Top Horror Movies Streaming This Week

On the road to the Academy Awards, Sinners won three awards at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) this weekend. Wunmi Mosaku won Best Supporting Actress, and was luminous in her bright blue gown, Ludwig  Göransson won for Best Score, and Ryan Coogler won for Best Original Screenplay. The BAFTAs are thought of as an awards ceremony that can sometimes predict the Oscars, which shows that Sinners is in the running.

Speaking of the actors in this film, the incredibly strong cast includes Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, and Delroy Lindo.

Sinners is now streaming on HBO Max and Prime.

For a movie that is as disturbing as it is, Weapons is also slyly funny, even more so than writer and director Zach Cregger's first movie, Barbarian. Its themes nestle right where the fears of a lot of adults lie. When almost an entire class full of children disappear without a trace, and no one seems to be doing anything about it, that's a nightmare for any parent. One subtle pressure point in the film is exactly how easy it is for anyone to disappear, which is a fear that Weapons has in common with Barbarian.

Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Toby Huss, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan play the people in this film, and it's remarkable how ordinary they are with all of their flaws and repressed anger. There are even two characters who are normal, well-adjusted, and kind, and they are the gay couple, which is great LGBTQ representation.

Weapons is now streaming on HBO Max.

Friendship and love are at the core of The Long Walk, standing in defiance of fascism and fear. It's a film starring the remarkable ensemble cast, including Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Josh Hamilton, Judy Greer, and Mark Hamill, where the stakes are quite literally life and death, and somehow that terror can't beat the brotherhood of the ever lessening pool of walkers.

This first novel from Stephen King, which he wrote at age 18, has a somewhat different viewpoint, but the film shows the gruesome reality of the walk and how the shared suffering bonds them together. Writer JT Mollner and director Francis Lawrence took the novel and made it into a song of resistance and camaraderie against dictators and men with guns.

The Long Walk is now streaming on Starz.

One of the films new to the top ten this week is the eerie Lovecraftian tale of a hospital with a skeleton crew and a police officer who are trapped by members of a hooded cult that appears from out of the night. The Void was directed by Steven Kostanski (Leprechaun Returns, Frankie Freako, and Psycho Goreman, with Adam Brooks)  and Jeremy Gillespie and stars Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Daniel Fathers, Kathleen Munroe, and Ellen Wong.

As so often happens, this film has caught the attention of fright fans after it was added to Prime. It had a limited release in theaters and on VOD in 2017, after premiering at Fantastic Fest, but has risen from the darkness again to put some gruesome terror into your life.

The Void is now streaming on Prime.

Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Williams, Chi Lewis-Parry, and Ralph Fiennes star in the all-new sequel to 28 Weeks Later. Each film is part of its time, with 28 Years Later echoing recent human history. It shows how easily we forget fear and start to take dangerous risks as we become accustomed to terror and death. It is a notable human trait.

The film, like the others in the series, has wonders in store for the viewers. Dr. Kelson is considered unstable by the people of the island of Lindisfarne, but he has found a way to live within the territory of the infected and has created a work of art in the ossuary he painstakingly constructed as a remembrance of all the human dead, including the rage-infected.

28 Years Later is now streaming on Netflix.

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein also did well at the BAFTAs in the craft categories. Kate Hawley won for Best Costume Design, Jordan Samuel, Cliona Furey, Mike Hill, and Megan Many won for Best Make Up and Hair, and Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau won for Best Production Design. It is a beautiful movie, and these awards show that Frankenstein is still a contender.

The film presents both Victor Frankenstein's and the Creature's point of view after a prelude, in a circular narrative that starts at the end and returns to the story's finale. Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, and Christoph Waltz star in the film, with Goth tackling the dual role of Baroness Claire Frankenstein and Lady Elizabeth Harlander.

Frankenstein is now streaming on Netflix.

This third film in the Black Phone series is a continuation of the themes of the first movie, namely that death is not the end and that friendship and love don't die when human beings die.  In Black Phone 2, it explores the idea that hate and the need for revenge continue in the afterlife. Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies,  Miguel Mora, Arianna Rivas, Demián Bichir, and Ethan Hawke star in the film.

James Ransone has appeared in all three of the films in the Black Phone series. He played Max, the Grabber's brother, in The Black Phone, and he played Bobby Blake in the short film directed by Scott Derrickson, DreamKill, from the V/H/S/85 anthology film. While his time in Black Phone 2 is only a cameo appearance, it is wonderful to see him again on the screen.

Black Phone 2 is now streaming on Peacock.

Wisely, two streaming services have added Wes Craven's Scream to their roster this month, which is a good call since the next film in the series will hit theaters this Friday. The original, written by Kevin Williamson, is a perennial favorite every Halloween and is one of the most beloved slasher franchises.

It has spawned seven sequels and a television series, all with the series' characteristic meta commentary on horror and the slasher subgenre. It brought slasher films roaring back into the mainstream with its original cast: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Drew Barrymore, and Roger L. Jackson as the voice of Ghostface.

Scream is now streaming on Kanopy and Paramount+.

The other new film on the list this week is 2002's The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Debra Messing, Alan Bates, and Lucinda Jenney.  Directed by Mark Pellington, it is an adaptation of the book of the same name by parapsychologist John Keel. It was reportedly about a true series of events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the late sixties related to that creature of American folklore, the Mothman.

In the film,  John Klein, who is a journalist with the Washington Post, starts being haunted by strange occurrences after his wife's death. He seems to be drawn to Point Pleasant and keeps hearing predictions of disasters from the people around him. He is told that he keeps reappearing to people in the town, even when he knows he was not there. His obsession with the Mothman grows as he tries to find the truth.

The Mothman Prophecies is now streaming on Prime.

The first film in the 28 Days Later series has reemerged among the most-streamed films this week. Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns, and Brendan Gleeson star in the film and give heartfelt performances as human beings suddenly thrown into a world where danger is all around, and you can turn from a human being into a raging cannibal in just a few seconds.

The film, directed by Danny Boyle, does so much with less. The emptiness of the world, among the streets of London that are usually crowded with people are viscerally frightening. The lack of people, scenes of abandoned objects, and the silence are every bit as effective as the scenes of infected people raging. In fact, the emptiness sets the scene for the infected's attacks.

28 Days Later is now streaming on AMC+ and Shudder.