By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
Although the official start of summer isn’t for a couple of weeks, a heatwave of horror is hitting streaming and VOD providers in June. Horror and cult film favorites Shudder, Screambox, and Arrow Player welcome the vacation season with new releases, classics, original programming, specially curated collections and premieres, while Vizio WatchFree+ serves up a smorgasbord of free fear films guaranteed to scorch your eyeballs. Slather on some sunscreen (we know most RUE MORGUE readers will need plenty of it), crack open a cold one and settle in for a terrifying June. Here are the highlights:
“BEST WISHES TO ALL”
Shudder subscribers in Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom can look forward to the June 13 streaming premiere of the Shudder original film Best Wishes to All, written and directed by Yûta Shimotsu. Aine Hara stars as a young woman whose visit with her grandparents reveals a macabre secret.
The 2025 sci-fi thriller Ash is available for streaming exclusively on Shudder beginning June 20. Eiza González, Aaron Paul and Flying Lotus star in this gripping tale of an astronaut who awakens to find herself on a strange planet with all her crew dead.
Two from modern horror icon James Wan also land on Shudder this month: Murder, mystery and the supernatural collide in the chilling 2007 film Dead Silence, and a family fights evil forces for the soul of their young son in 2010’s Insidious.
Shudder’s “HELL MOTEL”
Hell Motel, an all-new Shudder original series from Slasher creators Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter, kicks off with a two-episode premiere on June 17. Featuring an anthology format, Hell Motel centers on ten true crime obsessives who are invited to the reopening of the Cold River Motel, the site of a decades-old Satanic murder. Emmy winner Eric McCormack (Will and Grace) stars.
“SHIVER OF THE VAMPIRES”
Shudder expands its library of horror classics this month with a bloody batch of repertory titles. Fans of erotic, atmospheric French horror films should take note; June’s additions include seven shockers from the master, Jean Rollin: Lips of Blood, The Grapes of Death, Requiem for a Vampire, Fascination, Shiver of the Vampires, The Living Dead Girl and The Nude Vampire.
And speaking of bloodsuckers, horror streamer Screambox ups the vampire ante in the wake of Sinners with the original film Bleeding, coming June 10. Set in a world where vampire blood is harvested as a drug, Bleeding is the latest from filmmaker Andrew Bell (Bloody Bites).
Screambox celebrates the work of five grandmasters of the genre, George A. Romero, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava and Bob Clark in June. Films include Romero’s Two Evil Eyes; Argento’s The Cat o’ Nine Tails and Inferno; Fulci’s Zombie, House by the Cemetery, Manhattan Baby and Contraband; Bava’s Shock; and Clark’s Deathdream.
This month, Arrow Player, the home of cult cinema, highlights genre gems from Korea with a lineup of “Killer K-Horror” with such titles as Body Parts, Devils and Zombie For Sale.
June’s Arrow Selects features favorites from Corin Hardy, director of The Nun and The Hallow. In this installment, Hardy combs the Arrow archives for 22 influential horror classics, ranging from J-Horror and revenge thrillers to films focusing on nightmare worlds. This specially curated collection includes, in Hardy’s words, “a little something for everyone.” Films include Creepshow II, Basket Case and the documentary When Romero Met Del Toro.
“CALVAIRE”
Fabrice Du Welz’s Calvaire makes its Arrow Player streaming debut on June 13. Drawing comparisons with Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and John Boorman’s Deliverance, Calvaire is a pulse-pounding psychological horror focusing on a traveling cabaret singer (Laurent Lucas) who breaks down in a remote, mountainous region in France. However, his nightmarish ordeal really begins when he’s aided by a mentally unstable innkeeper.
Premiering exclusively for U.S. Arrow Player subscribers on June 20 is Extinction: The GMO Chronicles. Directed by Niki Drozdowski, this 2011 zombie-themed survival horror film follows the survivors of a global pandemic and their desperate search to find a cure before they succumb to the disease.
Arrow Player closes its June schedule with the surreal 1970 samurai fantasy The Invisible Swordsman. Set in Edo-era Japan, Sanshiro, a clumsy but dedicated swordsman, seeks revenge on his samurai father’s killer with the help of a recipe for an invisibility potion given to him by the yokai Shokera. The Invisible Swordsman begins streaming on June 23.
Of course, if you have a limited budget, the best horror movies are the ones you can see for free, and as usual, Vizio WatchFree+ delivers cost-free classic and contemporary genre fare for June. This month, see The Descent, The Descent 2, Sinister, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, Oculus, 1956’s The Bad Seed, Phantasm, Stephen King’s 1408, The Scarehouse, The Collector, Tiny Cinema, Extremity and The Fanatic on demand on Vizio TVs or the Vizio mobile app with your free Vizio account.
