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Practical Effects for the Win: Five Creature Features to Stream This Week!

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Aquatic Horror Leviathan

It’s Monday. Because sometimes nothing lifts your spirits quite like a good creature design or a monster on a rampage, this week’s streaming picks are dedicated to the creature feature.

Whether hailing from space, the darkest depths of the sea, or beyond, these five horror movies bring the monster mayhem we all love so much.

As usual, here’s where you can stream them this week…

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.


The Deadly Spawn – Shudder

creature features deadly spawn

The plot follows an alien that takes refuge in the basement of a suburb after crash landing via meteor, devouring anyone it meets and spawning at a rapid pace. It’s up to a handful of teens and a monster-obsessed boy to stop it. This labor of love and strife defies its meager budget to deliver one of the 80s’ most surprising, gory creature features. Come for the ravenous alien and get charmed by the practical effects and stellar use of miniatures.


Waxwork – Plex, Roku, Tubi, Vudu

creature features waxwork

Waxwork plays like an anthology in that the core group of characters falls victim to various wax exhibits in the mysterious wax museum owned by the ominous David Lincoln (David Warner). Stepping foot into exhibits means stepping into an alternate reality full of danger and mortal peril. It’s all a ruse for Lincoln to capture their souls to bring about the world’s end. One by one, the group of friends encounter different scenarios with various monsters and often die in gruesome, violent ways. It’s the ultimate monster movie mashup.


The Relic – HBO Max

the relic movie

This big budget action-horror movie sees an enormous chimeric monster prowl a Chicago museum. The opening shows how the monster, the mythical Kothoga from the Amazon, wound up there. It’s up to a homicide detective and an anthropologist to stop it before the body count grows even higher. Peter Hyams directs this adaptation of Douglas Preston’s novel with spectacle, much shrouded in darkness. But the creature design, when seen, is fantastic, and The Relic brings the fun all around.


Splinter – HBO Max, Tubi

creature features splinter

In this fun creature feature, a road trip gets stalled out by the unexpected. A young couple sets off for a romantic camping getaway but gets car-jacked by an escaped convict and his girlfriend. Then they get a flat tire that prompts them to seek help from a nearby gas station. Something is gravely wrong there, and the foursome must team up against a bizarre parasite infecting everything. A parasite that spreads and turns its hosts into deadly beings. Brutal, suspenseful, and with a highly cool creature concept, Splinter deserved a sequel.


Leviathan – Pluto TV, Roku, Tubi

Deep-sea miners stumble upon a Soviet shipwreck, and the cargo they bring back to base unleashes a genetic mutation that threatens to destroy them all. With a hurricane battering the surface, these blue-collar workers are entirely trapped and abandoned by the corporation that employs them. It’s an Alien film set underwater, but oh, so much fun. Leviathan stars Peter Weller, Amanda Pays, Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, Meg Foster, and Hector Elizondo. Above all, the film offers fantastic creature design and gnarly body horror.

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Co-Host of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest.

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Matilda Firth Joins the Cast of Director Leigh Whannell’s ‘Wolf Man’ Movie

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Pictured: Matilda Firth in 'Christmas Carole'

Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.

Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things),  Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.

The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).

Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.

Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.

Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.

In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.

Wolf Man 2024

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