February is that special time of year — a time when it feels like there’s no end in sight to winter, even if your brain tells you spring is closer than it was a month ago. It may just be the perfect time to bury yourself under some blankets, turn the heat up, turn the lights down, and treat yourself to some good scares. If that’s what’s on the menu, Hulu’s streaming service has everything from extraterrestrial intruders to psychic heroes and iconic slasher satire. In case there’s too much to choose from, we’ve gone through all of Hulu’s most chilling film titles to put together a guide to the best horror movies the service has to offer.
Needless to say, Hulu isn’t the only streaming platform with horror titles on demand. Lucky for you, we’ve also put together guides to the best horror movies on Netflix and best horror movies on Amazon Prime.
American Psycho (2000)
Before he became a dark knight, Christian Bale helped solidify his reputation as a powerhouse of a leading man in 2000’s American Psycho. Both a brilliant satire and a gushing slasher flick, American Psycho follows the strange and bloody adventures of wealthy yuppie Patrick Bateman, who enjoys waxing poetic about Huey Lewis and The News almost as much as he likes chopping up business rivals, sex workers, and just about anyone else who shows up in the wrong place at the right time.
Rotten Tomatoes: 70%
Stars: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas
Director: Mary Harron
Rated: R
Runtime: 101 minutes
The Dead Zone (1983)
In 1995’s The Prophecy, Christopher Walken plays an angel threatening to bring about the end of the world, but in 1983’s The Dead Zone, Walken plays a hero trying to stop it.
To be more precise, Walken plays a man with the indistinct name of Johnny Smith, who becomes a lot more distinct after a fateful car crash. In the wake of a five-year coma, Smith learns he has developed psychic powers. Through physical contact, Smith can see your past, your present, and even your future. Unfortunately, while Smith uses his ability to do some good — like hunting down a serial killer — he learns there’s little material reward in what he does. With failing health and empty pockets, Smith ultimately finds himself in the position of either saving himself or saving the world. The Dead Zone is a wonderful, early Stephen King adaptation, made decades before every actor and comedian in Hollywood started falling over each other to impersonate its leading man.
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Stars: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt
Director: David Cronenberg
Rated: R
Runtime: 103 minutes
Species (1995)
Whenever a story features a character who grows from infancy to adulthood in a matter of months, it’s probably not going to work out well. That’s what scientist Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) learns in the 1995 sci-fi/horror classic Species. Natasha Henstridge plays Sil, the product of the insanely bad decision to splice alien DNA. Once Sil reaches adulthood, she goes on a killing spree while attempting to find a human mate that can give her the offspring that will mean humanity’s downfall.
Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
Stars: Natasha Henstridge, Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley
Director: Roger Donaldson
Rated: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
The Omen (1976)
In retrospect, it’s both wonderful and strange that the same director who brought us 1978’s Superman also gave us the reason why most expecting couples of the late ’70s at the very least had second thoughts if considering naming their newborns “Damien.” We’re speaking, of course, of Richard Donner’s classic The Omen. Five years after the American ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) secretly adopts the newborn Damien to replace his own dead son, a series of horrible events plagues his family. One by one, everyone who tries to investigate the phenomena winds up dead until Thorn himself must confront the horrible truth about his child.
Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
Stars: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens
Director: Richard Donner
Rated: R
Runtime: 111 minutes
Cujo (1983)
The Dead Zone isn’t the only Stephen King classic on Hulu. You can also watch the tense and slow-building Cujo. Unlike the more well-known King horrors with their supernatural villains or global pandemics, Cujo‘s antagonist is more mundane but no less terrifying. When the titular St. Bernard is bit by a rabid bat, what used to be a gentle giant starts killing anyone unlucky enough to get near him, and that could include Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace) and her young son Tad. Mother and son find themselves trapped in their stalled Ford Pinto, and Donna will have to find a way to save herself and her child from the rabid monster before either the beast or the unforgiving sun kills them.
Rotten Tomatoes: 63%
Stars: Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Danny Pintauro
Director: Lewis Teague
Rated: R
Runtime: 93 minutes
Sputnik (2020)
The U.S. may have won the Space Race, but in the sci-fi horror flick Sputnik, it’s Russian cosmonaut Konstantin (Pyotr Fedorov) who makes history by bringing back the first alien visitor, and he does it without even knowing. Judging it by its plot alone, there isn’t a lot about Sputnik that sounds unique — after all, stories of humans acting as unwilling hosts to aliens are as old as moon craters. What makes Sputnik stand out is how the story is told. Yes, it has its moments of CGI grandeur and monstrous gore, but for much of the story, you don’t know exactly what kind of film you’re watching or who the real villains are. Almost everyone in the movie is hiding something, from the possessed Konstantin to the psychiatrist Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina) who interrogates him, and the military commanders overseeing it all. The result is a more intelligent and compelling horror than you’re expecting.
