Fresh Frights: What to Watch on Shudder April 2024

In April 2024, Shudder adds 26 new movies, including three originals, including the occult talk show joint Late Night with the Devil, the French spider flick Infested, and the supernatural horror Baghead. Shudder also debuts the brand-new sixth season of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. Shudder also adds Bob Clark’s zom-com Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, George A. Romero’s original Creepshow, the so-bad-it’s-awesome cult classic Spookies directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran (with Eugenie Joseph), and more.

The new content isn’t Shudder’s monthly drop of fresh frights. It’s also part of the annual Shudder/AMC+ Halfway to Halloween celebration, which includes biweekly live watch parties of The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs. You can find all the details on that in our Halfway to Halloween guide.

April 1

• At the Devil’s Door (2014)
• Creepshow (1982)
• Drag Me to Hell (2009)
• The Gates (2023)
• Ghost Stories (2017)
• Madman (1981)
• Mute Witness (1995)
• The Rental (2020)
• Spookies (1986)
• The Wind (2018)

April 4

• Emelie (2015)
• Gateway (2021)
• Wake Wood (2009)

April 5

• Baghead (2024)†

April 8

• Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)
• The Third Saturday in October (2022)
• The Third Saturday in October: Part V (2022)

April 12

• The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs—Season 6 (2024)†

April 15

• The Tunnel (2011)
• The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness (2021)

April 19

• Late Night with the Devil (2024)†

April 22

• The 13th Floor (1988)
• The Changeling (1980)
• Final Cut (aka Death Games) (1980)
• The House of the Devil (2009)
• The Innkeepers (2011)

April 26

• Infested (2024)†

• Late Night with the Devil (2024)
• Megalomaniac (2022)
• When Evil Lurks (2023)
• Preacher (2016)
• Brain Damage and Frankenhooker (1988, 1990)

• In Search of Darkness: Parts II and III (2022)
• The Furies (2019)
• The Evil Eye and Deep Red (1963, 1975)
• More movies to watch on Shudder

We’re looking forward to this fake documentary (read: found footage film) set in 1977, when Johnny Carson was still the king of late-night television. Late Night with the Devil finds host Jack Delroy looking for better ratings. To that end, he trots out a “possessed” young girl on Halloween night—and, we can safely assume, super-freaky horror hijinks ensue. This buzzy creepshow premiered a year ago at the South by Southwest Film Festival and hit U.S. theaters last weekend, supposedly grossing $666,666 on Sunday. Woooooo-oooooo. Scary. While we hope this is real news, it feels too good to be true. Let us all pray to tonight’s guest that it’s for real (because, uh . . . reasons).

Belgian filmmaker Karim Ouelhaj blends arthouse style with extreme horror and a twist of true crime in Megalomaniac. Loosely based on the Mons Butcher, who tormented Belgium in the late ‘90s and was never captured, the film follows mousy Martha (Eline Schumacher) and her psychopathic brother Felix. They’re the now-grown children of the Butcher, who we see only in flashbacks. Felix carries on their father’s brutal work; Martha provides a facade, living a normal, boring existence as a factory janitor—but she’s not entirely innocent herself—especially after she’s viciously assaulted several times at work. Here, we have the film’s big idea: violence begets violence begets violence. It’s not Pascal Laugier’s masterful Martyrs, but Megalomaniac hits some of the same markers.

This Argentine film (original title: Cuando acheca la maldad) by Demián Rugna (2017’s Terrified) is the best-reviewed horror film of 2023, certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 98% critics’ score—and 81% audience approval.

Why is a tale of demonic possession so scary in the increasingly godless 21st century? Because it treats possession as an infectious disease. We’re all scared of death—but we’re also scared because so many of us disagreed over how to protect ourselves from infection.

Don’t sleep on this one—but you might not be able to sleep after you watch it.

If you don’t think Preacher is horror, ask Arseface (left) what he thinks. But aside from that character’s tragic countenance (earned through a tragically botched suicide attempt), the series is pretty freaky.

In this series based on Garth Ennis’ kickass comic books, God abandons the world and Jesse Custer, a Texas preacher, somehow ends up with His mighty voice. Armed with his new superpower, Custer teams up with his vampire bestie and tough-as-nails girlfriend to face some genuinely vile enemies—including people from Jesse’s past and even Jesus Himself.

If that’s still not scary enough, consider this: In the real world, God might already be gone, as lunatics are running this asylum we call Earth. If that doesn’t scare you, then, uh . . . Boo? Or just take another look at poor ol’ Arseface.

