Tubi has quietly become one of the best places to watch horror and thriller movies without paying for another streaming subscription. Its catalogue moves between major studio titles, modern independent films, cult horror, serial-killer thrillers and movies that have slipped through the gaps of the bigger subscription services.
The biggest advantage is simple: the movies are free to watch with advertising. In August 2026, Tubi added another substantial group of horror and thriller titles including Final Destination, Scream, Zodiac, Missing, Halloween, Mimic and Looper. Tubi also says its catalogue is continually refreshed, so availability can change over time.
This list concentrates on films that deliver genuine suspense, horror or psychological tension rather than simply collecting everything Tubi labels as a thriller. Some are classics, some are recent releases and some are independent films worth discovering.
1. Zodiac (2007)
David Fincher turns the hunt for the Zodiac Killer into something far more unsettling than a conventional serial-killer procedural. Jake Gyllenhaal plays newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith, whose fascination with the murders gradually develops into an obsession, while Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo occupy different corners of an investigation that refuses to produce a satisfying conclusion.
What makes Zodiac so effective is Fincher’s refusal to manufacture certainty. The murders themselves are terrifying, but the film becomes increasingly concerned with what happens to people when an unanswered mystery consumes years of their lives. Tubi currently lists Zodiac as available to watch free in the United States.
2. Scream (1996)
Wes Craven took the conventions of the slasher movie, explained them to the audience and then demonstrated that knowing the rules does not necessarily help you survive them. Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott becomes the focus of a masked killer whose murders are tied both to horror-movie mythology and to secrets within her own community.
The self-awareness is what made Scream famous, but the movie works because underneath the jokes Craven still treats Ghostface as genuinely dangerous. Its opening remains one of the great demonstrations of how quickly humour, familiarity and everyday domestic space can turn into terror.
The original Scream, along with Scream 2 and Scream 3, joined Tubi’s August 2026 US catalogue.
3. Final Destination (2000)
James Wong removes the traditional horror villain entirely and replaces him with inevitability. After Alex Browning has a premonition of a catastrophic plane explosion and escapes with several classmates, the survivors begin dying in increasingly elaborate accidents.
The brilliance of Final Destination is that almost every ordinary object becomes threatening. A loose cable, a glass of water or a kitchen knife can become part of a chain reaction, training the audience to examine the frame for potential danger.
The film has become the foundation of an unusually durable horror franchise, and the original Final Destination is currently prominently surfaced by Tubi among its free movies.
4. Halloween (2018)
David Gordon Green ignores most of the increasingly complicated Halloween continuity and returns to the simplest idea: Laurie Strode survived Michael Myers once, and decades later she has never really stopped preparing for his return.
Jamie Lee Curtis gives the film much of its weight. Laurie is not simply the final girl brought back for nostalgia; survival has reshaped her entire life, damaged her relationships and turned fear into preparation.
Michael remains frightening precisely because the film resists explaining him. He is again less a conventional character than an approaching force, and the movie works best whenever Green strips the story back to stalking, waiting and sudden violence. Halloween was among the horror titles added to Tubi in August 2026.
5. Missing (2023)
Will Merrick and Nick Johnson build an entire mystery through laptop screens, phones, online accounts, security footage and digital searches without allowing the format to overwhelm the story.
Storm Reid plays June, whose mother disappears while travelling in Colombia with her new boyfriend. Unable to investigate physically, June begins reconstructing what happened using the enormous trail of information people leave behind online.
What initially appears to be a disappearance gradually opens into something much more complicated. Missing is particularly effective because each new discovery seems to answer one question while destabilising something the audience thought it already understood. The film joined Tubi’s thriller catalogue in August 2026.
6. Looper (2012)
Rian Johnson combines time travel, crime and noir into a thriller about a professional killer confronted by the future consequences of his own life.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a “looper” employed to execute victims sent backwards through time by criminals in the future. The arrangement works until Joe’s latest target turns out to be his older self, played by Bruce Willis.
