When it comes to streaming services, Hulu is not particularly known for their movie selection. If you’re looking for a huge number of horror movies to choose from, Netflix and Amazon Prime are typically your go-to. But the movies that Hulu does offer have some absolute gems for the horror fan who wants to pop some corn, turn off the lights, and have a good scare. Here are six horror movies on Hulu that will scare the crap out of you.
Carrie (1976)
There have been over a hundred movie and TV adaptations of Stephen King’s work, but Carrie is the first and arguably the best. Widely considered to be one of the best movies of 1976, Carrie is a cultural icon and earned Oscar nominations for both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie.
If you’re a horror fan, you doubtless know the basics. Carrie White (Spacek), a girl raised in near isolation by her crazy mother (Laurie), is bullied mercilessly by the other high school girls. When punished for the bullying, one girl hatches a plan to humiliate Carrie at the prom by getting her elected prom queen, then dumping a bucket of pig blood on her while she’s onstage. Little does she know that Carrie has the power to make them all pay.
I Saw the Devil
The revenge thriller is a well-worn South Korean genre, but I Saw the Devil pops with an undercurrent of emotion that surges below the graphic violence. Director Kim Jee-woon’s masterful filmmaking raises stomach-twisting torture porn to the level of art.
When a young woman is brutally murdered, her fiancé Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun), a secret service agent, vows revenge. What follows is a descent into depravity, as our protagonist tracks the murderer (Choi Min-sik), catches and tortures him, then lets him go and continues to hunt him, over and over, drawing out his pain and torment. As he sinks deeper into pure evil, will Soo-hyun be able to keep himself from becoming the monster he hunts?
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
The first movie in the Hellraiser franchise is, deservedly, a classic, and is available on Hulu as well. (If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for? Go watch it and come back!) But as iconic as the first movie is, many horror fans consider Hellbound: Hellraiser II to be even better due to its strong imagery and intense, unflinching celebration of the grotesque.
Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) returns as the heroine and finds herself in a mental institution run by a sadistic psychiatrist (Kenneth Cranham) obsessed with the Lament Configuration. His obsession leads to Kirsty and a young puzzle-solving patient named Tiffany (Imogen Boorman) being sucked into hell, where they must stand up to the Cenobites — including the iconic Pinhead — and fight their way back to the land of the living.
Dave Made a Maze
Every list of horror movies needs to have at least one horror-comedy, and man, is this a doozy! Dave Made a Maze, an independent film by Bill Watterson, is quirky, imaginative, funny, and utterly original. Oh, and with some juicy scares along the way! If you grew up with Labyrinth and The Goonies, you will see their fingerprints all over this movie.
Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) returns from a weekend away to discover her boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) has built a cardboard fort in their living room. Annie calls a friend, who calls a couple friends, and before you know it, there’s a party of people eager to go inside. They discover that the interior of the cardboard fort is a vast maze of cardboard hallways, complete with booby traps and a minotaur. Dave’s friends must find him and a way out before they all die in an explosion of confetti, yarn, and silly string.
Let the Right One In
Just when Hollywood had seemed to drive a stake through the heart of the vampire movie, this Swedish film came to raise the genre from the dead. Let The Right One In has been widely praised for its intelligent storytelling, beautiful cinematography, and complex characters, and is loved by horror fans for the intensely creepy atmosphere and equally intense scares.
At the base of this movie is a classic tale of boy meets girl … except the “girl” (Lina Leandersson) is an ageless vampire, and the boy (Kåre Hedebrant) is trembling on the edge of violence against the boys who have been bullying him. Set in ever-dark midwinter Sweden, their romance unfurls in blood and death as they both struggle to survive.
Event Horizon
When this movie was released in 1997, it got quite a drubbing from the critics. Don’t listen. Event Horizon is far from a perfect movie, but a movie doesn’t have to be perfect to be terrifying, and good God, is it terrifying. Event Horizon is a messy, bloody mash-up of science fiction and haunted house horror, and the scares, a satisfying mix of psychology and gore, will leave you breathless.
In the far future, a spaceship named the Event Horizon mysteriously disappears in deep space, then suddenly reappears in Neptune’s orbit. A rescue team, headed up by Captain Miller (a pre-Matrix Laurence Fishburne) and Dr. Weir (a post-Jurassic Park Sam Neill) are sent to solve the mystery. They find the crew dead, victims of a malevolent force that turns on them next, with the help of one of their own.
