10 Frightful Picks to Get You Started With That Free Shudder Trial – Gizmodo

Seoul StationImage: StudioCanal

Shudder knows its audience. The horror streaming service has a well-curated interface divided into sub-categories (including a timely selection of tales of confinement) to help you get started, but theres still a ton of spooky content for newcomers to wade through. Naturally, we have some suggestions.

In case you hadnt heard, Shudder is upping its usual seven-day free trial to 30 days (use code SHUTIN) for new subscribers, so if youve ever thought about signing up, now is definitely the time.

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Freak accidents. Unexplained deaths associated with the production. Weird vibes that require sets to be blessed. Some of Hollywoods most notorious cursed productions are spotlighted in this five-part Shudder Original series, with installments on The Exorcist, The Omen, and Poltergeist currently up on the site.

Each 30-minute doc digs into the tragic, ghoulish, and/or otherwise unusual incidents associated with each film (investigating what was real and what was lets make this scary movie even scarier promotional hype), and brings some fascinating context with the help of people who worked on the film (Linda Blair! Richard Donner!) as well as, in the case of two films at least, religious scholars, film critics, and a real-life exorcist, among others. The Exorcist itself is available on Shudder, though youll have to go elsewhere for the other source films so far. Future Cursed Films episodes (on The Crow and Twilight Zone: The Movie) will drop soon.

Unless this is your first time reading io9, you know how much we love this exceedingly clever Japanese zombie movie thats unlike anything youve ever seen before (as long as you watch past the first 30 minutestrust us). All hail Shudder for giving this instant cult classic a streaming home after its festival breakout success. POM!

We called it the best Guillermo del Toro movie he never made, and indeed the Oscar winner himself later sang the praises of Issa Lpezs ghostly tale about a group of homeless children struggling to survive amid a drug war in Mexico City. Tigers Are Not Afraid ismuch like One Cut of the Deada Shudder Exclusive, so if youre only going to stick with the service for 30 days, make sure you add this grim but deeply beautiful film to your watchlist.

Jordan Peele (Get Out), Tony Todd (Candyman), Rachel True (The Craft), Keith David (The Thing, They Live), and UCLA professor Tananarive Due are among the talking heads in this briskly edited, entertaining, and extremely informative study of Black characters and creators throughout the history of the horror genre. Shudder also has several episodes of the related Horror Noire podcast available to stream (featuring extended interviews with some of the contributors), and you will be very tempted to revisit George A. Romeros 1968 landmark Night of the Living Dead, which Shudder has available, after you watch the docas well as Bill Gunns lesser-known (but no less groundbreaking) 1973 indie vampire drama Ganja and Hess.

If theres one thing horror movies love to emphasize, its that veering off the main road can lead to some awful discoveries. Things like the Bates Motel, chainsaw-wielding cannibals, andas Tourist Trap vividly demonstratesroadside attractions carefully constructed to ensure that all who visit never leave. Though its kids-getting-picked-off-one-by-one plot is nothing new, this 1979 film from David Schmoeller (who later made Puppet Master) will still get under your skin, thanks to a tone that manages to blend kitsch and ghoulishness. It is the ultimate sinister mannequin movie, with the hulking Chuck Connors (a few years past his best-known role as the star of TV Western The Rifleman) playing the roadside museums folksy-yet-maniacal proprietor, and suitably grimy production design by Robert A. Burns, who also worked on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes.

Shudder has some choice oddities lurking in its collection, including this supremely demented, John Waters-esque 1973 cult classic, directed by Ted Post (Beneath the Planet of the Apes). A social worker is startled to learn her new clients have a most unusual family dynamic: The baby, whose name is Baby, is actually a full-grown man of ordinary intelligence whos simply been treated as an infant his entire life. While youre taking that in, know that the story of The Baby doesnt end there...nay, it gets even stranger. See it, believe it, become transformed by it forever.

Yeon Sang-ho directed this animated prequel/parallel story to his runaway zombie hit Train to Busan (which you can also watch on Shudder; incidentally, its sequel, Peninsula, just dropped its first trailer recently). Seoul Station begins just before the outbreak that erupts into a national crisis in Busan and like that film, its about a girl and her estranged father...sorta. In this case, theres also a crappy boyfriend in the mix, and the main character is a young woman whos trying to leave sex work behind. Theres a feeling of despair at play hereunlike Busans occasional flashes of hope in humanityand some incisive social commentary to go with Seouls animated (but still totally squishy) zombie chaos.

Shudders bounty of festival hits also includes this 2017 Taiwanese horror-comedy about a group of high school kids, including some hateful bullies, who happen upon a ghoul who used to be a girl and decide to keep her like a tortured pet. Things...go downhill from there. As Evan Narcisse wrote in his review for io9, which you can read in full here, Mon Mon Mon Monsters subverts the horror-movie trope that humans are the true monsters; instead, it takes that idea, kicks it in the balls, and then squeezes a lemon and onion juice cocktail into its eyes. This is a must-see vision of end-stage nihilism.

Hollywood is eyeing a remake of Argentinian writer-director Demin Rugnas intensely scary tale, but heres your chance to see the O.G. version, which happens to be one of the most original horror movies in recent memory. It starts on what appears to be an ordinary suburban street, where what can only be paranormal forces have been troubling certain residents. After a couple of tragic incidents, a team of eccentric investigators descends to poke aroundjoined by a local cop whod just as soon not have anything to do with all things unknowably spooky. Terrified is special because its so unfamiliar, which means (much like the characters) you have no idea what malevolent twist its gonna take next. As a result, its startling and bone-chilling from start to finish.

Enthusiastic fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13thpresumably prerequisites for being Shudder subscribers anywaywont want to miss these lovingly compiled documentaries that chronicle the making of two of horrors most enduring franchises. The Nightmare entry runs around four hours, while Friday the 13th, with more total films, is closer to six and a half, and both are packed with interviews, anecdotes, memories, and behind-the-scenes insights galore. Exhaustive? Yes. Obsessive? Maybe. Essential? Definitely.

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10 Frightful Picks to Get You Started With That Free Shudder Trial - Gizmodo