8 Frightful Films to Spend a Horrifying Weekend With on HBO Max

HBO Max has gotten a good deal of ink lately for a certainmega - sized superhero manager ’s cut , but the streamer is alsostuffed with genre titlesbeyond its showy premieres . We ’ve already picked out the must - see ( anddeep - cut ) fancy and sci - fi ; now , we ’ve got eight horror suggestions for your next spooky movie nighttime .

1) Scanners

Yes , yes , we ’re all well aware of scanner ’ glorious contribution to the advance of detonate - head special effects ( learn the trailer above ) , butDavid Cronenberg ’s 1981 chiller is disturbing on many levels even beyond that . It imagines a earth where certain people born with telepathic and psychokinetic top executive are targeted by both a sinister military contractor ( whose program is led by a doctor played byThe Prisoner ’s Patrick McGoohan ) and a rebel radical of “ scanners ” who espouse a violent drawing card ( Michael Ironside ) . When a hefty but untrained new recruit ( Stephen Lack ) steps into the midsection of this psychic war , he discovers multiple conspiracy afoot — as well as the worrisome trueness about his own yesteryear and the origins of his “ gift . ” Scanners is uniquely uncanny and completely electrifying , and just remember , rewinding - rewatching that drumhead - go - roar scene is well within any gorehound ’s banknote of rights .

https://gizmodo.com/the-most-iconic-sci-fi-and-fantasy-films-streaming-on-h-1846230881

2) Carnival of Souls

After she survives a devastating car chance event , a young electronic organ thespian ( Candace Hilligoss ) pick up and moves from Kansas to Utah , but she ca n’t quite shake her tragic past — or the feeling that she ’s either being haunt or going mad ( or both ) . Director Herk Harvey ’s 1962 cult classic prove that you do n’t need a big budget or fancy output value to create a mood that feel like being trapped in a incubus , a quality that would go on to influence other film producer working in the same surreal nervure . To put it another way of life , Carnival of Souls is “ Lynchian ” before “ Lynchian ” was a thing .

https://gizmodo.com/12-delightfully-freaky-horror-movies-from-the-1960s-1843544174

3) Eyes Without a Face

A devastating elevator car accident affect a troubled young woman also predominate large over Georges Franju ’s 1960 tale — but there ’s no question about what ’s amiss with her in this case , or what ’s very amiss about the circumstances she now finds herself in . Desperate to help his once - adorable daughter , Christiane ( Édith Scob ) , restore her disfigured face , a charge plate surgeon ( Pierre Brasseur ) and his assistant ( Alida Valli ) nobble women off the streets of Paris so that they can be made into unwitting face - transplant donors . Meanwhile , Christiane — who drift around her Church Father ’s mansion wearing an eerie white-hot mask — is slowly losing her own clutches on world , thanks to her travail and the fact that she ca n’t pass on out to her fiancé to let him know she survived the chance event . Despite its open matter , Eyes Without a Face is languid and gorgeous , though the sequence where Christiane ’s body rejects her late unexampled face is as stomach - turning as any full - coloring material splutter movie .

https://gizmodo.com/9-ex-streamly-radical-90s-genre-movies-you-can-watch-ri-1843831517

4) The Bay

find - footage horrormay be played out at this point , but this 2012 Barry Levinson - target holdover from its heyday — about a small coastal town in Maryland overwhelmed by a virulent parasitic irruption thanks to toxins in the weewee — employ the gimmick to great consequence . The Bay is framed as a top - secret assembling of evidence pertaining to a governance cover - up ; we stick with a news show newsperson ( You ’re the Worst ’s Kether Donohue ) who keeps her camera rolling as the position mystify chilling and exponentially grosser , while other root ( security cameras , TV chat , etc . ) also chime in to provide different ( but equally alarming ) perspectives . Taken as a whole , The Bay is substantiation that even grainy , shivering - Cam River coup d’oeil of exploding boils and wriggling , physical body - gobbling critters can be a highly in force panic tactic .

https://gizmodo.com/10-cult-sci-fi-movies-about-environmental-revenge-1832546196

5) Shocker

With A Nightmare on Elm Street already on its fifth entry by 1989 ( as it happen , it ’s available on HBO Max along with a few others from theElm Street series ) , creator Wes Craven turned his pot to a sweet bogeyman to sample and replicateFreddy Krueger ’s blockbuster success . He did n’t succeed in build a franchise with Shocker , but he did provide us with a slasher crafted around a central vanity that ’s almost as bonkers as a guy who can mutilate you in your dreams .

A beefy , pre - X - FilesMitch Pileggi plays TV service man - gash - serial killer Horace Pinker , whose execution run short sideways when he score a Satanic bargain to twist into electricity after he dies , enabling him to have hoi polloi ( or piddling girl , depending on who ’s nearby ) and retain his killing stripe . good of all , the idiotic finis sends Pinker and his estranged boy ( Peter Berg ) on a wild brawl across different TV channels , which see them punch their elbow room through vintage Scottish reel ( including the Hindenburg disaster ) , manifest in a Leave It to Beaver episode , clang into an Alice Cooper video recording , burst into a John Tesh - hosted newscast , and more . Sleep all you want , but never watch tv set again !

6) Stephen King’s It

HBO Max has Andy Muschietti ’s very skillful It andIt : Chapter 2 , but if you really want to give yourself a complex about buffoon and violent storm drains , beep - bleep yourself into the 1990 mini - series asterisk Tim Curry as Pennywise . The rest of the cast is jolly great , too — John Ritter , Harry Anderson , Annette O’Toole , Richard Thomas , Olivia Hussey , Seth Green — and the direction , by John Carpenter protégé Tommy Lee Wallace ( Halloween III : time of year of the Witch ) keep the many retiring - and - present move parts of Stephen King ’s giant playscript moving briskly along . But Curry ’s flawless performance is the independent draw here ; even over three decades afterwards , those pointy teeth will still give you nightmares .

https://gizmodo.com/over-25-years-later-the-it-miniseries-is-still-fantast-1785721964

7) Magic

Richard Attenboroughdirected this 1978William Goldman - scripted ( adapted from his own novel ) tale of a wannabe magician describe Corky ( Anthony Hopkins ) who decides his flailing act will benefit from the addition of a ventriloquist blank make Fats . The piffling guy gives Corky ’s career a huge boost , but his already touchy grasp on reality begins to suffer when he starts to believe that the controlling , foul - mouthed Fats is not only alive , but homicidal . It ’s a campy concept , but the movie plays it pretty straight — peculiarly Hopkins , who was 13 years away from bringingHannibal Lecterto life and yet is just as terrifying ( in an entirely unlike path ) here .

https://gizmodo.com/the-10-creepiest-ventriloquist-dummies-of-all-time-458555695

8) Open Water

Some repulsion movies throw a lot of plot and mythology and supernatural freak - outs at you . Others , like Chris Kentis ’ 2003 selection thriller Open Water , add up up with an estimate as simple as it is devastating . On a grouping scuba misstep , two divers are accidentally leave behind by their boat — and have no pick but to unable to help bob around as the nearbysharksslowly start to take notice of the free lunch in their midst . The remnant result is an perfectly torturous take on the “ holiday die incorrect ” musical genre , with a sense of apprehension that close in even though the poor characters are wall by the absolute vastness of an empty , empty ( except for all the sharks ) ocean .

https://gizmodo.com/10-sci-fi-and-fantasy-deep-cuts-on-hbo-max-1846260338

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Still floating after three decades!