July is the month the streaming services quietly assume you are outside. They are wrong about me. While everyone else is standing over a grill, the catalogs are filling up with fresh theatrical horror, a few genuinely strange originals, a Shudder slate that is pulling its weight, and the usual heap of library titles that reappear like they never left in the first place.
There is new stuff worth clearing an evening for and old stuff worth revisiting with the AC cranked. A couple of this year’s theatrical releases are hitting home this month, which is the good kind of surprise. Here is where everything landed, and where to point the remote.
Best Bets for July
If you only have time for a handful, start here.
- Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (HBO Max, July 3). The Evil Dead Rise director doing a monster movie. This one has been on my calendar since April.
- Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (Hulu, July 2). Samara Weaving came back. That is the whole pitch and it works.
- Touch Me (Shudder, July 3). Addison Heimann again, and the logline is deranged in the way I want.
- Saccharine (Shudder, July 24). Natalie Erika James made Relic. I will watch anything she points a camera at.
- Nightborn (Shudder, July 31). The Hatching director on new-parent dread, with Rupert Grint. Yes.
- Human Vapor (Netflix, July 2). A Toho property reworked by one of the Train to Busan writers.
- Exit 8 (Shudder, July 17). A video game about not looking away, turned into a movie about not looking away.
Netflix
Netflix front-loaded the whole month onto July 1
Human Vapor: Season 1 · July 2 ·
A Japanese reimagining of Toho’s old sci-fi property about a man who can turn himself into vapor and walk through any assassination he pleases. Yeon Sang-ho, who co-wrote Train to Busan, co-writes here, with Shinzo Katayama directing. The premise is pure pulp and I mean that as praise.
Worst Neighbor Ever: Season 1 · July 1 ·
Blumhouse Television doing true crime about the people on the other side of your fence. Bodycam footage, reenactments, the works. Not my usual, but Blumhouse knows how to make a hallway feel unsafe.
Talk to Me · July 1 · Library
The Philippou brothers’ embalmed-hand movie finally on Netflix in the US. If you somehow missed the party game that got everyone in trouble, fix that. Their follow-up Bring Her Back is over on HBO Max when you are ready to feel worse.
The Witch · July 1 · Library
Robert Eggers, 1630s New England, Anya Taylor-Joy’s debut, and the greatest goat in film history. His Werewulf trailer just dropped, so the timing is not an accident. Watch for Black Philip.
Krampus · July 1 · Library
Michael Dougherty’s holiday horror-comedy, arriving in the dead heat of summer, which is somehow the funniest possible time for it. Still one of the better Christmas creatures we have.
The Exorcism · July 28 · Library
Russell Crowe as an actor unraveling on the set of a possession movie. Not to be confused with the other Russell Crowe possession movie, which is a sentence I did not expect to type.
Also landing July 1: Gone Girl, Hellboy, and Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, which is the entry where Godzilla is basically a vengeful ghost made of dead soldiers. Kaiju sickos know. Scream 1 through 3 arrive July 24, and all three seasons of Hannibal show up July 27. If you have never let Bryan Fuller’s show cook you slowly, this is the summer.
Hulu
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come · July 2 · New release
Grace is back, which is the only thing I needed to hear. The original turned a wedding night into a body count and made a cult star out of Samara Weaving. Six days after streaming season started, Hulu just handed you the sequel. Do not overthink it.
Bodies Bodies Bodies · July · Library
The Gen Z whodunit where the storm outside is less dangerous than the group chat. Great to have it in the rotation again.
HBO Max
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy · July 3 ·
Cronin followed up Evil Dead Rise by resurrecting a very old monster, and New Line put it in theaters back in April. Now it is home. Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, and May Calamawy carry it. This is the biggest genre arrival on any service this month, and it is the one I would clear the schedule for. It hits Max on the 3rd and HBO proper the night of the 4th.
Prime Video
Do Not Enter · July 17 · New release
Urban explorers who call themselves the Creepers break into a haunted hotel. Marc Klasfeld directs. You already know at least two of them are not making it to checkout.
