You’ll waste this Friday the 13th if you don’t stream these 5 terrifying movies today
With A Quiet Place still in theatres and a treasure trove of great horror movies available to stream online, we pick the top 5 scary movies you can watch this Friday the 13th.
It’s never a bad time to watch a horror movie - even if you’re jolted awake by a nightmare at 3 am, there are worst things you could do than flipping open your computer and hitting play on the creepiest looking movie you can find.
But the experience is heightened considerably when you watch a horror movie on a Friday the 13th. Since we just saw John Krasinski’s unnervingly scary A Quiet Place, which is easily one of the best horror movies we’ve got in recent years, and since it is, after all, Friday the 13th, we’ve scoured the internet and found the top 5 horror films available to stream right now.
And since you’ve clicked on this, we’re going to assume that you’ve seen films like The Shining and Evil Dead and Dracula - all of which are also available online (legally) - we’re going to list the films that could have perhaps slipped under your radar.
It Follows
Director David Robert Mitchell’s, ahem, follow-up to his breakout horror hit, Under the Silver Lake, was selected to compete at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival just this week. But it took four whole years - A Quiet Place - until someone came up with a horror premise as ingenious as the one in It Follows, a film about a deathly curse that is transferred through sexual intercourse, and manifests as a lumbering entity that pursues the marked ones unrelentingly. Watch it for the glorious ‘80s throwback thrills, the psychological scares and a stunning performance by Maika Monroe.
The Witch
As far as horror debuts go, director Robert Eggers’ first movie, based on the ghost stories of his childhood, is right up there. The Witch is a restrained horror movie - perhaps too restrained for modern audiences, who are used to a jump scare a minute - but for fans of atmospheric thrillers, and solid filmmaking in general, The Witch is unlike any movie we’ve seen recently - it’s deliberately oblique, but once you’re in, you’ll be haunted.
Gerald’s Game
2017 was an amazing year for Stephen King, the pre-eminent horror writer of our times. Not only was he the mind behind It, the biggest horror movie in history, he also wrote the stories that inspired two Netflix movies, both of which are terrific enough to merit a place here. The first, Gerald’s Game, is a tight little thriller with a killer set-up - a couple tries to reignite the spark with a romantic getaway at a secluded cabin and after handcuffing his wife to the bed in a kinky move, the husband dies of a heart attack. Locked and unable to move, Carla Gugino delivers a spectacular performance as a woman who must escape the ghosts of her past to find freedom in her present.
READ | It movie review: One of the best horror movies of the year
1922
The second King adaptation couldn’t be more different, which is a testament to his skills as a storyteller. This one, like The Witch, is a period piece and has been directed by a first timer. Like Robert Eggers, Zak Hilditch’s slow-burn approach to the psychological thriller elements promises a bright future for the filmmaker as he tackles the darkness of horror.
READ | 1922 movie review: A haunting horror film; Stephen King’s hot-streak rages on
The Ritual
Perhaps the best surprise of 2018 - before A Quiet Place - was The Ritual, which, on the surface resembles yet another Blair Witch Project knockoff, but couldn’t be more different. It tells the story of four friends who embark on a long trek through the Swedish fjords, and after taking a short cut, get lost in a dense forest. There, they are haunted by occult symbols, fraying friendships and an unseen monster that follows them wherever they go.
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