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The first days of October are a special time around these parts. The air has grown crisp, more than a handful of leaves are tumbling off the cedars out back, and for some reason everything we drink now is “spiced” with a dash of pumpkin.
It’s our favorite month of the year, not least because it is also the official kickoff to spooky season. Granted, some of us don’t need to wait until Oct. 1 to start our horror-movie binging, but even then the turning of the seasons is a green light to hit the accelerator—and that includes by watching some old favorites, or hopefully discovering a few new ones on streaming. And the most popular streaming service in the world remains Netflix, a monolithic library with deeper horror pockets than might be apparent at first glance. So if you’re looking for some ideas liberated from algorithms or AI-generated data points, here are recommendations you know you can trust.
American Psycho
U.S. and UK
When director Mary Harron would tell friends she was adapting Bret Easton Ellis’ infamous novel, American Psycho, they would look aghast. That nasty misogynistic piece of trash? Harron was perplexed since she and her screenwriter Guinevere Turner saw the novel as a satire not only of ‘80s yuppie culture, but also a specific breed of “master of the universe” white male ego. And their vision brought that element out much further to the screen—and improved on it.
A major factor in the upgrade, of course, is Christian Bale’s still delightfully batshit performance as Patrick Bateman, an ‘80s empty suit who looks to fill the void with blood, viscera, and polaroids of himself flexing in the mirror. It’s one of the all time great horror-comic turns that put him on the path to Batman. When it’s coupled with Harron and Turner’s disaffected slyness, Patrick Bateman becomes an idol of a bygone age, and the punchline of a feminist takedown.
Annihilation
UK Only
An all star cast, including Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tessa Thompson, plus the quality direction of Alex Garland wasn’t enough to secure this horror sci-fi based on Jeff Vandermeer’s novel a theatrical release in the UK—or box office success in the U.S. Never mind that though. This is a spectacular film. Portman joins a crew of women exploring the mysterious Area X where her husband ventured some time before and came back changed. It’s a weird, unfamiliar landscape of beautiful flora and terrifying fauna defying explanation until the strange, indelible finale (not sure what it means? Have a read of this explainer). And you can check out our review, too if you like.
As Above, So Below
U.S. Only
Found footage movies from the 2000s and 2010s might be a dime a dozen, but John Erick Dowdle’s As Above, So Below is a cut above the rest, even if it achieves this by digging down deep. Like all the way to Hell. That’s the delicious setup of a film that makes shrewd use of Paris’ catacombs, a sprawling and labyrinthine underworld which houses millions of the city’s dead from ancient times. The catacombs by themselves are pretty spooky, with nameless skulls and skeletons being turned into ghoulish art. (They are French.)
As Above, So Below heightens that macabre appeal by revealing they also provide a gateway to perdition, which intrepid explorer Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks) accidentally uncovers while going off the beaten path with a go-pro and a camera crew. Yet if she wants to escape eternal damnation she’s going to have to ignore Dante’s warning about abandoning all hope “ye who enter.” It’s a shame Weeks didn’t get to make a couple of these like a found-footage Indiana Jones.
Apostle
U.S. and UK
Apostle comes from acclaimed The Raid director Gareth Evans and is his take on the horror genre. Spoiler alert: it’s a good one. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas Richardson, a British man in the early 1900s who must rescue his sister, Jennifer, from the clutches of a murderous cult. Thomas successfully infiltrates the cult led by the charismatic Malcom Howe (Michael Sheen) and begins to ingratiate himself with the strange folks obsessed with bloodletting. Thomas soon comes to find that the object of the cult’s religious fervor may be more real than he’d prefer.
The Babadook
U.S. Only
Love or hate the term “elevated horror,” the modern renaissance of thoughtful, adult-skewing chiller cinema probably began right here with Jennifer Kent’s probing and disquieting exploration of “Mr. Babadook,” a well-to-do monster about town, top hat and all. That’s how he appears at any rate in a disturbing “children’s book” belonging to the son of Amelia (Essie Davis). A creature visibly created to induce nightmares in children, he and the book are a hideous discovery, even before the single-mother realizes her son thinks the Babadook is real.
Worse still, Amelia also comes to believe in the creature when strange happenings in her home take on the feeling of oppression. A thrilling metaphor for dealing with the depression of being a parent, The Babadook brings to the fore some very difficult, dark thoughts that arise when you take responsibility for the well-being of a child… and either fear or welcome a release by any means necessary.
