Show of hands if you’re ready to leave 2025 in the dust. It’s time to make way for 2026 in style: with themed horror, of course. Who needs crowds or overpriced food and beverage when you can stay comfortable on the couch with horror movies that remind you why that’s the safer plan anyhow. This week, we’re celebrating the holidays with New Year’s Eve horror movies that highlight how scary fresh starts and change can really be.
Here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Cronos – Criterion Channel, HBO Max
The holidays, and New Year’s Eve, play a role in Guillermo del Toro’s unique vampire tale. Antique dealer Jesús Gris (Frederico Luppi) finds a 450-year-old mechanized scarab hidden within a statue in his shop. It stings him, injecting him with a mysterious substance, and he soon finds himself growing young again. Albeit with a thirst for blood. Gris’ new-found hunger for blood creates a path of destruction, and really rears its ugly head at a New Year’s ball that he attends with his wife, when he finds a man bleeding from an injury and loses control. You can also check out this gem on the big screen on NYE.
The Signal – Fandango at Home, Hoopla, Kanopy, Prime Video, Roku Channel
Set over New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day, a mysterious signal that invades radio, TV, and cell phone transmission turns anyone who hears it into rage-fueled killers. What makes The Signal so much fun and special is that it’s one cohesive story with central characters, but it’s told in three parts by three difference directors. This gives it varying tones, from serious to black comedy, and an anthology feel despite not actually being an anthology. A.J. Bowen plays Lewis, the infected husband to lead character Mya (Anessa Ramsey), who spends most of the film chasing her down as she attempts to escape him with her lover Ben (Justin Welborn).
The Substance – HBO Max
Coralie Fargeat’s body horror movie takes the “New Year, new you” concept to wild new levels, with a blood-soaked finale set over New Year’s Eve. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging starlet facing forced retirement. The pressure spurns her to try a secret new treatment that gives her exactly what she wanted, a younger version of herself ready to take Hollywood by storm. Failure to abide by the treatment’s new rules leads to disastrous consequences, though. Fargeat embraces absurdist humor, and The Substance is as funny as it is revolting. This is one raucous horror-comedy you can set your clocks too; ring in the New Year right as Monstro Elisasue takes the stage.
V/H/S/99 – Hoopla, Kanopy, Pluto TV, Shudder
The fifth installment in this found footage anthology film series parties like it’s 1999, including a segment centered on New Year’s Eve that reimagines the Y2K scare. Deadstream writers/directors Joseph and Vanessa Winter deliver a mischievous descent into Hell with the segment “To Hell and Back”, featuring Deadstream scene stealer Melanie Stone as Mabel. That this segment plays last means another fun way to ring in the new year when the clock strikes midnight. Also watch for segments by Johannes Roberts, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre, and Flying Lotus.
Y2K – HBO Max
Comedian and actor Kyle Mooney makes his directorial debut here with an irreverent comedy-horror movie that imagines what would’ve happened had the millennium bug actually crashed our infrastructure. What ensues is a nostalgic teen comedy that finds itself trapped in Maximum Overdrive as tech turns murderously against humankind. Weta Workshop brings the various murder bots to life via exquisite practical effects that choke, stab, maim, and set aflame their human prey. Be warned, though, the horror fares much stronger in the first half, with the comedy taking center stage (along with Fred Durst) in the back half. This is for those seeking a party vibe on New Year’s Eve.