HBO Max still has a ways to go before being an established streaming platform, but the service does have one major thing going for it right now: an impressive back-catalogue of movies from Warner Bros. and the other WarnerMedia divisions. With the service looking to close in on the market share of Netflix, Amazon Prime and the other industry giants, we’ll be seeing HBO Max bolster its library of over a hundred horror movies with twelve new titles arriving on July 1st.
Of the new films, we’re getting the Blade trilogy, which starts off strongly with the 1998 and 2002 installments, before suffering a pretty significant dip in quality by 2004’s Blade: Trinity. With the reboot of the vampire franchise still on the way though, now’s a good time to catch up on Wesley Snipes’ original take on the character.
Staying in bloodsucker territory, albeit of a slightly gentler kind, HBO Max are adding the 2005 animated film The Batman vs. Dracula. Meanwhile, fans of horror classics have plenty to choose from on HBO Max already, but it’s still good to see The Exorcist joining the platform’s catalogue.
HBO Max are also making the original 1982 Creepshow anthology film available for July, as well as the underrated black comedy Death Becomes Her from Robert Zemeckis, notable for its strong cast and inventive special effects.
More recent releases to HBO Max in July will include The Conjuring, as well as Orphan, Thirteen Ghosts and the Christopher Nolan-directed thriller Insomnia. Finally, if you want something a bit different for the July 4th weekend, then you can’t go much wrong with Tim Burton’s darkly comic Mars Attacks! Altogether, then, a solid collection of familiar horror films, or at least somewhat horrific in a few cases, to strengthen HBO Max’s library.
To recap, here’s what we’re getting:
The Batman vs. Dracula (2005)
Blade (1998)
Blade II (2002)
Blade: Trinity (2004)
The Conjuring (2013)
Creepshow (1982)
Death Becomes Her (1992)
The Exorcist (1973)
Insomnia (2002)
Mars Attacks (1996)
Orphan (2009)
Thirteen Ghosts (2001)
Of course, the platform is still liable to lose titles every month, with The Nun leaving on July 5th, and Final Destination, Crimson Peak, Pet Sematary, Friday the 13th and The Predator bowing out on July 31st. Given HBO Max‘s resources, we’d expect there to be another block of movies to replace them for August, with the streaming site also adding value to its catalogue with a lot more content for July.
