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
I recommend:
- The Cabin in the Woods
- Tucker and Dale versus Evil
- Midnight Mass
Tucker and Dale is awesome.
And completely fails the “no gore” requirement.
Midnight Massterpiece is more like it. Anything from Mike Flannigan is great. Also check out Midnight Club. It’s not particularly scary, but more touching and sad, in a good way.
He’s honestly the only reason I’ve still got a Netflix subscription at this point.
He did one of the segments in the new V/H/S Beyond movie as well, although I’m pretty sure that falls under gore for this question.
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982). Not gory, so much as gooey.
The Babadook.
The Mist. Based on a book by Steven King. King admits the movie ending is better than his own.
10 Cloverfield Lane. It’s standalone, don’t worry if you haven’t seen Cloverfield
Annihilation. The bear freaks me out.
Event Horizon. Sci-Fi/Horror
Original Ghostbusters from 1984.
Gremlins
No One Will Save You. The ending is weird, but the suspense is top-notch.
The 'Burbs. Classic Tom Hanks comedy.
Tremors.
What We Do in the Shadows
The best thing about Event Horizon is how incredibly gorey it is. Definitely not what OP is after.
Seconding Annihilation. Was going to suggest it if nobody else did.
Based on OP’s likes The Thing is spot on
I love The Thing, specifically because it’s smart and has great atmosphere. And as with Tremors, I like seeing people behave intelligently and adapt to try to overcome the threat, rather than just having people be idiots so we can watch them die.
That said, it goes way past the line for my SO, who makes less of a distinction between gross creature effects and violent gore effects. Plus, it’s not like there isn’t some fairly extreme violence as well. The defibrillator scene for example.
Ah, yes, I had in my mind it was on par with Aliens but probably a step above that gore-wise.
I would add The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993) to your Funny and Spooky list. I’ll also second the The Fog (1981) suggestion.
Hmm… Haven’t seen them since they first came out, my memory of them is vague, but might be worth a watch.
They definitely still hold up, and can actually be better seeing them as an adult for the first time if the last time you watched them was as a kid.
Also there’s an Addams Family channel on Pluto.tv that plays nonstop Addams Family episodes from the 60’s. It was a fantastic silly show. Love watching it with my kids.
The TV show version of What We Do in the Shadows is also quite good, I think, and very much traffics in the same themes as the movie, if even a bit sillier.
We both liked What We Do in the Shadows, but neither of us loved it. I’ve been suggesting giving the show a try but my SO is always a bit resistant to starting a new show, and the prospect of trying to squeeze a season into a limited time frame only has only made that worse. But it’ll probably happen sooner or later.
It’s worth it. Such a great show.
Hubs and I didn’t love the movie, but we totally adore the series.
I don’t watch a lot of creepy/spooky stuff, so my recommendations come from a fairly limited breadth. That said, I recommend a few things that many might lump under “kid movies” (I prefer the more accurate label “family entertainment”) since they tend to be perilous and unsettling without being outright violent, gory, or generally miserable.
Coraline (2009) - A young girl, dissatisfied with her home life after moving to a new town, stumbles upon a dark, parallel world. Therein, she finds solace in a parallel version of her mother who is not what she seems.
Paranorman (2012) - A young boy who can speak with the dead learns that a witch who was executed by the townspeople hundreds of years ago will soon return to seek vengeance upon them.
Over the Garden Wall (2014) - A mini-series focusing on two brothers who find themselves inexplicably lost in a forest teeming with fell beasts, witches, undead, and unlikely allies. I watch this one every year around this time. Cozy yet spooky at the same time.
I don’t completely object to family entertainment, as the good stuff is usually fun for adults too. But there’s also a big difference between the really good stuff and well, everything else. I mostly just wanted to avoid the Hocus Pocus, Hotel Transylvania, and “some random Disney channel crap from the 90s/2000s” that tend to pad out lists of non-horror Halloween movies.
My SO loves Coraline, I thought it was enjoyable enough. Although we watched it not long after watching They Live, which also has Keith David, which lead to a lot of joking about a scene mirroring the famous alley fight, but with buttons instead of sunglasses.
We watched Over the Garden Wall, liked the spooky parts, but wished the little brother would have been MIA for the entire series.
I know of Paranorman, I’ve had it on the list for a while, added when we felt like we were running out of options. Neither of us have seen it and we don’t know much about it, so it’s been a lower priority, but not ruled out.
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies fit I think. Skeleton pirates, curses, sea-zombie pirates, giant squid attacks, the East India Trading Company…
Can’t argue with that logic.
As long as you don’t mind blood and guts in a lighter context, Cabin in the Woods and Tucker and Dale vs Evil are both incredibly fun comedy horror. Neither is really scary (though CitW has a stretch where it emulates classic slasher tropes), but both are quotably hilarious. Considering Shaun of the Dead is on your list and it includes a full evisceration, you’re probably fine.
If you’ve seen Bubba Ho-Tep but not at least Evil Dead 2 if not also Army of Darkness, then you’re woefully deprived.
