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The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in October 2024

Shudder is coming in hot this October. We are getting The Boulet Brothers Dragula Season 6, Nightbreed, and WNUF Halloween Special this month. The streamer will also give Flanastans a reason to scream by adding Hush. They also know it’s not really Halloween without Jason Voorhees and are dropping the first eight movies on October 1st. A lot is going on, so I carved out a path to the titles that are my top priorities in this long list of horror titles hitting the app so fast and furious. Grab some snacks and check out which movies I think are the best bets below. 

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Shudder is coming in hot this October. We are getting The Boulet Brothers Dragula Season 6, Nightbreed, and WNUF Halloween Special this month. The streamer will also give Flanastans a reason to scream by adding Hush. They also know it’s not really Halloween without Jason Voorhees and are dropping the first eight movies on October 1st. A lot is going on, so I carved out a path to the titles that are my top priorities in this long list of horror titles hitting the app so fast and furious. Grab some snacks and check out which movies I think are the best bets below. 

The Best Movies to Stream on Shudder This Month

V/H/S/Beyond (Shudder Original Film)

Shudder’s found footage anthology film series returns with six new stories. This movie is coming fresh from Fantastic Fest, so fans will not have to see what this crop of filmmakers has conjured. Directors this time include Jordan Downey, Christian Long, Justin Long, Justin Martinez, Virat Pal, Kate Siegel, and Jay Cheel. So, I expect some sick stories and cannot wait to have my peace disturbed.

You can watch V/H/S/Beyond on October 4th.

Read our review of V/H/S/Beyond here.

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Chucky Season 3

Chucky is still embroiled in a grudge match with Jake and the crew, but this time, he has taken the fight to the White House. This season was magnificent and extra in all the right ways. I am upset the show was not automatically renewed. Hopefully, with its arrival on Shudder, more people will be reminded to tweet #RenewChucky  #SaveChucky and show Syfy and USA that we need more time with our favorite killer doll.

You can watch Chucky Season 3 on October 4th.

Tenebrae (1982)

An American author is stalked by a murderous fan while trying to promote his new book in Rome. Sure. This premise seems cool. This movie is also one of the many Giallo films I still need to see. However, it’s Dario Argento and John Saxon collaborating on the same film that makes me think this movie is about to be a moment. I cannot wait for Tenebrae to hit Shudder so I can hit play immediately. 

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You can watch Tenebrae on October 7th.

Daddy’s Head (Shudder Original Film)

After his father’s death, a boy is left on a sprawling estate with his widowed stepmother. While they figure out how to adjust to their new life, a grotesque creature bearing a resemblance to his dead dad begins to haunt the child. I don’t think we need another meditation on grief, but I am curious about this Daddy’s Head business. I love that this movie is heading to Shudder straight out of Fantastic Fest. So, everyone who misses it can catch it at home next month. 

You can watch Daddy’s Head on October 11th.

Noroi: The Curse (2005)

A paranormal expert investigating an ancient demon disappears while filming a documentary. I have been playing catch up with all of the found footage movies I missed out on before I started paying attention to the subgenre. So, Shudder is adding this Japanese horror movie right on time for my shenanigans this Halloween season. Yet another reason this streamer remains that girl.

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You can watch Noroi: The Curse on October 15th.

We should call out of work and hang out with Shudder this October. At least, that is what I plan on doing because these five titles are just the tip of the horrific iceberg for this streamer. I will need the whole month to inhale all the nightmare fuel, but luckily, I love a challenge.

Sharai is a writer, horror podcaster, freelancer, and recovering theatre kid. She is one-half of the podcast of Nightmare On Fierce Street, one-third of Blerdy Massacre, and co-hosts various other horror podcasts. She has bylines at Dread Central, Fangoria, and Horror Movie Blog. She spends way too much time with her TV while failing to escape the Midwest. You can find her most days on Instagram and Twitter. However, if you do find her, she will try to make you watch some scary stuff.

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The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in February 2025

The Shudder February lineup is after my heart. Obviously, the app is adding more 2024 titles like The Dead Thing and Little Bites. However, they are also adding so many cool movies I have been dying to make my friends watch these last few years. There are some films guaranteed to make some heads roll alongside some cute vampire rom-coms hitting the horror streamer this month, and I cannot wait to revisit each title. Check out the five movies I’m highlighting this year, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! So here are the best movies to stream on Shudder this February!

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The Shudder February lineup is after my heart. Obviously, the app is adding more 2024 titles like The Dead Thing and Little Bites. However, they are also adding so many cool movies I have been dying to make my friends watch these last few years. There are some films guaranteed to make some heads roll alongside some cute vampire rom-coms hitting the horror streamer this month, and I cannot wait to revisit each title. Check out the five movies I’m highlighting this year, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! 