Preacher premieres on Shudder on Thursday, January 18.

For some people (raises hand), body horror is the scariest horror. Do you want us to cringe, cower, and cry? Show us mouths full of wiggly tendrils trying to slips us the tongue(s) (The Last of Us), excruciating mecha-physical mutations (Tetsuo: The Iron Man), or a man’s arms bitten off by another man’s belly before both guys morph into an abomination (The Thing).

Or, if you don’t hate us, show us corporeal horrors like the talking, drug-dealing brain parasite or parrot-like patchwork sex worker in Frank Henenlotter’s body-horror comedies Brain Damage and Frankenhooker. Then we’ll be only a little scared ‘cause humor makes you forget the horror of having a brain parasite dosing you all day, or being so crazy that you try to reconstruct the dismembered love of your life from used prostitute parts. (Fear doesn’t have to make sense, folks.)

Shudder (and AMC+, which includes Shudder) used to have all of David A. Weiner’s acclaimed ’80s horror docu-trilogy. Alas, at the time of writing, only the second and third films remain on the horror streaming service. You need DIRECTV or a digital or physical copy of the film to watch the first one, which is also only intermittently available for sale.

They are absolutely worth screening even if you can’t find the first one. Weiner achieved something remarkable: A comprehensive horror documentary that captures the essence of ’80s horror fandom through interviews with filmmakers, cast, and crew responsible for the decade’s myriad classics (and not-so-classics).

This trilogy is essential viewing for horror fans and, hence, worth the chase (FYI, try to buy it because it’s expensive but not as costly as DIRECTV).

Do you like slashers? Final girls? Okay, consider this: Instead of pitting one against the other—again—Tony D’Aquino’s The Furies gamifies things.

Multiple masked maniacs and kidnapped high-school girls awaken in boxes in the Australian Outback, and you can figure out most of what happens.

The killers kill the kidnapped—but not all of ‘em. Each hulking mutant has one girl to protect from harm, so there’s some hot, gooey, slasher-on-slasher action, too. It’s a cool concept with some clever kills and a smash-the-patriarchy message.

With 31 movies in its “Giallo!” collection, Shudder is probably the best horror streaming service for the subgenre.

For the unfamiliar, giallo means “yellow” and refers to the pages of old Italian pulp novels. Giallo movies are beautifully shot, highly stylized, extra violent, kinda (totally) pervy mystery-slasher films (again, usually from Italy).

On Shudder, you can watch the best giallo ever, Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975), and three other Argento gialli: Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), and Opera (1987). Moreover, Shudder always has a good selection of films by giallo’s other maestro, Mario Bava. There are six Bava flicks on the service, including the first giallo, 1963’s The Evil Eye (aka The Girl Who Knew Too Much), and A Bay of Blood (1971).

Lamberto (son of Mario) Bava’s A Blade in the Dark (1983) is worth a watch—ditto Lucio Fulci’s notoriously gnarly The New York Ripper (1982), Paolo Cavara’s Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971), and Yann Gonzalez’s Knife + Heart (2019). And, if giallo movies fascinate you, check out Federico Caddeo’s 2019 documentary All the Colors of Giallo.

• The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023)
• At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964)
• Attachment (2022)
• The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
• Brooklyn 45 (2023)
• The Church (1989)
• The Deadly Spawn (1983)
• Deadstream (2022)
• Destroy All Neighbors (2023)
• Evil Dead Trap (1986)
• Fear No Evil (1981)
• Fried Barry (2021)
• The Furies (2019)
• Give Me Pity! (2022)

• Halloween (1978)
• Hellbender (2022)
• Horror Noire (2021)
• Huesera: The Bone Woman (2023)
• The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs
• Kuso (2017)
• Lux Aeterna (2019)
• Mad God (2021)
• Messiah of Evil (1973)
• Nekromantik (1987)
• Night of the Demons (1988)
• The Passenger (2023, aka La Pasajera)
• Perdita Durango (1997)
• Perfect Blue (1997)
• Perpetrator (2023)

• Possession (1981)
• The Prowler (1981)
• Re-Animator (1985)
• The Sacrifice Game (2023)
• The Sadness (2021)
• Satanic Hispanics (2023)
• Sorry About the Demon (2023)
• This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967)
  
• The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)
  
• The Strangers (2008)
• Suitable Flesh (2023)
• Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It (2022)
• The Thing (1982)
• V/H/S/85 (2023)
• You’ll Never Find Me (2023)