The Best Horror Movies Streaming In September And Where To Watch Them

Looking back at her childhood, filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun once told NBC News:

"[I recall] exploring a lot of the darker spaces that the internet had to offer, where other people like me were gathering in that nascent, early time, when the internet still felt like this other world, separate from reality."

That alien feel takes on unnerving dimensions in Schoenbrun's 2021 film "We're All Going to the World's Fair," which is equal parts coming-of-age drama and psychological horror set in the glow of the computer screen. The title refers to the creepypasta-adjacent game at the plot's center, known as the World's Fair Challenge to its many online participants. The movie starts with lonely teen Casey (played by Anna Cobb in a debut role) committing to the challenge with a sort of blood oath, repeating "I want to go to the World's Fair" into her computer's camera whilst pricking her finger. According to the numerous YouTube videos she binge-watches, strange symptoms should begin to occur as part of a vague, monstrous transformation — which she also records and posts. When a concerned user named JLB (Michael J. Rogers) initiates contact with Casey, he becomes a witness to her worsening mental state.

Schoenbrun delivers a one-two punch in this patient gem, uprooting reality and substituting it with Casey's distorted perspectives. It can't quite be called a found footage horror film but it uses footage from other players, intercut with Casey's increasingly erratic first-person videos, to build a tapestry of online personas floating around in an ambient, plugged-in unreality. Anna Cobb's high-tension performance tethers it all. This is a movie for those who like more pit-of-the-stomach discomfort than buckets of blood on movie night. (Anya Stanley)

"We're All Going To The World's Fair" is available to stream on HBO Max as of September 1, 2022. 

Whether "The Munsters" is among the best horror features coming to streaming this September remains to be seen, but the Rob Zombie-helmed comedy-horror is certainly one of the most anticipated. In Zombie's first feature film since "3 From Hell" in 2019, the lovable Munster family of the beloved 1960s sitcom is resurrected to tell their origin story, prior to their move to the iconic Victorian mansion in Mockingbird Heights and before the events of the series.

For casting the classic roles, Zombie picks from his cadre of regulars who already have tried-and-true chemistry together. Jeff Daniel Phillips stars as Herman Munster, who meets Lily (played by Sheri Moon Zombie) in Transylvania where the two fall in love, much to the consternation of Lily's father, The Count (Daniel Roebuck). As a treat, audiences get to see the arresting Richard Brake in the role of Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang, and appearances by celebrated genre veterans Dee Wallace and Cassandra Peterson, a.k.a. horror hostess Elvira.

Coming in at the tail end of September, "The Munsters" has a lighthearted and colorized relationship with the macabre earning it a PG rating, prompting a sigh of relief from those familiar with the writer-director's unapologetically unrefined movies; there was genuine worry that the sweet, lovable Herman might drop F-bombs and Lily might striptease before the rating came in. It may seem like an impossible statement, but Rob Zombie may have made a family-friendly movie, one that hopefully ushers in a new wave of fans for one of America's most ghoulish and goofy families. (Anya Stanley)

"The Munsters" will be available to stream on Netflix as of September 27, 2022

Horror breathes best when isolation is involved. A group of researchers stuck in a frigid Antarctic outpost have nothing but mistrust and flamethrowers to rely on in John Carpenter's "The Thing." Jack Torrance has plenty of room to swing an axe within the spacious hallways of the Overlook Hotel, but with the haunted hotel snowbound in the Rocky Mountains, there's little room for his family to escape from "The Shining." Scary movies are generally associated with cramped spaces and dark corners, but nothing drops a white-hot ball into the stomach like the realization of being lost in an abyss — whether by snow or space or sea — and no one is coming to the rescue.

"Open Water" operates in similar waters to Alfonso Cuarón's resilience-in-orbit thriller "Gravity" or Baltasar Kormákur's harrowing survival story adaptation "Adrift," where its potential victims are technically free to float anywhere, but can't get home. Chris Kentis' aquatic horror is based upon the real-life tragedy of Texas couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were accidentally abandoned by their boat on a scuba diving trip along the Great Barrier Reef. Like "Home Alone" but with more catastrophic consequences, a botched head count leads to the pair clinging to each other thousands of miles from the shore, and it's not long before someone gets an open wound — and that's before the sharks start to appear.

With no-frills, minimalist storytelling and the use of live sharks, Kentis channels the intensity of a Paul Greengrass movie like "United 93" while making the audience care as much about the couple's fate as the Freeling Family of "Poltergeist." These characters matter to each other beyond the screen, making the fear all the greater while watching. (Anya Stanley)

"Open Water" is available to stream on Hulu as of September 1, 2022.

Those who crave something weighty and nihilistic can look deep into "The Eyes of My Mother," Nicolas Pesce's debut horror feature that disturbed audiences at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. The celebration of suffering operates with unending bleakness: a truck driver chugging along a rural route stops when he sees a woman stumble into the road but instead of screaming for help, the woman hears the oncoming vehicle and simply lies down where she stands, spreading her body along the road for maximum impact. 

/Film's Chris Evangelista describes the monochromatic odyssey as "a nightmare you can't wake up from," due to its disorienting push-pull between repulsive horrors and striking cinematography not unlike Ana Lily Amirpour's black-and-white vampire antihero picture "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night." It's nasty business, but it's impossible to look away.

The story concerns Francisca (played by Kika Magalhães), a young woman who could use just one healthy friendship without involving shackles and mutilation. As a young girl, she witnesses her mother's murder and helps her distraught father keep the perpetrator chained in a barn on the family property, where she surgically removes his eyes and severs his vocal cords but keeps him as her only friend; this is the environment Francisca grows up in and internalizes. So when she is all grown up and looking to recreate that dynamic for a family of her own, the result is haunting and imprints on the mind long after it's over. (Anya Stanley)

"The Eyes of My Mother" is available to stream on HBO Max as of September 1, 2022.

Fun fact: one of the greatest slasher movies never got a sequel (though it did get a gnarly 3D remake). 

"My Bloody Valentine" is a Canadian horror film by director George Mihalka and written by John Beaird. It arrived in 1981 at the crest of the slasher movie cycle, hoping to cash in on the successes of holiday-centric horror like John Carpenter's "Halloween" and Sean S. Cunningham's "Friday the 13th," the latter being released the year prior and made it clear that serial killers could bring box-office dividends. But this one's got its own folk song.

"My Bloody Valentine" naturally surrounds the lover's holiday, but there's little love going around. It's set in the Canadian mining town of Valentine Bluffs which, despite its name, hasn't had a Valentine's Day dance in twenty years, suspending the tradition after an accident left multiple miners dead and one unhinged survivor. Legend has it that Harry Warden was the only survivor of the methane explosion that could have been prevented had his supervisors not ditched their post to attend the V-Day festivities. After those same supervisors met grisly ends, along with warnings more death will come if the town ever holds a Valentine's Day dance again, Warden became a legendary local boogeyman whose name comes up when the killings begin again.

What sets this movie apart is its characters and its kills. The main players are young, working-class friends whose camaraderie is believable and charming before the axe starts swinging, and the censorship surrounding the penetrative death scenes were extensive. If seeing a human heart in a heart-shaped candy box seems thrilling, this is the movie to watch. (Anya Stanley)

The original "My Bloody Valentine" is available to stream on HBO Max as of September 1, 2022.