A Horror Junkie’s Treasure

I have talked some about the streaming service Shudder in a previous article here in the Five Star Journal, but I focused on one of their original series, Creepshow. Now, after having more experience with their interface, their original content, and the selection of movies they get on the service weekly, I have much more to say. 

The current General Manager of the service, Craig Englar, is doing an outstanding job ramping up the service to compete with other small streaming services, like Screambox and Peacock. It keeps a competitive price of $5.99 a month, or $56.99 a year if you choose an annual subscription. 

     Now, to be honest, I hadn’t heard of Screambox before doing all of the research for this article, but it is a similar horror streaming service that premiered in October of 2021, about six months ago. I researched it heavily because I thought, “Oh, am I reviewing the wrong service?” I didn’t want to give you guys the wrong recommendation, but I can safely say now that I think Shudder is the safe bet. Shudder has been around since 2015 and is headed by the parent company AMC, giving it a lot more experience and a much more significant foothold in the industry. While Screambox is a dollar cheaper than Shudder per month and has a couple of gems on its service, it can’t beat Shudder’s meticulously curated catalog any time soon. 

     Shudder has some hard-to-find cult classics, like Cannibal Holocaust, which is a genuinely disturbing film, especially for its release date of 1979. It is one of the first films to allude to the found footage idea, and it does it pretty effectively, going a little too far with the idea at points to make the footage feel authentic. For example, there is real animal mutilation, which caught me off guard because I didn’t expect it going in. It's terrible to watch, especially a particular scene involving a turtle. There is also extreme fake gore as well, and heavy nudity. The entire film, in general, is very unsettling, and I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Shudder is perfect, but I think it's worth the price. Six dollars isn’t much for ad-free and uncut movies. Not everything on there is perfect, but there is more good than bad. Since Shudder is six dollars a month, I want to talk about six Shudder originals and exclusives that make at least one month’s payment worth it. 

     These are just the recommendations I’ve found so far, and by no means a definitive list. They also won’t be arranged in any particular order, other than the order in which I watched them, so number 6 isn’t necessarily better than number 1. 
     1: Creepshow - A Shudder Original Series - I’ve already talked about Creepshow before, but that was last year, so I want to mention it again. It is produced by Greg Nicotero, known for special effects from The Walking Dead, Dusk Till Dawn, The Hills Have Eyes, and Evil Dead 2. The show is based on the George Romero cult classic films Creepshow and Creepshow 2. The two movies were written by Stephen King, who has stories in the new show. Now, however, Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, has more stories in the show based on his work as a horror author. 

     This show is a horror-comedy anthology, similar to the movies, with a couple of pure horror stories sprinkled in here and there. Creepshow had a surprisingly good first season, with quite a few guest appearances from known horror actors, and it got me excited to see a show like this be something worth watching. In addition, the two specials released after the first season, the animated special and the holiday special, were fantastic. I think that's why season 2 was such an overall disappointment for me, and my expectations were admittedly high.
     Season 3 was half and half, with some good stories and some very bland ones. However, it was at least an improvement from season 2, giving me hope for season 4, which has already been greenlit. Either way, most of this series is worth the watch. 

     2: PG: Psycho Goreman - A Shudder Exclusive Film- This is a rated R parody of E.T., where two kids find an alien warlord and assume control over him. That doesn’t sound fantastic on paper, but this was such a fun movie with a lot of memorable moments. It has a small budget of about 600,000 dollars, but the practical effects are surprisingly good for that amount and cheesy when they need to be. The cast was perfectly picked, with great comedic timing on all of their parts. A sequel is already in the works for this movie because it was a pretty big hit for Shudder and the team behind it in general, during 2021. 

     3: V/H/S/94 - A Shudder Original Film - This movie is a sequel to the V/H/S trilogy released in the early 2010s. Shudder bought the rights to the franchise and attempted to recreate the magic that made some of those original films work so well. The basic concept of all of these movies is that they mix the horror genres of found footage and anthology, where the main characters always find a series of V/H/S tapes and decide to watch the disturbing content on them. 

     I have a lot of respect for this sequel, released last October in 2021. I have rarely seen a found footage movie use its medium so well. All of the short films within the movie have a grainy filter over them that expertly conceals the film's antagonists, giving so many scenes an ominous feeling of dread, especially in the first short, Storm Drain. Every story was unique in its own way, with one using the found-footage medium in another fun way I hadn’t seen before, during the short The Subject. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll see what I mean when you watch it. 

     Many popular horror directors got their start in the V/H/S franchise, like Ti West who just made X, which was a fairly big hit that already has a sequel on the way. I would suggest watching this movie, and you might be seeing some of the fresh masters of horror at the start of their careers. 
     4: See For Me - A Shudder Exclusive Film- This movie is a house invasion thriller, with the unique premise that the protagonist is blind. She needs to rely on a woman through an app on her phone to “see for her” and narrate her surroundings. I really enjoyed the sound design on this movie and thought the music was implemented well into scenes. When a movie is a Shudder Exclusive, they have the Exclusive rights to stream the film here in the U.S., but it's often a different story in other countries. See For Me is exclusively on Netflix in many other countries and was trending in the top ten internationally for a little while. So I would recommend this movie on Shudder, which has it exclusively here in the U.S. ad-free for only six dollars. I’m not saying this movie is incredible. I just thought it was a well-executed thriller that genuinely kept me enthralled for most of the runtime. 

     5: Cursed Films - A Shudder Original Series - This show is actually airing its second season at the time of this writing, and it's a well-directed documentary series about movies with jinxed productions. It talks about movies from across the spectrum, not strictly horror. For example, the Wizard of Oz was the first episode of season 2 and was pretty good! By far, though, my favorite episode was about Twilight Zone: The Movie. I am a fairly big fan of The Twilight Zone in general, so I was surprised I hadn’t heard of this one. Unfortunately, they’ve swept it under the rug pretty effectively until this documentary episode. It's the last episode of season 1, and it's a story too horrible to tell you here. 

     I would recommend just watching the episode in order to have first-hand witnesses tell you the horrible accident that occurred. But, beware, it does have real footage of the accident that may be disturbing to some viewers. 

     One of the upcoming episodes in season 2 is actually about Cannibal Holocaust, which I mentioned towards the beginning of this article. I’m excited to watch that one. 
     6: Color Out of Space - A Shudder Exclusive - Nicolas Cage has made a comeback recently, giving what a lot of people are saying is his best performance ever in 2021’s Pig. Although that movie isn’t a horror, many of his recent films are. He lends his unique skills to a lot of smaller horror films that have become instant cult classics as of late. Films like 2018’s Mandy (Another Shudder Exclusive), which is a dazzling horror film filled with gore and sorrow. 2019’s Color out of Space is an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. It stars Nic Cage as the patriarch of a family that comes into close contact with a meteorite and begins to experience terrifying things on their rural property. 

     Those are my six recommendations as of the time of writing this, but there is plenty more coming to the service. They just got the exclusive rights to Mad God, which is a heavily anticipated summer release that I would recommend looking into. If you’re interested, sign up online. They have a weeklong free trial for new users. Enjoy the terror.