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Forget ‘Conclave’ (2024) – Watch This Oscar Inspired Horror Marathon

One of my favorite things to do every year is a bit of Oscar catchup once the Academy Award nominations come out. For some that might mean sitting down to marathon September 5, Flow, The Brutalist, etc. And while that’s all well and good, the real fun is in finding horror movies that the nominees made or starred in before they hit the prestige era of their career (though The Substance proves that those two eras aren’t always mutually exclusive). If you’d like to join in on this grand tradition, I have arranged an epic marathon that drags the horror movie skeletons out of these esteemed performers and filmmakers’ closets!

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One of my favorite things to do every year is a bit of Oscar catchup once the Academy Award nominations come out. For some that might mean sitting down to marathon September 5, Flow, The Brutalist, etc. And while that’s all well and good, the real fun is in finding horror movies that the nominees made or starred in before they hit the prestige era of their career (though The Substance proves that those two eras aren’t always mutually exclusive). If you’d like to join in on this grand tradition, I have arranged an epic Oscar inspired horror marathon that drags the horror movie skeletons out of these esteemed performers and filmmakers’ closets!

An Oscar Inspired Horror Marathon

Brady Corbet in Funny Games (2007)

Before he was the esteemed director of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet was the less-esteemed director of the ludicrous pop music odyssey Vox Lux. And before that, he was a working actor, a gig that led him to star opposite Naomi Watts in Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot remake of his notorious 1997 movie Funny Games. I’m just saying, if any Brady Corbet movie actually deserves to be called The Brutalist, it’s probably this one.

Traci Loader doing Possessor (2020)

From an English-language facsimile of an Austrian movie, we move on to a son’s facsimile of his father’s beloved subgenre. This body horror outing by Brandon Cronenberg featured work by Makeup and Hairstyling nominee Traci Loader. Traci is nominated this year for Nosferatu, another horror title getting big ups from the Academy this year, but she proved her mettle in the genre long before that with the visceral Possessor.

Possessor is streaming on Tubi

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Demi Moore in Parasite (1982)

Before making a splash in St. Elmo’s Fire, Oscar-nominated The Substance star Demi Moore took on her second-ever feature film role in the 1982 sci-fi horror movie Parasite, in which she plays a lemon grower who helps fight off a post-apocalyptic parasite. This movie’s shlock credentials are unmatched, considering it is also an early outing from notorious Full Moon filmmaker Charles Band and was also originally distributed in 3-D.

Parasite is streaming on Plex

Timothée Chalamet in Bones and All (2022)

The theme connecting this to Parasite is “filmmakers who have lived in Italy.” (Never forget Charles Band lived and worked in a 12th century castle just outside Rome for years – check it out in Castle Freak.) Luca Guadagnino’s cannibal love story is a YA fantasy romance adaptation to beat the band, filled to the brim with carnal longings, whether it be for food, flesh, or A Complete Unknown nominee Timothée Chalamet. And when you’re watching a Guadagnino film, you know it’s mostly the latter.

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Bones and All is streaming on MGM+

Guy Pearce in Ravenous (1999)

From one cannibal movie to another, it’s time to check out The Brutalist nominee Guy Pearce leading a cast studded with “that guy” actors including Robert Carlyle, Neal McDonough, and David Arquette. This Wendigo movie is unique among the horror genre in many ways, including its 1840s period setting and the fact that it’s a pre-2000 horror movie directed by a woman, in this case the late great Antonia Bird.

Coralie Fargeat doing Revenge (2018)

Speaking of horror movies directed by women… This isn’t necessarily a skeleton in the closet considering the fact that Coralie Fargeat has been nominated for directing The Substance, but her directorial debut Revenge is a must-watch. While this modernized rape-revenge movie feels like an entirely different beast from The Substance, it contains many of the same core nuggets, including a harrowing examination of a specific aspect of one woman’s experience with the patriarchy, a fuckton of blood, and a general top-to-bottom disgust with the human condition.

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Revenge is streaming on Shudder

 

BONUS: Demi Moore on I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

So we’ve just talked about the rape-revenge genre AND The Substance, so let’s take a quick break to honor Demi Moore’s early work as the cover model on the poster for 1978’s I Spit On Your Grave. Feel free to watch the movie, if you can handle it, but it actually stars Camille Keaton, so it doesn’t technically count for this marathon.

Fernanda Torres in Gêmeas (1999)

OK, we’ve hit a bit of a snag here. If you don’t speak Portuguese, this one will be harder to find, so feel free to skip it if you’re actually following along. But I’m Still Here nominee Fernanda Torres has dabbled in horror, and it is well worth acknowledging this psychological thriller about twin sisters (both played by Torres) who fight over the same man.

