55 Best Movies On Shudder

If you're a genre geek you're probably familiar with the disappointing realization that most streaming services are seriously lacking in the horror department. Then again, if you're a genre geek, you probably subscribe to Shudder. So struggling to find obscure giallo classics, pre-code horror comedies, or skin-crawling French Extremity flicks isn't really a problem for you.

That said, you may find that you are now experiencing the opposite problem — the agony of choice. Shudder may not be the first horror-focused streaming subscription service out there, but its righteously well-stocked library and careful curation reigns supreme. Backed by AMC Networks since its beta launch in 2015, Shudder has carved out a space for itself in the streaming landscape as a must-subscribe for casual carnage fans and hardcore horror devotees alike. But flipping through the service's creatively named collections and endlessly entertaining new additions can be something of a daunting task. Do you dive into Ozploitation? Or would it be better to focus on a broader, more accessible genre?

Well, fear not ... or do, actually, because we've got the lowdown on the crème de la crème of what the streaming service has to offer. So sit back, relax, and keep your watchlist at the ready: Here are our picks for the best films Shudder has to offer.

Updated on July 5, 2022: Shudder is constantly updating its selection with new, scary titles that'll have you gasping in fright. So please note that this article is updated monthly to reflect changes to Shudder's streaming availability.

A city slicker couple head off into the Canadian boonies for a romp in a provincial park. Then, in an especially secluded part of the backcountry, an unsettling encounter with an aggressive hiker rattles the couple, who speed up the pace and head deeper into the woods. Soon, they loose the trail, and the couple soon find themselves up against nightmarish odds ... including entering the territory of an aggressive bear. Savage and emotionally draining with boiling tension that will make your stomach churn, "Backcountry" is hard proof that your horror movie doesn't need supernatural monsters or outlandish slasher villains to generate genuine scares.

• Starring: Missy Peregrym, Jeff Roop, Eric Balfour
• Director: Adam MacDonald
• Year: 2015
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

The next time someone tells you that John Carpenter's "Halloween" was the first true-blue North American slasher, do us a favor and correct them. That distinction belongs to "Black Christmas," Bob Clark's genuinely terrifying Canadian masterpiece. Set during the holidays in a colorfully lit sorority house, the only damper on the girls' mood is a crank caller who routinely breathes perverse obscenities and unnerving ramblings into their landline. Then, as the girls begin to go missing one by one, "Black Christmas" lets us in on its blood-curdling secret ... one that's guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine. Weaponizing festive trappings to create a unique and distinctly '70s sense of unease, "Black Christmas" is a chilling, chilly slasher classic that hasn't aged a day.

• Starring: Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea
• Director: Bob Clark
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

Released in the U.S. as "Andy Warhol's Dracula," Paul Morrissey's polarizing take on the vampire mythos is a wild ride, to put it lightly. Deathly ill and in search of a virgin's blood, Count Dracula and his greasy underling travel to Italy where they are invited into the decrepit estate of Marchese Di Fiore. Indebted and desperate, Di Fiore is all-too-happy to pawn his daughters off to a seemingly rich suitor. But when the blood-sucking count stars laying on the charm, instead of chaste young women, he encounters debauchery that rivals even his tastes. Scummy, sleazy, and unabashedly atmospheric, "Blood for Dracula" is top-tier campy cheese for those with strong stomachs.

• Starring: Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Arno Juerging
• Director: Paul Morrissey
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 65%

After miraculously surviving a drag race accident, a young woman named Mary Henry accepts a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. Though ... how she survived, exactly, remains something of a mystery. While traveling to her new gig, she's repeatedly haunted by a ghoulish, pallid apparition that compels her to take a detour towards a derelict lakeside carnival on the outskirts of town, which may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of her hazy past. A macabre masterpiece that feels like a cross between Jean Cocteau and Ingmar Bergman, "Carnival of Souls" is an understated and thoroughly unsettling B-movie classic.

