October 2026
Movies
44 films, each one watched and written about by somebody. The famous ones are here. They are not the reason to stay.
Can't decide?— let October ask three questions44 films
What the hell is this
Films that sound made up. They are not. That is the problem.
- The Peanut Butter Solution
A boy loses his hair from fright, and a paintbrush grows it back. This is a children's film. Canada made it on purpose.
- 1h 30m
- Gets under your skin
- Fine with kids
- House
A house eats seven schoolgirls. A piano eats one of them. No description of this film has ever sounded true.
- 1h 28m
- Spooky, not scary
- Teens and up
- Dead Alive
The goriest film ever made, and a comedy. There is a lawnmower. Peter Jackson, also before the ring.
- 1h 44m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- Cemetery Man
The caretaker of a cemetery where the dead will not stay down. It becomes a love story, then a philosophy, then something else.
- 1h 32m
- Gets under your skin
- Adults
You probably missed this
Genuinely good, genuinely out of the conversation.
- The Changeling
A grieving composer, an enormous empty house, and a seance. One of the best ghost films ever made, and nobody mentions it.
- 1h 47m
- Gets under your skin
- Adults
- The Watcher in the Woods
Disney made a real ghost story, gave it Bette Davis, then could not decide how to end it. The unease survives anyway.
- 1h 20m
- Gets under your skin
- Fine with kids
- Lady in White
A boy shut in the cloakroom on Halloween watches a murder that already happened. Autumn in upstate New York, and it looks it.
- 1h 52m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- The People Under the Stairs
A boy robs his landlords and finds what they keep downstairs. Wes Craven made a film about rent in 1991.
- 1h 42m
- Gets under your skin
- Adults
Canadian nightmare
Made here. Colder than you remember.
- Cube
Six strangers wake in a lethal geometric maze with no memory of arriving. Made for almost nothing. Does not matter.
- 1h 30m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- Ginger Snaps
Two sisters, one bite, and a film that worked out puberty was the horror all along.
- 1h 43m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
80s chaos
Practical effects, questionable judgement, no restraint whatsoever.
- Beetlejuice
Loud, strange, and funnier than it is frightening — though the sandworms land for some kids.
- 1h 32m
- Spooky, not scary
- Fine with kids
- Ghostbusters
A comedy first. The librarian in the opening scene is the only part anyone remembers being scared by.
- 1h 45m
- Spooky, not scary
- Fine with kids
- Poltergeist
A suburban house turns on a family. Rated PG in 1982, which tells you something about 1982.
- 1h 54m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- The Gate
Two kids find a hole in the back garden and accidentally open hell. The demons are stop-motion, which is somehow worse.
- 1h 25m
- Spooky, not scary
- Teens and up
Actually scary
Not atmospheric. Not unsettling. Scary.
- The Others
A big house, a mother, children who cannot be in daylight. Almost nothing is shown. Everything is heard.
- 1h 41m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- A Quiet Place
Ninety minutes where the sound design is the villain. Do not eat crisps.
- 1h 30m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- The Ring
A videotape, seven days, and a green-grey palette you will keep seeing. PG-13, and it will not feel like it.
- 1h 55m
- Actually frightening
- Teens and up
- The Thing
Twelve men, one outpost, and no way to know which of them is still a man.
- 1h 49m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- The Witch
A family alone at the edge of a wood in 1630. Almost no jumps. Ninety minutes of something closing in.
- 1h 32m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- HereditaryFind the trailer
Grief as a horror film. It goes somewhere in the first half hour that you will not be ready for.
- 2h 7m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- The Platform
A vertical prison where a feast descends one floor at a time. Everyone above you decides what is left.
- 1h 34m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
Watch with the kids
Some of these are gentler than you think. Some are not.
- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Twenty-five minutes. Linus waits in the pumpkin patch for something that never comes, and it is somehow perfect.
- 25 min
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- Casper
A ghost story where the ghost would just like a friend.
- 1h 40m
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- Corpse Bride
The land of the dead has better music than the land of the living. That's the whole joke.
- 1h 17m
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- Monster House
The house across the road eats things. Genuinely tense for about twenty minutes, then it lets you go.
- 1h 31m
- Spooky, not scary
- Fine with kids
- ParaNorman
A boy who sees the dead, in a town that would rather he didn't. Kinder than it looks.
- 1h 32m
- Spooky, not scary
- Fine with kids
- Coraline
Buttons for eyes. Rated for children and quietly one of the most unsettling films on this list.
- 1h 40m
- Gets under your skin
- Fine with kids
- The Witches
Anjelica Huston takes her face off in a hotel ballroom. A generation has not recovered.
- 1h 31m
- Gets under your skin
- Fine with kids
Funny on purpose
Horror that knows exactly what it is doing.
- Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
A monster movie where the monster is a rabbit and the stakes are a vegetable competition.
- 1h 25m
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- Scooby-Doo
It was a person in a mask. It was always a person in a mask.
- 1h 26m
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- The Addams Family
Gothic, warm, and about a family that likes each other. The certification is doing the heavy lifting, not the fear.
- 1h 39m
- Not trying to scare you
- Teens and up
- Arachnophobia
It is about spiders and it knows exactly what it is doing. Fine unless it is about spiders for you.
- 1h 49m
- Spooky, not scary
- Teens and up
- The 'Burbs
Tom Hanks decides his new neighbours are murderers. He is on holiday. He has nothing else to do.
- 1h 41m
- Not trying to scare you
- Teens and up
- The Frighteners
Michael J. Fox can see ghosts and has them running a scam for him. Peter Jackson, before the ring.
- 1h 50m
- Spooky, not scary
- Teens and up
October classics
You know these. They earned it.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
Skeletons, a song every ten minutes, and nothing that will keep anybody up.
- 1h 16m
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- Hocus Pocus
Three witches, one talking cat, and absolutely no intention of being frightening.
- 1h 36m
- Not trying to scare you
- Fine with kids
- Jaws
The shark barely appears. That was a budget problem, and it made the film.
- 2h 4m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- The Sixth Sense
Sad more than frightening, in the end. Watch it with someone who hasn't.
- 1h 47m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- Signs
A farmhouse, a cornfield, and something you mostly don't see. The birthday party footage is the whole film.
- 1h 46m
- Gets under your skin
- Teens and up
- Get Out
The scariest thing in it is a conversation. Funnier than people remember, right up until it isn't.
- 1h 44m
- Gets under your skin
- Adults
- Halloween
The one the month is named after. He is standing in the background of shots nobody is looking at.
- 1h 31m
- Gets under your skin
- Adults
- Alien
A haunted house in space, and nobody is coming. Slower than you remember, and better.
- 1h 57m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- The Shining
Corridors that are the wrong shape. Nothing chases anybody for an hour and it is unbearable.
- 2h 26m
- Actually frightening
- Adults
- Something Wicked This Way Comes
A carnival arrives in October and offers everybody exactly what they want. Bradbury wrote it. Disney made it. It is stranger than that sounds.
- 1h 35m
- Spooky, not scary
- Fine with kids