There’s a lot to appreciate about a lean, mean horror movie that impresses in the way it sustains suspense or dread throughout without overstaying its welcome. This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to precisely that type of movie. The intense horror movie that gets your adrenaline pumping in a short window, then never eases up for its entirety.
If you’re in the mood for scares but don’t have much time to spare, these five movies should do the trick.
As always, here’s where you can stream them this week…
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – AMC+, IMDb TV, Showtime, Shudder, Tubi
Tobe Hooper set the bar high with this stone-cold classic. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother, and their friends take a road trip to visit her grandfather’s grave in Texas. While strolling down memory lane, the group falls prey to a family of cannibalistic psychopaths. Trade the woods for rural flatlands, but the strange locals’ scenario still applies. Hooper infuses his disturbing debut with some twisted humor. It’s always the perfect time to revisit this classic. But perhaps now, even more so, with a new sequel on the way this year.
Terrified – AMC+, Shudder
The cinematic equivalent of enjoying a haunted attraction, Demián Rugna’s feature is an onslaught of terror from beginning to end. Plot-wise, there’s not much to it, nor is there a lot of explanation for those that prefer answers. However, that doesn’t stop a cop on the cusp of retirement and a slew of paranormal experts from trying to get to the bottom of a series of bizarre activities plaguing a Buenos Aires neighborhood. With creative and innovative scares aplenty, Terrified is the type of horror film that lives up to its name; it’s freaking petrifying.
The Loved Ones – Pluto TV
This brutal feature introduces Lola, who wants nothing more than to be a princess and find Prince Charming. She decides that Brent is the one and invites him to the school dance. When he rejects her offer, and she sees him with another girl, well, Lola decides she’ll get what she wants one way or another. Lola doesn’t take rejection lightly, and things get downright brutal. The truth is that maybe no one will love her as much as daddy, and that’s most terrifying of all. Love hurts.
Them (Ils) – Criterion Channel, IMDb TV, Shudder, Vudu
Them, also known as Ils, predates the more well-known The Strangers by two years yet rivals it in terms of bone-chilling suspense from start to finish. Lucas and Clementine live quietly alone in their rural countryside home. Their peaceful existence gets shattered one night by the arrival of hooded assailants that begin to terrorize them throughout the evening. This French-Romanian home invasion movie brings intensity and nail-biting tension. While touted to be “based on a true story,” it also rivals The Strangers in its unsettling one-liner in terms of the killers’ motivation.
[REC] – AMC+, Roku
The idea behind 2007’s [REC] was born from Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s desire not just to make a scary horror movie but to make the audience an active participant in the fear unfolding on screen. The film follows reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, as they cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” It begins as a quiet evening but spirals into abject terror when they become trapped in quarantine with a deadly outbreak. [REC] gives the subgenre a new, bone-chilling twist, making for a non-stop horror assault that puts the viewer right in the thick of the terror.