All the Horror You Need to Stream in January 2022

Welcome to Horrorscope, a monthly column keeping horror nerds and initiates up to date on all the horror content coming to and leaving from your favorite streaming services. Here’s what to watch in January 2022.

However you feel about new year’s resolutions, you have to admit that something about January fills the air with the spirit of renewal and change. It’s a month dedicated to new discoveries, beginnings, and turned-over leaves. Which, for horror fanatics, can mean diving deep into under-seen and under-explored genre crannies with a heartened spirit and a hardened resolve.

In that spirit, this month, I’m recommending a swath of offerings that might be collecting dust on the back of your watch list; daunting sub-genres, exploitation oddities, and films that have unfairly fallen through the cracks. Whether your tastes veer towards sci-fi horror, psychedelic video nasties, or historically relevant silent features that miraculously survived the ravages of time.

Be sure to peruse the complete list below, calendar in hand, for a full picture of what horror movies are coming and going from your favorite streaming services in January 2021. Keep in mind that all dates listed below may not apply to viewers outside the US.

January 2022 Horror Streaming Cheat Sheet

• Bad news: the Twilight saga is leaving Netflix this month. Good news: the Twilight saga is coming to Peacock this month.
• If you’re partial to freaky offerings from the 1970s, you might want to pay close attention to what’s coming to ARROW this month.
• Good news: the very funny and very meta Malignant is back on HBO Max this month.
• Shudder has the goodies this month, including a swath of neat documentaries, a folk horror collection, and two Paul Morrissey films.

Horror Streaming Highlights for January 2022

Pick of the Month: The Witch Who Came From The Sea

Synopsis: Set in a decrepit coastal town, we follow Molly, a single woman who idolizes the memory of her father, who died at sea. Only, that’s not how her sister Cathy remembers it. From her sister’s recollection, their father was a violent, sexually abusive drunk. And while Molly’s fragile conscious rejects the facts, her imaginative subconscious finds more direct ways of confronting her traumatic past. And when a news report announces a shocking double murder with eerie echoes to Molly’s depraved daydreams, fantasy and reality begin to bleed into one another, rather literally.

An anomaly both of genre film and the career of Blaxploitation director Matt Cimber, The Witch Who Came From the Sea is a peerless descent into psycho-sexual muck. Simultaneously transfixing and difficult to watch, Th Witch Who Came From the Sea is a vicious riptide of substance abuse, seaside squalor, and feminine rage.

Featuring an early taste of the photographic talents of the GOAT Dean Cundy and a script by star Millie Perkins’ late husband, Robert Thom (Death Race 2000), The Witch Who Came From the Sea is a unique, sickening, and unforgettable watch. If you are partial to the likes of Images, Possession, or Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, you can’t afford to miss this exploitation gem.

Available on Shudder January 4th.

A folk horror collection for newbies and old hats

Synopsis: One of the most unnerving corners of horror cinema, “folk horror” is a primeval sub-genre full of isolated rural hideaways, local legends, and old-world beliefs. This impressive updated collection from Shudder is a bonafide 101 course on the thrills and chills folk horror has to offer.

Releasing in tandem with the streaming premiere of Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched, a documentary about (you guessed it) folk horror, Shudder’s “The Folk Horror Collection” is getting a wildly impressive revamp. The word “unprecedented” is not out of place for the goodies in store.

New to the collection are the “unholy trinity” of English folk horror, largely credited with laying the groundwork for the subgenre’s Western permutations: Blood on Satan’s Claw, The Wicker Man, and The Witchfinder General. These nihilistic nightmares from the British isles dabble in an especially Anglo-Saxon flavor of ritualistic sacrifice and paganism.

But, as Adam Scovell rightly notes for the BFI, the term “folk horror” has outgrown its British roots to include a large swath of spooky international offerings, many of which are represented in Shudder’s updated collection.

In addition to the aforementioned unholy trinity, the collection will be adding the Southern Gothic chiller Eve’s Bayou on January 1st. Then, on January 10th, the collection expands with a more international flair with the addition of Alison’s Birthday (Australia), Clearcut (Canada), Edge of the Knife (Haida Nation /Canada), Eyes of Fire (US), Il Demonio (Italy), Lake of the Dead (Norway), Leptirica (Yugoslavia), Lokis (Poland), Tilbury (Iceland), and Wilzcyzca (Poland).

Arriving on Shudder January 1st and 10th.

The most terrifying abduction film of all time

Synopsis: In the fall of 1975, a group of loggers watches their friend get beamed up right before their eyes. Reeling from the disappearance and the media maelstrom that has descended on their small town, the loggers do their best to support one another and their own psyches as they come to grips with what they saw. Then, on a stormy night, their abducted friend returns.

In films, alien abduction films rarely feel truly terrifying. Maybe the cultural proliferation of little grey men is to blame. Perhaps all of those tasteless probe jokes have begun to sour.

So it’s no small feat that Fire in the Sky succeeds where so (so, so) many others have failed. Based very loosely on the infamous Travis Walton incident, Robert Lieberman’s 1993 film focuses on the PTSD-riddled human impact of an extracurricular abduction that radically affected the lives of those affected.

Straddling a tonal line between absolute nightmare fuel and TV movie levels of sincerity, an endearing cast and exquisite work from both cinematographer Bill Pope and the effects geniuses over at Industrial Light and Magic make this space oddity a must-watch for anyone who wished abduction films had 500% more body horror.

Arriving on Hulu January 1st.

A significant (and spooky) rediscovery of pioneering African American cinema

Synopsis: Surreal, stuttering visual allegories eschew linear storytelling for fluttering glimpses of the sins of the Jazz Age, presided over by a glee-filled horned devil. Culminating with a colossal and genuinely jaw-dropping train derailment (in truth: a model train yeet’d into a bonfire), the dreamlike quality of this 16mm artifact makes for a compelling testament to the visionary and renegade spirit of its filmmakers.

Created by self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, two African American evangelists who weaponized cinema as a tool for their traveling minister, Hell-Bound Train coincides with Criterion’s Pioneers of African American Cinema collection. Presented on the streaming platform with a score by Dr. Samuel Waymon (who genre freaks might recognize as the man behind the atmospheric soundtrack of Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess), the film is a must-watch for those looking to deepen and decolonize their watch habits (and spice things up with a silent picture here and there).

Leaving the Criterion Channel on January 31st.

Streamable Horror Incoming This Month

Horror Titles Expiring from Streaming Soon

Related Topics: Horror, Horrorscope

Based in the Pacific North West, Meg enjoys long scrambles on cliff faces and cozying up with a good piece of 1960s eurotrash. As a senior contributor at FSR, Meg's objective is to spread the good word about the best of sleaze, genre, and practical effects.