Shudder: Horror & Thrillers 17+

This is a fantastic app!!! Absolutely love Shudder. Great choice of tv and movies which seem to have a new title added most weeks which is great for my ever growing watchlist.
The only thing which is a little frustrating is I like to read reviews to get a sense of whether I’ll enjoy the movie but 90% of the time, the app doesn’t show “member reviews” I know they exist because I’ve left some but the next day, there’s nothing there? Sometimes the reviews are visible but majority of the time on the app, no rating of skulls and no reviews to read. Fix that issue and it’ll be 5 stars from because everything else is perfect! :)

So I’ve had shudder a couple of times now (don’t keep it long as there’s never much knew on) but the technical side of is absolutely terrible! The first time I had it there was streaming issues so had to watch it on my phone most of the time. Also when I emailed to complain about this they said they knew there was issues but I wasn’t given any advice on how to further use the app to stream! Second time I got it I couldn’t access my account as it said I didn’t have one and that my email wasn’t receiving emails from shudder, once again I had to email them and get help that way. This time around I’m trying to get my account back but my password doesn’t work so I’m using the reset email and that doesn’t work either. I have emailed shudder a couple of times already but not heard back! With platforms such as Netflix shudder really need to up their game on the tech side of it for it to continue to be successful because at this point the effort it’s taking to get my account back I’m not even that bothered and it’s not worth the effort!!! The fact you can’t even stream it from your app/phone to a chromecast is down right ridiculous. All other streaming services work from your phone. When it tells you to stream from the website, this also doesn’t work. With no returned emails on any help, or after years of streaming issues it’s beyond that shudder haven’t updated anything!

I got Shudder as it was advertised through Prime and seemed to have an interesting selection of horror. Signed up to a free trial and all seemed well. Watched a few of the films I’d had my eye on but then there wasn’t very much else, and it was always a choice of the best of a not great bunch. Don’t get me wrong, there are some gems, but if you’re a horror fan who has watched a lot of them already, there isn’t much new to get excited about. The worst thing though was when I realised the were selling my data! There is a toggle in the app menu that you have to go to a submenu to turn on to say “don’t sell my data”, which I had missed. There was no warning at all when signing up (at least no obvious one, as I never tick the box to accept such things), but the sudden increase in phishing emails and cold calls now makes sense! Not ideal while home I’ll trying to get over Covid and having the phone going with scam calls.

I would have given this 3 stars as being average for a streaming service but 2 stars deducted for selling my data! Bad form. Not sure where the Shudder team are based but pretty sure the General Data Protection Regulatons prevent the sharing of data without consent, which has to be given and not *implied*. In other words, people now have to opt in to sharing data and not opt out!