The Birds
U.S. Only
Leave it to Alfred Hitchcock to make something as commonplace as a pigeon or crow the stuff of nightmares. But here we are, 60 years on the other side of The Birds and still giving a stink-eye to the feathered fellas when they congregate along jungle gyms. The Birds is one of the biggest hits of the Master of Suspense’s career. While that does not necessarily make it one of his best, it is certainly one of his most entertainingly schlocky and visually iconic.
The film stars Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels, another of Hitchcock’s “cool blondes,” this one bold enough to follow a man and flirting partner (Rod Taylor) from San Francisco to his hometown, a little hamlet in northern California with a lot of birds… birds who have had it UP TO HERE with being hunted, tortured, and generally mistreated by the human race. If you’ve never seen it, give it a shot. Despite some dated special effects, its setpieces can be genuinely grueling as Hitch builds the tension to feverish levels. It’s like The Happening but good.
Bone Tomahawk
U.S. Only
As much Western thriller as straight ahead horror, this, Bone Tomahawk still has the pleasure of being one of the nastiest and most unpleasant experiences you could have gotten at the movies inside of the past decade. The first in a series of hard-hitting genre-mashups from hardboiled filmmaker S. Craig Zahler, Bone Tomahawk stars Western legend Kurt Russell as an over-the-hill sheriff who in the 1890s discovers some of the last unmapped corners of the Old West are the absolute darkest. This includes a Native American tribe of cannibals, which are described as “troglodytes” by the film’s white protagonists. And the troglodytes have taken prisoner innocent settlers whom Russell aims to save.
We are not going to pretend the film’s questionable historical politics are clean, but Zahler clearly likes it when his films occupy a grim, nebulous space in the zeitgeist, and then he exploits it for all the gruesome gore it’s worth. So when Sheriff Franklin Hunt catches up with the troglodytes, trust us, there will be blood.
Bride of Chucky
U.S. Only
Look, we’re not going to sit here and pretend Bride of Chucky, the fourth installment in the Child’s Play franchise, is by any meaningful definition “a good movie.” But it is a great time, especially with some friends in the mood for a Halloween treat. Directed with more style and pizazz than the screenplay deserves, thanks to Hong Kong helmer Ronny Yu, Bride of Chucky enjoys a slick nu-metal aesthetic befitting its 1998 timestamp.
It also is timelessly crazy in its high camp largely thanks to a go-for-broke performance by Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany Valentine, the hitherto unknown girlfriend of Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), the serial killer trapped inside the body of a doll. Not that Tiffany is a put-upon ex; she’s every bit as demented as old Chuck and twice as clever since she’s kept up the serial killer schtick solo without needing to get literally dolled up. In fact, she’s hunted down Chucky to torment the little jerk. Unfortunately, he escapes, murders her, and then for revenge traps her also in the body of a doll. But trust us, that’s where the real fun begins…
Cargo
U.S. and UK
Martin Freeman stars in this Netflix original developed from a short directed by Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke. Set in the Australian outback, Freeman is a father trying to find someone to protect his child in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. More wistful and emotional than that sounds on paper, there’s a fascinating subplot about an Aboriginal girl mourning her father and the final set piece is unforgettable. Check out our review.
Creep
U.S. and UK
No, not the one set on the tube, this “mumblegore” horror is far weirder than that. Director Patrice Brice plays Aaron, a videographer hired by Mark Duplass’ Josef to make a video for his kid to watch after he’s died of a terminal illness. Or did he? Playing on the power of politeness and the awkwardness of male relationships, this is a highly original, itchily uncomfortable watch. Creep 2 is also on Netflix, and also good!
El Conde
U.S. and UK
For horror fans who like a bit of real history with their vampires, here’s this satirical treat from Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín. El Conde follows the death and undeath of real-life brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet, who not only sparked a violent coup that cost the lives of thousands of Chileans in 1973 but was also responsible for many more thousands of disappearances and executions during his rule. He died in 2006 under house arrest as one of the most hated men in Chile, but El Conde (“The Count” in Spanish) imagines what it would be like if its subject, now a defeated old vampire (played by South American legend Jaime Vadell) who longs for the grave, were forced to live on in that solitude forever.