• Starring: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger
• Director: Herk Harvey
• Year: 1962
• Runtime: 78 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Lucio Fulci's 1980 film begins as all great films do, with a séance. During the ritual, a woman named Mary experiences a horrifying vision of a priest, who's hung himself in the village of Dunwich. All the H.P. Lovecraft fans in our readership ought to perk up at the mention of one of literature's most accursed locales. The vision appears to kill Mary, who's buried while her group urges the police that something terrible is about to happen. 

By chance, the journalist sent to investigate Mary's death hears something unnatural coming from her grave plot. After rescuing the inexplicably still-alive Mary from her coffin, the pair dig deeper into the meaning behind Mary's vision, which seems to prophesize an imminent undead invasion. "City of the Living Dead" is, undeniably, one of the gnarliest films ever made. From regurgitated insides to wind machines blasting still-wriggling maggots (no, really), Fulci pulls no punches. And the result is one of the most repulsively dream-like films ever made.

• Starring: Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Janet Agren
• Director: Lucio Fulci
• Year: 1980
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 46%

Wildly censored, infamously controversial, and until recently, very hard to find on streaming, Ken Russell's masterpiece adapts the historical events of the Loudun possessions in which a convent of Ursuline nuns slipped into mass hysteria that resulted in the execution of a local priest. "The Devils" underlines the horrific political machinations that spawned the debauchery that has since become the stuff of legend. A nightmare of scapegoating and "yes-and-ing" far more terrifying than anything deemed "salacious" by the censorious powers that be, "The Devils" boasts sedition in spades and exquisite central performances that highlight the power plays throbbing in the background of all those fleshy possessed nun scenes.

• Starring: Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Dudley Sutton
• Director: Ken Russell
• Year: 1971
• Runtime: 109 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

Set 15 years after poor little Regan MacNeil fell prey to the demon Pazuzu, Lieutenant William F. Kinderman battles his own demons as he investigates a baffling series of murders that carry the hallmarks of a deceased serial killer. When a formerly catatonic patient in a psychiatric ward claims to be the killer, Kinderman is shocked to find the man bears a striking resemblance to his old deceased friend, Father Damien Karras. Directed by William Peter Blatty (the writer of the novel "The Exorcist"), the film more than holds its own against William Friedkin's 1973 original. "The Exorcist III" also features a legendary, weepy-eyed performance by Brad Dourif, as well as one of the most shocking jump scares in horror history!

• Starring: George C. Scott, Ed Flanders, Brad Dourif
• Director: William Peter Blatty
• Year: 1990
• Runtime: 110 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 59%

Hey look, the tagline says it all: They don't call it "the curse" for nothing. When goth teen Ginger Fitzgerald gets her period for the first time, her younger sister, Brigette, feels left behind. However, after a freak run-in with a very large and very angry wolf creature, Ginger's hormonal appetites start to include an undeniable urge to kill. One of the all-time great coming-of-age flicks the horror genre has produced, "Ginger Snaps" is positively dripping with Y2K suburban malaise as well as ... other fluids. Grounded by two stellar lead performances and an incisive metaphor for the unpredictable horrorshow that is young womanhood, "Ginger Snaps" is a certified werewolf classic that will give you something to howl about.

• Starring: Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche
• Director: John Fawcett
• Year: 2000
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

God told us to tell you that this is one of the best films in Larry Cohen's career. God also told us to tell you that this — a sci-fi/procedural thriller/religious horror film — is one of the most miraculous genre mish-mashes out there. "God Told Me To" follows Peter Nicholas, as New York detective tasked with investigating a series of seemingly random homicides. The only connection? Every killer has the same motive: God told them to. To say much more would give away the delightful, unpredictable twists. Buckle up and expect the unexpected.

