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      Five New Horror Movies to Stream Now

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      From haunted houses to killer dolls, these frightful offerings will keep you entertained, or up all night.“A Quiet Place Part II” and “Spiral: From the Book of Saw,” are hogging the horror movie spotlight in theaters at the moment. But on streaming, these five under-the-radar horror films should be elbowing their way onto your watch list.‘Saint Maud’Stream it on Amazon Prime and Hulu.Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a hospice nurse in a seaside British town who’s caring for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a dancer dying of lymphoma. As Amanda’s condition worsens, Maud’s new Christian faith deepens, and she sanctimoniously endeavors to save Amanda’s soul. But as the women’s relationship becomes fraught, Maud morphs into less of a caregiver and more of a macabre prophetess in a church of her own making. Are Maud’s ecstatic visions from God? Or are they the product of a mind in free fall?This feature debut from the writer-director Rose Glass is an unnerving take on one of my favorite horror character conventions: the religious true believer. As in “Carrie,” “Saint Maud” layers a story about belief with supernatural elements and sexual obsessions to macabre effect.But the film also reminded me of the cult-themed thriller “The Sacrament,” in that sometimes the scariest thing about religious conviction isn’t holy spirits, it’s holy certainty. The final 10 minutes of “Saint Maud” make that terrifyingly clear.‘Sator’Stream it on Shudder.There’s not much dialogue in this spectacularly eerie film about an entity that haunts the psyches of a family living deep in the woods of Northern California. But who needs words when you have a writer-director-cinematographer-editor-composer as confident in creeping the bejesus out of you as Jordan Graham?Adam (Gabriel Nicholson) is tormented by stories of Sator, a supernatural presence who communicates, or so he’s been told, with members of his family. Adam’s grandmother (June Peterson, Graham’s own grandmother) has a benevolent relationship with the spirit. But his mother’s encounters, as she documents in scribbled diaries, are more sinister. When Adam begins crossing paths with ominous creatures in the woods and in his home, it’s clear Sator has Adam in his sights next.“Sator” is subtle, slow-burn, creeping-dread horror that unfolds with spooky atmospherics and hallucinatory storytelling. Graham’s use of saturated colors at night, especially in a stunning tableau that lights Adam brightly against menacing trees, is ambient and terrifying. The use of spectral black-and-white footage gives “Sator” the feel of a doomful documentary. So does the fact that Graham based his story on his grandmother’s own tales of conversations with a being named, you guessed it, Sator.‘The Vigil’Stream it on Hulu.It’s a mystery why there aren’t more horror films about the Jewish tradition of shomers, people who watch over a dead body in the time between death and burial. A scary movie genre about sitting with a corpse? Sign me up.To the rescue comes this frightening, fascinating feature debut from the writer-director Keith Thomas. Yakov (Dave Davis) is an ex-Hasid struggling to live in a secular world. To help earn some cash, he agrees to take a job as a shomer for a Holocaust survivor.But it turns out that Yakov and the deceased man’s wife (Lynn Cohen, the veteran stage and screen actress who died last year) aren’t the only ones staying the night in the couple’s Brooklyn home. A Mazzik, a malicious spirit from Jewish folklore, is in the house and has intergenerational trauma in mind.Besides being effectively creepy, “The Vigil” is a welcome addition to the rich but underappreciated Jewish horror movie tradition. It was a treat to hear much of the dialogue in Yiddish, a language I’ve not come cross much in a horror movie. The film is set in the Orthodox community of Borough Park, Brooklyn, giving the story a powerfully authentic and specific Jewish sensibility.‘The Strange House’Stream it on Netflix.I don’t have tweens or teens, but if I did, this Austrian chiller would be a great option for family horror movie night (providing your kids can handle mildly sinister situations).Sabine (Julia Koschitz) and her two sons, Hendrik (Leon Orlandianyi) and Eddi (Benno Rosskopf), move from Germany to rural Austria, and soon creepy things start happening in their new house. Eddi scribbles on a wall while sleepwalking. A family photo is replaced by one of the prior occupants.The boys soon figure out that the sinister events have something to do with a mom who poisoned her two sons in 1980. With help from new friends, the brothers set out to solve the supernatural mystery that keeps the ominous spirits on edge.Daniel Prochaska’s film is more “Stranger Things” sweet than genuinely scary, although there are plenty of intense chases, children in peril and haunted house shenanigans to keep young folks (and horror-averse parents) on edge. Orlandianyi is especially good as the protective big brother.‘Benny Loves You’Rent or buy on Vudu.I’m just as antsy as any fan of killer doll movies for the new “Child’s Play” series coming this fall. Until then, this low-budget British horror-comedy, directed with breakneck pacing by Karl Holt, was a giddy and super gory way to tide me over.Jack (also Holt) is a 35-year-old toy designer who lives with his parents and hasn’t yet put aside his childhood; he’s the kind of man-child who investigates strange noises by carrying a lightsaber. Determined to leave loserdom, Jack throws away his stuffed animals, including a furry guy named Benny, who looks like Elmo’s chubbier juvenile-delinquent brother.But Benny is a jealous creature and a whiz with weaponry, and woe to anyone who tries to steal Jack’s affections. And by woe I mean decapitation.The joys of “Benny Loves You” are from watching Benny giggle and slash his way through rampages that turn Jack’s home and office into farcical scenes of blood-soaked carnage. Holt, who also wrote the film, has a cutting, irreverent sense of humor that doesn’t always land. But when it does, it shines, especially when it’s paired with grisly violence, like death by baguette. More

