, and there is absolutely nothing they can do.
It Follows (2014)
We’ve all had shudder-inducing sexual experiences. Sometimes it’s a “god that was hot” shudder. Sometimes it’s a “that was so bad I wanna peel my skin off” kind of shudder. David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is the latter of the two. After casually hooking up with a boy, a teenage girl discovers that she is being pursued by a malevolent entity that no one else can see. If it catches her, it will kill her. The only way to get rid of it is to have sex with someone else. Thankfully, she has enough people simping after her in her friend group to make that happen.
Tigers Are Not Afraid
But I AM. Issa López’s Tigers Are Not Afraid is a terrifying tale about a group of orphans forced to survive in a city ravaged by violence in Mexico. If the murderous drug cartels weren’t enough, the kids also have to contend with supernatural forces gunning for their demise. Thankfully, they are granted three wishes in order to help them escape a shudder-worthy fate. And no, they can’t wish for more wishes.
Hereditary (2018)
Ari Aster’s Hereditary is so shudder-inducing that it actually spawned a “so-cringy-it-makes-me-shudder” new way for film school kids to describe horror movies. I’m talking of course about “elevated” horror. What does it mean? No one knows. What I do know is that this film about a family who are the victims of an ancestral curse has caused me to lose more sleep than I care to admit.
Lake Mungo (2008)
Lake Mungo proves the point that lakes are the most shudder-inducing bodies of water. The ocean is scary, yes, but at least I can avoid it by staying away from the coasts. Rivers are fine. Ponds are totally chill. Bogs are kinda gross, but it’s cool. But LAKES? Lakes are demonic. So wide. So still. So ready to pull you under. After a young girl drowns in the titular lake, her family begins to experience supernatural events, and learns horrible secrets about her fate in the form of found footage. Nothing in those tapes will show me anything about the horrors of lakes that I don’t know already.
Train to Busan (2016)
Yeon Sang-ho’s Train To Busan is about a workaholic father who decides to take his young daughter on a birthday train ride to Busan in order to visit his soon-to-be-divorced wife. Instead of getting cake and ice cream for her birthday, the little girl gets a zombie apocalypse. After an infected woman boards the train and begins biting passengers, the father, his daughter, and a group of other survivors must work together to get to their destination alive.
The Babadook (2014)
Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is about the most shudder-inducing thing on the face of the earth: children. An exhausted, recently widowed single mom has to take care of her wild-child son. That alone is a horror movie plot. Things get worse when the mother and son are haunted by a supernatural presence called the the Babadook. What does the Babadook want? It wants the mother to act on her deep-seated resentments towards her son … with violence.
Ginger Snaps (2000)
John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps follows Ginger and Brigitte, two teenage sisters who are obsessed with death. When Ginger gets her first period, she’s attacked by a werewolf the same night. Talk about a one-two puberty punch! Ginger begins experiencing the classic symptoms of adolescence—and lycanthropy: she grows hair in places where there wasn’t hair before, and she gets REALLY aggressive. Her still-human sister decides to help her find a cure before things get even messier.
(featured image: Radius-TWC / Shudder / IFC Films / MPI Media Group)
