Winter Horror Movies (January 2025)

The holidays are over, which means we are now knee-deep in the dark days of winter. In many parts of the world, a bleak coldness has set in. As I sit here writing this, a bone-chilling wind is howling outside, literally shaking my house and making me want to burrow under some blankets and not go outside until April rolls around. Now is the perfect time to hunker down and stream some icy horror movies as you wait out the winter. Below, I’ve rounded up 10 wintry horror movies you can stream this month, in all their chilly glory. And because I know someone, somewhere, will be wondering about this: no, “The Shining” isn’t on here. And there are two reasons for that. One: I already listed “The Shining” in a previous horror streaming column and I try not to double dip, and Two: believe it or not, “The Shining” is currently unavailable to stream anywhere (you can pay to rent it online, but that’s not the same thing). 

Streaming on Max.

It’s the winter of 1996, and a snow storm is brewing outside. But inside an abandoned school, a French dance troupe is gearing up for one wild night. In Gaspar Noé’s absolutely bonkers “Climax,” a group of dancers are secretly drugged with LSD, and all hell breaks loose. “Climax” is low on actual story, and the cast of dancers mostly improvised throughout the shoot. This only heightens the chaotic nature of the film, as we watch these dancers descend into total madness, all of it captured perfectly by cinematographer Benoît Debie. Noé opens the film with a bang as we watch all the dancers come out, one by one, performing frantic moves by way of introduction. And then, someone spikes a punch bowl of sangria, and everything goes very, very wrong, very, very quickly. The end result is both darkly funny and highly disturbing. 

Streaming on Prime Video, Tubi, streaming on Shudder January 13.

A somewhat underrated slasher, “Curtains” had a messy production, which resulted in two different directors taking on the material (the first director, Richard Ciupka, wanted the movie to be more artsy, whereas the director who took over, Peter R. Simpson, was going for a more traditional slasher pic). As a result of all this turmoil, the movie took almost two full years to complete. Despite these problems, the film ultimately works, thanks to some weird atmosphere and memorable set pieces. The story focuses on a group of female performers (they all have different talents: one is an actress, another is an ice skater, another is a musician, and so on) who move into a filmmaker’s secluded mansion in the dead of winter with hopes of landing a role in his latest picture. But these aspiring leading ladies are soon targeted by a killer. It’s strange, it’s fun, it features a scene where the killer puts on some ice skates to chase down a victim. 

Streaming on Tubi.

No, not the Disney one. Adam Green’s wonderfully nasty “Frozen” has a simple but effective premise: three friends get stuck on a ski lift at a ski resort. It sounds kind of silly, but Green milks it for all its worth. As the night comes on, the cold sets in. The three friends dangle high above the ground. The resort is about to close down for an entire week — because a storm is rolling in. And oh yeah, there are also wolves lurking about. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Full of frostbitten skin, broken bones, and animal attacks, “Frozen” is highly effective and the perfect horror treat for a cold, snowy night. Once you watch this, you might never want to go skiing again (or at all, if you’ve never been). 

Streaming on Prime Video, Tubi, Kanopy, Pluto TV.

“Let the Right One In” has been remade multiple times (first as an American film with its name inexplicably changed to “Let Me In,” and then again as a TV series that was canceled after one season), but the original is the best (and the only version you need to watch). Directed by Tomas Alfredson, “Let the Right One In” is a wintry horror movie that adds fresh blood to the vampire subgenre. Set in Stockholm in the 1980s, “Let the Right One In” introduces us to Oskar (KÃ¥re Hedebrant), a lonely, bullied boy who befriends Eli (Lina Leandersson), who looks like a little girl but is actually a very old vampire. These two outcasts bond and form an almost sweet, touching friendship — but there’s a dark, bleak undercurrent lurking beneath the surface that makes the entire film extra unsettling. 

Streaming on Max.

Robert Eggers’ best film so far, “The Lighthouse” is a hilarious, twisted oddity about two men stuck on a wind-whipped rock guarding a lighthouse. While the movie’s seasonal setting isn’t specified, the constant cold wind and the perpetual darkness sure invoke winter chills, which makes it a perfect film to watch right now. Robert Pattinson plays a guy new to the lighthouse keeper trade, working along a seasoned pro, played by Willem Dafoe. While Dafoe tends to hang out in the lighthouse tower all by his lonesome, he frequently sticks Pattinson’s character with all the thankless, backbreaking work. And just to make matters worse, he keeps farting, too. Soon, madness sets in as these men both bond in an almost romantic fashion and also try to kill each other. 