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Stars: Oksana Akinshina, Fedor Bondarchuk, Pyotr Fedorov
Director: Egor Abramenko
Rated: NR
Runtime: 113 minutes
The Host (2006)
A couple of years before the first of many Cloverfield films, Oscar alum Bong Joon Ho’s The Host fed some much-needed life into the neglected monster genre. Our story follows a desperate family, led by patriarch Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong) and his son, Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho). When a vicious underwater creature emerges from the Han River, the monster snatches Gang-du’s daughter and flees, but only after unleashing a massive rampage, attacking and killing many. As both American and Korean government forces start pushing in on the monster and the family, Gang-du’s clan must defend themselves from the creature’s wrath in their quest to rescue Gang-du’s daughter. Bong Joon Ho made waves last year by winning Best Picture for his impressive social thriller Parasite. With The Host, it’s a blast to see Ho operating with white gloves off, paying homage to monster stalwarts like Godzilla while imbuing his narrative with rich characters and fun-as-hell visual effects that have stood the test of time.
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Stars: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Rated: R
Runtime: 119 minutes
Ghost Stories (2017)
Adapted from their 2010 play of the same name, British writer/director duo Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman deliver a faithful and fresh stage-to-screen transfer of their esteemed production. Operating in the anthology tradition, Ghost Stories places viewers in the shoes of professor and television host Philip Goodman (Andy Nyman), who has made it his life’s work to blow the whistle on psychic hoaxes. After receiving an invitation from a well-known paranormal researcher (Leonard Byrne) to investigate three proclaimed cases of the supernatural, Goodman takes us on a dread-filled journey, one where we’re treated to three wholly unique, synaptically linked tales of terror, experienced through the eyes of each case’s respective person of interest. Featuring stellar performances from a gripping ensemble cast of British talents, including the almighty Martin Freeman, Ghost Stories moves nimbly through each of its three terrors, delivering wholly original twists and turns while paying homage to the play’s portmanteau roots.
Rotten Tomatoes: 84%
Stars: Andy Nyman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther, Martin Freeman
Directors: Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
Rated: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
Tragedy Girls (2017)
In horror films, women tend to be the victims far more often than men. Tragedy Girls takes advantage of those expectations and turns them on their heads with two very modern monsters. McKayla Hooper (Alexandra Shipp) and Sadie Cunningham (Brianna Hildebrand) are high school seniors who are obsessed with true crimes and social media fame. That’s why they start committing actual murders in the name of getting more hits for their blog, Tragedy Girls.
But this is a horror-comedy, so things don’t go very smoothly. McKayla and Sadie have a killer instinct, but they have to constantly escalate their murders just to keep their momentum going. This is a darkly hilarious film that happens to feel very timely.
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Stars: Alexandra Shipp, Brianna Hildebrand, Josh Hutcherson
Director: Tyler MacIntyre
Rated: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)
Anna and the Apocalypse is the first, and possibly only, Christmas zombie musical. Make no mistake, it is a horror film. But the songs are so fun and catchy, that the moments of genuine tragedy may catch you off guard. Ella Hunt stars as Anna Shepherd, with Malcolm Cumming as her best friend, John. On the verge of a major change in her life, Anna sings her way through her small town before realizing that something has gone horribly wrong. But that gives Anna a new mission to rescue her father and friends at school.
Nick (Ben Wiggins), Anna’s semi-love interest, fully embraces life in the zombie apocalypse with one of the film’s show-stopping songs. But if you’re expecting a Hollywood ending, don’t.
Rotten Tomatoes: 78%
Stars: Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Sarah Swire
Director: John McPhail
Rated: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard team up to tear horror movie conventions apart in The Cabin in the Woods. Dana Polk (Kristen Connolly), and a group of friends — including Chris Hemsworth as Curt Vaughan — take a much-needed vacation while sharing a cabin. But they soon find themselves living in a horror movie-like experience that forces them to act out of character.
The truth about The Cabin in the Woods deserves to be seen, rather than told. Suffice to say, the events leave the young men and women struggling to survive as they’re boxed into an inescapable situation. There are plenty of monsters in this movie, but the scariest monster of them all is still mankind’s collective inhumanity.
