It’s officially spooky season, but one of Netflix’s latest horror hits, Killer Book Club, is just as dead as its characters. This film stands at a horrific 8% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and the Google reviews of the film just might be more entertaining than the film itself. Movies this remarkably bad don’t come around very often. If you’re a bad film connoisseur, you might just love this movie. If, however, you were looking for a good horror film to watch, you might want to look elsewhere for options – and we’ve got a few of them.
Scream
A delightful horror classic, this 1996 film is regarded by many as one of the best horror flicks ever to exist. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a teenage girl grieving after the brutal rape and murder of her mother, has old wounds reopened when a similar murder rocks their small town. Sidney and her friends and boyfriend try to recover mentally by hosting a party, but the killer knows where they are.
It features a delightful meta-knowledge of its genre (Ghostface [the killer] has his victims beg for their lives by answering horror movie trivia questions), lots of suspense and laughter in equal measures (it can be quite hard to effectively parody genres while still following their tropes, but Scream does it quite effectively), and a twist that still holds up just as well in 2023 and 1996. This is as good of a substitute for Killer Book Club that you can find.
Scream is streaming now on Max.
Candyman (2021)
The sequel to the acclaimed 1992 film, Candyman deftly combines horror with social commentary in a way that will leave you perfectly primed for more. In 1977, Black man Sherman Fields (Michael Hargrove) is brutally lynched for a crime he did not commit. Forty-two years later, in 2019, Black independent artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) finds out about the crime and becomes obsessed with it, making it a theme in his art. But Sherman’s spirit lives on – and has a thirst for vengeance.
Candyman is streaming now on Prime Video.
The Burning
When camp counselor Cropsy (Lou David) is horribly burned in a prank by the campers gone wrong, he vows to get his revenge. Five years later, another group of teens is enjoying their time at sleepaway camp – but what they don’t know is that Cropsy is still out there, waiting for his revenge. Derided as a cheap Friday the 13th copy at its initial release in 1981, The Burning has since gained a cult following, all the while delivering all the blood and gore that a slasher fan could ever want.
The Burning is streaming now on Prime Video.