Streaming on Shudder January 14.

One of the scariest movies of 2024 and one of the best movies of that year in general, Pascal Plante’s “Red Rooms” is so bone chilling that it makes for the perfect winter watch. In fact, it’s so icy cold that you might need to start a fire to warm up after. Set in Montreal, the film follows Kelly-Ann (Juliette Gariépy, who should really be getting awards season attention), a fashion model and online poker addict who shows up every day at the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a man accused of murdering three teenage girls and uploading videos of the murders to the dark web. Why is Kelly-Ann so obsessed with this case? The film stays tight-lipped about this, and sharply contrasts Kelly-Ann with Clémentine (Laurie Babin), another women at the trial every day, who is 100% convinced Chevalier is innocent and being framed. While “Red Rooms” is never overly graphic (we never see the footage of the murders, although we do hear some of it), the film is genuinely terrifying because it works its way under your skin and leaves you immensely uncomfortable in the process. 

Streaming on Hulu.

The TV miniseries doesn’t really exist anymore — in the age of streaming, it’s been replaced by the “limited series.” But once upon a time, networks were able to create TV events by releasing miniseries, and Stephen King took advantage of that on multiple occasions. One of King’s biggest miniseries events was “Storm of the Century,” a 3-part series about a deadly winter storm that blows into the isolated Maine community of Little Tall Island. With the storm comes a mysterious, menacing figure known as Andre Linoge (Colm Feore), and he has a deadly proposition: the townsfolk have to decide to hand over a child to Lionge, or everyone will die. King uses this scenario to highlight how small town mindsets lead to backstabbing and infighting, as the seemingly good people of Little Tall Island turn on each other all in the name of saving their own hides.

Streaming on Netflix, Prime Video.

Okay, this is a bit of a cheat, because “The Terror” is a TV series and not a movie. But look, this is my list, and I can do what I want. Plus: “The Terror” feels highly underrated, and I’m happy to have any chance to highlight it. For the purposes of this entry, we’re talking about the first season only (the show is an anthology series, so season 2 is a completely different story — and it’s not very good). Season 1 is based on the novel of the same name by Dan Simmons, which in turn was based on the true story of the lost expedition of the two ships the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which set out to locate the Northwest Passage in the late 1800s, only to vanish (the ships were later found in the 2010s). In real life, the two ships got trapped in the ice in the Arctic and the men perished. In Simmons’ novel, and the subsequent TV adaptation, something supernatural is at play. And there are more human horrors here as well — like cannibalism. Gothic and bleak, “The Terror” season 1 is horror TV done right. 

Streaming on Shudder.

The ultimate winter horror movie (the movie even begins on the first day of winter!), John Carpenter’s “The Thing” needs no introduction. Practically everyone knows that Carpenter’s remake was a flop when it opened in 1982, only for the film to go on to be considered a classic. The story follows a group of guys snowed-in at a research center in Antarctica. Cabin fever is the least of their problems, though: there’s a shape-shifting alien afoot, and it can look like anyone, anyone at all. This scenario allows Carpenter to go wild with some fantastic, gnarly practical make-up effects courtesy of Rob Bottin. Bonus: Kurt Russell sporting a glorious beard and a giant hat. 

Streaming on Max.

M. Night Shyamalan was riding high for a while there, but a series of critical and box office failures left his career in a weird place. Rather than give up, Shyamalan decided to stage his own comeback. He borrowed $5 million against his home and made “The Visit,” a faux documentary about killer senior citizens. The story follows a pair of siblings, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her very annoying brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), who go to visit the grandparents they have never met. At first, Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) seem kind and welcoming. But as the visit stretches on, the siblings notice their grandparents are acting kind of … funny. Are they a harmless pair of old folks going senile? Or is something more sinister at play here? Set against a wintry backdrop, “The Visit” has an almost schizophrenic blend of comedy and horror (Shyamalan says he went through multiple cuts of the film before he settled on the tone). While not everything works (there’s a running “gag” about Tyler wanting to be a rapper that’s truly awful), “The Visit” ends up being a lot of fun. On top of that, the film was a minor hit, and M. Night Shyamalan was back, baby!