Scary Movie Binge: Here Are the Horror Films to Watch on Streaming

Halloween is just over the horizon, meaning it's time for scary movies. Yet, although Miami's local arthouse has a pretty damn great lineup of midnight movies this month, at the multiplex, it's a choice between a killer clown, a sad loser clown, and whatever this is. Thankfully, October is the perfect time to curl up at home with a whole stack of scary movies as a chill begins to take hold outside. (Ignore for a second that it's still 80 degrees here in Miami.)

Since stacks of DVDs have been replaced in most people's homes with tiny boxes full of streaming movies, we're recommending a whole bunch of films on every major service, from the behemoths like Netflix and Disney+ to specialty streamers like Criterion Channel and Shudder. Dive in below.

The Best Horror Movies on Netflix: Hitchcock Heaters

Netflix is often criticized, somewhat rightfully, for having very few older movies available on its service. (Gotta make room for Love is Blind Miami, after all!) This October, however, it's making up for it by listing some of the most iconic movies from the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. Psycho is obviously the first place to start. It's got one of the most iconic murders ever committed to film, along with one of cinema's most disturbed protagonists in Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Filmmakers have been mining Psycho for inspiration for decades, from Gus Van Sant with his shot-for-shot remake of the film to Osgood Perkins, son of Anthony, who incorporated his family story into the recent Longlegs. For my money, however, it's The Birds that takes it as Hitchcock's most unbearably scary vision. It's got a simple concept — birds have spontaneously begun attacking people for reasons unknown — yet by way of Hitchcock's atmospheric direction, it turns into a complete nightmare of ecological rebellion against humankind. Hitchcock completionists can also watch Marnie, starring The Birds' Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery; otherwise, it's skippable thanks to its lack of thrills and questionable sexual politics.

The Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime: Slashers and Sickos

Prime Video has so many great horror selections that it's hard to pick just a few. Several slasher classics are available on the service, including a 50th-anniversary presentation of Tobe Hooper's original 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Variety recently voted the iconic film as the greatest horror film of all time. Going from Leatherface to Pinhead, Prime also has the original Hellraiser, directed by Clive Barker and featuring the famous Cenobites, a coterie of sadistic beings from a dimension where pain is pleasure. Turning to more cosmic horror, John Carpenter's The Thing is one of the all-time greatest monster movies, an intensely suspenseful nightmare in which a team of Antarctic scientists led by Kurt Russell must fend off a shapeshifting killer alien. Finally, if you're gearing up to see Art the Clown return in Terrifier 3, now in theaters, you can dip into the first two films in the saga — both are streaming on Prime.

The Best Horror Movies on Max: A24 Horror

"Hark, Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father, the Sea King, rise from the depths full foul in his fury!" So begins the absolutely unhinged monologue from Willem Dafoe's deranged seaman in Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, the most darkly comedic film about a pair of North Eastern lighthouse keepers going insane ever made. With Eggers set to release his Nosferatu adaptation later this year, watching The Lighthouse is the perfect way to get in touch with its director's unique sensibilities, as well as those of A24. The studio has embraced unique visions of horror, and quite a few of its best cuts are available on Max. You can see Florence Pugh fight off a group of mad Swedish cultists in Ari Aster's Midsommar, witness Barry Keoghan terrorize a doctor's family in Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and watch what happens when a bunch of French ravers drink spiked sangria in Gaspar Noé's Climax. But our top recommendation is Jane Schoenbrun's trans-coded horror story I Saw The TV Glow, in which a seemingly goofy kids' TV show becomes a gateway to horrific realizations amid the desolation of suburbia. Reviewed earlier this year by New Times, it's one of the year's finest films, and it's on Max alongside Schoenbrun's earlier film We're All Going to the World's Fair.

The Best Horror Movies on Disney+: It's Burton, Witches!

Okay, maybe Disney's streaming service isn't the best place to go for scary movies, but they've got plenty of spooktacular, family-friendly Halloween-themed flicks on view. Did Beetlejuice Beetlejuice have you salivating for more Tim Burton masterpieces? Not only is Disney screening his beloved drama Edward Scissorhands, but it also has the Burton-produced, Henry Selick-directed claymation classic The Nightmare Before Christmas and Burton's self-directed Frankenweenie. Feeling nostalgic for the Disney Channel days? The entire Halloweentown saga is available, along with other DCOM classics like Phantom of the Megaplex, Smart House, and Mom's Got a Date With a Vampire. Finally, you'll be happy to know that your favorite witchy women from Hocus Pocus are also on Disney+. The perennial All Hallows Eve favorite stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimi as a trio of mystic sisters from Salem wreaking havoc on a modern-day Halloween. The 2022 sequel is also streaming.

