The Best Psychology Movies and TV Shows on Shudder

What it's about: Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween Night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabulary. Any word that comes from beyond their family abode is instantly assigned a new meaning. Hence 'the sea' refers to a large armchair and 'zombies' are little yellow flowers. Having invented a brother whom they claim to have ostracized for his disobedience, the uber-controlling parents terrorize their offspring into submission.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Fandor, Shudder & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $2.00 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: A dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Showtime, Shudder & fuboTV), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Showtime) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: Henry likes to kill people, in different ways each time. Henry shares an apartment with Otis. When Otis' sister comes to stay, we see both sides of Henry: "the guy next door" and the serial killer.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: The sequel to House of 1000 Corpses – the Firefly family are ambushed at their isolated home by Sheriff Wydell and a squad of armed men guns blazing – yet only Otis and his sister, Baby, manage to escape the barrage of bullets unharmed. Hiding out in a backwater motel, the wanted siblings wait to rendezvous with their errant father, Captain Spaulding, killing whoever happens to stand in their way.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (IMDb TV), stream on a subscription service (Shudder & Tribeca Short List) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix & Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Shudder & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: Seeking shelter from a relentless rainstorm and landslides in a remote region of Wales, five travelers are admitted to a large foreboding old house that belongs to the extremely strange Femm family. Sepulchral Horace Femm and his obsessive, inhospitable sister Rebecca are the group's peculiar hosts. The house also holds surprises - and a brutish mute manservant named Morgan.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder, The Criterion Channel & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Vudu).

What it's about: When the sleepy rural village of Accendura is rocked by a series of murders of young boys, the superstitious locals are given to apportion blame, with the suspects including the local "witch" Maciara. With the bodies piling up and the community gripped by panic and a thirst for bloody vengeance, two outsiders - city journalist Andrea and spoilt rich girl Patrizia - team up to cracked the case. But before the mystery is solved, more blood will have been spilled, and not all of it belonging to innocents...

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: Tensions rise within an asbestos cleaning crew as they work in an abandoned mental hospital with a horrific past that seems to be coming back.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder).

What it's about: After having narrowly escaped an attempt on his life at the hands of a psychopath, detective inspector Takakura quits active service in the police force and takes up a position as a university lecturer in criminal psychology. But his desire to get to the bottom of criminals’ motives remains, and he does not hesitate long when former colleague Nogami asks him to reopen an old case.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Shudder & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $4.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: Invisible aliens in a tiny flying saucer come to Earth looking for heroin. They land on top of a New York apartment inhabited by a drug dealer and her female, androgynous, bisexual nymphomaniac lover, a fashion model. The aliens soon find the human pheromones created in the brain during orgasm preferable to heroin, and the model's casual sex partners begin to disappear. This increasingly bizarre scenario is observed by a lonely woman in the building across the street, a German scientist who is following the aliens, and an equally androgynous, drug-addicted male model.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: Schizophrenic housewife, engulfed by terrorizing apparitions, kills off each, unknowing if these demons are merely figments of her hallucinatory imagination or part of reality.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: A ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Cinemax & Shudder), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Cinemax) & rent or buy from $14.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: Spain, 1950s. Montse's agoraphobia keeps her locked in a sinister apartment in Madrid and her only link to reality is the little sister she lost her youth raising. But one day, a reckless young neighbor, Carlos, falls down the stairwell and drags himself to their door. Someone has entered the shrew's nest... perhaps he'll never leave.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (iTunes).

What it's about: A mother of two inherits a home from her aunt. On the first night in the new home she is confronted with murderous intruders and fights for her daughters’ lives. Sixteen years later the daughters reunite at the house, and that is when things get strange . . .

