Has anyone tried out Shudder? It’s a $5 a month ad-free streaming horror service. It kind of seems like it’s just taking stuff that you can find through either Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime, but not necessarily their whole catalogs. I just watched The Church last night and I’ve found a handful of movies I either hadn’t heard of or had no way to watch.
It does have a 14 day free trial for anyone interested.
So I keep looking at this, and I just…I wish I liked this more.
Last winter I took a look at Shudder and wrote down the names of movies streaming there that I either really wanted to see or that at least looked better than cash-in crap.
I came up with about 25…but of those 25, 15 were movies I’d seen already. So I decided not to plunge.
Decided to take a look tonight, and did the same counting exercise…and got the exact same list of movies. Does their selection change at all? It seems like it’s kind of stuck at a point in time and doesn’t really move at all.
Yeah, I just can’t see how genre-specific streaming services are a good idea.
OK so, yeah, thread necro and all that, but: I’m thinking it’s time to use the 7 day free trial and check out some stuff. So from what I’ve seen, Blood Quantum and Blood Machines are two recent exclusives to the streaming service, anything else I should make sure not to miss?
There are fantastic movies there, so the value of the service besides catching those exclusives depends on which movies you’ve seen before and/or may want to see again.
(I will say that they have managed to rotate their selection a bit since 2016.)
Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. It’s a goofy supernatural show based in High School, but I found it pretty funny.
I’m looking at exclusives because I want to make the most of the 7 day trial. I’m sure there are lots of good horror movies I should get around to seeing that aren’t exclusive to Shudder, but if I can get them on Netflix or Amazon then I can punt them down the road.
I’ve heard Haunt is really good. Also, their documentary on African American representation in Horror.
Looks like there’s also a documentary called ‘Cursed Films’ about movies like Poltergeist, Twilight one The Movie, some others that had bad enough stuff happen that they appear to have been cursed. Might be silly.
It sucks. It’s mostly a lot of stuff copied right out of the trivia section of IMDB.
Yeah wasn’t a fan either, super padded as well.
OK fair enough, that’s off the list. A little googling led me to this list though, how does it look?
Mandy, 100% Mandy. It gets weird.
That must be Horror Noire. Sounds good, I’m a big fan of Candyman, hope that’s in there. I see Keith David and Jordan Peele in the trailer, good sign.
I liked Revenge.
Can second Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, which is hilarious.
They have Hellraiser and Hellraiser II, Ginger Snaps, Re-Animator (and sequel), Behind the Mask: The Leslie Vernon Story (slasher flick mockumentary), Absentia (early Mike Flanagan, I quite liked), One Cut of the Dead (you might be tired of zombie movies but should still watch this), Spring (a monster romance from the Endless/Resolution folks), Audition, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, The Wailing, Over Your Dead Body (a lesser known recent Miike, quite creepy), The Void (vaguely Hellraiserish indie flick), The Changeling, Ichi the Killer, Terrified (obscure but excellent Argentinian horror), Satan’s Slaves (interesting Indonesian horror - remake of Satan’s Slave, which they recently added but I haven’t seen), Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance trilogy, Southbound (strong horror anthology), Threads, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original), Dark Water (the original), The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, A Tale of Two Sisters, The House of the Devil, Night of the Living Dead, and plenty of others I can’t weigh in on.
Fuck that’s a lot.
The UK selection isn’t nearly as good but I found half a dozen new things to watch during the free trial, plus Todd…
Ok so I finally did it! Actually my mobile carrier had a deal where I could get Shudder for 3 months at $.99 per month, couldn’t pass that up. So I’m going to start catching up on some good spooky stuff I’ve missed.
Blood Machines is sort of like some college art senior’s studio dance project spawned the night after he visited a strip club. It’s very weird, and somehow very wholesome.
Here’s a cool looking trailer for a new movie from Cronenberg. No, not David. No no, not Brandon either. It’s from Caitlin Cronenberg! What a family these guys have huh?
