Editorials
12 Noteworthy Genre Movies to Stream at Home in June 2023
Welcome to June, a hefty month for horror on streaming. As we rapidly approach the halfway point of 2023, this month’s new additions to various streaming platforms lean heavily on recent releases. That means an extra packed month, giving you plenty of time to catch up on many of 2022 and 2023’s biggest releases.
Here are thirteen noteworthy horror titles available for streaming in June 2023 on some of the most popular streaming services, along with when/where you can watch them.
Baby Ruby – Hulu (June 3)
Writer/Director Bess Wohl’s debut feature, Baby Ruby, uses psychological horror to put viewers in the shoes of a new mother unraveling after giving birth. Jo (Jumbo’s Noémie Merlant) exudes style and perfection. She’s an influencer with a blog so successful that she has a staff, including a close assistant. But her carefully curated idyllic life unravels when newborn Ruby enters the world. Everyday maternal anxieties crescendo into full-blown paranoia and fear that Ruby might be out to get her the more bizarre her baby behaves.
Margaux –Paramount+ (June 5)
Director Steven C. Miller (Silent Night, First Kill, Escape Plan 2) takes on smart technology horror. As a group of seniors celebrate their final college days at a smart house, the house’s highly advanced AI system, Margaux, begins to take on a deadly presence of her own. A carefree weekend of partying turns into a dystopian nightmare as they realize Margaux’s plans to eliminate her tenants one way or another.
Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story – SCREAMBOX (June 6)
This intimate portrait of the horror icon features interviews with Robert Englund, his wife Nancy, and such genre favorites as Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Lance Henriksen, Bill Moseley, Eli Roth, Lin Shaye, Heather Langenkamp, Mick Garris, Andrew Divoff, William Katt, Jeffrey Reddick, Corey Taylor, and more! The perfect watch to celebrate #RobertEnglundDay.
Brooklyn 45 – Shudder (June 9)
Despite the spooky séance setup in Brooklyn 45, writer/director Ted Geoghegan (We Are Still Here, Mohawk) is less interested in exploring a literal interpretation of ghosts. Instead, the filmmaker connects the ghosts of our past as a metaphor for present-day national turmoil and paranoia. The period-set chamber piece gives precedence to fraught tension as a séance among friends goes horrifically awry.
Renfield – Peacock (June 9)
Photo Credit: Michele K. Short / Universal Pictures
Director Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War) and writer Ryan Ridley (“Rick and Morty”) bring Universal classic characters Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) into the modern world for a horror-comedy about a toxic relationship between a megalomaniac and his bug-eating servant. McKay unleashes the gore and laughs in spades in his tribute to these classic characters.
There’s Something Wrong with The Children – Prime Video (June 16)
A weekend getaway becomes an intense nightmare when the children disappear one night only to return the next day, acting peculiarly. Director Roxanne Benjamin (Body at Brighton Rock, Southbound) and screenwriters T.J. Cimfel and David White make it apparent early on that they’re more interested in using a familiar setup to explore new angles within the subgenre, subverting a few tropes in the process.
New Religion – SCREAMBOX (June 20)
After her daughter’s death, divorced Miyabi begins working as a call girl. One day, she meets an unsettling customer who wants to take pictures of her body parts. Soon, she realizes that her daughter’s spirit gets closer every time she allows her body to be photographed. She must decide how far she will go to connect with her daughter again. Expect things to get surreal in this body horror feature by Keishi Kondo.
Infinity Pool – Hulu (June 23)
Writer/Director Brandon Cronenberg returns to the deep well of surreal, grotesque sci-fi horror. Cronenberg doles out heady, warped horror at the resort-set Infinity Pool, which sees James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) caught in a vicious cycle of violence and debauchery when he meets Gabi (Mia Goth). It’s as starkly funny as it is shocking.
Barbarian – Hulu (June 25)
A simple rental nightmare sets up an intense pressure cooker scenario without limits to the midnight madness. At its core, Barbarian presents two sides of the same coin reacting to one hellish scenario. From it, it unleashes one sadistic and gruesome horror thriller unafraid to be as biting with its pitch-black humor as its horror.
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham – Max (June 26)
Inspired by the comic book series by Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Richard Pace, and Troy Nixey, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is a brand-new animated movie that embraces horror. The logic/science-driven Batman must battle Lovecraftian supernatural forces threatening the sheer existence of Gotham, along the way being aided and confronted by reimagined versions of his well-known allies and enemies, including Green Arrow, Ra’s al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, Two-Face, James Gordon and Bruce’s beloved wards.
M3GAN – Prime Video (June 27)
M3GAN reunited producer James Wan and screenwriter Akela Cooper, responsible for 2021’s highly entertaining Malignant, and put Housebound’s Gerard Johnstone at the helm. It resulted in a murderous killer doll with style and dance moves, ensuring the year kicked off with a meme-able horror comedy that had everyone talking.
Run Rabbit Run – Netflix (June 28)
Sarah Snook (“Succession”) plays a fertility doctor who believes firmly in life and death, but after noticing the strange behavior of her young daughter, she must challenge her own values and confront a ghost from her past. Daina Reid (“Shining Girls,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Outsider”) directed the film, written by Hannah Kent (The Good People, Devotion).
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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