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      Watch Emma Stone Become ‘Cruella’

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      The director Craig Gillespie discusses the formation of the title character in a scene from his film, which also features Emma Thompson.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Fashion and intrigue and giant rats all make an appearance in this scene from “Cruella.”The sequence has the title character (Emma Stone) making a surprising entrance at an event thrown by the Baroness (Emma Thompson), a fashion mogul with a mean streak. Stone’s character has arrived with two of her cohorts, Horace and Jasper (Paul Walter Hauser and Joel Fry), in disguise to pull off a heist.Spinning several plates in the scene, the director Craig Gillespie shows the formulation of the persona Cruella, tracks Horace and Jasper’s improvisational plan to cause a distraction, and makes use of dogs and rats (and dogs posing as rats) in creative ways.In this video, Gillespie explains how he worked with Stone to capture a performance that had to include a level of “bad” acting for the character, and discusses the negotiations he had with Disney about how many rats would be too many for the scene.Read the “Cruella” review.Read an interview with Emma Stone.Watch “Cruella” in theaters or on Disney+Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Film or Real Life?

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      THE TAKEFilm or Real Life?Jake Michaels for The New York TimesSometimes a place is more than just a place; it can be a scene. Even the blankest backdrops, like a parking lot or a sun-baked freeway, can shimmer with cinematic potential. Four photographers showed us the movie moments that they found all over.Jolie Ruben and Jake MichaelsWhen Jake Michaels began shooting around Los Angeles, he noticed how the backdrop and spontaneous action within the frame combine to tell a story, and how those moments dissolve quickly. “That’s why I think it’s interesting to go back to a place several times,” Michaels said. “You can see life kind of cycling. You see from a static point of view how much life exists in that frame.”Jake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesJake Michaels for The New York TimesAn Rong XuAn Rong Xu, who made these photographs around Taiwan, is often influenced by the movies of 1990s Hong Kong and the Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing, who created images from “slow gestures that gather into something larger,” Xu said. In other words: Viewers sense a bigger story in the photo and are drawn in by that mystery.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesSarah Van RijSarah van Rij made these pictures around Amsterdam and The Hague. Van Rij declared that filmmakers strongly influence her work — “maybe more than other photographers,” she said. Van Rij, who takes most of her shots outside on the streets, searches for a feeling before snapping the shutter, sometimes inventing her own private back story for a scene.Sarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSarah van Rij for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn BottomsFor September Dawn Bottoms, who shot in and around Tulsa, Okla., the answer to what makes a photo cinematic flows from her personal point of view. “I photograph my own life all of the time,” she said. “Every photo is about me and what I’m seeing, I’m just never in it.”September Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesSeptember Dawn Bottoms for The New York Times More

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      For ‘F9,’ Making Stunts That Stick

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      The concept of electromagnets factor heavily into the new film, creating the impression of cars stuck together and leaving stacks of wreckage in a way only the “Fast and the Furious” films know how.They’ve launched cars into the sky from the backs of planes. They’ve jumped cars through buildings in Abu Dhabi, they’ve raced cars on sheets of ice and pitted them against submarines. What’s next for the filmmakers of the “Fast and Furious” series, a franchise that, for 20 years, has been a magnet for audiences? More

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      ‘Apocalypse ’45’ Review: Graphic Images of Wartime

