Monsters on Max: 8 Horror Movies to Stream Now

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• The 8 best horror movies on Max
• More Max horror movie recommendations

• Friday the 13th series binge-watch (1980–2009)
• House (1977)
• The Strangers (2008)
• Cronos (1993)

• Hereditary (2018)
• Scanners (1981)
• From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
• The Menu (2022)

At this writing, you can watch every Friday the 13th movie on Max except three: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), Jason X (2001), and Freddy vs. Jason (2003). That leaves the first eight Friday the 13th movies plus the 2009 remake. That’s not a bad little marathon (although Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan sucks), so why not strap on your hockey mask and cheer Jason and Mrs. Voorhees through 118 kills (plus five bonus deaths)?

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s wacky-but-freaky haunted house film, seven giggly teen girls—Gorgeous, Mac, Fantasy, Sweet, Kung Fu, Prof, and Melody—visit Gorgeous’s elderly aunt, whom she hardly knows. As the film progresses, you’re kept delightfully off-balance, often asking, “WTF?!” or “Why are they still giggling?” as trippy, gruesome stuff happens. That’s part and parcel of House’s (or Hausu’s, if you prefer the original Japanese title) considerable charm.

Four words will chill you forever after you watch Bryan Bertino’s home-invasion slasher, The Strangers. The film’s shocking violence may also affect you, but the deadpan explanation for three masked killers’ sadistic visit will bounce around your brain for some time afterward. (So will some of the songs from the film’s cool, creepy soundtrack, but I digress.) No spoilers, though: You should hear the words first from the killer’s mouth.

If you have time to kill, Max also has the 2018 sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night and Bertino’s lauded 2016 creature feature The Monster. These films could make a fun binge-watch before The Strangers: Chapter 1 arrives on May 17.

In the first feature film from Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Nightmare Alley, Hellboy), an old antique dealer—Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi)—discovers a golden device resembling a scarab within a sculpture. The object embeds itself in Gris, feeding on his blood and restoring the old man’s youth and vigor.

As Gris and his new gadget become acquainted, a dying rich man who’s chased the device for years tries to purchase it, then steal it. Gris resists, and the man has him killed—or so he believes. Gris resurrects as a vampire seeking to settle the score without becoming a soulless bloodsucker like his pursuer.

Refreshingly different, Cronos will satisfy your craving for something more than the same old vampire stories.

Ari Aster’s feature debut is pee-your-pants scary. Maybe you already knew that, since Hereditary came out five years ago, and people tend to talk about movies that scary.

It also helps that Aster’s film boasts a mind-scrambling story, incredible cinematography and sound design, and a gobsmackingly brilliant performance by Toni Collette that highlights Hereditary’s themes of grief and loss.

It gets better. Aster pairs those gut-wrenching emotions with occultism and family trauma. The result is a freaky horror film that could’ve kickstarted a Satanic panic revival (but we’re past that as a society, yeah?).

We always talk about the head explosion scene in David Cronenberg’s 1981 sci-fi body horror classic, Scanners. We text the GIF to shock our friends and pretend it’s the film’s only highlight.

The grue doesn’t saturate the entire film, but the stress does. Credit that to strong performances—especially from the eerily intense Michael Ironside as the evil telepath Daryl Revok—along with the music and sound design.

Howard Shore’s high-pitched, discordant score drags a violin bow along your last nerve and, combined with the sound design, with its jumble of un-mutable inner monologues and alarming sounds, make you wonder if your head might explode. And that’s Cronenberg for you.

Thirsty for more non-traditional vampire lore? Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino directed and wrote this one, respectively.

George Clooney and Tarantino play maddog criminals Seth and Richie Gecko, who must get to Mexico fast. They hijack the Fuller family’s RV, promising to release the father and his two teens in the town of El Rey.

Upon arrival, Seth and Richie casually take down the bouncers of a chaotic roadhouse bar called the Titty Twister. Seth orders the family to stick around and celebrate with the brothers, but the bouncers want revenge.

That’s when From Dusk Till Dawn takes its famous left turn. Blood, guts, boobs, and one-liners abound as the Geckos, the Fullers, and genre film legends like Tom Savini and Fred Williamson fight a legion of snake-like vamps, including Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, and Danny Trejo. Propelled by a badass soundtrack featuring The Blasters, Tito and Tarantula, and ZZ Top, From Dusk Till Dawn is a wild ride that’ll leave you panting.

Mark Mylod’s The Menu is what you get when you mix a dash of Saw, a teaspoon of Clue, and a pound of Gordon Ramsay.

Various people get invited to a remote five-star restaurant where a world-class chef (Ralph Fiennes) and his crew will provide a mysterious dining experience—on the house. As dinner is served, the courses get stranger and oddly relevant to the guests and staff. Grievances air, secrets reveal, and scores settle as the chef and crew show themselves as a culinary death cult and proclaim that nobody is safe.

At once a biting satirization of fine dining that examines what matters in life, The Menu will have you closely question your life choices.

• Aliens (1986)
• The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2017)
• The Brood (1979)
• Cabin Fever (2003)
• Carnival of Souls (1962)
• Carrie (1976)
• Dream Scenario (2023) 
• Eraserhead (1977)
• Evil Dead Rise (2023)
• Eyes Without a Face (1960)

• It Comes at Night (2017)
• House (1977)
• John Dies at the End (2013)
• Kwaidan (1964)
• Leviathan (1989)
• The Lure (2015)
• Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• Orphan (2009)
• Pet Sematary (1989)
• Scanners (1981)

• Scream (1996)
• Scream 2 (1997)
• Scream 3 (2000)
• Scream 4 (2011)
• Sinister (2012)
• Species (1995)
• Under the Skin (2014)
• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2022)
• The Witch (2015)