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Stars: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison
Director: Drew Goddard
Rated: R
Runtime: 92 minutes
The Houses October Built (2014)
Director Bobby Roe’s 2014 The Houses October Built is a semi-fictionalized retelling of his own 2011 documentary of the same name. The story will be familiar to most: Five friends are on a road trip to scour the best-haunted attractions across America. What they didn’t sign up for is a creepy cult of scare-hounds that decide to stalk the band of buddies. The found footage genre has been done to death, but there’s something exciting and enticing about the way that Roe and his team breathe new life into this strange hybrid of faux-documentary-meets-narrative tropes. Until true evil rears its several ugly heads, it actually feels like you could be watching an authentic, if not slightly demented, low-budget doc about Halloween haunted attractions. For those left wanting more when the credits roll, the film spawned a sequel, The Houses October Built 2 (also available on Hulu), that picks up where the first film strands us.
Rotten Tomatoes: 60%
Stars: Brandy Schaefer, Zack Andrews, Mikey Roe
Director: Bobby Roe
Rated: R
Runtime: 91 minutes
Hounds of Love (2019)
There’s something about Aussie filmmaking that is just so unsettling. For those who enjoy walking away from the likes of Wolf Creek and Lake Mungo feeling happily winded, give Hounds of Love a spin. From writer/director Ben Young, Hounds of Love follows Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), a kidnapped suburban girl, and her captors, John and Evelyn (Stephen Curry and Emma Booth). The couple takes Vicki back to their home, where all her worst nightmares come true. But, resilient and conniving, Vicki begins to exploit the deranged couple’s emotional vulnerabilities, pitting them against each other. This is a cunning film from start to finish and a beautiful first feature from its breakout genre-auteur. Hounds of Love doesn’t want to be your friend, so if you like your horror films a bit lighter, it’s best to stray away from this one.
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Stars: Ashleigh Cummings, Emma Booth, Stephen Curry
Director: Ben Young
Rated: NR
Runtime: 108 minutes
The House That Jack Built (2018)
The films of Lars von Trier can often be polarizing, and that’s certainly no exception with The House That Jack Built. The film stars Matt Dillon as the titular character, a meticulous serial killer. The narrative is divided into five chapters, each of these flashbacks to one of Jack’s brutal crimes. This is the first film that von Trier made outside of his notable Depression Trilogy, which featured Antichrist, Melancholia, and Nymphomaniac, and his vision here feels even more demented than his divisive trifecta. If you’re after solid character work and good-old unforgiving torture-terror, then spend a night with The House That Jack Built.
Rotten Tomatoes: 58%
Stars: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman
Director: Lars von Trier
Rated: R
Runtime: 151 minutes
Pet Sematary (2019)
Sometimes, dead is better — especially for the Creed family. After a string of tragic misfortunes befalls the aforementioned clan, a local friend shows Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) an ancient burial ground, one with “life-giving” properties in its folkloric soil. What follows is nothing short of pure hell. Remakes can be pretty hit or miss, but last year’s reimagining of Pet Sematary is more than worthy. There are necessary callbacks to Stephen King’s source novel, as well as the 1989 original film, but writer/director team Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer put their own unique spin on this twisted reincarnation story. With grounded performances from Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow, this version of Pet Sematary feels more naturalistic than its predecessor. While the late-’80s film is hard to replace, we can’t imagine another stab at King’s text being better than this 2019 attempt.
Rotten Tomatoes: 58%
Stars: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow
Directors: Kevin Kölsh, Dennis Widmyer
Rated: R
Runtime: 101 minutes
Let the Right One In (2008)
Vampires have seen their fair share of cinema, both good and bad. Over a decade ago, there was Let the Right One In (based on the Swedish novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist), an ultra-compelling, air-brushed interpretation of classic vampiric lore. Set in Stockholm in the early 80s, we follow Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) through his everyday tribulations as a bullied adolescent. When a quiet, pale-faced girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson) moves in next door to him, the two youths foster a friendship. Unbeknownst to Oskar, Eli is actually a budding vampiress living under the watchful eye of Håkan, her late-aged guardian and keeper. Foregoing tropes and easy scares, Let the Right One In instead focuses on the emotional connection between the film’s two fragile youths, an impressive character study set against the moody nighttime exteriors of a snowy Stockholm. Critics raved that Let the Right One In pumped new life into the overly trod vampire genre. Now, you be the judge.