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      Candid testimonies from World War II veterans accompanies vivid archival footage in this immersive documentary that showcases the myths we tell ourselves about war.At one point in “Apocalypse ’45,” the camera gazes over Tokyo from an American military bomber as the plane ejects a cluster of cylinders. For several beats, the bombs disappear into the air. Then we see the explosions: tiny bursts of orange far below.Startling images appear throughout “Apocalypse ’45,” a transfixing documentary that depicts the final months of World War II in rare detail. The film (streaming on Discovery+) combines vivid archival footage from war reporters with the accounts of an array of veterans. Its project is to immerse us in the horrors of warfare, and to convey the ways its witnesses cope with war’s psychic toll.The images, taken from digitally-restored film reels that sat in the National Archives for decades, are disturbingly graphic. A Japanese woman steps off a cliff in the Mariana Islands to avoid being taken hostage. Soldiers on Iwo Jima shoot flamethrowers into caves. Planes piloted by kamikaze plunge into ships near Okinawa. The director Erik Nelson adds realistic wartime sound effects to the silent footage, achieving an unsettling verisimilitude.But the veterans, whose candid testimonies are interwoven in voice over, are the movie’s shrewdest addition. Notably, Nelson declines to distinguish among the men, and instead patchworks their deep, breathy voices into sonic wallpaper. Without faces or names, their remarks cannot be individually condemned or celebrated. Rather, they blend into a collective, showcasing how people seek out myths — about war’s inevitability, Japanese conformity, or American might — to find reason where there may be none.When it comes to representing non-American experiences, the documentary is less equipped. Nelson calls on only one Japanese interviewee, a survivor of Hiroshima. His voice opens the documentary, and reappears later on to describe the atom bomb attack. The survivor’s perspective is vital, but offered alone, its inclusion feels perfunctory. “Apocalypse ’45” knows that war is hell for everyone. But it’s difficult to escape the sense that, in this film’s view of history, America is top of mind.Apocalypse ’45Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Her Man’: A Relic of a Bygone Hollywood, Now Restored

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      Now streaming, this mildly racy romance, from 1930, arrived before the censorious Production Code. What really sets the film apart is its incredible tracking shots.“Her Man,” a snappy bit of hokum inspired by the venerable crime-of-passion ballad “Frankie and Johnny,” was well received when it arrived in 1930. Decades later, the mildly racy romance, with lightly disguised hookers and pimps, would become a bone of contention between critics conversant with classic Hollywood.Periodically rediscovered, the movie is streaming in a crisp new digital restoration via the Museum of Modern Art’s Virtual Cinema. Although opinions vary on the American director Tay Garnett’s auteur status, his high-spirited lowlife drama is well worth a look.Garnett (1894-1977) broke into movies writing slapstick comedies for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. “Her Man,” released four years before the censorious Production Code, is set in a roomy Havana “dance hall” named the Thalia, catering to (and robbing from) drunken American sailors. The tale is full of comic roughhouse. In his indispensable history “The American Cinema,” the critic Andrew Sarris characterized Garnett as a “rowdy vaudevillian” and “an artist with the kind of rough edges that cause the overcivilized French sensibility to swoon in sheer physical frustration.”Be that as it may, “Her Man” was a favorite of Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque Française. John Ashbery evidently saw the movie in Paris and cites it in his poem in praise of Helen Twelvetrees, the fragile Brooklyn-born actress who plays the teenage “bar-girl” Frankie.Twelvetrees, who committed suicide in 1958, was best known for starring in lachrymose melodramas. She’s spunkier here, caught between her shiv-wielding “protector” Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez, né Jacob Krantz) and a Sir Galahad figure, the sweet-singing American sailor Dan (Phillips Holmes, described in Ashbery’s poem as “awkwardly handsome”). “You’re just a dame and a pretty regular little dame at that,” Dan tells her on a date that winds up at a mission on St. Patrick’s Day.As befits an early talkie, “Her Man” is intermittently stagy, most often when the Broadway diva Marjorie Rambeau, emphatically playing an aging hooker with alcohol issues and a maternal interest in Frankie, is on set. But it’s also enlivened by a number of spirited secondary players. Thelma Todd, a comic beauty in several Marx Brothers movies, appears in a black wig with spit curls as the other woman, Nelly. Franklin Pangborn, a specialist in high-strung roles, is surprisingly bellicose, repeatedly mixing it up with Danny’s sailor pals (James Gleason and Harry Sweet). Their idiotic ongoing struggle for possession of a bowler hat evokes Garnett’s work with Laurel and Hardy.There’s an abundance of running gags, but what really sets “Her Man” apart is its fluidity. Garnett orchestrates several extended dolly shots through Havana’s red-light district — the camera navigating crowds, horse carts and fistfights. The accompanying sound mix is no less swoon-worthy. The movie, which often seems like one long barroom brawl, ends with the destruction of the Thalia set. (Evidently, Garnett hired a number of college football players and former boxers as extras.)“Her Man” is a period piece in more ways than one. The cavalcade of drunken antics is a reminder that while the Production Code didn’t fully exist in 1930, Prohibition was still in effect.Her ManStreaming through June 10; moma.org. More

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      Mike Faist Isn’t Sure About This Whole Acting Thing

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      “I can’t tell if I hate acting or if I love it too much,” he said ahead of the debut of the Amazon series “Panic.” Coming soon, a major role in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story.” For now, he’s going to Ohio.Tall and lanky, looking as if he were born wearing Wranglers, Mike Faist cuts quite a striking figure in the Amazon Prime series “Panic”: His character, Dodge Mason, is a Stetson-wearing rodeo dude who breaks untamed horses, then soulfully gazes into their eyes. More