For while he’s surrounded by family in his decrepit ranch house prison in the country, all his wife and kids want is the fortune he stole from the Chilean people. While he finds love anew in the arms of a young nun named Carmen (a wonderful Paula Luchsinger), she’s secretly an exorcist who’s hellbent on vanquishing the bloodsucker, even if it means sacrificing her own humanity to do it. Larraín lets the old bastard wallow in self-pity, unloved and undead, while some truly gory sequences involving blenders and guillotines unfold in the background.
Evil Dead Rise
U.S. Only
For 30 years we went along without anyone but Sam Raimi making Evil Dead movies, but now the Deadite’s out of the bag and everyone is getting in on the groovy action. And so far, to our delight, there have been no stinkers, unless you count Henrietta in the fruit cellar.
In the case of Evil Dead Rise, writer-director Lee Cronin gets a chance up to bat with a genuinely sadistic premise: instead of a teenager being possessed while drinking and smooching with their friends at a cabin in the woods, it is a loving single mother (Alyssa Sutherland) in a working class home who is possessed by demons from Hell. Now they’re using her knowledge as Mommie Dearest to lure her three children into the fires of eternal torment. And the spooky thing is… she gets some of them! But not without a fight from her estranged sister (Lily Sullivan), who turns a family reunion into an absolute bloodbath.
Fear Street Trilogy
U.S. and UK
These movies, set in three different time periods and invoking three different horror styles were released weekly almost as an extended boxset. It was a smart move and the release felt like an event as viewers waited to see how the stories would interlink and loop back to the 1994 setting of number one. Leigh Janiak directs the series which owes a debt to Stranger Things as well as, of course, its horror predecessors including Scream, Friday the 13th and even The Witch. The movies are based on the Fear Street books by R.L Stine and so have a YA vibe as well as a bit of social commentary as the youths of Shadyside seem to be cursed as opposed to their privileged neighbors in Sunnyvale.
Gerald’s Game
U.S. and UK
We are living in a renaissance for Stephen King adaptations. But while there have been many killer clowns and hat-wearing fiends getting major attention at the multiplexes, the best King movie in perhaps decades is Mike Flanagan’s underrated Gerald’s Game. Cleverly adapted from what has been described as one of King’s worst stories, Gerald’s Game improves on its source material when it imagines a middle-aged woman (Carla Gugino) placed in a terrifying survival situation after her husband (Bruce Greenwood) dies of a heart attack during a sex game.
Handcuffed to a bed in their remote cabin in the woods, Gugino’s Jessie must face the fact no one is coming to save her in the next week… more than enough time to die of dehydration or to be eaten by the wolf prowling about. Thus the specter of death hovers over the whole movie, seemingly literally with a monstrous shade emerging from the shadows to bedevil Jessie each night. A trenchant character study that frees Gugino to show a wide range of terror, determination, and finally horrifying desperation, the movie delves into the shadows of a woman haunted by trauma and demons almost as scary as her current situation. Almost.
Get Out
UK Only
More than five years later, Jordan Peele’s Get Out is as evocative and impressive as ever. A satirical chiller where the metaphor is as glaringly obvious as American racism is pervasive, Get Out has all the subtlety of a hammer while making its point about the 2010s, post-Obama incarnation of bigotry and (not-so-)unconscious biases, even in elite progressive enclaves still dominated by smiling white faces. It’s there that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) agrees to spend the weekend with the parents of his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams). If only he knew the title of the movie he was in… although his slow dawning horror remains the stuff of nightmares and mirthless chuckles.
Halloween (2018)
U.S. Only
We might understand if your tastes are a bit soured on the Blumhouse and David Gordon Green era of Halloween following the back-to-back disappointments of Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. But trust us, the 2018 reboot that started the cycle is still a damn good Michael Myers movie. As the first film since the 1978 classic from John Carpenter to return to the core fear of Myers—that he will stalk you and butcher you for no discernible reason—Halloween (2018) was a renaissance for the Boogeyman after decades of neglect and/or misuse. It also featured the best performance Jamie Lee Curtis ever gave in this series, complete with a superb conclusion to the story of her Laurie Strode and Michael Myers’ 40 years of Halloween. Alas, Blumhouse couldn’t take the win and had to add increasingly bad addendums to that finale.