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Adrien Brody in Splice (2009)

And now we move on from characters who share DNA to characters who specifically mutate DNA. In Splice, which was helmed by Cube’s Vincenzo Natali, The Brutalist nominee Adrien Brody plays a geneticist who is part of a team that accidentally creates a monster.

Splice is streaming on Max

Jarin Blaschke doing Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009)

Splice’s B-movie nature leaves a huge gulf in esteem between it and The Brutalist, but I think we can widen that gulf here. Jarin Blaschke has been nominated for lensing Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu after collaborating with the aesthetically inclined filmmaker previously on The Witch, The Lighthouse (for which Blaschke was nominated for his first Oscar), and The Northman. However, way back in the day, he was cutting his teeth on the down-and-dirty direct-to-DVD slasher Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, which features appearances from horror royalty in the form of Bill Moseley and Danielle Harris.

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Mikey Madison in Scream (2022)

And so we move from one slasher to another, though this one is much better known. Not only is Anora nominee Mikey Madison in the 2022 legacy sequel Scream, but she also gets to (SPOILER ALERT) play one of the Ghostface killers. Honestly, that’s a much bigger honor than some paltry Oscar.

Scream is streaming on Netflix (and also Paramount+)

BONUS: Ariana Grande in Scream Queens Season 1 (2015)

If you’re still thirsty for slashers after all that, why not have a cool-down at the end of your marathon with the first couple episodes of Ryan Murphy’s short-lived horror-comedy series Scream Queens? The Wicked nominee has a memorable death scene early on, and you’ll get to witness the ignoble birth of the cringe-inducing “Señorita Awesome” meme that you may have seen floating around the Internet lately.

Scream Queens is streaming on Hulu

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Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the  Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can also find his full-length movie reviews on Alternate Ending and his personal blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.

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The Best Horror You Can Stream on Netflix in March

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Netflix did not give me a lot to work with this month. I may have also zoomed through many of my favorite things on the platform these last few months. So, many of these are titles I have been meaning to check out, and I hope they are worth the wait. However, I cannot promise the carnage, chaos, and confusion I normally provide for this column. This means you’ll have to forgive me for having less razzle dazzle and a little more uncertainty while I list some stuff off the less beaten path. Gather around, and I’ll tell you what I am trying to get into this March!

Archive (2020)

In 20238, George Almore’s newest AI prototype is nearly complete. However, this humanesque machine is also hiding one of George’s secrets that must remain hidden. While I love some British sci-fi and believe we should watch as many of the 2020 movies that slid under our quarantined radar, I’m pulling up for another reason. I want to see Theo James in something that isn’t The Monkey. Literally. I didn’t enjoy that movie, and I seem to be the last person I know who was unfamiliar with James before that. So, I’m trying to rectify that and see what he can do in anything else. Hopefully, after catching this on Netflix, I will have a new movie that comes to mind when he is mentioned. Fingers crossed, friends!

Green Room (2016)

A punk rock band gets trapped in a venue where skinheads want to kill them. So many people have told me this movie is worth my time, but because it’s always too soon for violent racists in this decade, I keep putting it off. However, I am so curious to see what Patrick Stewart, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, and the late Anton Yelchin are doing in this movie. Green Room is also one of the few A24 horror movies that I have not seen, which makes it even more intriguing. While I doubt 2026 will calm down enough for this not feel too real, I think it’s time for me to be brave and cross this movie off my list already. So, I might have to grab a drink, a weighted blanket, and remote so I can open Netflix.

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M3GAN 2.0 (2025)

Two years after M3GAN’s murder spree, she is rebuilt by her creator to take down a military-grade weapon made from her stolen tech. Is this movie as good as the original written by Akela Cooper? Obviously not. No one can do what Cooper does and we shouldn’t hold people to that very high bar. Is this movie way too damn long? Also, yes. However, was there still a lot of fun to be had along the way? I thought so. While M3GAN 2.0 isn’t the sequel we wanted, I’m happy to rewatch it for free at home. We lose a lot of the threads I loved in the first one, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the new Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day anyway. In a perfect world, Akela Cooper will reopen the computer (after receiving a very large check from Blumhouse) and give us a third installment to bring our dancing diva back into the horror fold.

