This is the Best Streaming Service for Horror Fans (& It’s Free)

For horror movie fans, streaming libraries can be a bit of a mixed bag. Netflix has a handful of gems, but also a lot of middle-of-the-road fare. Max has a decent back catalog, but rights issues have shrunk their offerings in recent years. Of course, there’s always Shudder, with its lovingly curated collection of classics and originals, but subscription fees for any combination of these or other services start to add up fast. Luckily, there’s one streaming service with a vast library of horror films that doesn’t cost a dime to use.

That service is Tubi, the free ad-supported streamer that has become a major player in the streaming world over the past couple of years. Tubi’s horror section boasts an impressive collection of overlooked indies, obscure cult classics, and a handful of mainstream hits, not to mention their increasing array of originals. Horror fans who might want to find something they’ve never seen before should spend some time scrolling through their massive catalog to dig up some hidden gems.

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Tubi’s Horror Offerings

Tubi’s horror section has something for every type of fan, from those who love the cheap and cheesy to more casual viewers who like to stick to the classics. Stone-cold genre icons like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hellraiser, and Carrie can be found on the service, nestled alongside more recent hits like the Terrifier series and Bodies Bodies Bodies. The service also serves as a streaming home for films from more niche distributors like Severin Films, Arrow Video, and the American Genre Film Archive, which focus on restoring and reviving forgotten independent and direct-to-video projects.

Plenty of the most buzzy indie horrors from recent years have found their way onto the site, movies like 2016’s The Love Witch, 2022’s The Outwaters, and 2018’s The Night Eats the World, among many others. Fans who like to test their nerves with the more extreme end of the genre can find especially disturbing entries like Takashi Miike’s Audition, the TikTok-infamous found footage film Megan is Missing, or the 2008 French endurance test Martyrs. Those who prefer their horror more silly and less scary can turn to horror-comedy offerings like Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Cooties, or the 80s zombie classic Return of the Living Dead. This is just a tiny sample of what Tubi has to offer those fans brave enough to sift through their inventory.

There are a couple of downsides to this, however. Tubi’s recommendation algorithms aren’t quite as sophisticated as some of the bigger streamers, and their wide-net approach to filling their libraries means that there’s also a lot of crap mixed in with the gems. But for horror fans with the patience to dig through the dreck to find the good stuff, the rewards can be great indeed. In the world of algorithmically-guided viewing options, it’s actually refreshing to not have such a heavily curated experience. Clicking on “horror” under the website’s browse section only shows a fraction of the titles available, but individual title pages offer further recommendations to explore, leading curious browsers down pleasurable rabbit holes. It’s probably the closest experience to walking the aisles at a video store that still exists in the streaming era.

Why Tubi Shouldn’t Get Too Mainstream

Tubi has definitely grown a lot in recent years, netting bigger titles and even offering a streaming home for this year’s Super Bowl. As paid streamers become increasingly expensive, with many requiring subscription fees and still making users watch ads, free options like Tubi have become more and more attractive to viewers who want to cut costs while still having access to a wide array of titles. It’s pushed Tubi from a relatively niche streamer into a mainstream contender.

This is great news for Tubi’s longevity as a company, and their future in a space that’s grown more crowded than ever. But hopefully this larger success won’t come at the expense of its scrappy charm. For years, Tubi has felt almost like a secret kept by the most diehard movie fans, with niche websites and columns sharing recommendations of titles uncovered by intrepid viewers with the gumption to browse through the endless back catalog. While it’s great to have a place to watch some of the genre’s greatest classics for free, the sense of discovery, of finding something great that’s been overlooked by the masses, has been one of the biggest pleasures of the service since its inception.

Tubi’s growth in the industry is undeniably a good thing, and an encouraging sign that it’s possible to offer customers a quality streaming experience with no subscription fee that’s completely supported by ad revenue. For now, there’s still plenty of weird little gems hiding in dusty corners of Tubi’s sprawling catalog, and hopefully their continued ascendancy in the streaming world won’t change that any time soon.

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