TV & Streaming

Sam Zimmerman is known for his impeccable and calculating taste. But as Shudder‘s senior vice president of programming and acquisitions, the 37-year-old horror movie devotee still takes care to hunt from the heart. An authentic genre film buff — who knows truly scary storytelling is at the core of Shudder‘s success and subscriber base — Zimmerman has been with AMC Networks’ beloved streaming service since it started more than a decade ago.

“Independent horror will always be just a little bit ahead of the game,” he told IndieWire in a recent conversation about the future of fear in film. “We’re showing you something you didn’t expect to see, pushing you further than you expected to go, and making you just a little more unnerved. We’re provoking you, then making you really think about what you’re watching.”  

The cult-hit horror platform has been toasting its 10th birthday with a seemingly endless list of events and activations in 2025. From a Shudder-themed parade in New Orleans to a tattoo shop in New York, the year-long party is proof of the brand’s dazzling approach to community. 

“If we’re going to put ourselves out there and say that Shudder is defined by its programming, then we should put ourselves and our filmmakers at the forefront,” said Zimmerman. “You should feel like you can reach out, touch us, and talk to us. Horror is a conversation.” 

An ideal backdrop to roll out yet another winning slate, which includes acquired titles as well as movies Shudder helped make, the birthday campaign has accompanied some of the service’s biggest hits to date. That includes the theatrical release of Ben Leonberg’s “Good Boy,” presently entering its third weekend in theaters and still holding strong at the box office. The canine caper is the second-highest-grossing release from Shudder, trailing “Late Night with the Devil” from last year. 

For Halloween, Zimmerman is back to manning Shudder’s annual recommendations hotline, but the service was equally busy entertaining fans over the summer. Sean Byrne’s shark-infested “Dangerous Animals” screened for select audiences on real boats, and Eli Craig’s smash hit “Clown in a Cornfield” played early at drive-ins before opening nationwide through RLJE Films.” That’s a subtle nod to George A. Romero, who showed his 1968 feature debut “Night of the Living Dead” — a shoestring zombie flick that broke convention in every sense — on the vehicular circuit, too. 

“His spirit was fiercely independent, and if you look at classic and contemporary horror, the divide was ‘Night of the Living Dead,’” said Zimmerman. “The film kicked off what contemporary horror [style] is — something that’s more naturalistic, gorier, grittier, bleaker. And that production was the definition of independent and regional. It was a group of 10 people who decided to do it themselves with the money they’d made from their own advertising business.” 

Romero stayed independent in his process and philosophy, even as his filmmaking career grew. Horror experts like Zimmerman know all too well how that hurt the legendary director’s bottom line, but Shudder’s decade of success with serious horror fans proves that the Father of Zombies’ earnest approach still works as a modern business model. Zimmerman also cites 1974’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” as essential genre foundation, and watching his own company excel, the programmer looks to major studio releases with palpable indie spirits (think “The Exorcist” or “Rosemary’s Baby”) for inspiration when finding new filmmakers for Shudder. 

“People might peg ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ as a studio-style horror movie because it’s pretty broad leaning, but I think [director Eli Craig] and [novel author Adam Cesare] have a truly skillful sensibility to what they do,” said Zimmerman. “They land their gags and their kills. Even if you call it a ‘teen slasher,’ it goes a lot further than most teen slashers. It’s what we wish teen slashers would do, and that’s imbuing more of that independent sensibility into their film.” 

If you don’t know Romero’s entire life story, and/or you left your field guide to the best high school horror movie at home, then the web of connection needed to support programming this good sounds daunting. That’s another reason the top brass at Shudder has stayed committed to connecting with fans — even as they’re increasingly recognized as the experts in indie horror. 

“It should never feel exclusive,” said Zimmerman. “That’s something I try to say to everyone on the team. The tone should never be, ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen that!’ It’s got to be, ‘I’m so excited for you to see that.’ That’s the world we want to live in.” 

Over the years, Zimmerman has seen countless studio executives and marketing creatives try to peg the typical horror consumer. But growing up in New York City surrounded by millions, Shudder’s friendliest face truly believes, “Someone who loves horror doesn’t look one way.” 