The Best Movies to Stream on Shudder This Month

The Coffee Table (2022)

A couple of new parents experiencing a rough patch decide to buy a coffee table, not knowing that the decision will alter their lives forever. The Coffee Table was one of my favorite movies of last year, and it is one of those titles you want to know as little as possible when you hit play. It is the bleakest and most stressful comedy I have seen in years, and I love it. This one goes out to my fellow sickos (complimentary). Please watch it the day it hits Shudder before the internet can ruin it for you.

You can watch The Coffee Table on February 24th.

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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)

A young vampire who is too sensitive to kill for her supper meets a young loner with suicidal tendencies. What starts as a transactional relationship soon blossoms into an unexpected friendship. This movie is much cuter than I like my vampire movies. However, it is still a nice time for those looking to fill the void left by What We Do in the Shadows ending. It’s also not the worst romantic horror movie we have ever seen. I had very few notes for it in my review, and I know it made it onto quite a few top 10 lists of last year. 

You can watch Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person on February 10th.

My Animal (2023)

An outcast falls for a new girl in her small town, which makes it difficult to keep her darkest secret hidden. My Animal is a severely overlooked lesbian werewolf tale. It has been stuck in streamer purgatory for years, so finally finding a streaming home is a big deal. This moody story stars Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg and deserves your attention. It belongs somewhere between Ginger Snaps and Good Manners in the women werewolves we must celebrate. Make this feral love story a date night this winter, preferably during a full moon. 

You can watch My Animal on February 1st.

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Nightsiren (2022)

A woman returns to her birthplace, searching for answers to questions about her childhood. However, she is met with ancient superstitions and a community accusing her of witchcraft and murder. Nightsiren has been on my radar for a couple of years and is the only movie I have not seen. I love that Shudder is letting me find out if it’s as good as it looks this February. Worst-case scenario, I can say that I watched a Slovak-Czech feminist psychological horror this month, and that feels like a win.

You can watch Nightsiren on February 10th.

Tiger Stripes (2024)

An 11-year-old discovers the body horror of puberty as her body begins to change. Gothic horror is out, and menstruation is in because Tiger Stripes is the kind of period horror we need more of in the world. I fell for this cute little movie during a festival a couple of years ago and am so glad it has finally made its way to Shudder. It’s funny and very relatable. It is also a new genre entry destigmatizing the menses, and we need more movies in this subgenre. So, while you should watch it with as many people as possible, it’s also a delightful brunch body horror moment. 

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You can watch Tiger Stripes on February 24th.

It seems like Shudder has read my diary and added titles that I need the rest of you to see. I hope you check out these tales of lesbian werewolves, fun period horror, and everything between this February. You truly deserve cool new stories by cool new filmmakers, and that is exactly what the streamer is giving us almost weekly this month. What a time to be a subscriber! 

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Revisiting The Stepfather Films (And The Insane Real Crime Spree That Inspired Them)

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We all have one person in our lives who carries everything on their backs. It could be a family member whose work ethic shocks everyone around them or a friend juggling dozens of projects at once and still managing to get everything done just right. Thankless individuals who go unrecognized, but sometimes, that person ends up getting the spotlight they deserve.

To me, the Stepfather series is the perfect example of that in cinematic terms.  

The Stepfather, directed by Joseph Ruben in 1987, is the first in a small franchise of horror films that feels pretty forgotten in the grand scheme of 80s slashers and thrillers. But the film is a really interesting study of how one actor can take a role and make it their own, in a way that’s so compelling it makes you want to see more of that character even when the movies he’s in are kind of mediocre.

ODDLY MEMORABLE FOR A FORGOTTEN FRANCHISE

As the cultural conversation of the era has turned into a lot of circular discourse about how much better effects were back then and how unproven concepts made it to the screen more often, it should be easy to forget a psychological horror film with such a simple premise: what if your stepfather you hated was actually a freaky serial killer who was going to take your family out? From that premise sprung an unexpectedly great film, carried entirely by its lead actor.

I have a weird connection to The Stepfather because it was written by Richard Stark, who wrote one of my favorite crime stories of all time: The Hunter. I didn’t even know Richard Stark was only a pseudonym until I watched The Stepfatherand discovered it was writer Donald E. Westlake’s pen name. And Westlake’s proficiency with crime fiction translates here smoothly, because he took a horrifying real-life story of absolute evil (straight out of Westfield, New Jersey) and brought it to the screen with a true-to-life character.

