The Best Horror Movies Streaming This Month Will Make Your Skin Crawl (May 2024)
We all love a "fun" horror movie, right? I'm talking about horror that feels like the cinematic equivalent of a roller coaster — fast, exhilarating, scary, but ultimately harmless. You buy the ticket and take the ride. But one of the things I love about the horror genre is that it's so damn flexible. On one hand, you can have fun horror movies like I just mentioned. And then there's the complete opposite: horror movies that make you squirm. Horror movies designed to make your skin crawl. Bugs, monsters, blood, body horror — the type of stuff that makes you feel like you need to take a shower after watching it. Those are the types of horror movies we're highlighting here — gnarly stuff, gross stuff, stuff that's going to make you feel more than a little icky. Be warned: it's about to get disgusting up in here.
Infested
Streaming on Shudder.
Arachnophobes beware: there's a new killer spider movie on the loose, and it's pretty damn good! Sébastien Vaniček, who is directing one of two new "Evil Dead" movies coming our way, helms "Infested," a creepy, crawly nightmare. Set in a crumbling apartment complex, this French fright flick traps a bunch of residents in a space swarming with increasingly large spiders. It's a pretty simple premise exploited to great lengths, as the spiders get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, killing anyone they come across. If you're even slightly scared of spiders or bugs in general you should probably skip this one, but if you think you can handle it, you'll witness a nasty, skin-crawling extravaganza as our heroes try to get the hell out, beset by spiders at every turn. There's a sequence where the main characters have to travel down a dark hallway covered in webs and spiders that's flat-out terrifying.
Stream this if you like "Arachnophobia" and "Attack the Block."
Alien
Streaming on Hulu.
Perhaps its shocks have been somewhat diminished with time, but Ridley Scott's original "Alien" still has the power to disgust. The infamous chestbursterr scene, in which a baby Xenomorph comes exploding out of poor John Hurt's chest, is incredibly disturbing and incredibly gross, and the entire film is full of gooseflesh-inducing gross-out moments just like it. The Xenomorph itself, all dripping goo and slimy teeth, is a walking gross-out, and as the doomed crew of the Nostromo goes up against it, things grow increasingly bleak. The franchise would eventually give itself over to action, but the original "Alien" is a slow-burning bit of disgusting dread, and it still holds power after all these years. Will the new movie, "Alien: Romulus," bring back the gross horror? We'll see.
Stream this if you like "Prometheus" and "Aliens."
Cabin Fever
Streaming on Max.
Eli Roth burst onto the scene with "Cabin Fever," the story of a group of college students who rent a cabin in the woods. Sounds like a fun getaway, right? Incorrect! A nasty flesh-eating disease is unleashed upon them, and soon our characters are falling apart, literally. I'm not the biggest fan of Roth's work (although I did enjoy his new slasher movie "Thanksgiving"), but I'll freely admit that "Cabin Fever" is a simple idea that works, and works well. Some of the film's early 2000s humor has aged poorly, but in terms of the gross-out factor, "Cabin Fever" is solid stuff that will probably have you cringing on more than one occasion.
Stream this if you like "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead" (2013).
Creepshow
Streaming on Shudder.
Sure, George A. Romero and Stephen King's "Creepshow" is a lot of fun, even comical at times. It's also gross as hell! The downright depressing "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" has King playing a country bumpkin who gets covered in gross moss from an alien meteor (it even ends up on his tongue, and King really leans into the disgustingness of it all). Then there's the final segment, "They're Creeping Up on You!", in which E. G. Marshall plays a rich man in a penthouse overrun with cockroaches (and they used a ton of real cockroaches for this segment, folks). One of the best horror anthologies of all time, they just don't make 'em like "Creepshow" anymore. Not even Shudder's "Creepshow" TV series can recapture the EC Comics-infused horror enjoyment of this original film.
Stream this if you like "Creepshow 2" and "Tales From the Darkside: The Movie."
Gerald's Game
Streaming on Netflix.
