The first decade in the 21st century marked a boon of exciting new horror. Zombies sped up and became dangerous again. Remakes were back in style, found footage went into overdrive, J-Horror waxed and waned, and new voices emerged. The decade marked the rise of brutal films known as “torture porn” and broader accessibility to international genre films.
2000-2009 had something for every type of genre fan, getting the new century in horror off to a stellar start. So much happened in the genre, and there’s still plenty of underrated or underseen gems to seek out from the early aughts. This week’s streaming picks belong to those lesser discussed favorites.
From haunted hospitals to clever creature features, here’s where you can stream these five titles this week.
House of Wax – Tubi
Creative kills are crucial to the slasher, and House of Wax brings the goods. Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, The Shallows) insisted everything be as practical as possible for his directorial feature debut, which pays off dividends. For the teens that take a shortcut to their college football game and instead wind up in a backwoods little town of wax, they pay for their mistakes with their lives in the most brutal fashion. The death scenes are remarkable in this loose remake. House of Wax, with its gruesome deaths and stellar production design, didn’t deserve its multiple Razzie Award nominations. It offers slasher fun and fantastic set pieces in spades.
Black Sheep – Tubi
If you’re in the mood for a completely over-the-top splatstick horror-comedy from New Zealand, watch this one. As a child, Henry developed a sheep phobia after his brother Angus played a cruel prank on the family sheep farm. Fifteen years later, Henry returns to the farm to sell his share, unaware that Angus covertly carried out a series of genetic experiments to transform the sheep into ferocious carnivores. B-movie sheep zombie mayhem ensues, complete with fantastic creature and gore effects by Weta Workshop (Krampus, District 9, Meet the Feebles). If you’ve been missing Peter Jackson’s early works but love modern special effects, Black Sheep should scratch that itch.
Splinter – Pluto TV, Tubi, Vudu
A young couple sets off for a romantic camping getaway but instead gets car-jacked by an escaped convict and his girlfriend. Then they get a flat tire that prompts them to seek help from a nearby gas station. Something is very, very wrong there, and the foursome must team up against a bizarre parasite infecting everything. A parasite that spreads and turns its hosts into deadly beings. Brutal, suspenseful, and with a highly cool creature concept, Splinter hides its low budget well. This underseen creature feature deserved a sequel.
Them – Prime Video (IMDb TV)
Them, also known as Ils, predates the more well-known The Strangers by two years yet rivals it in terms of bone-chilling suspense from start to finish. Lucas and Clementine live quietly alone in their rural countryside home. Their peaceful existence gets shattered one night by the arrival of hooded assailants that begin to terrorize them throughout the evening. This French-Romanian home invasion movie brings intensity and nail-biting tension. While touted to be “based on a true story,” it also rivals The Strangers in its unsettling one-liner in terms of the killers’ motivation.
Fragile – Prime Video, Vudu
Before Jaume Balagueró teamed up with Paco Plaza to unleash one of the most terrifying movies of the decade, [REC], he proved an aptitude for delivering chills with this underseen haunted hospital fairy tale, Fragile. Calista Flockhart stars as Amy, a nurse brought on to the nightshift in the children’s ward at an old hospital in the process of closing down. The problem is that the hospital’s closing means a ghost is very, very unhappy about the children leaving, and Amy has to somehow find a way to keep the children safe from unseen attacks. Fragile is creepy and atmospheric with effective scares, but even better is that Balagueró gives this ghost story an emotional center that resonates.
source https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3658639/stay-home-watch-horror-5-early-aughts-horror-movies-stream-week/
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