Editorials
Stay Home, Watch Horror: 5 Horror Movies You Should Stream This Week
Thanks to a string of postponements on the theatrical front, along with theaters closing worldwide, the current box office slate is looking relatively sparse between now and late April. Luckily there’s no shortage of streaming services available, with endless horror titles at our fingertips. So much so that it can sometimes be overwhelming to choose just one.
To help, we’ll be offering up worthwhile options currently available to stream right now. Inspired by St. Patrick’s Day, this week’s streaming picks revolve around Irish horror.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Crackle
One of the most faithful adaptations of Irish author Bram Stoker’s classic tale, there’s never a wrong time to revisit this grand sweeping epic horror film. Stoker forever changed the genre with his literary introduction to the Gothic horrors of Count Dracula, which has been theorized to draw inspiration from the Irish legend of Abhartach, not Vlad the Impaler. While you could pick any adaptation, it’s hard to top Francis Ford Coppola’s gorgeous take as well as Gary Oldman’s riveting performance of the famous bloodsucker. If you’d prefer a more straightforward Irish vampire flick, then check out the primal From the Dark on Shudder.
The Company of Wolves – HBO
Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan has delivered numerous memorable genre films worth checking out, like Interview with the Vampire, Byzantium, and Greta. Dark werewolf fantasy movie The Company of Wolves, though, is an absolute must. Jordan’s sophomore feature offers a horror twist to the fairy tale Red Riding Hood and other stories, making for a dreamy sort of anthology. It was a UK production, however. If you’re looking for something more Irish by the Irish filmmaker, then check out ghostly horror-comedy High Spirits, featuring Irish actor Liam Neeson. That title is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.
Images – Prime Video
Robert Altman’s Palme d’Or nominated psychological horror film follows a wealthy children’s book author losing her grip on reality. After a terrifying outburst, her husband takes her to the Irish countryside to help reduce her stress. Except, she’s afflicted with increasingly disturbing hallucinations, no longer able to tell what’s real or not. Shot on location in County Wicklow, Ireland, the lush setting becomes just as important as the characters on screen. A surreal, psychological slow burn, this won’t be for everyone, but it does offer a unique and haunting portrayal of schizophrenia.
The Canal – Hulu
Written and directed by Ivan Kavanagh, this Dublin production sees a film archivist’s sanity crumbling after his work colleague gives him a 16mm reel depicting a horrific murder that once occurred in the very same house where he lives. When his wife goes missing and is later found dead, it sends him on a downward spiral. The question becomes whether the man is losing his mind, or if he is indeed haunted by the remnants of the old murder. The Canal is atmospheric and unsettling, and the final thirty minutes make for some bleak and shocking stuff.
Grabbers – Hulu
If you’re in the mood for a horror-comedy creature feature, this is the answer. A small island off the coast of Ireland becomes ground zero to an alien invasion. These tentacled monsters, dubbed Grabbers by the locals, have an affinity for human blood. That’s terrible news for the locals until they discover that alcohol is extremely toxic to the spaced invaders. Naturally, they deduce the only way to survive the attack is to get hammered. Drunk villagers versus man-eating aliens make for an entertaining way to spend St. Patrick’s Day. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina actor Richard Coyle stars.
Bonus: Catcalls – Shudder
For those in the mood for bite-sized horror, this nine-minute short on Shudder should do the trick. Written and directed by Kate Dolan, Catcalls unleashes a quick little creature feature. A man chooses the wrong pair of women to mess with in this terror tale.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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