Horror’s Greatest Season 2 Brings More Genre Love to Shudder

It’s baaaack! After making its debut successful August, Horror’s Greatest has returned for much clips and chat astir horror’s astir beloved sub-genres. Season 1 dug into Stephen King adaptations, elephantine monsters, Japanese horror, fearfulness comedies, and tropes and clichés (with an accent connected slasher films)—leaving plentifulness of country for more. This time, it’s animal attacks, film scores, hidden gems, abstraction horror, and slayer dates.

A batch of the talking heads repeat; it’s beauteous wide Horror’s Greatest filmed some (or who knows however many) seasons backmost to back, and the database of interviewees again includes David Dastmalchian, Kate Siegel, Joe Hill, Jonah Ray Rodrigues, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Alex Winter, Tananarive Due, and the Boulet Brothers, among others. It’s an engaging radical of radical progressive successful the existent instauration of fearfulness films and media, with scholars, authors, critics, and programmers sprinkled in. Everyone intelligibly shares a heavy emotion and appreciation for the genre.

As before, the editing is brisk and the clips well-curated, with stop-motion interludes and in-episode asides that interruption up the treatment successful amusive ways. One illustration is the dueling lists of champion and worst horror-movie pets successful the “Animal Attacks” episode; you tin conjecture wherever Cujo falls connected that ranking. Though determination is immoderate overlap betwixt episodes—Jaws comes up a lot, for instance—there’s capable to screen that Horror’s Greatest doesn’t consciousness similar it’s repeating itself oregon stretching itself excessively thin.

Tananarive Due admits her admiration of Event Horizon successful the “Space Horror” episode. Image: Shudder

Since play 1 focused connected somewhat much evident categories, play 2 is capable to get adjacent weirder, which allows Horror’s Greatest to traverse immoderate less-familiar turf. This is simply a bonus for the spectator who gets the accidental to larn astir much offbeat films, arsenic good arsenic a bonus for the talking heads, who—especially successful the “Hidden Gems” episode, which is simply a amusive inclusion—get to enthuse astir overlooked favorites, which see a batch of vintage and planetary selections, arsenic good arsenic should-be cult classics.

The strongest episodes are astir apt “Animal Attacks,” which delves into however Jaws launched a question of copycats but besides inspired a sensation for films that blend serious-minded biology concerns and “nature strikes back” themes with, like, alligators leaping retired of sewers and PCP-crazed zoo animals; and “Hidden Gems,” though that mightiness conscionable beryllium my excitement implicit seeing praised heaped upon the comparatively obscure likes of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and The Psychic. That occurrence successful peculiar feels similar you’re getting can’t-fail viewing recommendations from a person who has seen each movie, but that person is Shudder (and indeed, a batch of the titles are disposable to watercourse determination aft you decorativeness Horror’s Greatest).

“Killer Dates” mightiness beryllium the slightest successful, conscionable due to the fact that it has the murkiest through-line. It bobs from Carrie‘s prom nightmare to Get Out‘s meet-the-parents nightmare to the information that movies similar Terror Train and Jennifer’s Body have… hook-ups and relationships and romance elements existing alongside their assemblage counts. It conscionable doesn’t consciousness arsenic cohesive arsenic the different episodes, which works against it.

Along those lines, by widening its absorption a bit, Horror’s Greatest play 2 does thin to drift beyond what galore fans mightiness see strictly “horror.” There’s a batch much sci-fi included, adjacent extracurricular the “Space Horror” episode, and the amusement makes immoderate assertions that mightiness beryllium arguable to some. You whitethorn beryllium capable to grow your explanation of fearfulness to include, arsenic Horror’s Greatest would similar you to, the 1985 Martin Scorsese movie After Hours, astir 1 man’s hellish nighttime retired successful New York City. Or you whitethorn not, particularly erstwhile determination are truthful galore “I’m horror, and arrogant of it” types of films near retired of the conversation.

Perhaps that’s wherefore we’ve got fingers crossed for a 3rd season? The five-episode 2nd play of Horror’s Greatest begins today, December 31, connected Shudder, with play rollouts Tuesdays done January 28.

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