7 best Shudder horror movies of 2025
While I still subscribe to most of the major streaming services (at least partly out of professional obligation), there are only a couple of streamers that I consistently turn to when looking to watch something purely for my own enjoyment. As a longtime horror fan, I’d never want to give up my subscription to Shudder, which rivals the Criterion Channel in its careful curation of vintage classics and obscurities.
The same care goes into Shudder’s original productions, which are frequently among the best horror movies of any given year. Shudder continued that streak in 2025, with original movies that reached wider audiences in theaters before debuting on the service, as well as lower-profile titles that premiered directly to streaming but were equally worthwhile.
‘The Ugly Stepsister’
Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt puts a body-horror spin on the classic tale of Cinderella by making Cinderella’s meek, jealous stepsister Elvira (Lea Myren) into the main character. Blichfeldt depicts every disgusting detail of the extreme procedures that Elvira’s greedy mother forces her to undergo in order to win over the prince, including a tapeworm scene that is one of the grossest things I’ve ever witnessed in a movie (in a good way).
The grotesquerie is supported by gorgeous set and costume design, a wonderfully icy score, and excellent performances that make the characters both sympathetic and repellent. It doesn’t reach for big statements, instead reveling in the nastiness inherent to early fairy tales that has slowly been sanitized via decades of mass-market adaptations.
Watch on Shudder
‘Influencers’
Writer-director Kurtis David Harder’s 2022 thriller “Influencer” is one of Shudder’s best original movies, and this sequel expands on the twisted adventures of the serial killer known as CW (Cassandra Naud) while continuing to examine the toxic effects of being perpetually online. The parallels between CW and Patricia Highsmith’s iconic character Tom Ripley become even clearer, as she destroys a seemingly happy relationship because she can’t resist her violent, narcissistic impulses.
Once again, Harder tells a globe-trotting story with lavish, immersive visuals on a small budget. CW travels from France to Indonesia, targeting one of the first film’s survivors as well as other online personalities with her devious manipulation. Naud is fantastic as the seductive, sociopathic CW, who’s so charismatic that it’s tough to root against her even as she’s committing multiple murders.
Watch on Shudder
‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’
Stars Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow lend a bit of prestige to this enjoyably mean-spirited horror movie set in a nursing home. Rush plays a slightly officious, condescending judge who suffers a stroke and finds himself confined to a mid-level care facility. As if that’s not bad enough, he’s subjected to increasingly crude and harsh bullying from a fellow patient (Lithgow) who constantly wears a creepy baby-doll puppet on his hand.
New Zealand director James Ashcroft’s film emerges as a sympathetic portrayal of the horrors of aging, and especially the indifference of elder care for anyone without extraordinary means or family support. Lithgow is great as the sadistic senior who stays young at heart by torturing his fellow residents, and the tone finds a balance between ridiculous and unsettling.
Watch on Shudder
‘Dangerous Animals’
Director Sean Byrne combines a kidnapping thriller with a shark movie in this entertainingly absurd story about a serial killer who abducts women and feeds them to sharks. Jai Courtney is delightfully unhinged as the killer, who runs a business on the Australian coast that’s ostensibly focused on taking tourists out to swim with sharks. But many of those tourists don’t make it back, especially if they’re solo travelers with no one waiting for them back home.
His latest victim is stronger than he anticipates, though, and she fights back against his diabolical plan. The shark attacks are appealingly gruesome, and the movie has a playful sense of humor about its over-the-top premise. It’s a shame Courtney wasted so much time trying to be a leading man when this kind of dirtbag role is clearly what he’s good at.
Watch on Shudder
‘Good Boy’
Director Ben Leonberg’s impressive debut feature is a haunted house story told entirely from the perspective of a dog, finding a new way to present a familiar type of narrative. Indy the dog and his human owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), who’s suffering from an unspecified illness, move into a dilapidated, isolated house in the woods once owned by Todd’s grandfather (indie horror legend Larry Fessenden).
Pretty soon, Indy starts seeing dark apparitions and hearing strange noises, but Todd seems oblivious, spending most of his time arguing over the phone with his concerned sister. The performance from Leonberg’s real-life pet dog is remarkable, and what starts out as a basic ghost story evolves into an affecting metaphor for both illness and the bond between animals and humans.
Watch on Shudder
‘V/H/S/Halloween’
After laying dormant for seven years, this found-footage anthology franchise has found new life since being picked up by Shudder, and the eighth overall installment is more unified than other recent entries, thanks to the holiday focus. As always, it’s still something of a mixed bag, but there are no outright duds among the Halloween-themed stories.
Director Casper Kelly’s gleefully nightmarish candy-factory segment is the best of the bunch, and the other segments offer plenty of disturbing images and nasty humor. Alex Ross Perry delivers a bleak story about child kidnapping, while Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman make goofy suburban haunted-house decorations spookily real. It’s now become an annual tradition for Shudder to release a new “V/H/S” movie, and this is one of the strongest entries of the whole series.
Watch on Shudder
‘Night of the Reaper’
This retro-style slasher movie, set in the 1980s, is the latest effort from indie-horror mainstay Brandon Christensen, the filmmaker behind previous standout Shudder originals including “Z” and “Superhost.” Christensen pays tribute to the heyday of slasher movies with his story of a killer in a Grim Reaper costume terrorizing a small town, including a young woman babysitting the sheriff’s son.
After a tense and brutal prologue, the movie deftly shifts back and forth between the babysitter and the sheriff, as they piece together the truth behind the killer’s motivations and the original murders from years earlier. Christensen builds solid suspense and delivers a clever third-act twist, making a movie that fits alongside the vintage films that inspired it.
Watch on Shudder
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