• Starring: Tony Lo Bianco, Sandy Dennis, Richard Lynch
• Director: Larry Cohen
• Year: 1976
• Runtime: 91 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

Veronica can't pick a lane. On the one hand, being a part of the "in crowd" (a group of girls who are all named Heather) would give her the high school equivalent of unlimited power. On the other, the misanthropic rebel with a devious smile and even more devious ideas about what popular kids "deserve" is pretty cute. What begins as morbid Bonnie and Clyde escapades soon escalates into all-out murder, forcing Veronica to take a stand about what it is she wants. Dark as sin, "Heathers" is what you get when you let the a serial killer direct a John Hughes movie. Cynical to its very core, the film is a cult classic in the purest sense (which is to say that it has since been adapted into a wildly popular musical).

• Starring: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty
• Director: Michael Lehmann
• Year: 1989
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

The directorial debut of Renaissance man Clive Barker (who wrote the short story on which the film was based), "Hellraiser" tells a tale of sadomasochism, teenage perseverance, and inter-dimensional torturers from beyond the pale. While Pinhead (played chillingly by Doug Bradley) may have emerged as the series' figurehead and Ashley Laurence's intrepid Kristy may be our heroine, the real protagonist (and villain) of "Hellraiser" is Clare Higgins' Julia.

After snagging his hand on a nail while moving a mattress, Julia's boring husband, Larry, bleeds all over the floorboards of their new home, inadvertently awakening a pile of goo that used to be his debaucherous brother, Frank. Frank (well, a pile of sinew and bone that claims to be Frank) implores Julia, his former lover, to help him pull himself together, as it were. While Julia lures men into Frank's clutches, her stepdaughter, Kristy, stumbles into their plot, one that eventually involves four leather-clad demons. Nightmarish, bloody, and unapologetically kinky, "Hellraiser" is an exquisite example of late-1980s, practical effects-riddled horror.

• Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence
• Director: Clive Barker
• Year: 1987
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%

Addressing the systemic erasure and historically racist framing of Black voices in the horror genre, "Horror Noire" takes a look back at the history of Black horror films and the instrumental Black artists who've played in the genre since its inception. Featuring interviews with culture critics as well as prominent artists like Jordan Peele, Ken Foree, and Tony Todd, "Horror Noire" is an incredibly well-made tapestry of historical context, oral storytelling, and longstanding trends in horror cinema.

• Starring: Jordan Peele, Tony Todd, Ken Foree
• Director: Xavier Burgin
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 83 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

When college student Samantha Hughes sees an ad for a babysitting job, all she's thinking about is paying her rent. What she's not thinking about is the possibility that her employers might be part of a devil-worshiping cult hellbent on bringing something unnatural into this world. Remind us to never accept random gigs on nights where there's a full lunar eclipse. Balancing its homage to early slasher classics and a thorough understanding of the "satanic panic," Ti West delivers a slow-burning throwback with atmosphere and chilling visuals to spare.

• Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Greta Gerwig
• Director: Ti West
• Year: 2009
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

The final entry in John Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy" — an existentially nightmarish triptych that includes "The Thing" and "Prince of Darkness" — "In the Mouth of Madness" follows John Trent, an insurance agent whose keen sense for fraud tingles at the details of his latest case: A renowned horror author has gone missing, along with the manuscript sure to make his publisher a big chunk of change. Tasked with tracking the author down, Trent's reality soon begins to tear itself apart at the seams (rather literally) as he uncovers the true power behind the author's magnetic cult following. Arguably one of the best Lovecraftian horror films (despite not being explicitly based on H.P. Lovecraft's work), "In the Mouth of Madness" is a surreal, funny, and genuinely unsettling watch, much more entertaining than its lackluster Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest.

• Starring: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow
• Director: John Carpenter
• Year: 1994
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 57%

An insider account of one of the most famously troubled productions of all time, "Lost Soul" offers an oral history of the deeply bizarre shenanigans that plagued the making of 1996's "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (you know, the one where Marlon Brando looks like a marshmallow?). From the production's original director Richard Stanley losing control of his passion project to haughty actors to acts of God, "Lost Soul" offers a wildly entertaining coroner's report on a doomed and fragmented train wreck.

