What I’m Screaming: Halloween
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It’s October! Halloween—a time for rubber bats, candy corn, and David S. Pumpkins—is here. Whether you’re at home handing out candy or drinking too much while dressed as a sexy cat, everyone agrees it’s the most wonderful time of the year (suck it, Christmas). Grab the candy bowl and settle in because it’s time to Netflix and kill!
Hellraiser
Recommended if you like: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pi, or haunted Rubix cubes
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (his feature debut as director) pulled horror kicking and screaming out of the gory, mindless funk of the ‘80s. At a time where the genre was dominated by goofy, braindead slashers, Hellraiser raised the stakes and made horror smart again. When a man finds a mysterious puzzle box and solves it, he opens a portal to Hell and all that comes with it. “This isn’t for your eyes,” hisses the otherworldly Cenobite (a.k.a. Pinhead), but he’s dead wrong; Barker’s inventive take on the underworld and sadomasochism is required viewing for any horror aficionado.
Available on: Netflix, Hulu
It Follows
Recommended if you like: Teeth, Under the Skin, or spectral STDs
It Follows puts a twist on the concept of the curse: What if you caught a haunting like a disease? After a strange sexual encounter, a young woman named Jay finds herself pursued by a mysterious entity at every turn. It Follows plays with genre tropes, but never winks at its audience. It’s honest and earnest, which makes the tension and suspense that much more intense. Visually arresting and definitely original, it’ll leave a lasting impression to be sure—but it’s probably not a date movie.
Available on: Netflix
The Fly
Recommended if you like: Alien, The Thing, or shirtless Jeff Goldblum
David Cronenberg’s 1986 update of The Fly mixes body horror and developed characters to create one of the most fascinating sci-fi/horror films of the twentieth century. Scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) finds himself in an experiment gone wrong, and slowly transforms into a half-man, half-fly monstrosity. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde meets Frankenstein with Cronenberg’s trademark mutations and gore. It continually ranks in top horror movie lists, and it has one of the most iconic horror lines of all time: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” You’d do well to listen.
Available on: Hulu
The Return of the Living Dead
Recommended if you like: Dawn of the Dead (2004), Night of the Living Dead, or braaaaaaains
The Return of the Living Dead injects a healthy dose of punk sensibility into a “self-serious” genre. A pseudosequel that assumes George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was a movie covering up a real zombie outbreak, Return is more slapstick than scary. It’s a lurid, ghoulish comedy that skewers a genre, all while defining it (you know why zombies eat brains and moan about it? Thank this movie). With no shortage of style, it’s one of the most rewatchable cult classics around.
Available on: Amazon
Train to Busan
Recommended if you like: The Void, The Host, or forever living in fear of Amtrak
If you like your zombies a little more traditional, Korean gorefest titled Train to Busan—which has an American remake on the way from the minds behind The Conjuring—keeps its flesh-eating corpses a bit more serious than The Return of the Living Dead. Suspenseful, claustrophobic, and smart, Train to Busan upends the zombie genre by confining it: director Yeon Sang-ho restricts the action to a passenger train, forcing the cast to travel from deadly car to deadly car. That doesn’t limit the action, but rather enhances it; a climb through labyrinthine luggage racks becomes a white knuckle-inducing chase.
Available on: Netflix
The Monster Squad
Recommended if you like: Beetlejuice, The Goonies, or Wolfman’s nards
If you want something less scary and more spooky, The Monster Squad is your best bet. It’s offbeat and ’80s as hell with a script from director Fred Dekker and writer Shane Black (yes, that Shane Black). The premise is simple, but charming: suburban teens have to save the day from Universal’s classic monsters. (Between this, Poltergeist, The Lost Boys, and Gremlins, the ’80s sure were all about evil invading suburbia.) It’s goofy, not gory, so if you’re tired of limbs being ripped off and heads exploding, try this on for size.
Available on: Hulu, Amazon
Blade & Blade II
Recommended if you like: Basically any Marvel movie, basically any Guillermo del Toro movie, or motherfuckers trying to ice skate uphill
(Am I cheating with two movies? Shut up.)
Arguably the series that kickstarted the superhero craze, Blade and Blade II are stylish action extravaganzas with some of Guillermo del Toro’s creepiest monsters. If you’re looking for thoughtful, deep examinations of vampire mythology, keep going. If you want to see Wesley Snipes murder a shitload of ghouls, stop here. While it’s more Hellboy than Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s still pure del Toro. Just remember to skip the third one. Trust me.
Available on: Netflix
Preacher
Recommended if you like: Evil Dead, Cabin in the Woods, or bar brawl beatdowns
Heaven fucked up. When a supernatural something escapes its celestial cage, it starts exploding holy men—save for small town preacher Jesse Custer, who finds himself gifted with “The Word,” the ability to command anyone and anything. With the help of his outlaw ex-girlfriend and a junkie Irish vampire, Custer jukes renegade angels, shadowy religious militias, and the Saint of Killers as he tries to answer a cosmic question: Where the hell is God? From Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Preacher is a raucous, bizarre horrorshow with action and gore to spare.
Available on: Hulu
Lore
Recommended if you like: My Favorite Murder, Into the Dark, or spooky ASMR videos
This podcast-cum-anthology series takes folklore and urban legends—some old, some new, but all creepy—and reinvents the campfire story. Lore tackles the origins of the modern vampire, the terror of the Celtic changeling, the true story of the icepick lobotomy, and more. “All of the material is from documented stories or historical events. Some are ancient and some are modern,” says series creator Aaron Mahnke, “but they are all factual in the sense that people reported these things and believed they were true.” If you find yourself hungry for more of Mahnke’s weirdly soothing monotone after two woefully short (but very bingeable) seasons, there’s always the original podcast to keep you company.
Available on: Amazon
28 Weeks Later
Recommended if you like: The Walking Dead, The Mist, or soul-crushing guilt
The 2007 sequel to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later doesn’t just rehash the original. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo fast forwards to post-zombie London, where NATO has stepped in to help rebuild after the devastating Rage Virus. When two children attempt to reconnect with their infected mother, all hell breaks loose. It’s cerebral, scary, and visceral; if you’re burned out on zombies, it’ll resurrect those feelings of terror and dread. If the opening sequence doesn’t sell you, nothing will.
Available on: Hulu
—Jackson Sutliff