Now Streaming | The Best Haunted House Movies

If you live long enough, you are bound to be alone in the house someday and forced to explain an unexplainable noise, or a mysterious shadow, or a door that closes on its on with nary a gust of wind around it. From these humble, mysterious beginnings the haunted house genre was born, and it lingers to this day, telling the poor hapless audience that all of those little quirks in their homes are malevolent spirits who wish them harm. Or at least Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis screwing around in the attic.

Previously: Now Streaming | The Best Space Movies

With Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak arriving in theaters this week, just in time for Halloween, we figured the time was right to focus on all the best, scariest and funniest haunted house movies currently available on instant streaming services across the web. These are the films you don’t have to pay extra to watch, so long as you already subscribe to the service. So you can just click away right now and experience some of the best haunted house movies the internet has to offer, curated by Now Streaming.

House (Shudder)

New World Pictures

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who prefer House II: The Second Story and those who have seen the original House recently enough to know that those other people are WAY off base. This 1986 horror classic from director Steve Miner (Friday the 13th Part 2) stars the greatest American hero himself, William Katt, as a horror author who inherits a house that’s haunted as hell, and winds up fighting the ghosts of his past… literally.

From a story by Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad), this horror comedy has a serious emotional core on which Miner builds a story full of funny moments. From the hilarious next door neighbor played by George Wendt to the gateway to hell in the medicine cabinet, there’s a lot of fun to be had in this House, but by the time our hero confronts the real reason for his personal, emotional instability, it feels genuine. House is one of the most underrated horror movies out there.

The Devil’s Backbone (Crackle)

Sony Pictures Classics

When Guillermo Del Toro isn’t making over the top horror-inspired mainstream entertainments like Hellboy and FX’s The Strain, he makes subtle nightmares inspired by his childhood experiences. Perhaps his finest, scariest film is this 2001 classic about a young boy who is forced to live in an orphanage which also houses a defused bomb in the courtyard. The shadow of death looms large in every corner, in part because of the bomb, in part because of the raging Spanish Civil War, in part because there is a very real ghost there too.

A comparatively quiet film, especially by Del Toro’s standards, The Devil’s Backbone was widely hailed on its initial release but then overwhelmingly forgotten in favor of his Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth several years later. Don’t let that tragedy continue. See it now.

Beetlejuice (HBO Go)

Warner Bros.

More than 25 years later, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice feels just as fresh as ever. That’s at least partly because the film’s approach to the haunted house genre is still refreshingly novel. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play happily married homebodies who die and are forced to spend eternity in their old house, regardless of who moves in with them. As they find themselves stymied by the bureaucracies of the afterlife, they wind up hiring a reverse-exorcist, played by Michael Keaton, to get rid of the yuppies who have invaded their homestead. And, of course, he’s the title character, and he’s more than a little evil.

Tim Burton’s enormous affection for the supernatural and the morbid shines through in Beetlejuice, which interjects sublime nonsense into an already ludicrous story and – somehow – gets away with it. Beetlejuice remains to this day the only haunted house movie with multiple musical numbers set to the tunes of calypso impresario Harry Belafonte, mostly because nobody else would be crazy enough to come up with such a wacko concept, and nobody else would be talented enough to make it work.

Ju-On: The Grudge (Amazon Prime)

LionsGate Films

There are 11 films in the Ju-On series, including the American remakes. None of them are as good as the third, and first theatrically released version. (Believe or not, one of the best horror movies ever is a threequel to a straight-to-video franchise.) A horrible crime has been committed, leaving a supernatural impression on the house where it took place. And then horrible things happen, and under the surreal direction of Takashi Shimizu that would have been enough to scare that pants off of anybody.

But Ju-On: The Grudge isn’t a typical haunted house movie. It’s a story of a demonic infection: a haunting that passes from person to person, and no longer confines itself to the house where it all started. As the horror continues, unabated and unstoppable, Ju-On: The Grudge begins to take on a truly apocalyptic air of menace. A single act of violence spirals out into the world and destroys us all, with ghostly children and creaking, moaning specters that will haunt your dreams. Maybe this paranormal event can infect the audience as well…

Hausu (Hulu Plus)

Toho Studios

If there is one word we should use to describe the Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu, aka House (no relation), it would be bananas. This shit is bananas, damn it, and not just because at one point – and for no reason – one of the characters transforms into a pile of bananas wearing a pair of glasses. Although it may have something to do with the little girl whose fingers are bitten off by a piano, but continue to keep playing without her. Or the other girl who is eventually chopped in half at the waist but whose legs keep fighting ghosts anyway.

Don’t ask about the plot. It’s kind of besides the point, even in the film. It’s just a strange phantasmagoria of awesome random creepiness. It’s meant to be experienced, not understood.

If you haven’t seen Hausu, stop what you are doing and click here now. You will thank us forever. It’s bananas. Sometimes literally.

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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