Reviews
Streaming Service Showdown: Shudder vs. Screambox

Note: Horror Press is neither sponsored by nor promoting any streaming service entity. What follows are unbiased observations of a horror fan and writer who loves to stream horror content.
Today more people are going “unplugged,” opting for streaming services rather than cable. Megaliths HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, and Disney+ are considered the best streaming services and appeal to horror fans by offering titles such as Freaky, American Horror Story, Stranger Things, and Hocus Pocus 2, respectively.
But lovers of all things horror can find a home in their own scary streaming services. Though there are many options for horror streaming, Shudder and Screambox demand our attention.
Shudder was founded in 2015 and has over one million subscribers. Meanwhile, Screambox has also been around since 2015 but only recently was Screambox acquired by Cinedigm (the same folks who own Bloody Disgusting.) This new ownership is breathing life into this Shudder competitor as Cinedigm announced its plans to reach one million subscribers within three years of acquiring the horror streaming service.
With so many streaming services, a duel of the scary streaming services is in order.
Horror Press Presents: Shudder Versus Screambox.
How Much Does Shudder or Screambox Cost?
Getting right down to brass tacks, the answer to the question of how much something costs can make or break someone’s decision to sign up for a streaming service. The available prices for Screambox and Shudder are as follows:
Subscription Tiers and Pricing*
*Note: These prices are accurate for US pricing only. Prices in Canada, where applicable, may vary.
Not only does Screambox offer a free version where anyone can view some of their content without logging in, but Screambox is cheaper and offers an annual subscription, saving customers money. Under this yearly option, viewers average $2.99 per month before applicable taxes.
Two points to Screambox for both offering utterly free content and low monthly subscription costs.
Live Streams
As of this writing, Screambox offers live television through BloodyDisgustingTV. Screambox’s option is comparable to Shudder TV, where Shudder consistently broadcasts live movies. However, Shudder’s live events give them a leg up on the competition.
While they may have some bugs to work out, as live events tend to start a bit dodgy (like when Psycho Goreman aired instead of the first 20 minutes of the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards), the live events allow horror fans to come together and share the experience. One example of this comes from the ever-popular Friday night airing of The Last Drive-In w/ Joe Bob Briggs and his co-host Darcy, the Mail Girl aka Diana Prince, where in addition to a live show, the two hosts interact with tweets from fans. Because this is an invaluable experience that brings the horror community together, Shudder wins this round.
One point to Shudder for offering live streaming events.
Devices Compatible with Screambox and Shudder
Though the edge is slight, Shudder once again has a leg up on the competition as Screambox reportedly cannot be accessed on Xbox or Apple TV. They both so far have been unable to permeate PlayStation TV & Video. However, a workaround does exist to access Shudder on Playstation.
Since Amazon Prime allows customers to subscribe to Shudder through them, any device that supports Amazon Prime will then be able to open Shudder. (Note: this method does come with drawbacks as this route does not offer an annual subscription option, nor does it grant access to Shudder’s live content.) For Screambox, though, no such workaround exists.
One point to Shudder for being accessible on (almost) all devices.
How Many Screens Can Stream at Once?
With Screambox, you can simultaneously stream on five devices at once. However, the catch is that only five devices can ever be registered to a Screambox account. This means you cannot stream on anything outside the five-device limit.
Shudder, however, only guarantees one screen in use at a time. However, there have been reports of people being able to stream from the same account on three or more devices at once. Since this is not guaranteed, and five is undoubtedly more than three, point for Screambox.
One point to Screambox for allowing simultaneous streaming.
Country Availability
Currently, Shudder is accessible in the following countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the United States. Meanwhile, Screambox is only available in the United States (for now).
One point to Shudder for being available in six countries.
Shudder and Screambox’s Exclusive and Original Content
One of the temptations streaming services offer is their unique content, making signing up with the service worthwhile as customers are given access to titles they would not have had otherwise. In this case, both Shudder and Screambox have exclusive content. Screambox’s content appears under the aptly titled “Only on Screambox,” whereas Shudder Exclusives can be found in the Shudder catalog under “Exclusive & Original.”
Shudder boasts well over one hundred titles in this section, with popular hits such as Glorious, The Dark and The Wicked, Mad God, and The Sadness, to name a few. This does not include Shudder’s original hit series such as Creepshow, Cursed Films, or The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula.
The Screambox selection is much more modest, with titles including Welcome to Hell (Bienvenidos al Infierno), Pennywise: The Story of It, and Suicide Forest Village, which was directed by Takashi Shimizu, the director of Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) as well as The Grudge (2004).