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THE CRIMINAL BEHIND THE STEPFATHER SERIES

The real-life killer behind The Stepfather films was John List. To most people, he was a family man, living the dream with his wife and three children. He was a banker, hard-working and clean living, on the outside at least. He had a close relationship with many of the people in the Lutheran church he attended every Sunday, and was well-liked. But in reality, List was about to become one of the most infamous mass murderers in American history.

Behind the scenes, List was struck with financial trouble after financial trouble that exacerbated his already worsening mental health problems. A number of layoffs and setbacks left him and his family teetering on the brink of poverty despite the fact they lived in a 19-room mansion (I couldn’t even begin to explain how that works, don’t ask). List’s relationship with his wife was damaged by her spending habits, alcoholism, and deteriorating mental state due to untreated syphilis.  

He was left to “raise” three children, whom he was verbally and physically abusive to; his daughter Patricia even warned her drama coach that she was certain her father was going to kill her. Then her father actually sat all the kids down and told them they should prepare to die. And eventually, Patricia, her mother and grandmother, and both of her brothers became List’s victims in 1971.

List left his car in long-term parking at JFK International and disappeared with almost nothing in his name. Leaving a confession for his pastor behind in the form of a letter, it took weeks for neighbors to report the family’s disappearance, thanks to List’s meticulous planning. He had already slipped through the hands of the police by running from state to state, before eventually settling down into a new persona: Robert Clark. He eventually “fell in love” with a woman named Delores Miller, and the two moved to Virginia together soon after that.

Their relationship ended abruptly after an episode of America’s Most Wanted aired, in which famous forensic artist Frank Bender made an incredibly accurate sculpt of what List looked like at the time. After years of close calls and narrow captures, List was discovered. It took 17 and a half years for List to be caught. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences and died in jail in 2008.

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THE ACTOR WHO GAVE LIFE TO THE STEPFATHER SERIES

Now, I mention all of this above to punctuate one thing: The Stepfather isn’t the only fictionalized retelling of List’s story, but it is the most effective. Its opening scene is a gruesome recounting of List’s disaffected disappearance, how he slipped off to freedom, to an alternate life of his own design for nearly two decades, with little emotion at all. It opens on a mystery—what kind of man is he, if he is human at all? How does one simply walk away from a crime scene so calm and collected?

Because at the heart of the List case is the intensely intriguing and horrifying persona that is John List. To adapt that kind of personality, that deeply unhinged and deceptive person, is the kind of acting challenge many actors would pounce on immediately. And for horror fans, an unlikely hero stepped up to the plate: Terry O’Quinn. He’s best known for playing John Locke on the show Lost, but he’s also a quintessential “that one guy” character actor; he’s been in so many films and television shows you can probably throw a dart in any direction and hit his filmography.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call the first two Stepfather movies iconic (entertaining, definitely). Still, our main man Terry O’Quinn is incredibly iconic in his performance of Jerry Blake. O’Quinn really does enthrall you, and he’s an actor to beat when it comes to depicting someone slowly unraveling and releasing bursts of madness along the way like solar flares on a star’s surface. And I don’t just say that because he bears a bizarre resemblance to an older Anthony Starr.

He even almost tricks you into thinking Jerry’s moments of manufactured sweetness and maudlin family-man aesthetic are genuine, but then you remember what you’re watching and go right back to hating him with a passion. He is a quintessential horror movie villain because you despise him, but you’re transfixed by him.

He’s an emotionally disturbed con man, a parasite who can worm his way into a new skin with sociopathic ease. And when it all comes crashing down, to the point where even he isn’t sure what role he’s supposed to play for his fake family, its fantastic. With a line as simple as, “Wait a minute, who am I here?”, O’Quinn cemented himself as the definitive depiction of the character.

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WHY EACH OF THE STEPFATHER FILMS IS WORTH WATCHING

As I said, these films are far from perfect, but each one brings something a little new and different to the table. It’s fun to see O’Quinn return to the role in Stepfather 2, playing opposite of the legendary Caroline Williams and Meg Foster; a psycho-slasher finale at a wedding is just hard to beat. Stepfather 3 brings a surprisingly good changing of hands to the title role, though, since despite O’Quinn being replaced by Robert Wightman, Wightman brings just the right kind of energy to the role; he’s the perfect fit for the much campier and goofier tone of the 3rd film, and I was honestly very impressed with how he brought the role to life. But be warned: don’t bother with the remake. It is borderline bloodless, and incredibly boring. You can put a million Penn Badgley’s in that film, I’m not watching it again.

The Stepfather films aren’t anyone’s favorite of the many horror fans I’ve met and spoken with. But they are a capsule of how one artist can have enough staying power to keep them in your mind. So, for all my people out there who are going to check the trilogy out now thanks to this article: happy watching horror fans, and have fun!

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