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: The dark legend of the young woman Albrun and her struggle to preserve her own sanity, and tries to explore the fine line between ancient magic, faith and madness at a time when pagan beliefs in witches and nature spirits spread fear and terror in the minds of the rural population.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: A newlywed couple finds their lake-country honeymoon descend into chaos after Paul finds his wife wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Hulu, Monsters Nightmares & Shudder) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: A mentally ill man searches New York for his missing eight year old daughter. He recreates her steps each day hoping for some clue to her disappearance, until he meets and befriend a woman with a daughter the same age. Could she help him with the missing piece of the puzzle?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 3 services (Prime Video, Vudu & PlayStation Store).

What it's about: A Beverly Hills teen (Billy Warlock) discovers his parents are part of a gruesome orgy cult for the social elite.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Shudder & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: A normal, average guy who lives in New York City becomes dependent on an evil, disembodied brain.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (iTunes).

What it's about: Desperate to repay his debt to his ex-wife, an ex-con plots a heist at his new employer's country home, unaware that a second criminal has also targeted the property, and rigged it with a series of deadly traps.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix, Tubi & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, ConTV, Shudder & 1 other) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Rachel, a rookie cop, is about to begin her first night shift in a neglected police station in a Scottish, backwater town. The kind of place where the tide has gone out and stranded a motley bunch of the aimless, the forgotten, the bitter-and-twisted who all think that, really, they deserve to be somewhere else. They all think they're there by accident and that, with a little luck, life is going to get better. Wrong, on both counts. Six is about to arrive - and All Hell Will Break Loose!

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 7 services (iTunes, Google Play & 5 others).

What it's about: A Nazi doctor who had a fetish for young boys feels guilt after torturing and murdering his latest victim, and throws himself off a roof. Some years later, the doctor, confined to an iron lung, accepts as his nurse a boy who secretly witnessed that killing.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi) & stream on a subscription service (Shudder).

What it's about: A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, loose in NYC, kills young women and takes their scalps as trophies. Will he find the perfect woman in photographer Anna, and end his killing spree?

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu), stream on a subscription service (Full Moon & Shudder), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (Google Play & Prime Video).

What it's about: A group of hobos begin melting into multicolored piles of goo after drinking sixty-year-old liquor. At the same time, the psychotic Vietnam War vet who rules the hobo camp snaps and begins killing at random. Two brothers set out to stop the liquor and the killer.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder).

What it's about: Twenty-three years after her hooker mother tried to kill her in the womb Helen remains damaged psychological goods. A mindset that gets worse when she suffers a traumatic head injury in an accident. Awakening in hospital, it’s discovered Helen has a tumour growth in her brain causing her to experience dark visions, disembodied voices and the omnipresence of a strange young woman. Soon, lost in a walking nightmare, in which nothing is what it seems, and her vicious actions barely remembered, it becomes crystal clear that whatever is inside her cracked psyche will stop at nothing to get out.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix, Tubi & Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Five carnival workers are kidnapped and held hostage in an abandoned, Hell-like compound where they are forced to participate in a violent game, the goal of which is to survive twelve hours against a gang of sadistic clowns.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi & Vudu), stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: This slasher movie follows a relentless killer who is out to avenge the death of a young girl who died after being bullied and teased by four of her classmates. Now high-school students, the guilt-ridden kids have kept their involvement a secret, but when they start being murdered, one by one, it's clear that someone knows the truth. Also coping with the past are members of the dead girl's family, most notably her prom-queen sister, Kim Hammond (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix, Tubi, Vudu & 1 other), stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: A troupe of struggling stage actors is rehearsing for a small-town production of a play. Everything seems to be as it should until one of the cast members turns up dead. In a panic, the others try to get out, only to find they are now locked in the theater with the killer! Which one of them committed the murder, and who will get out alive?

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Vudu), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Full Moon & Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Prime Video).

What it's about: A family intervention goes horrifically awry within the snowy confines of an isolated lake house.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix, Tubi, Vudu & 1 other), stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: Presumed dead after a shoot-out with the Haddonfield police, Michael Myers is secretly nursed back to health -- and returns a year later to kill again and once more targets his young niece, Jamie. Jamie is now recovering in the local children's hospital after attacking her stepmother and losing her voice. Her mental link with her evil uncle may be the key to uprooting her family tree.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (iTunes & Vudu).

