My SO and I are always looking for good movies, shows, etc. to fill the month of October. We like things that are atmospheric, cerebral, or just fun. But a lot of the standard recommendations are your typical slasher movies and the like, disgusting body horror, kids movies that we have no interest in, and things that are just plain miserable.
Here’s some things we’ve liked to one degree or another from previous years.
Action Horror / Horror That’s Actually Enjoyable
- Aliens
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula
- Fright Night
- Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
- The Mummy (1999)
- Silence of the Lambs
- Sleepy Hollow (Great? No. Fun? Yes.)
- Termors 1 & 2
- Various Stephen King Mini series (IT, The Stand, Rose Red)
Funny and Spooky
- Army of Darkness
- BeetleJuice
- Bubba Ho-Tep
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (movie)
- The Burbs (didn’t love it, but a good fit)
- Death Becomes Her
- The Frighteners
- Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
- Ghostbusters 1 & 2
- Gremlins 1 & 2
- High Anxiety
- Little Shop of Horrors (not really into musicals, but still a good fit)
- Shaun of the Dead
- What We Do in the Shadows (movie)
- Various MST3K horror movie episodes
- Young Frankenstein
Anthology Shows (inherently hit or miss)
- The Twilight Zone (60s)
- The Outer Limits (90s)
- Tales From the Crypt
Old Timey Classics
- Dracula
- Frankenstein (actually underwhelming, but it was a good fit)
- The Haunting (1963)
- The Haunting of Hill House (with Rifftrax, but still counts)
- The Last Man on Earth
- Psycho
- The Invisible Man
Barely Qualifies as spooky but still good:
- Dark Man
- The Dead Zone (movie)
- Men in Black
- Pacific Rim
- The Shadow
- They Live
Don’t sleep on Doctor Sleep.
Still have to watch The Shining first. It’s been sitting on the list for years but keeps getting bumped for something else at the last minute.
Personally, I vote for The Shining mini-series over the movie with Jack Nicholson but I might be in the minority there.
Oddly enough I have seen that one. But my preferred version will always be The Shinning.
Then I vote for The Shining!
This is an interesting suggestion. I LOVE this movie (even the 3-hour Director’s Cut, which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it), but it does kinda require having seen The Shining (quite scary and moderately graphic but might be passable since it’s 70’s-scale scary) and it’s pretty dark at times. But it’s a fantastic creepy journey that isn’t actually all that terrifying in itself. It feels more like a novel than most adaptations, and I love that about it.