My wife and I love to binge watch scary movies in October. Looking for stuff that’s truly scary and not just gore. Watcha got?
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Psychological:
A deaf woman is stalked by a serial killer who believes she is the perfect victim, but she strikes back and starts to hunt him. Mild gore, but more thrilling.
A woman escapes her abusive husband, only to be stalked by an invisible foe.
A woman (apparently I need to start every entry like that) is killed by a motel owner, her sister and her lover try to find her.
Notable mentions: Psycho 2 and Psycho 4, but not Psycho 3, which sucks harder than a ladybug sucks on an aphid.
After a one-night stand, a traveling photographer is locked in the apartment of her lover, and he keeps her hostage.
Julia’s blind twin sister commits suicide. She travels to the city and stays, only to be stalked by a mysterious man. Not helped by having the same genetic illness her sister had, and quickly going blind.
Paranormal:
A family moves into a haunted house, and Ed and Lorraine Warren need to save them.
A boy gets a Good Guy-doll gifted for his birthday, murders start to happen around him.
A jackal in a zoo delivers a human baby, it is quickly replaced with the baby of a politician, and little Damian will do Damian things.
Honorable mention: Omen 2, but not Omen 3.
A woman and her husband move into a new apartment, he quickly becomes friends with the eccentric neighbors, and she nearly loses her mind.
A traveling merchant picks a rose in a beautiful garden. A beast appears and asks for his daughter as a punishment for stealing from him.
Edit: Somehow The Frighteners got deleted.
Michael J Fox sees ghosts, has a successful business in swindling people to get rid of ghosts, finally has to get rid of a murderous ghost.
These are a few of my go to movies for October:
- Suspiria (1977)
- An American Werewolf in London (1981)
- Creepshow (1982)
- Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
- Demon Knight (1995)
- The Devil’s Advocate (1997)
- Lake Placid (1999)
- Sleepy Hollow (1999)
- The Ninth Gate (1999)
- Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
- Trick R’ Treat (2007)
- The Innkeepers (2011)
- What We Do In The Shadows (2014)
- It Follows (2014)
- Tale of Tales (2015)
- The Witch (2015)
- The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
- The Endless (2017)
- Get Out (2017)
- The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)
- Suspiria (2018)
- Underwater (2020)
- Last Night in Soho (2021)
- The Menu (2022)
Side note: Tubi the free streaming service, often has many obscure horror movies, worth a look.
Another huge recco for the Autopsy of Jane Doe. Just watched it last week and loved it! Definitiely give it a go
You’ve probably seen these classics, but they are all worth a rewatch in my opinion:
Some (probably) lesser known movies:
- The Orphanage (Spanish)
- The Others
- Tumbbad (Hindi) - has some gore in the end iirc
If you are looking for something more recent Barbarian (2022) is phenomenal
Signs. Genuinely scares the shit out of me.
Ju-On series, the original Japanese films.
Wait Until Dark. An old classic
I’m not really good at discerning what’s scary, but here are some horror recommendations that are just super fun movies:
- One Cut of the Dead (2017)
- Barbarian (2022)
- House (1977)
- Evil Dead 2 (1987)
- No One Will Save You (2023)
- The People Under the Stairs (1991)
- M3gan (2022)
- Tales from the Hood (1995)
- Deadstream (2022)
- The Evil Within (2017)
- Santa Sangre (1989)
- Housebound (2014)
Sinister
The RitualIdle Hands is an extremely 2000-era film, staring a bunch of kids who’d go on to significant careers, and it bombed. But it has a quality that makes it invincible: it knows exactly how stupid it is. Whatever level a film is on, so long as it correctly believes it’s on that level, it can get away with anything. And a movie about teenage slackers dealing with their friend’s right hand being poltergeisted into sex, drugs, and violence was under no delusions of being high art.
Speaking of “high art,” that’s half of why it flopped. It’s a stoner comedy you absolutely should not watch while stoned. The other half is that it came out right after 9/11, as a glib time capsule of peak late-90s irony and self-awareness, when nobody was in the mood to see it and the studio wasn’t about to waste money selling them on it.
Is it a great movie? Fuck no. But chances are vanishingly low you’ve ever seen it, and it’s an example of horror-comedy that does a decent job of both.
Funny Games and Hereditary were 2 that really got me feeling off after they were over.
The Ring holds up. Creative monster, clear rules, fantastic trailer, a premise that inspires worry about everyday situations, A+ execution on the central video, and - most importantly for a horror movie - flawless sound.
Also a stand-out example of localization. The original is very Japanese. This adaptation thoroughly westernized it without a hint of pandering or exoticism, and without being a jumble of cliches. You get tiny glimpses of a sanitarium near a sleepy New England sound. The characters go to a remote cabin in the woods, for safety, and it’s a reasonable decision. All of this is American, specifically, but it would take vanishingly little to set it in Newfoundland or Scandinavia. It never feels like a movie about an imported mythology. The mote of hand-wavy foreign mystery is only as alien as a Stephen King story.
Frailty - no spoilers, go in cold.