His House
U.S. and UK
Remi Weekes’ debut feature is a surprise gem which won him a BAFTA for Outstanding British Debut. It stars Gangs of London’s Sope Dirisu and Loki’s Wunmi Mosaku as a refugee couple who’ve been housed in a large but dilapidated property in a city outside London. The two have brought demons with them that inhabit the house while the horrors of the situation that brought them here, and the one they now find themselves in, loom large. It’s an intelligent critique of how we treat refugees at the same time as being a genuinely scary ghost story.
Insidious
UK Only but leaves soon
Insidious is the start of a multi-film horror franchise and a pretty good one at that. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne star as a married couple who move into a new home with their three kids. Shortly after they move in, their son Dalton is drawn to a shadow in the attic and then falls into a mysterious coma from which they can’t wake him. It’s at this point that the Lamberts do what horror fans always yell at characters to do: they move out of the damn house! Little do they know, however, that some hauntings go beyond mere domiciles.
It Follows
U.S. Only (Leaves on Oct. 10)
While the whole “sex = death” trope might be less prevalent in horror movies than some assume, it does exist and is ripe for evaluation. Enter David Robert Mitchell, whose It Follows features a monster who hunts its victims by taking a form that will disturb the target and then slowly, but relentlessly, stalks them. The only way to avoid the monster? Have sex with someone else, thus passing on the curse.
Set in the ruins of post-Great Recession Detroit, It Follows stars an excellent Maika Monroe as Jay, a suburban teen who gets the curse after her first sexual experience. Jay and her friends try to find a way to stop the monster from finding her, making for a movie that’s as emotionally resonant as it is absolutely terrifying. Mitchell’s confident direction, combined with a dynamic electronic score by Disasterpiece, makes It Follows the best of the John Carpenter-influenced horror movies we got in the 2010s.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
U.S. and UK
Horror fans can be very forgiving, not only will we keep watching franchises as they shamble into fourth, fifth, and sixth entries, but we’ll even champion sequels long after the rest of the public has abandoned them. But even by that standard, Ouija: Origin of Evil, the prequel to a little-loved PG-13 movie from 2014, seems an unlikely choice to win fan support.
But Origin of Evil outdoes its predecessor in every way thanks to the involvement of director Mike Flanagan, who co-wrote the movie with Jeff Howard. Still early in his career, Flanagan brings everything you expect to Ouija: Origin of Evil, such as strong performances from his stock players (including Elizabeth Reaser and Henry Thomas), as well as long conversations and monologues about faith, despair, and the meaning of life.
Pearl
U.S. Only
We can’t explain why the only installment in Ti West’s surprise horror trilogy from A24 on Netflix is Pearl, but luckily it’s the best one! A prequel to the also appropriately grisly X, Pearl is a little more shocking and thrilling than that admittedly fun throwback. Whereas X revisited one of horror aficionados’ generally favorite stomping grounds—the Texan backwoods of 1970s DIY filmmakers and massacres—Pearl goes further back in time to the 1920s, right after the First World War.
Leaning heavily on a visual language reminiscent of 1930s technicolor fantasies, and seedier ‘40s psychodramas, Pearl is a character study of X’s mass murderer in her youth. Young Pearl (Mia Goth) wants to be a good girl almost as much as she wants to be a star, like those women up on the silver screen named Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish. But her mama says she’s not well… and you know what?… mama might be right! But by the time dear Pearl accepts that, a lot of people are going to have to die. And Goth carries that epiphany with a captivating, and terrifying, conviction.
The Platform
U.S. and UK
This existential Spanish horror made a splash at the start of lockdown with it’s tale of prisoners trapped in an enormous vertical prison with a platform at it’s center, which delivers food to the inmates floor by floor starting at the top, so that each floor only gets what the floor above has left over. It’s political, allegorical, it’s clever, and it’s very violent.
The Pope’s Exorcist
U.S. Only
“It’s, a-me, da’ Pope’s Exorcist!” This is not what Russell Crowe says when he plays Father Gabriele Amorth with a breathtakingly unconvincing Italian accent in The Pope’s Exorcist… but he might as well have since everything else about the performance is as campy as a 1990s Super Mario Bros. video game. And that’s not a bad thing! In fact, it proves outright delightful as you follow Crowe’s BDE pope riding around Rome on a vespa and confronting a demon who is claiming credit for the Spanish Inquisition with all the solemnity of going to a Sunday night football party. It’s the type of batshit movie that the term “guilty pleasure” was invented for.
