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Horror movie streaming service makes all your nightmares come true
Chin up, horror fans: the long, dark Canadian winter just got a lot more bearable, albeit also a lot scarier.
The subscription streaming-’n’-screaming service Shudder.com, long eyed jealously by fright-flick fans unfortunately situated south of the 49th parallel, is finally available in Canada as of this week, gathering together a wealth of horror-movie titles — and nothing but horror-movie titles — together in one, convenient place for your endless late-night perusal. If you dare. In anticipation of Shudder.com’s Canadian debut, we rang up Samuel Zimmerman, the former editor of horror bible Fangoria who now serves as one of the site’s content overseers and basically has fallen into the best job in the world, to give us the lowdown on what ghoul, gore and grindhouse aficionados can expect.
Boo! Shudder.com isn’t just a thoughtless dumping ground No, unlike a service such as Netflix, which just kinda throws a bunch of movies in its horror section at you without any thought to order or quality, Shudder is lovingly curated by Zimmerman and Toronto’s very own Colin Geddes, familiar to Toronto International Film Festival fans as the man who’s run its Midnight Madness program since 1998.
In addition to what’s popping on the home page — or on the site’s free Shudder TV section, which runs a continuous stream of pulse-quickening movies 24 hours a day that it won’t cost you $4.99 a month (or $49.99 a year) to see — you can go deep into your very own perverted horror fantasies with a variety of convenient search filters. Categories such as “body horror,” “creature features,” “paranormal” and “extreme” feature on the genre-within-a-genre side, or you can simply search by “monster” and dial up your evil entity of choice, be it “aliens,” “demons,” “evil animals,” “mutant creatures,” “werewolves,” “killer objects” or simply “humans.”
“I never tire of talking about it because Shudder is definitely lovingly curated,” says Zimmerman, noting that Shudder’s parent company, the AMC network, “has loved and invested in horror for some time.”
The success of AMC’s Walking Dead series and its October-long Fear Fest movie marathon, among other ventures, has led the network to “recognize how devoted and how loving and knowledgeable people who are admirers of the genre can be,” he says.
“There was a dearth of quality in broader streaming services in their genre section. They just sort of ended up being sections without any real clear path and it was harder to navigate.”
So think of Shudder as your old video store with the really cool horror section Shudder doesn’t have the volume of films that Netflix does — when it launched in the United States last year it had about 250 titles — but it does have a couple of serious students of the horror genre picking and talking about the films. And, of course, the experience is further enriched by the ratings and reviews contributed by users.
“We’re making a very genre-focused and specific thing and then going deep within it, using that experience of the video store and knowledge and recommendations as a guide,” Zimmerman says.
“The parameters really aren’t that strict or stringent. I forget who said it, but someone said that ‘horror isn’t easily defined; horror is an emotion.’
“So we really sort of go with our emotions or our instincts.
“Do we love it? Do we think it’s interesting? Do we think it’s conceptually interesting? Do we think it’s cinematically interesting? Do we think it’s historically interesting?
“These are all the things we sort of use as a guide. And would our members like it, of course.
“We don’t just curate to our own tastes. If it was up to my own taste, it would only be witch movies.” Why, yes, there is exclusive content Just in time for the Canadian launch on Oct. 20, Shudder unveiled the French horror miniseries Beyond the Walls, a three-part paranormal chiller starring Geraldine Chaplin about a woman who inherits a townhouse that’s not just haunted, but — as Zimmerman enthusiastically puts it — has “a whole parallel plane of existence within it.”
Other treats on the way include an exclusive stream of recent Fantasia fest grad Therapy, a camping-trip-gone-wrong shocker from 17-yearold French director Nathan Ambrosioni, and the Japanese Ring/Grudge monster-off Sadako vs. Kayako, which should double the pleasure of anyone who enjoys seeing creepy dead girls climbing out of wells and down attic stairs.
There’s also lots of cool stuff that simply never got a proper release outside its home territory, such as the Wicker Man- ish mid-‘90s British creepout Darklands, and is now get- ting its first wide airing.
So, Sam Zimmerman really does have his dream job “It was basically someone calling and going ‘Do you wanna do your dream job,’ ” he concurs with a laugh. “I’ve known Colin for years and I respect him and very much admire that dude, so when he came on it was fun from there. It was, like: ‘This is what we get to do? We really get to build a deep and wonderful resource and library? Rad.’ ”