Johnson uses the science-fiction premise less as a puzzle than as a way of exploring whether violence inevitably reproduces itself. The result moves from futuristic crime film into something stranger and more intimate while maintaining the momentum of a chase thriller. Looper was added to Tubi’s US catalogue in August 2026.
7. Blood Star (2024)
Lawrence Jacomelli places the threat in Blood Star behind the badge of a small-town sheriff. Bobbie, a young woman crossing the New Mexico desert, encounters a police officer whose authority initially gives him control of the situation before it becomes clear that she has entered a pattern of predation established through earlier victims.
The film operates somewhere between psychological road thriller, survival movie and serial-killer horror. Rather than relying on a supernatural monster, Blood Star turns the expectation that a uniform represents protection against its protagonist, gradually reducing the open desert into a trap.
Britni Camacho leads the film opposite John Schwab, and the story ultimately becomes a struggle over who controls the rules of the sheriff’s game. Blood Star is now available to watch free with ads on Tubi in the United States, listed under Action, Thriller, Horror and Crime.
8. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick’s final film begins with marital jealousy and gradually transforms into a nocturnal journey through secrecy, sexuality and power.
Tom Cruise plays Bill Harford, a New York doctor disturbed by his wife’s confession that she once contemplated abandoning their life for another man. His response is to wander deeper into a hidden world that culminates in the famous masked gathering at an isolated mansion.
Whether the danger Bill encounters is as organised as he imagines remains part of the film’s fascination. Kubrick repeatedly leaves him, and the audience, uncertain about how much has actually been revealed. Eyes Wide Shut is part of Tubi’s August 2026 thriller additions.
9. Mimic (1997)
Guillermo del Toro’s first major English-language feature takes a creature engineered to eliminate disease-carrying cockroaches and imagines what happens when evolution refuses to stop where scientists intended.
Mira Sorvino plays entomologist Susan Tyler, who discovers that the insects she helped create have survived underground and developed the ability to imitate their human predators.
Del Toro turns New York’s tunnels and abandoned spaces into a damp, decaying ecosystem beneath the city. The creature design provides the immediate horror, but the deeper anxiety comes from humanity creating something it believes it can control. Mimic returned to Tubi as part of the platform’s August 2026 horror line-up.
10. The Blackening (2022)
Tim Story’s horror comedy begins with a familiar slasher setup: a group of friends gather at an isolated cabin and discover that somebody has constructed a deadly game around them.
The difference is that Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins’ screenplay is explicitly built around the racial conventions of horror films, particularly the old joke about Black characters being expendable.
Rather than letting the joke replace the suspense, The Blackening uses it as the structure of the movie. Characters understand the genre, argue about its rules and attempt to exploit them while still facing a killer who intends to make those rules lethal. The film is currently among Tubi’s August 2026 additions.
11. Flatliners (1990)
Joel Schumacher turns a group of ambitious medical students into explorers of the afterlife. Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt play young doctors experimenting with deliberately stopping their hearts before being revived.
Their apparent scientific breakthrough quickly becomes something more disturbing when experiences from their past begin returning with them.
The idea gives Flatliners an unusual position between psychological thriller, supernatural horror and science fiction. Its most effective moments come from the possibility that death has not merely shown the characters something, it has followed them back. The 1990 film joined Tubi’s August 2026 science-fiction and fantasy catalogue.
12. Exam (2009)
Stuart Hazeldine builds almost an entire thriller from eight candidates, one room and a piece of paper.
The applicants have reached the final stage of an apparently prestigious recruitment process. They are told there is one question and one answer, but when the exam begins their papers appear blank.
What follows becomes a study in competition, paranoia and group behaviour. With almost nowhere for the story to go physically, Exam generates tension by continuously changing what the candidates believe the rules might be. It is a strong choice for viewers who prefer contained psychological thrillers to conventional action, and it is among Tubi’s August 2026 thriller additions.
13. Scream 2 (1997)
Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson take the self-awareness of Scream and turn it toward sequels.