Speaking of Stephen King, here's "Gerald's Game"! For years, King's 1992 novel was considered to be unadaptable. Then Mike Flanagan came along and showed everyone exactly how it's done. Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) and her husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) have gone away to a lake house, where Gerald proceeds to handcuff Jessie to the bed for a little BDSM foreplay. Unfortunately for Jessie, Gerald ends up having a heart attack and dying ... leaving her still cuffed to the bed. Flanagan cuts back and forth in time to Jessie's traumatic childhood as she struggles to get free. To make matters worse, a hulking serial killer may or may not be lurking nearby. For most of its runtime, "Gerald's Game" is more psychological than outright horrific. And then Flanagan unleashes a gross-out moment so graphic that it might make you vomit. That's the power of cinema!
Stream this if you like "Dolores Claiborne" and "Hush."
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Streaming on Prime Video.
Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is loaded with existential dread that arises from the fear of being replaced. But it's also a pretty disgusting movie: those pods that replace and replicate people, complete with tendrils and goo, are mighty nasty looking. In this paranoid thriller, a group of characters discover that an alien invasion is underway. This invasion doesn't involve spaceships and little green men. Instead, the aliens are slowly replacing everyone, little by little, and turning them into emotionless pod people. The terrifying thing is that there's seemingly no way to tell where one person's consciousness ends and the alien double begins. Featuring an all-timer of a scary ending.
Stream this if you like the countless other versions of "Invasions of the Body Snatchers" (this is the best one — yes, even better than the original).
Underwater
Streaming on Tubi.
Sure, "Underwater" is kind of an "Alien" knock-off, trading the deep sea for deep space. But you know what? This is a solid little aquatic horror flick, with some nasty body horror to gross you out. Throw in some Lovecraftian monsters and you've got a stew going! Kristen Stewart (and her very cool buzzcut) stars as one of several humans trapped beneath the waves in a research station as a horde of sea monsters go nuts. This is the least-gross film on the list, so if you're looking for more fun and less disgustingness, this might be the way to go. This film flopped, so there's a chance you didn't see it at all when it hit theaters in 2020. Now's your chance!
Stream this if you liked "Alien" and "The Abyss."
Smile
Streaming on Prime Video.
Parker Finn's "Smile" has a way of working its way under your skin. For one thing, it's a rather hopeless movie — there's seemingly no escape from the malevolent force at the center of the story. The victims are stuck witnessing horrible things, including seeing people with ghastly wide smiles on their faces. Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin) plays a therapist who gets sucked into the world of the supernatural after one of her patients dies by violent suicide. Those around her think Bacon's character is merely grappling with trauma, but we, the audience, know there's something more wicked at work here. There's a dark sense of humor running through "Smile," but there's also a host of imagery that will have your skin crawling (I mean, just look at the image above).
Stream this if you like "The Ring" and "Cure."
Possessor
Streaming on Tubi.
As I said in my review of "Possessor," "Bathed in blood and gore and unrelentingly aggressive, Brandon Cronenberg's 'Possessor' is unlike anything you've ever seen before. It is a singular work – one so ghastly, so unique, and so brutal that it will awe some and disgust others. It is a film about extinguishing humanity and embracing savagery. The philosophy of Possessor is one of carnage. Of cutting ties with the things that make you human, and reverting back to the predator within." In other words, "Possessor" is a brutal movie, with some of the most graphic violence you'll ever see on film. The violence is gut-wrenching, to the point where it might be too much for you. Andrea Riseborough plays an assassin who can literally get inside people's heads, taking over their bodies to carry out kills. But when something goes wrong with her latest assignment, she becomes trapped, with her subject (Christopher Abbott) fighting for control of his own body. It's a remarkable movie ... if you can stomach it.
Stream this if you like "Infinity Pool" and "Scanners."
Antichrist
Streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.
In "Antichrist," the death of their child sends a married couple, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe, to a cabin in the woods. Anyone who has ever seen a horror movie can tell you that going to a cabin in the woods is never a good idea. Sure enough, chaos soon reigns in Lars von Trier's strange, horrifying nightmare. Gainsbourg's character, stricken by grief, grows increasingly unhinged, and things become terrifying in the process. Von Trier has never been one to shy away from controversy, and "Antichrist" goes to extremely unpleasant places, unleashing imagery designed to make you immensely uncomfortable.
Stream this if you want to feel absolutely terrible.