Psycho
U.S. Only
Another Hitchcock ‘60s classic you need to see at least once in your life, Psycho is the real deal: Hitch firing at his most manipulative and sadistic best. Something of a scandal when it hit cinemagoers like a kitchen knife across the face in 1960, this is the one with the famous shower scene—which only comes after 45 minutes of following Janet Leigh throughout the film as a foolish, but not unlikable thief.
The first act of the movie, indeed, follows a woman who stole a small fortune from her ratty employer to start a new life. Instead she finds herself checked into the Bates Motel where Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) lives alone with his mother. And, you see, she’s not well… but a boy’s best friend is his mother. Will you be staying one night… or forever?
Sinister
UK Only
One of the better Blumhouse chillers to come out of the 2010s, Sinister is the case of a brilliant elevator pitch meeting a superior pair of talents in director Scott Derrickson and star Ethan Hawke to bring it to life.
The setup of the movie is simple: There is a pagan demon god who will consume the soul of any nearby children whenever someone sees him. And not just him, but recreations of his image on walls. And wouldn’t you know it, true crime journalist Ellison (Hawke) just moved into a house with an attic full of home movies stuffed to the gills with Bughuul. And Ellison’s daughter is right downstairs. Uh oh.
Thanksgiving
U.S. Only
Probably the best movie in Eli Roth’s career, Thanksgiving works better than it has any right to. Adapted from a darkly amusing fake trailer Roth made for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse–way back in 2007(!)—the actual film Thanksgiving succeeds at what it’s trying to be: a lighthearted throwback to 1980s slasher junk.
Essentially pretending to be the Halloween knockoff no one else got around to making in the early ‘80s glut of movies like April Fool’s Day, Friday the 13th, and Silent Night, Deadly Night, Thanksgiving imagines the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts bedeviled by a masked killer dressed up as the colony’s first Pilgrim governor, John Carver. And he carves a bloody path through this movie, which has some fun at Black Friday consumerism and the festive season’s expense.
Under the Shadow
U.S. and UK
This 2016 effort could not possibly be more timely as it sympathizes, and terrorizes, an Iranian single mother and child in 1980s Tehran. Like a draconian travel ban, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her son Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) are malevolently targeted by a force of supreme evil.
This occurs after Dorsa’s father, a doctor, is called away to serve the Iranian army in post-revolution and war-torn Iran. In his absence evil seeps in… as does a quality horror movie with heightened emotional weight.
Veronica
U.S. and UK
Loosely based on a true story, Veronica is set in Madrid in 1991 and follows a young woman who messes with a Ouija board and thinks she’s accidentally summoned an evil spirit. Directed by Paco Plaza, one of the two directors behind REC, the movie gained minor notoriety when it first landed on Netflix because of a few viewers finding it overly scary. It’s true that there are some seriously creepy bits (but you’ll be fine!).
You’re Next
U.S. Only
A wonderful little cult horror movie that feels like it needs more love these days is You’re Next, a macabre gem from director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett. As much a satire and inversion of the home invasion yarns that were all the rage about 15 years ago, this horror-comedy has a hell of a twist we won’t give away. But suffice to say that during a family reunion, things go horribly wrong as masked intruders try to attack multiple generations of Davisons with machetes, bear traps, crossbows, and other assorted weapons of impalement.
Little do the invaders realize, however, that a family interloper named Erin (a terrific Sharni Vinson) is tagging along for the weekend, and she grew up on a survivalist compound on the fringe of society. So she knows exactly how to handle such unwanted beasts at the door.
Zombieland
U.S. and UK
More comedy than outright horror, the original Zombieland can still scratch the right kind of itch this spooky season. A cult classic of sorts, though also a hit back in the day, the film boasts a terrific cast, including Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, and a winsomely daffy tone.
In this zom-com, the world is well and truly over, but four loners from different corners of the U.S. (they even refer to each other by their hometowns or states) create a makeshift family while double-crossing one another, palling around, and searching the globe for the very last Twinkie in the face of Zombie Armageddon. They also make a detour to Hollywood for one of the great movie cameos of all-time, which we won’t spoil here in case you still haven’t seen it.
The post Best Horror Movies on Netflix in October 2024 appeared first on Den of Geek.
