The Best Horror on Hulu

It’s that time of year again. As the air gets colder and the artificial pumpkin spice scent hangs in the air, thoughts turn to autumn—and monsters. Halloween is around the corner, and what’s a better way to prepare than some good scary movies? Hulu has a great selection of scares for your screaming streaming needs, from popular new titles to true classics. (To learn about hulu, see our review. We’ve updated this list to what’s available for Halloween 2020, so dig in and see what you might find! 

Hulu’s Huluween is back with a special page curated of all the top horror selections the service has to offer. Within this section, you’ll find scares and thrills sorted by featured highlights, “For You” selections based on your viewing, and all the major categories such as Hauntings & Supernatural, Psychological, Family, Zombies, and many more. We’ve done some digging to identify some of the truly classic titles tucked in there, good and bad (based on popularity and Rotten Tomatoes’ score), as well as picked out a few promising new ones. 

Best Horror Movies on Hulu

Parasite  (2019) – 99%

One of the most talked-about films last year, Parasite is an award-winning thriller from Korean director Bong Joon-ho. The film made history the first non-English Best Picture Oscar winner. Darkly comedic, with a vicious tense undercurrent, Parasite is a not-so-subtle commentary on class discrimination, focusing on an impoverished family that slowly intertwines themselves into a wealthy household, forming a twisted symbiotic relationship. 

Let the Right One In (2008) – 98%

Aesthetically beautiful and restrained in its storytelling, the Swedish film Let the Right One In takes a fresh approach to vampire stories. This film tops numerous top horror movie lists and garnered recognition as an artistic achievement beyond the horror genre. Lonely and bullied, Oskar befriends the mysterious new girl next door, Eli, only to be drawn into a series of brutal deaths and secrets when he discovers her true nature. It’s a surprisingly intimate story of friendship, childhood loneliness, and the darker side of human nature. Let the Right One In walks the line of being both brilliant horror and beautiful filmmaking.

A Quiet Place (2018)- 96% (via Live TV subscription)

This post-apocalyptic thriller was one of the top movies of 2018, innovative and chilling in its near silence. Most of the life on Earth has been wiped out. Those who remain must maintain quiet to stay safe from the creatures who slaughtered society: sightless monsters with hypersensitive hearing that attack at any noise. It’s a great flick for a quiet night at home.

Shirley (2020) – 84% 

While critic and audience reviews are divided on this new film, everyone agrees that Elizabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale, Mad Men) can deliver a stellar performance. This mystery/thriller blends fact and fiction, with Moss playing real-life horror writer Shirley Jackson (The Lottery). The setup? A young couple takes on Shirley’s care at her husband’s request, in return for free room and board in their small Vermont town.

Little Monsters (2019) – 80% 

Starring the always-amazing Lupita Nyong’ o, Little Monsters is another fresh, comedic turn on the zombie genre, blending both horror and rom-com in a wacky life-or-death adventure. A kindergarten teacher (Nyong’ o) is on a field trip to a farm with her students when a sudden zombie outbreak occurs, forcing her to team up with a washed-up musician and a children’s television personality to protect her young charges.

Horror TV Series

In addition to films, Hulu also includes multiple scary TV series throughout its Horror tag, especially if you’re looking for zombies. Top picks? The lesser-known but brilliant British zombie horror-drama In the Flesh (97%, two seasons) and the 1990s phenomenon is Buffy the Vampire Slayer(83%, seven seasons). The Huluween bundle is the latest chapter in the American Horror Story anthology series, American Horror Story: 1984, a tribute to the classic slasher genre, and Hulu also carries the show’s previous 8 seasons of twisted torture and horror.

Helstrom (also known as Marvel’s Helstrom) literally dropped last week, with the full 10-episode first season debuting on October 16. One of just a handful of standalone stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be produced for Hulu, the most notable being Runaways, the series follows the Helstrom siblings, children of a mysterious and powerful serial killer who hunt down the evils of humanity. While critical reviews barely scraped a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes, fans so far have received it much better (82%).

Monsterland (2020) – 72% 

Another new original series from Hulu that arrived this month, Monsterland, is an anthology series based on North American Lake Monsters: Stories, a short story collection by Nathan Ballingrud. The stories trace the thin line between humans and monsters as desperate people struggling to fix their lives encounter such entities angels, beasts, werewolves, and mermaids.   

Wrapping up the list is the Into the Dark anthology series from Hulu Originals., which debuted in 2018. Each season is released as 12 films, roughly 90-minutes, released monthly building up to Halloween. Each “episode” is a standalone story with a different plot and set of actors. Stories cover themes like purity cults, issues of immigration, bullying, stalking, and grief. The second season of dark tales has been unfolding this year, leading up to Halloween once again. 

Need more Hulu Horror?

With Hulu Live TV, the options get even better, with two recent top horror-thrillers available in 2017’s Get Out, 2016’s Don’t Breathe, plus classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as 28 Days Later and The Blair Witch Project.

Also, if you subscribe to any premium add-ons, you’ll find even more film options. For example, Night of the Living Dead(1968), Shaun of the Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and An American Werewolf in London are available from among HBO, Starz, Cinemax, and Showtime.