Movies
7 Recent Horror Releases You Might Have Missed Now Streaming for Free on Kanopy
If you have a library card, you likely have access to one of the best streaming platforms available. Kanopy, like Hoopla, offers thousands of films for free without ads by partnering with public libraries and universities. What’s even more impressive is the sheer scope of titles available, new and old alike.
You can find recent titles like The Life of Chuck or The Carpenter’s Son, along with genre cult classics like Possession or Ringu, and everything in between. Keeping up with new releases is a Kanopy specialty, including plenty of recent horror releases that have flown under the radar.
For those looking beyond the theatrical studio slate in search of hidden horror favorites, here are seven recently released films currently available to stream for free on Kanopy.
Animale
French filmmaker Emma Benestan quietly contributed to the recent body horror renaissance with a searing slowburn centered around professional bull runner Nejma Chokri (Oulaya Amamra), who seemingly begins to undergo a strange metamorphosis after a harrowing encounter. Soon, Nejma’s male counterparts begin dying, one by one. The violent nature of bullfighting is put on graphic display, a brutal metaphor for Najma’s horrific plight. It’s disturbing French horror with an emotionally devastating purpose.
The Girl with the Needle
Director Magnus von Horn (Sweat, The Here After) helms a haunting gothic portrait of one of Denmark’s most heinous serial killers. It follows a young factory worker who, while struggling to survive in post-WW1 Copenhagen, gets taken under the wing of a woman running an underground adoption agency. When the worker discovers the harrowing truth behind the agency, it puts them on a crash course with catastrophic consequences. Realism meets nightmarish expressionism in The Girl with the Needle, a stunning biopic that dabbles with psychological horror and horror techniques to present a grim yet timely tale of society’s discarded and the disturbing lengths they’re forced to undergo to cope and survive.
Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project
This meta mockumentary, directed by Max Tzannes and produced by Tyler Friesen with Radio Silence, follows a budding filmmaker’s attempt to produce a found footage movie about Bigfoot. Framed from the perspective of the documentary crew, the story follows his unlikely band of misfits as they struggle to keep the production afloat on a shoestring budget. That’s when they discover they’ve stepped foot into a real-life horror movie. Expect laughs over scares in this comedy that draws inspiration from Christopher Guest films like This is Spinal Tap.
Primitive War
PRIMITIVE WAR, 2025. © Fathom Entertainment / courtesy Everett Collection
Writer/Director Luke Sparke adapts author Ethan Pettus‘ novel about a recon squad’s discovery of rampaging dinos during the Vietnam War, starring Ryan Kwanten and Tricia Helfer. Primitive War, despite its B-movie setup, takes its dinosaurs and soldiers as seriously as its action. The action horror movie already has a sequel in the works, with Sparke promising to escalate the budding war between prehistoric beasts and the military.
Rabbit Trap
Folk horror gets an eerie auditory twist in writer/director Bryn Chainey’s feature debut. Married couple Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne (Rose McEwen) recently moved to a remote countryside cottage to further their artistic pursuits, which entail recording ambient sounds from the nearby wood. But in opening themselves up to listening to the land, they unwittingly become receivers of something otherworldly. It’s as stunningly crafted as it is oblique in storytelling; this cryptic folk horror operates on compelling atmospherics over narrative.
The Shrouds
David Cronenberg explores grief in a genre bender that includes his body horror signatures. Vincent Cassel stars as a tech-entrepreneur who develops a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. His sanity will be tested when a string of grave vandalisms puts his new endeavor at risk, compounding his fragile mental state over the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) and the bizarre sexual relationship he subsequently developed with his wife’s sister (Kruger). Cronenberg’s thought-provoking meditation on death is as personal as it is deeply weird.
Sister Midnight
Radhika Apte stars as Uma, a young woman horrified to find herself transformed into a disturbing and ruthless figure after entering into an arranged marriage. What begins as a domestic comedy, with Uma begrudgingly navigating her new housewife role, slowly unfurls into an unexpected journey involving stop motion, zany night encounters, and vampirism. Writer/Director Karan Kandhari’s energetic, genre-bending feature debut fully embraces magic realism, but isn’t afraid to lean into horror when the occasion arises.