Sidney Prescott has reached college, the Woodsboro murders have already been turned into a movie, and another Ghostface begins killing people around her. The characters understand that they may now be living through the second instalment of a horror story, but that knowledge provides little protection.
The sequel expands the world without abandoning the mixture of suspense and commentary that made the first film work. Craven’s cinema sequence in particular remains one of the franchise’s strongest exercises in hiding real violence inside an audience already watching fictional violence. Scream 2 joined Tubi alongside the original film in August 2026.
14. The Black Demon (2023)
Adrian Grünberg takes the shark movie away from the familiar beaches and tourist resorts and places its characters on an isolated offshore oil platform.
Josh Lucas plays an oil-company inspector who travels with his family to Mexico and discovers that the rig he has been sent to assess is largely abandoned. In the surrounding water is an enormous shark connected to local legend and environmental destruction.
The film combines creature horror with the isolation of a survival thriller. Its most effective idea is not simply that something enormous is in the water, but that almost every route back to safety requires entering its territory. The Black Demon is part of Tubi’s August 2026 catalogue.
15. Premonition (2007)
Mennan Yapo builds Premonition around a deliberately destabilising idea: Sandra Bullock’s Linda wakes one morning to discover that her husband has died, then wakes the next day and finds him alive.
The days surrounding the accident appear to be arriving out of order, forcing Linda to reconstruct a timeline while trying to determine whether knowing the future gives her any power to change it.
The film sits somewhere between supernatural mystery and domestic psychological thriller. Its central tension comes from the possibility that prediction may not equal control. Premonition was added to Tubi’s thriller catalogue in August 2026.
16. Ghost Stories (2017)
Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman adapt their stage production into an anthology built around a sceptic who has devoted his career to exposing supposedly supernatural events.
Professor Phillip Goodman is given three cases that his late mentor could never explain. Each investigation appears to offer the possibility of rational explanation until the accumulating details begin turning Goodman’s own certainty against him.
The film draws heavily on classic British ghost-story traditions, using empty spaces, darkness and suggestion rather than treating horror purely as a sequence of shocks. Ghost Stories is among Tubi’s August 2026 horror additions.
17. They (2002)
Robert Harmon, director of The Hitcher, returns to nocturnal horror with a story about people who believe something from their childhood has found them again.
Laura Regan plays psychology student Julia, whose memories of childhood night terrors become increasingly difficult to dismiss after the death of an old friend. Others who experienced similar fears begin describing the same marks, sounds and sense that something is waiting in the darkness.
The film is most effective when it refuses to provide a clear view of what its characters fear. Darkness itself becomes the threatening space. They is part of Tubi’s August 2026 horror catalogue.
18. The Glass House (2001)
Daniel Sackheim’s thriller begins with an apparently generous arrangement. After two teenagers lose their parents, family friends Erin and Terry Glass take them into their extraordinary modern home in Malibu.
Leelee Sobieski’s Ruby gradually begins to suspect that her new guardians may have reasons beyond kindness for wanting control of her and her younger brother.
The film belongs to the domestic-threat tradition in which wealth and beautiful architecture become part of the trap. Its glass-walled house offers visibility everywhere while providing surprisingly little safety. The Glass House joined Tubi’s August 2026 drama catalogue and remains an easy recommendation for viewers looking for turn-of-the-century psychological thrillers.
19. Flatliners (2017)
Niels Arden Oplev revisits the premise of the 1990 film with another group of medical students attempting to discover what lies beyond clinical death.
Elliot Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons become involved in experiments that initially seem to sharpen their minds after revival. The apparent benefits are soon accompanied by hallucinations and manifestations connected to unresolved guilt.
The remake leans further toward supernatural horror than its predecessor, turning the consequences of the experiment into something increasingly physical. Both versions provide an interesting double bill and were listed among Tubi’s August 2026 additions.
20. Scream 3 (2000)
Wes Craven moves the series to Hollywood, where another sequel to the fictional Stab franchise is being made and another Ghostface is killing the people involved.