What it's about: After being sent to the electric chair, a serial killer uses electricity to come back from the dead and carry out his vengeance on the football player who turned him in to the police.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: While doing undercover work in a mental hospital, Emanuelle discovers a girl who seems to have been raised by a tribe of amazonian cannibals. Intrigued, Emanuelle and friends travel deep into the Amazon jungle, where they find that the supposedly extinct tribe of cannibals is still very much alive.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder).

What it's about: After their car breaks down, a group of young travelers find themselves stranded at a roadside museum run by the mysterious Mr. Slausen and populated by his collection of supernatural mannequins.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (Prime Video).

What it's about: A haunting exploration of the mind of Sam, a teenager who's on the verge of acting out hidden psychopathic desires.

Where to Watch: 4 episodes (100%) are available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder). 2 episodes (50%) are available to rent or buy from $1.99 on 2 services (Google Play & YouTube).

What it's about: At a summer camp for youths, cocky pre-teen calls out the name of mass serial killer "Madman Marz". Suddenly, counselors are being maimed and slaughtered in various ways by the backwoodsman who has returned when his name was called.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, ConTV & Shudder) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: A band of satanist hippies roll into a town and begin terrorizing the local folk. After raping a local girl, her grandpa goes after them, only to be beaten and forced to take LSD. His grandson then plots revenge on the satanists by feeding them meat pies infected with blood from a rabid dog. They turn into crazed lunatics and begin killing and/or infecting everything in their path.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder & Kanopy).

What it's about: In 1974, Terry commits a murder and pins it on his twin brother, Todd. Ten years later, Todd escapes from a mental institution on the same day as Terry’s murderous instincts resurface.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video, Shudder & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Thomas, a very intelligent and resourceful child, is left alone with his beloved and fragile granddad on Christmas Eve, when a psychopath dressed as Santa Claus breaks into their mansion and starts chasing them. Thomas will do whatever he can to save himself and his granddad, leaving much of his childhood innocence behind.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder).

What it's about: A naïve young boy unknowingly becomes the pawn of a serial killer.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (Tubi), stream on a popular subscription service (Prime Video & Shudder), stream on a popular TV everywhere service (Epix) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: A story of Eliska and her daughter, starting a new life in a remote house with the 'father away on business', as the mother claims. After the lie is disclosed, their relationship begins to wither. At that time, the mythical Noonday Witch begins to materialize. She is coming closer and closer and the question is poised: is the danger real or is it all in the mother's crumbling head?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 2 services (Microsoft & Vudu).

What it's about: Five teenage friends set out for the beach on their Spring Break vacation. Good times are cut short when one of the group, Carrie, contracts a deadly sexual transmitted disease during a bathroom stop. When they stop for the night at an isolated motel, the real terror begins when the STD virus starts running rampant, turning those infected into the living dead.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PopcornFlix & Tubi), stream on a subscription service (Shudder) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 2 services (Prime Video & Vudu).

What it's about: Julia (Trish Everly, in her only film role), a young teacher for deaf children living in Savannah, Georgia. Julia has horrid memories of her childhood, which was scarred by her sadistic twin sister Mary (Allison Biggers). At the urging of her uncle, Father James, Julia visits Mary, suffering from a severe skin disease, in a mental institution. The meet does not go well, and Mary vows to make Julia "suffer as she had suffered". As their mutual birthday approaches, several of Julia's friends and neighbors begin to die gruesome deaths, some of which committed by a mysterious Rottweiler dog that has some sort of connection to Mary. But is Mary really the killer?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 1 service (iTunes).

What it's about: A young hairdresser enters into the modeling world while fearing retaliation from her puritanical mother and stalker ex-boyfriend.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a subscription service (Shudder).