Editorials
Stay Home, Watch Horror: 5 Slashers to Stream This Week
Between the recent Shudder additions of the first three Sleepaway Camp films, The Burning, and the Fourth of July-themed I Know What You Did Last Summer, now seems like the perfect time to binge slashers. Summer tends to serve as the favorite backdrop for slashers anyway, with camps, cabins, and remote vacation spots providing favored slaying grounds for masked maniacs.
So, this week’s streaming picks belong to one of the most beloved subgenres of horror. If you’ve never seen the Sleepaway Camp movies, start there. The first eight Friday the 13th movies are also available on Prime Video. After that, fire up the grill and prep your summery treats, then settle in for these five slasher films that bring the carnage, with a variety of tones and styles.
As always, they’re all available to stream now.
Hush – Netflix
For pure nail-biting intensity, Mike Flanagan proves he knows how to wield suspense like a weapon with Hush. Kate Siegel stars as Maddie, a deaf and mute author that lives alone in the woods. Her reclusive existence is interrupted by the arrival of a masked maniac currently amid a killing spree. A cat and mouse game ensues as Maddie fights to survive. It’s a good old-fashioned horror story elevated by the ingenious use of tension, sound design, and serious thrills. John Gallagher Jr., who typically excels in the nice guy role, plays against type as the chilling killer eager to rack up a body count.
StageFright – Prime Video
Also known as Stage Fright: Aquarius or Deliria, this Italian slasher follows a theater troupe that has locked themselves inside the theater to rehearse for a musical about a fictional mass murderer known as the Night Owl. They’re unaware that an escaped mental patient has crashed the party. Directed by Michele Soavi (The Church, Cemetery Man), this slasher features one of the most visually striking masked killers of all time. It’s gorgeous and stylized, without sacrificing brutal kills. For those in the mood for a classic ‘80s slasher, StageFright scratches that itch and then some.
Stitches – Prime Video
While performing at a children’s birthday party, Stitches the clown attempts to entertain but finds himself the subject of ridicule instead. Then a freak accident claims his life. Six years later, Stitches returns from the grave to exact revenge. This slasher comedy emphasizes splatstick gore. Think Evil Dead 2 levels of gory silliness, with inventive kills suitable for a killer clown. We’re talking balloon animals made out of dismembered members and ice cream sundaes concocted out of brains. The only aim in Stitches is to offer a good time with great kills, and it nails it.
Tourist Trap – Tubi, Shudder
This summery slasher sees a group of friends stranded at a secluded roadside museum that’s filled to the brim with creepy mannequins. These mannequins seem to have a life of their own and a lust for blood. Of course, if you’ve seen this cult classic, then you know there’s much more than meets the eye here. The feature debut by director David Schmoeller (Puppet Master) boasts atmosphere for days, and one haunting score by Pino Donaggio. Tourist Trap offers one of the best summer slashers not set at a camp.
Intruder – Tubi
The overnight stock crew of a local grocery store finds themselves falling victim to an unseen killer in this highly infectious late ‘80s slasher. The deaths are delightfully gruesome and inventive; look for this killer to make excellent use of grocery store items as weapons. Look for a stacked cast, too, with notable names like Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, and Evil Dead II’s Dan Hicks. It’s the perfect film to showcase Hicks’ talent and honor his memory, but it’s also just plain fun. One of the better and underseen slashers of the decade, Intruder also delivers a small cameo by Bruce Campbell. Considering frequent Raimi collaborator Scott Spiegel directed it, the connections to Evil Dead 2 are endless.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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