Editorials
Five Action Horror Movies to Stream This Week
The gory action-horror movie Project Wolf Hunting is now exclusively available to stream on SCREAMBOX and Hi-YAH. The high-octane splatterfest spills buckets of blood and paints the seas red with arterial spray as dangerous convicts aboard a cargo ship unite in a coordinated escape. Of course, they’re not the only threat the guards face.
This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to action horror. While none manage to outdo Project Wolf Hunting in sheer carnage, many come close. And all bring an adrenaline rush.
Here’s where to stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Battle Royale – freevee, Kanopy, Plex, Pluto TV, Roku, Tubi, Vudu
Thanks to a government-mandated act to control Japan’s disorderly youth, class 3-B has been selected to participate in the annual Battle Royale. The students are dropped on a remote island, provided with provisions, and given three days to slaughter each other until a single victor emerges. Those that refuse to cooperate have their explosive collars detonated. Pushed into slaying their classmates for a shot at survival results in a bloodbath. It’s ruthless, thrilling, and frequently tragic.
Blade – Tubi
Written by David S. Goyer and directed by Stephen Norrington, Blade immediately sets the action-horror tone by introducing its lead via blood rave. Wesley Snipes’ half-vampire, half-mortal character silently slays through a blood-drenched crowd of vampires and never stops. Blade’s stoic, unrelenting pursuit of ridding the world of vampires makes for an infectious blend of horror and comic book action that’s filled with memorable characters. The entire horror trilogy is currently available on Tubi, so you could make it a vampire marathon with this pick.
Prey – Hulu
Prey takes its cues from 1987’s Predator in terms of simplicity and bloody action-horror. Its cultural specificity and period setting lend a sweeping period epic feel and introduce emotional stakes through its memorable characters. Set in the Great Plains in 1719, Prey introduces Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman uninterested in fulfilling the domestic role her tribe expects of her. Naru wants to hunt, like her brother and respected hunter Taabe (Dakota Beavers). She sets out to test her mettle and protect her tribe when an unknown threat emerges across the ridge. It’s a thrilling companion piece to the original in so many ways.
Revenge – AMC+, Shudder
Coralie Fargeat’s impressive debut makes another worthy entry in French extreme horror. Fargeat subverts the rape-revenge sub-genre with a different protagonist and authentic social commentary before unleashing a bloodbath like no other in a tense cat-and-mouse game against a bright desert backdrop. Stylized and with beautiful cinematography that crescendos into an insanely bloody finale, Fargeat’s bold declarations will surely polarize audiences with her blood-soaked metaphors.
The Seventh Curse – Crackle, Plex
This Hong Kong action/horror/fantasy hybrid dials up the pulp insanity to eleven, delivering an insane crowd-pleaser. After saving a young princess from being sacrificed to the worm god, a cop is stricken with a blood curse. He has seven days to return to the jungle to find the cure, or he’ll bleed to death. Feuds, evil sorcerers, worm gods, vengeful skeletons, monsters, and more get in his way. Expect the blood to flow freely, as this is from the same director behind the ultraviolent Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. Gather your friends, order some pizza, and settle in.
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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