Although the winner of this section is clear, it is vital to understand Cinedigm’s vision for Screambox. Erick Opeka, the chief strategy officer of Cinedigm, explained: “Despite more than 145,000 horror films listed [on IMDB], less than 5% of the genre is currently available for fans to enjoy in a subscription environment.”
Cinedigm has big things in store for Screambox, but for now, Shudder wins this round.
One point to Shudder for a tremendous collection of original and exclusive content.
Shudder versus Screambox: Final Tally

Despite Shudder’s long and successful run, the tally was surprisingly close. Screambox offers a better price point, a free ad-supported version, and simultaneous streaming on devices. Meanwhile, Shudder offers services on more devices, in more countries, with live programs and exclusives that create a horror community experience.
Remember that Screambox entered this match as an underdog since it is under recent ownership changes, whereas Shudder has been owned by the already successful AMC Network from launch. It’s worth pondering that while we have an idea of what to expect from Shudder at this point, Screambox, under new ownership, still has the potential to surprise us. It is a streaming service to keep an eye on.
Whether either of these streaming services is for you is up to you and given that they both offer the ability to try them out at no cost, check out the free version of Screambox or sign up for a free trial of Shudder today. Come back and tell us, which is your favorite?
Reviews
‘Body Melt’ Review: An Irreverent Approach to Body Horror

In this world, few things are more mildly perturbing than leaving a film unsure of what exactly it was trying to say. At least for me. Death of the author withstanding, I like to have some grasp over what the filmmakers are trying to tell me. What is the writer saying? How is the director conveying it? What was the gaffer doing lighting the scene like that? Was it intentional, or was it just difficult angling a light there? Body Melt is one of those films.
WHAT IS BODY MELT (1993)?
Body Melt is a 1993 Australian special effects cult classic that delivers a lot of gooey and gorey deaths, but initially left me feeling ambivalent about its message. Given its efforts to nauseate are the main thing on display, there isn’t much deep conversation to be had by its characters. They’re mainly pastiches of people you would see around the neighborhood (the power walker, the doofy bachelors, the crochety old man, the young married couple, etc. etc.), and they’re treated just like that; cardboard cutout people to be cut apart.
While a horror film about a cul-de-sac being disfigured and sludged to death might seem like regular slasher fair, the villain this time around isn’t an alien with acid blood or an incredible melting man: it’s a pharmaceutical company called Vimuville, making guinea pigs out of the neighborhood and rapidly mutating them to death in the name of researching a new super drug.
Sending out free health supplements to the denizens of Pebble Court, the film is a series of loosely connected set pieces, with the throughline being Vimuville’s “vitamins” and the people who drink them to disastrous consequence (sort of like an evil wheatgrass shot, or Herbalife shakes if they made your spleen explode out of your chest).
INCREDIBLE EFFECTS ABOUND, COURTESY OF BOB CARRON
What results is a cartoonish splatter film, amplified in its grotesqueries by the effects of Bob Carron, an Australian special effects legend. If you need to know his street cred, fans of more obscure animal horror will know his biggest and boar-iest creation, the titular pig monster from Razorback.
More likely you know him for helping to make the human battery scene from The Matrix, where a tube-fed catatonic Neo is awakened in a pod of viscous red goo. He’s also the man who helped do prosthetic application on the set of an early Peter Jackson classic Braindead, which was made only a year before Body Melt. Given how notoriously explosive the blood sprays and zombie deaths were in Braindead, there’s some definite creative crossover between the two.
His work here on Body Melt, like on Braindead, probably wouldn’t play well in most movies. It is excessive and absurd, with meaty melting tentacles and body fluid spraying demises. Imagine the defibrillator scene from The Thing, but repeatedly over roughly 80 minutes. People get inverted, imploded, and expanded, and then it happens again. And again. And again. And if it seems like I just keep talking about how insane the effects are, that’s because that’s really its main move; Body Melt is a circus of completely bad taste endings for each of its stars.
It’s Itchy and Scratchy’s idea of a public safety advertisement about checking with your doctor before taking a new medication. Ultimately, the story is sparse; you’re here to see Carron flex his skills with liquid latex and mixtures of lubricant and corn syrup. Which is quite fine, the movie is worth watching just for that. However, those looking for more than a highlight reel of splatter movie kills will be disappointed, and rightfully so.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN? (WHEN YOU BLOW UP YOUR SPLEEN?)