The Best Horror Movies on Hulu: New Classics and Auteurs

Quite a few recent success stories from the horror genre have landed on Hulu. The experimental Skinamarink, as well as hits Barbarian and Smile, which, like Terrifier, also has a sequel in theaters this month, are available to watch there. Two films from Jordan Peele, the doppelganger nightmare Us and the Oscar-winning Get Out, are up, as well as Panos Cosmatos' outrageous Nicolas Cage starring revenge thriller Mandy (two words: chainsaw battle). Going back a bit further, we've got Jim Jarmusch's vampire hangout flick Only Lovers Left Alive, in which Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston play a pair of deathless rockers, and Bong Joon-ho's monster mash The Host, where a fishy, mutated kaiju serves as a metaphor for American imperialism. Finally, while the original zombie thriller 28 Days Later isn't currently streaming for some reason, Danny Boyle's 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later is up on Hulu. Check it out in order to catch up before the newly announced follow-up 28 Years Later, which was apparently shot on iPhone 15, before it drops next year.

The Best Horror Movies on Peacock, Paramount+, and Apple TV+

Like Rowdy Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's 1988 cult classic They Live, we're here to recommend movies and chew bubblegum, and we're all outta gum. Okay, maybe that's not the line, but the movie is great. It's a paranoid thriller where all your wildest conspiracy theories come true, and a pro-wrestler turned actor has to battle an alien invasion trying to control the world through advertising and Reaganomics. It's streaming on Peacock. Meanwhile, another alien invasion is taking place on Paramount+, although this one is much stranger. In Annihilation, based on Florida author Jeff VanderMeer's bestselling novel, Natalie Portman plays a scientist exploring a mutating realm under extraterrestrial influence, searching for her lost husband. Perhaps the best film by Civil War director Alex Garland, its wild visions were underappreciated when released in 2014. Finally, the horror picks are remarkably thin on Apple TV+ — the prestige streamer isn't exactly one for genre fans unless you're looking for glossy sci-fi — but it does have Zodiac, David Fincher's look into the search for America's most infamous serial killer. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and a pre-Marvel Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, it's a fact-based, slow-burn thriller on an epic scale.

The Best Horror Movies on Criterion Channel: Cronenberg, J-Horror, and More

Let's get real: If you love movies and you don't have a Criterion Channel subscription, you're playing yourself. It's not just arthouse classics on this service, as its absolutely stacked October additions show. There are collections focusing on Japanese horror (Audition, Tetsuo: The Iron Man), sinister witches (Suspiria, The Love Witch), and gory, terrifying special effects (Night of the Living Dead, An American Werewolf in London). It's added new-school classics from Australia (The Babadook) and Korea (The Wailing), stone-cold classics from Hollywood (Rosemary's Baby, The Night of the Hunter), and even a special section on Stephen King stories (Christine, The Lawnmower Man). But we're especially excited about the selection from one of horror cinema's greatest auteurs, David Cronenberg. Six of the Canadian body horror master's earliest, goriest films are screening on Criterion, culminating with what may be his ultimate masterpiece, his 1986 adaptation of The Fly. Starring Jeff Goldblum as a mad scientist who accidentally fuses his DNA with that of an insect, it's a stealthy meditation on the heartbreak of terminal illness that will also make you cry and scream and (literally) throw up.

The Best Horror Movies on Shudder: Literally Everything

Shudder is a streaming service specializing in horror, so of course, we're not going to leave them out of this. Along with recent hits like this year's Late Night With The Devil and In a Violent Nature, quite a few stone-cold classics from the genre are available. There's a pair of Italian giallo essentials from director Dario Argento, Deep Red, and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; slasher favorites such as Friday the 13th from 1980 and John Carpenter's original Halloween from 1978; and movies from beloved directors like Sam Raimi (Evil Dead II) and Clive Barker (Nightbreed, featuring a rare acting appearance from David Cronenberg). But we want to shout out two particularly frightening films. First is The Exorcist III, directed by the original Exorcist's novelist William Peter Blatty; far from being a typical cash-in sequel, this follow-up to the original is one of the scariest movies ever made, full of disturbing imagery that will give you nightmares, guaranteed. Finally, there's Mad God, the 30-years-in-the-making stop-motion masterpiece by special effects wizard Phil Tippett.