Samuel Zimmerman hops on the phone every Friday afternoon in October with people hunting custom movie recommendations.

“Hey, this is the Shudder Halloween hotline,” he said last week. “Who’s calling?”

Mr. Zimmerman, head of programming at Shudder, a streaming service specializing in horror, suggested an Australian flick about a killer boar,...

Samuel Zimmerman hops on the phone every Friday afternoon in October with people hunting custom movie recommendations.

Coming from inside the house

“Hey, this is the Shudder Halloween hotline,” he said last week. “Who’s calling?”

Mr. Zimmerman, head of programming at Shudder, a streaming service specializing in horror, suggested an Australian flick about a killer boar, “Razorback,” for a caller seeking an underrated relic. He pointed a woman in need of a respite from her new HR job to “Motel Hell.” Mr. Zimmerman suggested “Pledge Night” for a slasher that tapped into Gen-X angst, and “Nina Forever,” in which one member of a love triangle is undead, to fit a caller’s mood after a breakup.

A Shudder curator has recommended horror movies including ‘Razorback,’ ‘Pledge Night’ and ‘Motel Hell’ to its customers.

Photo: Everett Collection (3)

Shudder is using this kind of human touch to bond with subscribers and carve out some space in an entertainment market overshadowed by mega-streamers like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. If those are the big-box stores of digital video, with seemingly endless titles served up by algorithms, then smaller, targeted streamers like Shudder are the boutique shops, stocked exclusively with certain genres.

U.S. households subscribe to 4.4 video streaming services on average, paying a total $44 a month, according to a recent survey by research firm Ampere Analysis. Shudder costs $6 a month.

For platforms trying to stand out and keep subscribers loyal, curation has become a buzzword, just as it did years ago among big music streamers promoting playlists assembled by specialists and stars.

“If we can’t be enthusiastic about our own content, how can we expect anyone else to be?” says Shudder general manager Craig Engler, who peppered a recent interview with movie recommendations. Among them: “One Cut of the Dead,” a 2017 zombie satire made in Japan with what he calls “stone-cold love.”

‘One Cut of the Dead’ is a zombie satire made in Japan that streams on Shudder.

Photo: Shudder

Shudder was launched in 2015 by AMC Networks, whose streaming portfolio includes ALLBLK, specializing in Black stars and creators, and Sundance Now, digital home of the art house brand.

Shudder has a holiday peak to program around, with gimmicks like its annual Ghoul Log, a spin on Yule log videos and featuring a candlelit jack-o-lantern. Just as the Hallmark Channel has its Christmas in July marathon, Shudder gets mileage out of a Halfway to Halloween promo in April, when Mr. Zimmerman opens his weekly one-hour phone line again.

He serves as a one-man call center in his bedroom in Queens. Using the Google Voice app, he powered through 15 movie consultations in the hour allotted last week. He kept a couple pages of Shudder open on his computer to run quick searches and jog his mental database, which the 33-year-old New York native accumulated over a lifetime of fandom and six years contributing to the horror-movie magazine Fangoria. He highlighted Shudder originals and fresh additions to the service, which Mr. Zimmerman helps bring in as vice president of programming.

Producers work with smaller budgets but get creative leeway, says special-effects makeup veteran Greg Nicotero.

Photo: AMC

He asked callers what they were in the mood for, then drilled down on their tastes (“How are you on gothic British stuff?”) and viewing requirements, such as one caller’s need for a low-intensity supernatural thriller that would lure his fiancé to the TV.

“Stitches,” he told a caller, is “one of the better killer clown movies of the last couple years.” He pitched “Skull: The Mask” as “a splatter film that knows no bounds,” and “Monstrous” as “the most unique bigfoot movie I’ve seen all year.”

In talking up “And Now the Screaming Starts,” a 1973 Peter Cushing picture about a cursed castle, Mr. Zimmerman revealed his own soft spot for the subgenre of movies featuring “a manor and a ton of candles and, you know, a crawling disembodied hand.”

Shudder’s business hinges on the fans’ year-round appetite for horror, creepy sci-fi and thrillers. And the hunger for the genre is great: Netflix’s dystopian thriller, “Squid Game,” is a global hit.

AMC Networks doesn’t disclose statistics for its individual streaming sites. In its last earnings announcement, the company said it expected to hit nine million total streaming subscribers by the end of 2021.

Last year, Shudder produced one original film, “Host,” about a Zoom seance. Now it has 13 original films in development or production, including “Night’s End,” with Michael Shannon and Kate Arrington in the tale of a shut-in who seeks an exorcist.

Last year, Shudder produced the film ‘Host,’ about a Zoom seance.

Photo: Shudder

The company got into TV production in 2018 with “Creepshow,” an anthology series adapted from the 1982 movie by horror titan George Romero. Shudder now has seven series going. Producers work with smaller budgets, but get creative leeway, says special-effects makeup veteran Greg Nicotero.

“We could probably make an entire season of ‘Creepshow’ for what one episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ costs,” says Mr. Nicotero, an executive producer on both series.

Emily Gotto, vice president of global acquisitions and co-productions, says Shudder viewing data shows demand for foreign horror, and creators from underrepresented groups in the genre.

“The thing you have never seen is always the scariest,” says Tananarive Due, a writer on “Horror Noire,” a Shudder anthology film inspired by a 2019 documentary exploring the history of Black people in the genre.

Lesley-Ann Brandt as Abbie in ‘Horror Noire,’ a Shudder anthology featuring Black creators and characters.

Photo: Shudder

Shudder doesn’t use algorithms to serve up movies based on viewers’ past activity. Instead, Mr. Zimmerman picks the movies the streaming service offers by rotating through categories such as “slashics.” One throwback feature plops viewers into a movie in progress, like switching on a random TV channel. Another draws on one of the horror genre’s oldest traditions, using outlandish hosts to present movies. On “The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs,” the host sets up flicks like “Humanoids From the Deep” and “Maniac Cop.”

For Mr. Nicotero, who grew up in Pittsburgh under the influence of Chiller Theater, a local late-night series hosted by “Chilly Billy” Cardille, Shudder is the network he never had. “When I was a kid,” he says, “I fantasized about an all-horror genre channel.”

Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com