Every month, I’ll make my way through the dark halls of Tubi, searching for five horror films you don’t want to miss on the streamer.
This month features a wide range of comedy, psychological nightmares, environmental terror, demons, and one of my personal favorite John Carpenter movies.
Check them out below, if you dare. And make sure to revisit this tomb when I’m back in September with five more titles to make your nerves scream. After all, Tubi has over 300,000 titles available to stream. It’s completely free, and no sign-up is necessary. For horror fans, it’s heaven.
Censor (2021)
A film censor (Niamh Algar) descends into madness as she sets out to solve the mystery of her sister’s disappearance, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Director Prano Bailey-Bond hasn’t released another film since making her feature debut with Censor, which I first caught in Sundance’s 2021 Midnight Section. That’s a damn shame, too, because her psychological nightmare left me stunned. It places us into the shoes of a censor during the 1980s moral panic era when the UK enacted heavy censorship on films, outright banning many dubbed “video nasties”. We’re treated to a horrific descent where reality is overtaken by the neon and gore of extreme horror haunting Algar’s character around every corner. It’s a film as gorgeous as it is shocking, and it demands to be seen…even if it drives you a little mad.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
An insurance investigator (Sam Neill) is hired to track down missing author Sutter Kane (Jürgen Prochnow). His search brings him to a town ripped straight from the horror author’s novels, where the writer’s stories have come to terrifying life.
When people ask me what John Carpenter‘s most underrated horror film is, it’s between Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness. Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the latter contains some of the most chilling concepts in Carpenter’s work, such as fiction becoming truth based on majority belief. It’s an idea that feels all too real these days, especially with Sam Neill speaking lines like “Every species can smell its extinction”. *Shudder*. Do you read Sutter Cane? You should. Especially if you want to revisit one of the late Sam Neill’s most memorable performances.
Peeping Tom (1960)
A young man (Karlheinz Böhm) stalks and murders women–often using his trusty camera–filming their deaths to add to his macabre collection.
Widely considered to be one of the earliest proto-slashers, Peeping Tom is a must-see for any horror fan. The film set the stage for Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and the rest. It incorporates the killer’s POV as he intimately slays his victims with the sharp end of his camera’s tripod, a technique we’d see used in the many Giallo and slasher movies to follow. Not to mention, it’s simply stunning. Director Michael Powell crafts the film with an elegance that may remind some of a Hitchcock pic, depicting gorgeous imagery befitting of a film about a murderous cameraman. Even if you don’t like slashers all that much, this one’s well worth the time for anyone who wants a peek into cinema history and into the origins of many of the slasher subgenre’s tropes.
The Blackening (2022)
A group of friends heads to a cabin in the woods for their annual Juneteenth get-together. Once there, though, they discover a killer has marked them for a twisted game. Unfortunately for the maniac, this group isn’t going down without a fight.
For far too long, the horror genre treated Black characters as expendable. You all know the frustratingly accurate “the Black guy dies first” trope. And if they weren’t first, it was usually death by sacrificing themselves for the white star. Ugh. Well, part of the genius of The Blackening is that it gathers a cast of Black characters who prove they’re more than capable of surviving a horror movie…and it’s fucking hysterical. The entire cast is great, but special shout-out to star/writer Dewayne Perkins, who injects an infectious life into the film that you can’t get enough of.
Wolfen (1981)
A New York cop (Albert Finney) investigates a series of strange murders. Something is hunting the citizens of the city…something that howls at the moon, leaves behind wolf fur, and is on a mission of vengeance.
Werewolf fans recognize 1981 as the year of the wolf, when both The Howling and An American Werewolf in London were released. Often lost in that discussion, though, is the other 1981 entry in the sub-genre, Wolfen. Based on the book by Whitley Strieber, the title creatures aren’t werewolves, but they are a unique type of wolf wreaking havoc on New York. Aside from some shocking gore effects (including a beheading to remember), there’s a haunting quality to this environmental horror film that reminds us nature is beautiful, vicious, and not to be trifled with.
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