Life After Beth (2014)

A man discovers his dead girlfriend is back, and that might be for the worst. I never watched this horror comedy, but I’m sad and hoping Aubrey Plaza can change that. After all, if she can’t wake us up after a long winter, then who can? I also imagine Plaza as a zombie is kind of great. Along for the ride is Molly Shannon, so between the two of them, I expect some chuckles and guffaws. Maybe the powers that be at Netflix knew we could all use a laugh, and that’s why this is waiting for us on the other side of February. Or possibly they wanted to apologize for that last season of Stranger Things. Or maybe it’s just a wacky coincidence, and I’m looking for meaning where there is none. Either way, I have a date with this movie, and you might want to check it out too.

Teen Wolf (2011-2017)

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Getting bitten by a werewolf turns life upside down for a high school student and his best friend. Hear me out! I doubt there is a world where I will watch all six seasons of this. Hell, I doubt I’ll even finish the first season. However, I skipped this MTV moment when it originally aired. Which is why I didn’t know who Dylan O’Brien was when Send Help was announced. So, I’m using this Netflix account to see where he started now that I have seen him in something. You can join me in this or mark your time as safe and watch something else. I don’t blame you either way, and I hope you’ll respect my privacy during this adventure.

That’s what I’m doing with my Netflix account this month. Here is hoping April gives us more scary movies because some of us deserve it. Most importantly, I deserve it.

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The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in March 2026

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Shudder is still that girl even in March. Our beloved streamer is adding classics like The Fog and Messiah of Evil. They are also adding a couple of films that are precious to my generation, like May. The app always has an eclectic lineup, but this month is an embarrassment of riches. At least if you are like me, and looking at a list of movies you have had on your watch list forever. That is why it took me a hot minute to figure out which five titles should be this month’s priority. However, I cracked the code and think I have something old, something new, and definitely at least a couple of things that will turn blue. Check out what I am trying to see on Shudder this month. Also, be sure to let me know if you are as geeked about these titles as I am.

The Best Movies to Stream on Shudder This Month

The Last Horror Film (1982)

A New York taxi driver stalks an actress during the Cannes Film Festival. I love 80s slashers and have been on a quest to watch them all. This one has eluded me for a couple of years, and I am so happy Shudder is finally letting me cross it off my list. I am not expecting this to break my top 1980s slashers. I’m not even counting on it to be one of the best movies about a stalked actress of that era. However, I’m excited to finally see it for myself with an adult beverage in hand.

You can watch The Last Horror Film on March 1st.

Fade to Black (1980)

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A film fanatic begins murdering people who betray him while stalking his idol. I finally caught this on Shudder in the last couple of years and will be using its return as an excuse to rewatch it. Very few movies cater to the slasher kids and film nerds as well as this one. Fade to Black is the kind of psychological horror comedy that is the reason 1980s horror remains unmatched. The costumes, the obsession, and the kills are the most fun you can possibly have on a Shudder Saturday. Do yourself a favor and hit play immediately. 

You can watch Fade to Black on March 9th.

Hostile Dimensions (2023)

Two filmmakers travel through alternate dimensions seeking out the truth about a missing graffiti artist. This found footage film has been on my list for years, and I am so grateful that Shudder is finally letting me see it. I have heard so many great things, and the FOMO was killing me. Hopefully, Hostile Dimensions lives up to the hype. Otherwise, I have to ask my nearest and dearest to explain themselves and then stop accepting recommendations from them. Will it scratch the found footage itch I have this month? There is only one way to find out, and that is why I will be sat the day this drops on the app.

You can watch Hostile Dimensions on March 9th.

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1000 Women in Horror (2025)

Women have been an integral part of the genre since Mary Shelley started thinking about Frankenstein. However, we do not always get the credit and respect we deserve. Which is why I am thrilled 1000 Women in Horror is celebrating the badasses who revolutionized horror films. Not only is the documentary opening the libraries for us, but it’s also bringing current faves along for the ride. Akela Cooper, Toby Poser, and Jenn Wexler are just some of the names I know who are about to inspire so many women to get serious about making their movies. I cannot stress enough how happy I am that Shudder is adding this to its lineup. 

You can watch 1000 Women in Horror on March 20th.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

College friends backpacking through Britain are attacked by a werewolf. As a werewolf film enthusiast, I know they are not all made equally. That is one of the many reasons why this is easily one of the best werewolf movies the genre has. The transformation alone is worth the price of a Shudder subscription. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock that this is one of the five titles I’m most excited to see this month. Hell, it’s probably in everyone’s top five to be completely honest. I cannot think of a better way to close this month out than with a top-tier werewolf flick.

You can watch An American Werewolf in London on March 31st.

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I told you, Shudder is that girl. Whether you’re on spring break, taking a mental health day, or just dissociating, this app has got you covered. Make sure you dig into some of this sick, twisted, and cool cinema. As for me, I will see you next month with more recommendations.

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