We here at Arrow in the Head are making an effort to keep track of the best horror movies that are available on various streaming services, and today we’ve set our sights on the Hulu service. We’ve looked over what they have to offer, put together a list of ten of the Best Horror Movies on Hulu Right Now, and you can check our picks out below!
CARRIE (1976)
The first Stephen King adaptation also ranks highly as one of the best. Director Brian De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen brought King’s story to the screen with a great script and great style, with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie turning in Oscar-nominated performances as telekinetic teen Carrie and her horrendous mother. Carrie is bullied at school and has an awful home life. We care about her, we want to see things get better for her. But good things are not to be. And when the bullies go too far at the school prom, we see Carrie unleash her telekinetic powers in one of the most popular sequences in horror history. There have been a couple other adaptations of Carrie over the decades, but they can’t reach the level of De Palma’s film.
PREY (2022)
It was previously established in the Predator franchise that the alien hunters have been coming to our planet for centuries – so director Dan Trachtenberg decided to take us back to the 1700s for his Predator movie Prey. This one goes back to the basics in a major way, following a young Comanche woman (Amber Midthunder) as she encounters a Predator that’s a bit different from any we’ve seen before. Prey is a simple story that’s well told and features some cool kills – most notably a sequence where the Predator takes down a group of French fur trappers. Here’s hoping this is the first entry in a series of movies that will show Predators visiting Earth throughout history. Give us a samurai movie next!
THE WRETCHED (2019)
The first drive-in hit in decades, The Wretched was #1 at the 2020 box office for six weeks, due to it being released during the pandemic when nothing else was coming out. Now it has made its way to Hulu, and I think the attention and success the film received was deserved, as it’s a good horror flick that’s a new play on the Rear Window / Fright Night set-up of a person thinking something strange is going on with their neighbor. Here, the neighbor is a child-eating witch with a lair in the forest. The Wretched was written and directed by Brett and Drew Pierce, whose father Bart did effects work on Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. There is a touch of Evil Dead to some of the woodsy horror of this film.
FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984)
One of the best entries in the Friday the 13th franchise, this one finds Jason Voorhees stalking and slashing his way through a group of young people who have rented a house near Crystal Lake – and also tormenting the family that lives right across the rented house. That family includes a young boy named Tommy Jarvis (played here by Corey Feldman), who would become one of Jason’s greatest adversaries. Directed by Joseph Zito, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is fun, dark, and features some awesome special effects, which were provided by Tom Savini. Stuntman Ted White wasn’t happy to be playing Jason, but he turned in an awesome performance as the hockey mask-wearing killer, making his version of the character legitimately terrifying. Hulu also has the first and third Friday the 13th movies.
LITTLE MONSTERS (2019)
Writer/director Abe Forsythe’s Little Monsters has a concept that sounds questionable at first, being a horror-comedy about a zombie outbreak disrupting a kindergarten class field trip to a petting zoo. Turns out, Forsythe took that idea and made it into a really fun and amusing film that’s carried by great performances from Lupita Nyong’o as teacher Miss Caroline, Alexander England as an irresponsible uncle who has accompanied a kid on the field trip to get closer to Miss Caroline, and Josh Gad as children’s show host Teddy McGiggles, who reveals himself to be an awful person when put in a life or death situation. The movie has heart, humor, and bloodshed – and despite the set-up, thankfully does not rely on zombie children.
ALIEN (1979)
Often referred to as a “haunted house movie in space”, director Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien introduced audiences to one of the most iconic cinematic monsters of the last fifty years, the xenomorph. As an added bonus, we also get one of cinema’s great heroines with the character Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver. A group of blue collar space workers respond to a distress signal emanating from an uninhabited moon and discover an alien ship full of eggs… just in time for one of those eggs to hatch. Soon they’re trapped on their own ship with a bloodthirsty creature, drifting through space. Where no one can hear you scream. This great sci-fi horror film spawned a franchise that went off in several different directions, but if you’re looking for scares the first Alien has the most.
FRESH (2022)
In its early scenes, director Mimi Cave’s feature debut Fresh seems like it’s going to be a love story about down-on-her-luck twenty-something Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) being swept off her feet by successful surgeon Steve (Sebastian Stan). But then a darkness creeps in, and around the 30 minute point Noa finds herself chained up in the basement of Steve’s isolated country home. Things get really creepy from there. Cave and screenwriter Lauryn Kahn crafted a fascinating film that’s packed with thrills and has some nice twists and turns along the way, and it’s carried by the terrific performances delivered by Edgar-Jones and Stan. Viewers who tuned in for a love story might end up appalled and gagging, but fans of horror thrillers are going to have a great viewing experience.
THE CONJURING (2013)
Not many great movies have come out of the “Conjuring Universe”, but the main Conjuring movies are leagues above most of the spin-offs that have been released over the years. Director James Wan delivered one of the best haunted house movies of this century, and the greatest thing about it is the chemistry between Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as married paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their interactions alone would make The Conjuring worth watching, but then Wan surrounds them with masterfully crafted scenes of suspense and jump scares as they try to rid a family’s home of an evil spirit and dig into a back story of Satanism and witchcraft.
MIMIC (1997)
Mimic may be the most compromised film on Guillermo del Toro’s résumé, as he had a lot of problems with Dimension Films during production. It’s not unfiltered del Toro, but there are still enough interesting and creepy ideas in here to make it worth a watch. Based on a short story by Donald A. Wollheim, the film stars Mira Sorvino as an entomologist who helps bring an end to an epidemic spread by cockroaches by creating a new insect called the Judas Breed, which secretes an enzyme that kills roaches. Problem is, the Judas Breed doesn’t die out in six months as intended. After a few years, the bug has grown and evolved to the point where they can mimic the appearance of adult humans, a trick they start using to prey on people. Bug monster action ensues, and Mimic turns out to be a decent viewing experience even though del Toro didn’t have a good experience making it. Hulu has both the theatrical cut and the director’s cut.
ALONE (2020)
It remains to be seen if director John Hyams will ever get the chance to shoot the Maniac Cop remake he has been attached to for years, but he did do one hell of a job with Alive, a remake of a 2011 Swedish film called Gone. This one stars Jules Willcox as Jessica, a woman who catches the attention of a predatory Man (Marc Menchaca) while on a road trip. Captured by the Man and taken to a cabin deep in the woods, Jessica is able to escape from the cabin before long… but making it out of the wilderness proves to be more of a challenge, with the Man tracking her the whole way. Alone is a really smart and intense thriller that would probably be more popular by now if it didn’t have such a bland, over-used title. Hopefully more viewers will find it on Hulu.