Zombieland and its sequel are both delightful popcorn fun and very funny.
Happy Death Day is a slasher, but it’s also Groundhog Day and a likable, fun, PG-13 romp without too much meanness or darkness. The sequel is… fine.
Slither is a brilliant horror comedy but it’s a bit of a gross-out type, so it’s iffy if you don’t like seeing people swell to bursting with alien slugs and stuff like that. But the tone is always light and it’s just so much fun. Nathan Fillion in his peak Firefly days is the immensely likable hero.
There’s also a movie from the 80’s called Night of the Creeps that’s a cheesy, schlocky, gooey slugfest that is the spiritual predecessor to Slither.
Speaking of the 80’s, Return of the Living Dead is a super fun and funny 80’s zombie movie that actually has the honor of originating the “zombies eat brains” trope as far as I know.
If the 90’s are in play, Idle Hands is a fun, slightly gross, thoroughly silly stoner horror comedy that’s especially fun if you’re a fan of The Offspring (IYKYK).
I would also add Coraline and Nightmare Before Christmas as spooky atmospheric fun that aren’t obnoxiously kid-focused.
And segueing into Christmas horror, Krampus is a really fun movie that is both very funny and, but also works as a solid proper horror movie AND a family Christmas movie (for freaks like me).
Don’t sleep on Doctor Sleep.
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.
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.
Then I vote for The Shining!
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.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I can’t recommend Midnight Mass highly enough! Probably my favorite horror/spooky thing ever. Best to go in blind, I think. It’s not a mystery per se, but figuring out what’s going on is part of the fun for sure.
Dead Zone with Christopher Walken is amazing. Glad to see it on this list.
Some more classic Stephen King you might enjoy if you haven’t already seen it:
- Salems Lot (the original 1970s mini series)
- Carrie (the original Spacek version, not the remakes)
- Firestarter (original with Drew Barrymore)
Edit: The Fog isn’t Stephen King. But it’s still good. I don’t remember it being too gory because everything happens in “the fog” but there might be a neck slicing. It’s been a looong time since I last watched it.
- The Fog (original with Adrienne Barbeau)
We recently threw the Fog on the list but know nothing about it beyond it being early John Carpenter. Didn’t even realize it was Stephen King.
Salem’s Lot is something I keep remembering exists and then forget to add to the list. Neither of us have seen it but I have a vague awareness of it.
I know my SO hated Carrie, so probably not something we’re watching together. I’ve never seen it, I’ve just seen the ten million things parodying it.
I completely forgot about Firestarter. I never saw the original, I think I saw the sequel that people hated, though all I remember is Dennis Hopper playing a guy who they establish sees the future with perfect clarity, and then immediately gets his predictions wrong.
A few that I don’t think have been mentioned yet:
- Rosemary’s Baby
- Ring (Japanese original)
- Mulholland Drive
- Get Out
- The Exorcist
- The Omen
The Omen is great but has a couple of beheading-style scenes if I recall right.
Ah, fair point, I forgot that!
For “funny and spooky” I’d suggest Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. The gore is over the top to such a degree that it becomes just ridiculous!
For shows, I’ve been digging “From” on MGM+. First season (10 episodes) is free. 3rd season just started, new episode tonight!
Trailer:
I love Army of Darkness. I’ve had Evil Dead II on the to watch list, but it has to wait for my SO to be in an adventurous enough mood since they’re more squeamish than I am.
From looks interesting. I’m curious how satisfying it is as a story. The premise seems like the kind of thing that would work best with a more stand alone story structure, so the fact that it has multiple seasons makes me worry about it either dragging on until it gets bad or getting cancelled without wrapping things up.
they left season 2 with a crazy cliffhanger, I NEED season 3
Season 3 is out, just not all of it yet.
yeah, just waiting. no time lately to get back to it.
Beyond The Black Rainbow - A psychedelic loveletter to the 80s, about a dying cult and its first and last victims.
Anything by David Lynch, but particularly Mullholland Drive and Twin Peaks.
Mullholland Drive is a dream logic trip through Los Angeles as a small town actress finds work and love and heartbreak and murder in the big city while the world becomes increasingly incomprehensible and nightmarishly surreal; it also includes one of the best acted, directed, shot and scored scenes in all of horror.
Twin Peaks is the story of a small town deep in the forests of Washington, struggling to solve the murder of a high schooler, an FBI agent arrives and proceeds to explore esoteric and supernatural causes; part drama, part cosmic horror.
A couple old ones:
The Serpent And The Rainbow directed by Wes Craven.
Arachnophobia with Jeff Daniels, John Goodman.
Studio 666 was really good. Marginally scary; more funny.
Color Out of Space was an amazing adaptation of an amazing short story.
The mix of Lovecraft and Nicholas Cage has me both excited and terrified. Also, a short story about an otherworldly color that no human has seen before is an interesting choice for a visual medium that, you know, only has existing colors to work with. My TV has vibrant reds, yellows and blues, but it’s octarines are a bit muted.
Colour Out of Space does have scenes of body horror, btw. Great movie, but yeah, disturbing body horror.