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%
Stars: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Rated: R
Runtime: 114 minutes
The Lodge (2019)
Nothing says “bad times for all” like a traumatized stepmom-to-be getting snowed in with her embittered and equally traumatized stepchildren — in the middle of nowhere. From the malicious minds that brought us 2014’s Goodnight Mommy, The Lodge is a discomforting blend of close-quarters madness, familial frailty, and religious insanity. Indie stalwart Riley Keough delivers a restrained but haunting performance as the rattled stepmother. As strange events begin piling up at the remote cabin, the stepchildren (played by Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh) do a little digging and discover their new mom is the single escapee of a very dark past. Intense, lurking visuals, oppressively dim lighting, and a dooming score are the backbone to this tale of winter woe that will keep you guessing from start to finish. Think The Shining, but on a painfully microcosmic scale.
Rotten Tomatoes: 74%
Stars: Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh
Directors: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Rating: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
My Friend Dahmer (2017)
This isn’t the first origin film to explore the dark and twisted roots of Jeffrey Dahmer’s psyche, but it’s one of the most compelling explorations of the butcher that shook the world. Adapted from a 2012 graphic novel of the same name by Dahmer’s high school friend John “Derf” Backderf, writer/director Marc Meyers’s visually stunning film gets us uncomfortably close and personal with Dahmer and Derf during their teen years. Inspired by Dahmer’s already-maudlin idiosyncrasies, Derf and his posse of friends invite Dahmer into their inner circle for a number of staged pranks and rebellious hijinks. As Dahmer’s home life starts to crumble, his behavior becomes increasingly grim and disturbed. Is it the dissolution of the nuclear household that unleashes Dahmer’s inner demons? Or would his evil ways have surfaced regardless of stimuli? Meyers’ film poses these heavy questions for the viewer, who gets to decide how much empathy Dahmer’s history truly deserves. Next to none, if you ask us.
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Stars: Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Alex Wolff
Director: Marc Meyers
Rated: R
Runtime: 107 minutes
Shirley (2020)
Elisabeth Moss is mesmerizing as the titular Shirley Jackson, the famed horror novelist behind such books as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Director Josephine Decker’s film is an adaptation of Susan Scarff Merrell’s 2014 novel of the same name, about a young couple, Fred and Rose (Logan Lerman and Odessa Young), who moves in with Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg). As Rose starts to befriend Shirley, a series of unusual events and increasing psychological duress morphs a once-promising living situation into a perplexing nightmare for all involved. The entire cast is on fire in Decker’s film, creating a tormented stage of performances not unlike the battered and belligerent souls of Edward Albee’s famous 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? While less an outright horror film, Shirley effectively builds its terror-laced atmosphere through a slow burn of rich little oddities and uncanny phenomena. Regardless of its exact genre pinnings, we highly recommend it.
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Stars: Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Odessa Young
Director: Josephine Decker
Rated: R
Runtime: 107 minutes
Southbound (2015)
There are a number of words we can use to describe the hellish anthology-film-meets-road-picture mashup, Southbound. It’s unpredictable, chaotic, perplexing, and, above all, relentless. To put things into perspective, our story begins on a stretch of desolate highway. Two men, Mitch (Chad Villela) and Jack (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin), speed down a barren desert interstate, trying to outrun an onslaught of winged demon creatures. Disturbing events transpire, which eventually leads us to a motel. Just as we’re starting to piece together who these guys are, where they’ve come from, and what’s up with the demons, the film forcibly shifts perspective from Mitch and Jack’s tale to three new characters, Sadie, Ava, and Kim, all lodged in the same motel. Then, after we spend time with the girls, another three stories unfold. Players from previous stories repeat, along with the aforementioned demons of flight. With the segments filmed collaboratively by the horror filmmaking trio known as Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, and Chad Villella) and three other directors, Southbound is a non-stop thrill ride, with a foreboding through-line of recurring motifs, disturbing imagery, and plenty of gore.
Rotten Tomatoes: 80%
Stars: Chad Villela, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Fabianne Therese, Hannah Marks
Directors: Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath
Rated: R
Runtime: 89 minutes
Wrinkles the Clown (2019)
Is your child misbehaving? For a nominal fee, Florida residents can call in Wrinkles, a professional creeper clown, to scare the kiddies straight. Wrinkles the Clown is a multilayered documentary about the very real clown for hire, focusing on the man behind the mask, the communities he serves, the families that call upon his services, and the internet-obsessed teens who use his phone number as a thrilling rite of passage. Wrinkles the Clown is sincerely uncomfortable but also utterly fascinating. Just as we begin to get used to the film’s odd cast of characters, the doc does a complete 180, unfolding an entirely new layer to the Wrinkles mythos. What new layer, exactly? You’ll just have to see for yourself.
Rotten Tomatoes: 71%
Stars: Wrinkles the Clown
Director: Michael Beach Nichols
Rated: R
Runtime: 75 minutes
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