A lot of good stuff is leaving HBO Max at the end of December—including several entries in The Omen franchise. But have no fear. After all, there’s plenty of fantastic stuff hitting the streamer, all but guaranteeing this December as a Christmas to remember. While the offerings aren’t quite as vast as what the service had to offer in October, there are plenty of perennials available—including The Conjuring films—and a smattering of spicy new scares to check out. Don’t forget to also check out our December guides for Hulu, Magnolia Selects, and ARROW.
De Palma (2015)
While not strictly speaking a scary movie, horror fans would do well to check out Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma. The feature-length documentary includes De Palma himself and several frequent collaborators as they review the master’s body of work, including such seminal horror classics as Carrie and Dressed to Kill. It’s a gorgeously composed documentary, reverent of one of cinema’s very best. Love or hate De Palma (I hope it’s love), there’s no denying he’s one of the most influential pioneers of the genre, whether that be stylistically, narratively, or anything and everything in-between. HBO Max always has some noteworthy documentary offerings. With De Palma, horror fans and cinephiles alike are getting one of the best.
Green Room
Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room isn’t an easy watch. In the seven years since release, there hasn’t been anything else quite like it. It’s the kind of all-too-rare effort, a mid-budget hardcore slasher that doesn’t comfortably fit within either the realm of indie or mainstream horror offerings. This renders the film such a delightful—if unpleasantly frightening—film to revisit. Pat (the late Anton Yelchin) and his band the Ain’t Rights stop over at a neo-Nazi bar for a quick gig. They’re desperate for cash, so even though the venue flies in the face of their values, they figure they’ll get in, get out, no problem.
Only, there is a problem. Big problem. After they stumble across a deceased girl’s corpse, they’re locked in the titular green room, hunted down over the course of the night by proprietors hoping to keep them quiet. It’s a brutal, uncompromising affair, one of this century’s scariest movies. The cold, cruel violence of Green Room will haunt audiences for a long, long time.
Gone Girl
This isn’t cheating. Sure, David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel of the same name might technically be best conceptualized as a thriller. But name a movie—any movie—that had audiences more afraid of their partners than this one. Rosamund Pike’s Amy Elliott Dunne is one of the genre’s scariest movie villains. Cold, calculating, and earnestly sympathetic, she’s a tempest of conflicting emotions, eliciting disgust and fascination in equal measure. There’s plenty of blood for the horror crowd. And as he often does, Fincher directs with an austere detachment that chills right to the very bone. Like another one of Flynn’s works, there are elements of horror here, and that’s what makes everything she writes so fascinating and, in the right circumstances, so terrifying. Check it out on HBO Max this month if you haven’t yet.
Hellraiser: Hellworld
Some critics argue Hellraiser: Hellworld barely feels like a Hellraiser movie at all. It makes sense given the movie first originated as an entirely different script. But for those with a little grace in their heart, it’s a fun—if unremarkable—take on the Hellraiser mythos. It’s got video games, some cool lore, some grimy, gory kills, and it never takes itself quite too seriously. Filmed concurrently with Hellraiser: Deader (also available this month), the franchise was definitely showing its age at this point. But as a look back at where the franchise has been, it’s a fascinating outing. Plus, if those two aren’t enough, HBO Max has four additional Hellraiser movies available for your viewing pleasure, presuming your pleasure is more Hellraiser.
The full list of HBO Max’s horror offerings can be seen below:
December 1
De Palma, 2015
Gone Girl, 2014
Green Room, 2015
Hellraiser III Hell on Earth, 1992
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline, 1996
Hellraiser V: Inferno, 2000
Hellraiser VII: Deader, 2005
Hellraiser: Hellseeker, 2002
Hellraiser: Hellworld, 2005
The Purge: Anarchy, 2014
December 5
His Dark Materials, Season 3 Premiere
Let me know what you are most excited to check out on HBO Max this month on Twitter over at @DreadCentral.
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