Fresh Screams: Five Horror Films to Stream This Week – Morbidly Beautiful

From fairytale nightmare fuel and found-footage dread to killer kids and deadly dolls, here are the horrors haunting the week of April 20.

Horror fans have more options than ever and less patience than ever for mediocrity. Every week, streamers dump a fresh wave of titles onto our screens, all competing for a spot in the queue, not all of them worthy of one. That is where Fresh Screams comes in.

Each week, this column spotlights four horror films newly streaming, or arriving in the days ahead, that are actually worth your time, plus one new rental that justifies the extra spend. Not an exhaustive list. Just a discerning one.

4 Great Horror Films to Stream This Week

1. Dust Bunny (HBO Max – April 17, 2026)

If your tastes lean toward horror with a little storybook poison in its veins, Dust Bunny is an easy first pick this week. Bryan Fuller’s feature debut is the kind of dark fantasy horror that could either become a cult favorite or, at the very least, inspire fierce devotion from the weirdo wing of the genre community. That alone makes it more interesting than most of the dreck dumped onto streaming every weekend.

The hook is deliciously sinister: childhood fear filtered through a heightened, almost fable-like lens. Add Mads Mikkelsen to the mix, and you have a film that already feels designed to lure in viewers who like their horror elegant, uncanny, and just a little poisonous.

Read our full review here.

2. Shelby Oaks (Hulu – April 17, 2026)

There was plenty of curiosity surrounding the NEON-backed Shelby Oaks for a long time before it finally dropped in theaters in October of 2025. That curiosity was fueled by the popularity of YouTube personality/critic turned filmmaker Chris Stuckmann (making his feature film debut), a record-setting Kickstarter campaign, and the involvement of horror legend Mike Flanagan as an executive producer. That’s a lot of juice for a micro-budget horror film, and it helped this passion projectachieve profitability in its first two weeks.

Of course, curiosity only gets you so far. Fortunately, there’s more here than just a novelty pick or internet curiosity piece. The setup—missing sister, unraveling mystery, supernatural unease—hits several sweet spots at once, especially for horror fans who enjoy stories where obsession and media bleed into the terror.

It’s the kind of film plenty of genre fans have almost certainly been meaning to watch but have not gotten around to yet, which is exactly the sweet spot for a column like this. It’s not without its flaws and is best enjoyed free of excessive hype. In other words, it’s the kind of intriguing horror tailor-made for streaming. Watch it, if for no other reason, then to see the compelling origins of a genre filmmaker with a killer career ahead of him.

Read our full review here.

3. Dolly (Shudder – April 24, 2026)

A young woman abducted by a monstrous figure who wants to raise her as its child? Yes, that will do nicely.

Dolly is the kind of demented little nightmare Shudder subscribers should be watching the minute it lands. The setup is immediately upsetting in a primal, fairy-tale-gone-rotten way, tapping into bodily vulnerability, captivity horror, and the especially skin-crawling terror of being transformed into someone else’s idea of family. It is also the kind of premise that’s built for horror fans who prefer their movies nasty, claustrophobic, and just off enough to leave a stain.

In other words: prime Shudder movie night material.

Read our full review here.

4. Hive (Tubi – April 17, 2026)

Tubi remains one of horror’s strangest ecosystems: chaotic, overflowing, occasionally absurd, and every so often home to a title that deserves more attention than it is likely to get, like the platform’s absolutely brilliant Lowlifes (if you haven’t seen it yet, go watch it… now!)

The premise for Tubi’s much-buzzed-about Hive is simple. A babysitter loses the child in her care and is forced to confront something sinister hiding among the children at a playground. Evil-kid horror is already potent nightmare fuel, but what makes this especially enticing is how ordinary the setting is. There is something deeply wrong-making about terror erupting in broad daylight, in a place meant to feel safe, communal, and dull.

It’s a little bit Weapons meets Cooties, with some of Silent Hill‘s grotesque, puppet-like body movement for creepy good measure. Don’t get excited; it’s not nearly as good as any of those films. It’s certainly not the next Lowlifes. It won’t blow your mind. The script is lacking, and the pacing is far from perfect. But it boasts a cool visual style and some ample weirdness. Scrappy and fun, it’s worth a low-stakes trip to this perverse playground.

Just don’t expect to be buzzing about it long after.

Bonus: One Worth Opening Your Wallet For

Undertone (VOD – April 14, 2026)

There is something inherently unsettling about horror built around sound. Not spectacle. Not creature design. Sound. Voices on recordings. Distorted messages. Half-heard things that feel wrong before they even make sense. Undertone seems to understand exactly how unnerving that can be.

A paranormal podcast setup could have gone gimmicky in a hurry, but this is moodier and more intimate, with grief and dread humming beneath the surface. If you want a rental that feels less like a sugar rush and more like a slow, steady infection of unease, this is probably the one.

Full disclosure: I didn’t love this one quite as much as I’d hoped, but there is still plenty to recommend here. It’s a genuinely immersive sensory nightmare with impressive direction, even if it’s stronger technically than narratively. At a minimum, it does something memorable in a marketplace full of interchangeable noise, and that’s worth supporting.

The film is expected to arrive on HBO Max around July 2026. But you might not want to wait that long. Try to watch this on the best sound-equipped device possible. It’s meant for stereo surround sound or at least a great pair of headphones.