The setting allows Scream 3 to push the franchise’s movie-within-a-movie idea further. Sets recreate Sidney’s childhood home, actors encounter the people they are supposed to portray, and the distinction between the original murders and their commercial reconstruction becomes increasingly unstable.
It is broader and more comic than the first two films, but as the conclusion to the original trilogy it remains an interesting extension of Craven’s central idea: horror movies do not simply reflect violence; within the world of Scream, they become part of how that violence is remembered and repeated. Scream 3 is currently included with the other original Scream films on Tubi in the United States.
Why Tubi Has Become So Good for Horror and Thrillers
Part of Tubi’s appeal is the scale and unpredictability of its catalogue. Major studio films can appear beside cult movies, independent releases and films that are difficult to find elsewhere. Unlike subscription services, the platform is free and supported by advertising.
That scale is now substantial. Tubi reported in August 2026 that it had reached 110 million monthly active users, while describing its service as a free on-demand platform combining Hollywood films with creator-led titles and Tubi Originals.
For horror in particular, that model works well. Genre audiences have always been unusually willing to search beyond theatrical hits for smaller films, forgotten titles and movies recommended through word of mouth. A library in which Zodiac, Final Destination and Scream can sit alongside independent films such as Blood Star makes discovery part of the attraction rather than simply a way to locate something already familiar.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you want a pure thriller rather than outright horror, start with Zodiac, Missing, Eyes Wide Shut, Exam or Blood Star.
Zodiac is the strongest choice for a methodical serial-killer investigation. Missing offers a much faster modern mystery built around digital investigation, while Exam reduces the thriller to a single room and a set of unexplained rules. For viewers looking for a darker road or survival thriller, Blood Star uses the New Mexico desert and a corrupt sheriff to turn a routine encounter with authority into a prolonged struggle for survival.
For mainstream horror, Scream, Final Destination and Halloween are the obvious starting points.
Scream remains one of the defining slasher films of the 1990s, while Final Destination created an entire horror formula without requiring a conventional killer. Halloween brings Laurie Strode and Michael Myers back into direct confrontation decades after their first encounter. Viewers looking for something less familiar should try Ghost Stories, They, Mimic or Blood Star.
Yes. Tubi is an advertising-supported streaming service rather than a conventional paid subscription platform. Movies and television programmes can therefore be watched without paying a monthly subscription, although advertising appears during playback. Availability varies by territory and titles rotate in and out of the catalogue, which is why this page is regularly updated.
Blood Star is currently available to stream free with ads on Tubi in the United States. Tubi lists the 2024 film as a thriller, horror, crime and action title.
You can also visit the Blood Star Watch Free page for the full list of legitimate free and paid streaming options in the USA.
More Movies to Discover
If Blood Star is the kind of thriller you are looking for, explore our guides to the best psychological thriller movies, best serial killer movies, survival thriller movies, movies like Wolf Creek and movies like No Country for Old Men.
Blood Star is a psychological desert road thriller written and directed by Lawrence Jacomelli and starring Britni Camacho and John Schwab. Learn more about the film, or watch Blood Star free on Tubi in the USA.
Film posters courtesy of The Movie Database (TMDB). This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
More on Blood Star
Table of Contents
- 1. Zodiac (2007)
- 2. Scream (1996)
- 3. Final Destination (2000)
- 4. Halloween (2018)
- 5. Missing (2023)
- 6. Looper (2012)
- 7. Blood Star (2024)
- 8. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
- 9. Mimic (1997)
- 10. The Blackening (2022)
- 11. Flatliners (1990)
- 12. Exam (2009)
- 13. Scream 2 (1997)
- 14. The Black Demon (2023)
- 15. Premonition (2007)
- 16. Ghost Stories (2017)
- 17. They (2002)
- 18. The Glass House (2001)
- 19. Flatliners (2017)
- 20. Scream 3 (2000)
- Why Tubi Has Become So Good for Horror and Thrillers
- More Movies to Discover
- More on Blood Star