American horror fans are about to have a new best friend. It’s called Shudder, it comes from AMC, and it’s an all-new all-scary VOD service that offers a big batch of genre titles for a very reasonable price. (That’s AMC Networks, not AMC Theaters.) The key difference between Shudder and services like Hulu or Netflix is that these flicks are curated by actual horror freaks who dig through deep distribution catalogs and pull out (mostly) their favorite stuff. The head curators are also the programmers of TIFF’s world-famous Midnight Madness slate, and believe me: you can trust Colin Geddes when it comes to scary movies. They also made a bunch of handy little categories for you to pick through, as well as a constant feed of horror films for people who simply cannot make up their minds on what to watch.
Shudder offers a 14-day free trial in addition to a more-than-reasonable $5 monthly rate for access to about 275 horror films of all shapes and sizes. In addition to the films cited in the full press release (pasted below for your convenience), I’d also like to recommend the wildly underrated Black Death, Simon Rumley’s truly unsettling films The Living and the Dead and Red, White and Blue, the crazy baboon flick Shakma, Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter, the slick, Swedish slasher Cold Prey, Ben Wheatley’s brilliant Kill List, and 1972’s Asylum, which is probably the coolest horror anthology ever made that’s not called Creepshow. Ooh, they also have City of the Living Dead! And Re-Animator! I feel like a kid in a candy store, even though I’ve already seen 94% of these films.
(If you really don’t know where to start or just need more recommendations from the Shudder catalog, hit me up on twitter.)
Shudder is currently available on iOS and Android mobile devices, and Roku, with more platforms to come in the next few months. Shudder is for U.S. audiences only. UK horror junkies who need a VOD fix can always go talk to my pals at The Horror Show.
