It’s the first weekend of October, and surprise, surprise, streamers like HBO Max, Mubi and Hulu are dropping some pretty scary movies for you to watch this weekend.
Evil Dead Burn is a relatively straightforward horror sequel, while Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma features lead stars Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder contemplating the impact of the genre both of their characters participate in.
On Hulu, The Swan: Behind the Mirror offers a different kind of scare, examining one of the worst competitive reality shows ever made, The Swan.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle isn’t scary at all, but it’s a good anime featuring lots of inventive action sequences and some eye-popping animation.
‘Evil Dead Burn’ (2026) — HBO Max
At the beginning of Evil Dead Burn, Alice’s (Souheila Yacoub) husband dies in a horrific car crash. That’s just the start of a very bad time in her life, where her mourning is interrupted by some nasty Deadites possessing her in-laws and trying to kill her. Stuck in a secluded country estate, she must slice, dice and, yes, burn the people she once called family to make it out alive. There’s only one problem – how do you kill something that’s already dead?
Evil Dead Burn is another winning entry in the long-running — and constantly surprising — Evil Dead franchise. Director Sébastien Vaniček knows how to make you squirm, with generous amounts of blood, gore and a gnarly killing involving a woman and the sharp edges of a car seat headrest. This film doesn’t go as hard as the last entry, Evil Dead Rise, but there are enough jump scares and gross-out moments that honor original director Sam Raimi’s macabre legacy.
‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (2026) — Mubi
What ever happened to Billy Presley (Anderson)? The star of the first Camp Miasma horror film has disappeared from the public and lives in seclusion in the Pacific Northwest. Director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is about to reboot the beloved but down-in-the-dumps Camp Miasma slasher franchise, and she wants her to start in her film. But when she finally meets Billy, she’s thrown for a loop when she realizes she’s falling for the former final girl. Even more disturbing, she experiences strange hallucinations where she’s a character in a Camp Miasma flick and is being stalked by Little Death (Jack Haven), the franchise’s iconic killer.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma isn’t a horror film so much as it’s a meditation about how the genre matters to people like Kris, whose queerness is both attracted to and repulsed by the franchise’s overt homophobia and transphobia. It’s also a film about two women getting off, and all the satisfaction and release an orgasm can bring to them. Yes, this is an artsy, pretentious film; not all of it works, but when it does, it’s modern transgressive filmmaking at its finest.
‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle’ (2025) — Netflix and Hulu
It’s endgame for the Demon Slayer Corps. The demon king, Muzan Kibutsuji, has fled to his supernatural dimension, the Infinity Castle, and Tanjiro Kamado (Natsuki Hanae) and the nine Hashira chase after him. But the Infinity Castle is a constantly changing labyrinth that separates Team Demon Slayer. Besieged by enemies determined to reunite with their comrades and find Muzan, Tanjiro and the Hashira clan must fight their way to victory.
Based on the popular anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba by Koyoharu Gotouge and a direct sequel to the show’s fourth season, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The Movie Infinity Castle was one of 2025’s biggest hits, grossing $820 million. That’s more than what Superman made last year and The Devil Wears Prada 2 made this year! If you’re not a fan of the show, the story is super confusing, as there’s no attempt to make it palatable to newcomers. That doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy it, if only for the beautiful animation and spectacular fight sequences.
‘The Swan: Behind the Mirror’ (2026) — Hulu
Reality TV has reached some pretty embarrassing lows, but no show was so egregiously tasteless right out of the gate as The Swan. Broadcast on Fox in 2004, the series’ core premise was nauseating: two self-proclaimed “ugly ducklings” were chosen to be made over by a team of stylists, life coaches, cosmetic dentists and plastic surgeons. At the end of the show, every made-over contestant, dubbed a “Swan” by the show to make you vomit just a little bit more, was then entered into a beauty pageant with other “transformed” contestants, with the winner receiving a modeling contract. Although a ratings hit, The Swan was so critically reviled and made into a pop-culture punchline that it was canceled after two seasons.
It’s back, sort of, in The Swan: Behind the Mirror, a fascinating documentary that asks everyone involved … why? Why be a part of something that is so outrageously awful and backward-thinking? That’s the question former Swans and people involved with the show are asked and ask themselves. Some have different answers, but they all share the same feeling about their experience on the show — it was awful then, and it remains awful now. The Swan: Behind the Mirror isn’t awful, though; it’s an illuminating look at a moment in time when beauty standards were different, impossibly high and crazy enough for a network to greenlight a show like The Swan in the first place.