Which leads to the primary question that had me wrestling with how I would talk about the film: can a film be too irreverent to send a message? What is the goal here? I plumbed Australian pharmaceutical history to try and see if there was some sort of contemporary counterpart to events in the film, any inspiration that tracked.
The closest I could find was Australia’s slow and lacking response to the thalidomide scandals of the 1950s and 60s, but the ties were tenuous at best. The film’s goal of being a pitch-black horror comedy, mainly meant to skewer the fitness crazes of the 80s and 90s, are subsumed by its technical achievements in making the audience sickly with slime, and leave you mostly numb to the horrific things that happen in it.
I think on a rewatch, the film’s philosophy was made clear by that numbness. As the vitamins take their last victim during a shootout– I won’t spoil how it happens, but I will spoil the reaction its witnesses have: being rapidly underwhelmed. It was at that moment that I realized what I feel is the real approach of the film. Body Melt does not try to convey a message about bioethics, but rather an approach to violations of bioethics. An approach, albeit a passive one to living with corrupt companies and the exploitation of people for profits.
AN ODDLY EXPERT SATIRE OF OUR APPROACH TO FEAR
Body Melt is a satire that plays in excess to make a point about how people become inured to the horrors they’re exposed to. In a surprisingly smart way, Body Melt becomes an absurdist shrug towards being turned into a lab rat, a rising and ever-related fear as companies push to gain ever increasing powers to skirt consequences for violating laws and human rights. When companies hide behind dozens of proxies of legal protection and walls of money to surround themselves, how do you keep from going insane as they mistreat swathes of the population and force you to watch? You sort of just learn to live with it.
And as bleak of an idea as it is, Body Melt’s ultimate dark humor stems from this. The joke is ultimately on the viewer; it mocks our own ability to turn a blind eye to them, turning the experiment gone wrong into an uncomfortable laugh through its extreme execution.
“How silly. That wouldn’t happen to us! Someone would stop them!”
“…Right?”
Body Melt is streaming on Shudder.
Reviews
‘Tesis’ Review: A 90s Hidden Gem

The film forums, threads, and pages I follow have recently been abuzz with talk about a film called Tesis. Usually, when older films are hyped out of nowhere, it means a new physical release is coming, or a new cut of the film has been assembled. To my surprise, Tesis returned to the conversation when Shudder released it just a few weeks ago. It should be noted that discussions around Tesis probably started when Umbrella Home Entertainment released a gorgeous collection around October of 2024. Still, I hadn’t seen much talk about it until its Shudder release. Does the movie hold up to the hype? The title of this piece might just give it away…
Tesis follows Ángela Márquez (Ana Torrent), a student working on her thesis project on audiovisual violence. Professor Figueroa (Miguel Picazo) and fellow student Chema (Fele Martínez) assist Ángela with finding gnarly films to further her studies. Ángela finds her professor dead in one of their university’s screening rooms. She takes the tape he was watching when he died and watches it with Chema. They soon realize the subject of the tape is none other than Vanessa (Olga Margallo), a student who went missing from campus roughly two years ago. After subsequent viewings, Ángela and Chema realize the tape they’re watching isn’t a film…it’s a snuff tape.
Comparing Tesis to A Serbian Film
Personally, I would never recommend A Serbian Film to anyone. And it’s not because the subject matter is “too offensive” but because it’s not a good film. Even though it deserves to be on disturbing movie lists, there’s little substance to it other than the political commentary that lightly shades the film in a positive light. Tesis is a film I would recommend to someone looking for a Serbian Film-like film. It may not have the same amount of gratuitous blood, violence, and sex that Serbian does, but it does not fail at being disturbing, raw, and well-made.
Besides Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, there is very little modern media set around snuff in general. Alejandro Amenábar’s feature directorial debut broke the mold of good taste with this 1996 instant classic. Amenábar’s freshman film tackles not just the idea of snuff within the genre, but the human condition and how violence in media affects everyone differently. Ángela is fascinated from an educational standpoint, while Chema is more enthralled in a way that feels a bit too personal. Each character approaches the idea of snuff/ultraviolence in their own unique way that feels more personal than anything Schumacher attempted to do in 8MM.
Ana Torrent’s Pivotal Performance
Much of Tesis is more akin to a murder mystery, with Ángela thrust into the middle of this murderous game of cat and mouse. For a debut script, Amenábar finds impressive ways to keep the twists and turns coming without anything feeling forced or over the top. Each piece of information the viewer gets makes them feel like they know how it will end, until they get the next piece of information. The script feels like it could have only come from a seasoned professional. It’s almost as twisty as David Fincher’s The Game, only with a much better payoff.