Primate · July 31 · New release
Johannes Roberts, the 47 Meters Down guy, turns a family’s adopted chimp rabid and lets it loose on a house full of teenagers. Troy Kotsur is in it. Nature horror with a primate is a specific flavor and this one looks committed.
The Devil’s Mouth · July 29 · New release
Jeff Wadlow sends a group of friends swimming through a remote cave system with a shark waiting inside. Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor headline. It is a survival creature feature and it knows exactly what it is.
World War Z · July 1 · Library
Brad Pitt outrunning a fast-zombie pandemic on a global scale. More action than horror, but the Jerusalem wall sequence still holds up.
Shudder
The genre service is doing the heavy lifting this month, with a new title almost every Friday. All of the Shudder Originals and Exclusives below also stream on AMC+, which bundles the Shudder library.
Touch Me · July 3 · Shudder Exclusive
Two codependent best friends get hooked on the touch of an alien narcissist, which reads like a heroin metaphor because it is one. Addison Heimann made Hypochondriac, so I trust the swing. Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Jordan Gavaris star.
Faces of Death · July 10 · Shudder Original
A remake of the notorious mondo shocker, reframed around a content moderator, played by Barbie Ferreira, who starts finding real murders staged like scenes from the old tape. Smart way to update something that was always about the ethics of watching.
The Last Drive-In: Joe Bob’s Savage Summer · July 10 · Original Special
Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl hosting two titans of transgressive cinema, one of them an actual Video Nasty. The drive-in can never die.
Exit 8 · July 17 · Shudder Exclusive
Adapted from the liminal-hallway video game where a man is trapped in a subway passage and has to notice when something is off. It should not work as a film. It works.
Saccharine · July 24 · Shudder Original
A medical student joins an obscure weight-loss craze involving human ashes and gets stalked by something for the trouble. Natalie Erika James directs, Midori Francis and Danielle Macdonald star. The ashes detail alone earns my attention.
Nightborn · July 31 · Shudder Exclusive
Hanna Bergholm, who made Hatching, closes the month with a couple in an isolated Finnish forest house convinced there is something deeply wrong with their newborn. Seidi Haarla and Rupert Grint play the parents. New-parent fear is the easiest button in horror and Bergholm knows where it is.
On the library side, Shudder is also carrying The Cabin in the Woods, The Craft, The Evil Dead, Ghost Ship, and Dead Snow this month, plus Friday watch parties capped by a Christmas in July double of Christmas Bloody Christmas and Black Christmas.
Paramount+
The Ring · July 1 · Library
Gore Verbinski’s remake of Ringu, still the rare American redo that earned its keep. Seven days, one tape, one very committed girl. If you came to J-horror through this version, no judgment. Start here and then go find the original.
Peacock
Jaws · July 4 weekend · Library
Spielberg’s shark parked on Peacock for the exact holiday weekend everyone wants to go in the water. The original summer horror movie, doing its annual public service of ruining the beach.
Tubi
Free and feral, as always.
The One Next Door · July 10 · New addition
A charming stranger moves onto a quiet street and slowly turns a normal couple’s life into a minefield. Tubi loves a bad-neighbor thriller and so, apparently, does Netflix this month. Pick your fence.
Also worth a free scroll: Deep Blue Sea, the 1999 smart-shark classic where the ocean fights back and one monologue does not end the way anyone plans, and Exorcist II: The Heretic, which brings me to the freak pick.
Deep Cut: The Weird Little Freak Pick
Exorcist II: The Heretic (Tubi, free)
This is one of the strangest sequels a major studio ever released. John Boorman took the most terrifying movie of the 1970s and made a follow-up about hypnosis machines, locust telepathy, and Richard Burton yelling at the desert. It is incoherent. It is completely unlike the film it is supposed to be continuing, and watching it feels like a dream someone had about The Exorcist without seeing it. I have shown it to people who left the room and people who could not look away. It is free right now. Do not look this one up. Just start it.
Check Back Next Month
That is July. New Cronin, new Weaving, a Shudder month that actually delivers, and enough library horror to get you through every heat wave between now and the first pumpkin. This is a monthly thing, so I will be back when August posts its cards.
Tell me what you are queuing up in the comments, and tell me if I missed something buried in a catalog. I always miss one. That is what the comments are for.