• Starring: Richard Stanley, Kier-La Janisse, Michael Gingold
• Director: David Gregory
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Let's be honest, access to "Mandy" is easily worth the price of a Shudder subscription. Panos Cosmatos' sophomore feature follows Red Miller, a logger who's abandoned his mysterious violent past to live in domestic bliss in the isolation of the Shadow Mountains. Then, one day, Red's titular girlfriend has the misfortune of catching the eye of a local cult leader, who visits hellfire and chaos upon the couple when Mandy rejects his advances. Featuring a career-best performance from Nic Cage and a psychedelic disregard for naturalism, "Mandy" is a revenge rock opera flanked by tenderness, loss, and violence-courting ego.

• Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache
• Director: Panos Cosmatos
• Year: 2018
• Runtime: 121 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

The flesh-munching nightmare that started it all, George A. Romero's genre-defining tale is as unsettling now as it was half a century ago. A violent sickness grips the nation — a plague with the power to rouse the dead, who clamor, slack-jawed to feast on the flesh of the living. A group of anxious survivors takes refuge in an isolated farmhouse where their nerves and desire to see another sunrise force them to work together. Featuring one of the most devastating endings in not just horror history but the history of film itself, "Night of the Living Dead" is a prescient and discouraging statement on how human beings, and human institutions, act when all accepted systems break down.

• Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman
• Director: George A. Romero
• Year: 1968
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

The year is 1838, and Thomas Hutter has been sent to Transylvania at the behest of his employer to visit a new client named Count Orlok. Ignoring all the ominous portents and hushed murmurs from the terrified locals, Hutter meets with the rat-faced count who seems a little too excited when Hutter accidentally cuts himself at dinner and definitely too excited when he says that Hutter's wife looks like she "has a lovely neck." Undeniably powerful nearly a century later, F.W. Murnau's unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is an eerie, phantasmagoric terror trip that continues to age like a fine wine. At least ... we're pretty sure that's wine.

• Starring: Max Schreck, Alexander Granach, Gustav von Wangenheim
• Director: F. W. Murnau
• Year: 1922
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

A no-budget zombie film within a low-budget zombie film, "One Cut of the Dead" follows a hack director and his ragtag crew as they attempt to make a zombie film inside an abandoned warehouse. To say more would be to undercut the film's scrappy charm — namely, its Russian nesting doll-like construction, which hilariously blurs the line between scrappy filmmaking shenanigans and genuine attempts at survival. This is a film that opens with a 37-minute single-take shot. It contains big creative swings, and it's a miracle that it all works as well as it does. Treat yourself to this very special, rewarding, and hilarious magic trick of a film.

• Starring: Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, Harumi Shuhama
• Director: Shin'ichirō Ueda
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 96 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Now look, we're bending the rules a little bit here. But we promise that it's for a very good reason. Let's think of "Primal Screen" as a short film or a mini-documentary rather than "the only episode of a show that didn't get any more episodes." Directed by Rodney Ascher (perhaps known to readers for his 2012 documentary "Room 237"), "Primal Screen," as it currently exists, unravels the subconscious rumblings behind one of humanity's more common phobias: ventriloquist dummies. From its proposed syllabus of dummy films to the uncomfortably true-sounding suggestion that the line between ventriloquism and social media personas is a straight one, "Primal Screen" is unnerving and unforgettable.

• Starring: Gregory S. Burkart, Ryan Alessi, Julian Brandon Bereny
• Director: Rodney Ascher
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 27 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: N/A

After being cast out from the University of Zurich for "bringing his dead professor back to life with horrific side-effects," the brilliant and deranged Herbert West relocates to Miskatonic University. There, he forces his friendship on a young medical student named Dan Cain, who gets sucked in to West's obsessive desire to create a serum that can (say it with us) reanimate the dead. Hilarious and disgusting, "Re-Animator" is what you get when you dunk a "Three Stooges" short in a pile of 1980s practical gore effects. Frenetic and witty, "Re-Animator" is an incredible introduction to an impressive roster of genre film greats — from its director, Stuart Gordon, to charismatic co-leads Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.

• Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton
• Director: Stuart Gordon
• Year: 1985
• Runtime: 85 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

A pillar of the Japanese psychological supernatural horror craze that gripped the new millennium, "Ringu" follows Reiko Asakawa, a reporter who's sent to investigate the mysterious death of her niece and her three friends. Dismissive of the rumor that the girls died after watching a cursed videotape, Reiko watches the VHS for herself only to receive a phone call informing her that she has seven days to live. Downright creepy and patiently paced, "Ringu" boats a bleak, dread-filled atmosphere that will make you glad that VHS tapes are a thing of the past. Ghosts can't possess streaming services, right?

• Starring: Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki Nakatani
• Director: Hideo Nakata
• Year: 1998
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Despite pivoting from a parody to more of a straight-up slasher, "The Slumber Party Massacre" has a tongue firmly planted in its cheek. The plot is delightfully simple — a drill-wielding killer has decided that a group of local high school girls need to die. Lucky for him, the gals are having a slumber party, so they're all in one place. Name another film where a group of would-be slasher victims eat pizza off the delivery boy's corpse, we dare you. Funny, quotable, and gory as all sin, "The Slumber Party Massacre" brilliantly walks the line between supreme darkness and silliness.

• Starring: Michele Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villella
• Director: Amy Holden Jones
• Year: 1982
• Runtime: 77 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 42%

Running away from personal problems, Evan does what all despondent, purpose-seeking young adults do and goes traveling overseas. In Italy, Evan meets a charming woman with a dark centuries-old secret, one that we won't be spoiling here. Masquerading in its opening minutes as a road trip drama, "Spring" boasts top-shelf body horror and genuinely touching romantic beats in equal measure. Surreal, slow-burning, and delightfully heartfelt, "Spring" is one of the best offerings from dual directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the dynamic duo behind 2017's "The Endless" and 2012's "Resolution."

• Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, Vinny Curran
• Director: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 109 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

Considered by many to be the scariest film ever made, Tobe Hooper's seminal classic tells of a group of pals who head off into the country with a macabre task. The grave of Sally's grandfather may have been vandalized, so she and her friends are off to investigate. During a detour to their family's old farmhouse, the group stumbles across the neighboring estate, which just so happens to be home to a family of cannibalistic outcasts. Visceral, sweaty, and nightmarish in the proper sense of the word, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is a dizzying descent into the darkest recesses of human depravity. You'll love every second of it.

• Starring: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Allen Danziger
• Director: Tobe Hooper
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 83 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

Finally, an answer to the question "what if a neglectful father became a better person while zombies invaded a train?" Inarguably one of the best horror films of the 21st century, "Train to Busan" boasts a rare blend of action, melodrama, and horror that delivers on high-octane sequences and bloodshed in equal measure. If slow-moving zombies bore you to tears, you're in luck. These undead monsters move unnervingly fast, transfer their viruses at lightning speed, and don't let a little thing like "broken bones" get 'em down. As if you needed another reason to seek this gem out, Ma Dong-seok gives an incredibly charming supporting performance as a passenger with a rock-solid conscience and biceps to match.

• Starring: Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Choi Woo-sik
• Director: Yeon Sang-ho
• Year: 2016
• Runtime: 118 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Don't let that inordinately long runtime scare you off. "The Wailing" is one of the most unsetting, accomplished genre films of the 21st century. It is well worth your time. A mysterious sickness has afflicted a small, rural village in South Korea. Those unlucky enough to fall sick break out in a violent skin rash that worsens into murderous outbursts and, ultimately, death. A gutless local cop, Jong-goo, is on the case, with his schlubby family man persona a stark contrast to the hellish scenario he's ostensibly qualified to solve. Sure enough, as Jong-goo's investigation festers, things get personal. And before you know it, there's nothing he won't do to get to the bottom of the bloodbath. Dense, horrifying, and unnerving to its core, "The Wailing" lives up to its name and then some.

• Starring: Kwak Do-won, Jun Kunimura, Hwang Jung-min
• Director: Na Hong-jin
• Year: 2016
• Runtime: 157 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%