“When I get to have conversations with people outside of the industry — people who say, ‘I’m a mom!’ or ‘I’m a nurse!’ and ‘I just love horror movies so much!’ — that is really heartening to me,” said Zimmerman. “We always wanted Shudder to be a place where everyone found something scary to watch… and it is so important to me that our movies are scary. That might seem obvious, but it’s really not.” 

Assessing global trends across genre acquisitions, Zimmerman argues we’re in the middle of a renaissance for J-Horror. See Yûta Shimotsu’s “Best Wishes to All,” also released by Shudder this year.

Zimmerman was born in 1988, and his generation gets to make many of the tide-turning business decisions for U.S. horror. Discovering the genre through Americanized versions of Japanese masterworks, millennials explored world cinema largely through comparison. In 2025, Shudder is stoking that discussion with their ongoing love of Asian horror. 

“We’ve been working on this contemporary wave of Indonesian horror ever since ‘Satan’s Slaves’ in 2017,” said Zimmerman. “It’s very nervy and stylish. We did ‘The Queen of Black Magic’ in 2019, and it’s one of my favorite movies that Shudder has ever released because it feels so perfectly creepy, crawly, icky, scary — just ideal when you’re making a horror movie.”

Shudder has worked with Indonesian writer/director Joko Anwar ever since, and searching for fresh scares on the social media side, Zimmerman considers this July’s “House on Eden” an important step in establishing a lasting relationship between internet creators and the broader indie film scene. Directed and written by TikToker Kris Collins, who stars alongside Celina Myers (another familiar face from the app), the new found-footage film cost just $10,000 to make. 

“That’s another kind of authenticity test,” said Zimmerman. “Kris and Celina are so successful in their domain and in the creator world of TikTok. They have such a wide audience already, and they didn’t have to do this movie. But they went out and they did it ‘Blair Witch’ style. It was just them in the woods, and they created a film that sets up real scares.”

Although Zimmerman knows plenty of Hollywood folks who get insecure around influencers, he sees the source for new talent as a good thing. “House on Eden” pulled more than $450,000 at the box office for Shudder ahead of YouTuber Chris Stuckmann‘s directorial debut for Neon, out this fall. Horror-heads won’t really be able to look at those two projects side-by-side until “Shelby Oaks” opens, but Zimmerman has never had more faith in doing things the Shudder way. 

Asked why the service hasn’t really ventured into the Disney IP-turned-nightmare fuel market (a commercially lucrative arena that’s been a critical bust mostly), Shudder’s lead programmer quipped, “Well, we had ‘The Ugly Stepsister.’” Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt’s dark spin on the “Cinderella” story earned back its budget and opened to solid reviews at Sundance; its acquisition was spearheaded by Shudder’s SVP of Acquisitions and Productions Emily Gotto.

“If you can take a thing that’s recognizable and then take it to a horror space, it is original,” said Zimmerman. “Emilie announced herself with such a bold vision. I’m always excited to see where the new voices are coming from, whether they’re reinvigorating a landscape or introducing us to something completely new.” 

That’s another sign of progress for Shudder, which brought the divisive world premiere of Chris Nash’s “In a Violent Nature” to Park City, Utah, last year. Leave it to the guy straddling the divide between big screen events and digital-only releases to use his phone in a theater, but that night Zimmerman recorded audio of the festival audience watching an ultraviolet death scene (posthumously known as “the yoga kill”), and it sounds like a microbudget rollercoaster. 

“It’s fun to razz ’em a bit,” said Zimmerman. “Chris made a very skillful film with ‘In a Violent Nature,’ but you also want to bring that type of horror movie to places with an air of prestige. It builds good word of mouth. I don’t think you have to choose really, but when you get the opportunity with a festival like Sundance, you don’t pass it up if you’ve got the right movie.” 

Highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in-between, Shudder’s marathon birthday party from 2025 should be remembered like an axe to the forehead. Less “anniversary celebration” and more “frenzied point made repeatedly,” this is the type of big swing you have to take if you want to keep being the definitive best source for emerging films across indie horror.

“Fear unites us in a lot of ways,” said Zimmerman. “The ambition is to keep the genre at the heart, expand within it to bigger and scarier scales, and always retain how we cherish pure independence and movies made on nothing but tenacity. That entire spectrum covers what the horror genre is, and that’s what we have to showcase by continuously expanding our minds.”