This week kicked off with the release of hippo horror movie Hungry at home, and four more horror movies have arrived for at-home viewing as we head into the final weekend of June.
Here are the new horror movies that released on Friday, June 26, 2026!
The Halloween season can no longer be contained to the months of September and October, with “Summerween” becoming a thing in recent years. Essentially, it allows for Halloween to bleed into the warmer Summer months, and the first ever Summerween movie has arrived.
The Asylum released Summerween onto Digital outlets today.
In the film from writer/director Ryan Ebert, “On Summerween, a former circus clown escapes a mental institution to return to his abandoned mansion and hunt the teens partying there.”
Cole Chapleski, Chase Breithoff, Logan Roe, Sophia Sabol, and Clint Morrison star.
Director Ryan Ebert is the man behind a string of recent indie horrors we’ve covered, including Shark Side of the Moon, The Jolly Monkey, Jurassic Reborn, and Predator: Wastelands.
A witchy coming-of-age story from Dark Sky Films, Camp is now playing in select theaters.
Check your local listings to find a theater near you.
Camp is from writer-director Avalon Fast (Honeycomb, The Serpent’s Skin).
“Emily is the root cause of two devastating tragedies very early in her life, and she feels the weight of these accidents as though cursed. At her father’s suggestion, she takes a position at a summer camp for troubled youth to ease her guilt. When Emily arrives, she is welcomed by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and surround her with peace and forgiveness.
“As Emily begins to believe in a new kind of life, she starts to hear a voice whispering from deep in the woods — one that urges her to go home, and one that may be impossible to ignore.”
The film stars Zola Grimmer in her screen debut alongside Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis (Castration Movie Part 1 & 2, In A Violent Nature), Ella Reece, Austyn Van de Kamp (This Too Shall Pass), Sophie Bawks-Smith (Honeycomb), Izza Jarvis, and Aiden Laudersmith.
Producers Tyler Perry and Jason Blum have joined forces for Peacock Original Strung.
The film is now streaming only on Peacock.
“A talented violinist takes a prestigious job as a music tutor for the gifted daughter of an influential and enigmatic family. As she becomes entangled in their opulent world, unsettling secrets begin to surface, forcing her to question her safety, her dreams, and even her sanity.”
Malcolm D. Lee (Scary Movie 5, Space Jam: A New Legacy) directs from a script written by Alan B. McElroy (Wrong Turn, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers).
Chloe Bailey (“Swarm“), Lynn Whitfield (Jaws: The Revenge), Lucien Laviscount (“Scream Queens”), Anna Diop (Us), Coco Jones (Vampires vs. the Bronx), Langley Kirkwood (“Banshee”), and Romy Woods star in Peacock’s Strung.
Produced by Diablo Cody, director Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits brought a new coven of witches to the big screen earlier this year, and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Victoria Pedretti (“The Haunting of Hill House”), Alexandra Shipp (Tragedy Girls), Gabrielle Union (Breaking In), and Emma Chamberlain star in Forbidden Fruits, released by IFC and Shudder.
Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges the group’s ‘girl boss’ ways, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate.
“Forbidden Fruits grabbed me by the neck the very first time I read it,” Diablo Cody said. “It’s one of the craziest, most creative, beautifully bonkers projects I’ve ever worked on.”
Meagan Navarro writes in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “Forbidden Fruits may not necessarily forge new terrain in the teen satire space, but Alloway brings so much style and energy to her well-cast single-location stage play adaptation for the Gen Z crowd.”
The film is an adaptation of playwright Lily Houghton’s stage play Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die. Alloway and Houghton co-adapted.
This week’s new release roundups are presented by HUNGRY.
All aboard the swamp tour from hell – this hippo isn’t playing games…
HUNGRY is now available on Digital. Watch it now!
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