Movies
Five 90-Minute or Less Horror Movies to Stream This Week
In an age where runtimes can run long, there’s a lot to appreciate about a horror movie that can deliver maximum frights in 90 minutes or less. When time is in short supply, a short movie can do the trick. This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to precisely that type of movie.
If you’re in the mood for scares but don’t have much time to spare, add these five horror titles to your watchlists. As always, here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
The Beyond – Kanopy, Midnight Pulp, Peacock, Pluto TV, SCREAMBOX
One of Lucio Fulci’s most beloved horror films and the second entry in his unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy hits the ground running and never eases up on the oppressive sense of dread. Set in New Orleans, a young woman (Catriona MacColl) inherits a hotel and discovers it was built over one of the gates to Hell. There’s gore aplenty, with no shortage of gruesome demises, but The Beyond most impresses for its unique apocalyptic scenario and unwavering bleakness. Playing almost like a fever dream, Fulci’s macabre, cosmic vision of Hell and the evils escaping it sticks with you right down to the film’s final stunning frame.
The Devil’s Candy – AMC+, Kanopy, Shudder
Sean Byrne’s long-awaited follow-up to The Loved Ones offers an affecting spin on Satanic, heavy metal horror. It’s heavy metal and the deep bonds forged between father and daughter that anchor a tortured artist tale centered around Jesse (Ethan Embry) when he moves his family into a new rural home that previously hosted a grim tragedy. As the same dark forces that drove Ray Smilie (Pruitt Taylor Vince) to madness seek to seduce Jesse, a shared love of heavy metal dangles the possibility of salvation for a change. An earworm soundtrack that includes bands like Ghost, Slayer, and Machine Head, accompanied by metal references throughout, solidifies this Satanic chiller as a can’t miss horror movie for metalheads.
Maniac – IFC Films Unlimited, the Roku Channel
This remake of William Lustig’s greasy serial killer thriller elicits greater sympathy for maniac Frank Zito by putting viewers in his shoes. The events are framed through Frank’s eyes and made more disarming by Elijah Wood’s performance. Frank is a troubled individual with a traumatic past and tends to scalp women to keep his one happy childhood memory alive. But his fragile existence is upended when he meets Anna, a photographer with whom Frank is so smitten that he attempts to get his act together. Frank Zito commits heinous acts, yet his traumatic past and broken nature instill hope for a happier outcome for all. But this grim, stylish tale was helmed by Franck Khalfoun, and written by Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, so don’t expect a tidy happily ever after here.
[REC] 3: Genesis – Tubi
All four REC movies are currently available to stream on Tubi, with the first two entries delivering pulse-pounding thrills and a nightmarish twist to outbreak horror. But it’s the third entry, a sidequel, that deserves more attention for its clever means of expanding the franchise. Genesis overlaps with the first two films, set at a large church for the wedding of Clara (Leticia Dolera) and Koldo (Diego Martin). One of their guests happens to be the veterinarian of the infected dog referenced in the first film, which means that another harrowing outbreak ensues and scatters the guests, including the newlyweds. Genesis experiments with form, transitioning the franchise away from its found footage-style origins into conventional storytelling, allowing for a better look at the carnage. The church setting- a perfect battleground against demonic evil- and a blood-drenched bride wielding a chainsaw ensure this standalone sequel brings the horror fun.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man – Arrow Player, Criterion Channel, Kanopy, Midnight Pulp, Night Flight+
The plot premise sounds simple on paper: a metal fetishist gets killed in a hit and run. The metal fetishist gets revenge from beyond by slowly turning his killer, a businessman, into a grotesque hybrid of tech and metal that threatens to consume him entirely. It’s the way that Shinya Tsukamoto relays his cautionary tale of losing one’s humanity amidst a concrete jungle that makes this narrative complex. An influential piece of filmmaking in native Japan and a cult hit overseas, the filmmaker’s take on body horror plays like a cyberpunk fable that disturbs at every possible turn. With a runtime clocking in at just over an hour, that’s saying a lot. Be prepared for a dizzying assault on the senses when it comes to the body horror here.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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