16 of the Best New Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween
Reading Time: 4 minutesIf scary movies are your thing, this October might be the greatest month of your life.
October 2022 is overflowing with fright flicks, like ten pounds of guts in a five-pound bag. There’s something for every kind of horror fan. If you’re into making discoveries, there are obscure-but-promising, streaming-only flicks like Deadstream and Piggy. If you’re a more mainstream fan, there are new entries from blockbuster franchises like Halloween and Hellraiser. And I’m not even including no-budget science fiction movies that are actually fetish movies like Giantess: Battle Attack, but those are coming out, too. Here are the 16 horror films coming in October that I think have the most potential for greatness.
October comes out haunting with a movie based on a short story from Stephen King. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone stars Jaeden Martell and Donald Sutherland as a teenager and a dead man who communicate with each other through a haunted iPhone buried in the old man’s coffin. If Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is even half as good as the recent Netflix/King movies like 1922 and Gerald’s Game, it’s will be twice as good as anything else.
Where to watch: Netflix
The first Terrifer was made on a tiny budget raised through crowdfunding and quickly became a favorite of hardcore horror fans for its grueling, uncompromising brutality, weird touches of the surreal, and memorable killer clown. The sequel looks like more of the same in the best possible way.
Where to watch: Theaters
Deadstream is a little under the radar, but festival showings of this low-budget horror/comedy about a washed-up live-streamer spending the night in a haunted house gained raves from reviewers and fans alike for its whip-smart script and blend of comedy and terror. I’m going to give it a shot for sure.
Where to watch: Shudder
This reboot of Clive Barker’s much-loved, 1987 artsy/sadistic horror film Hellraiser has a high bar to hurdle. But it features disgusting cenobites, a supernatural puzzle box, and Jamie Clayton as a gender-flipped Pinhead, so the parts are in place. Let’s hope they fit together as tightly as The Lament Configuration.
Where to watch: Hulu
Directed by Mike Flanagan, the man behind Midnight Mass, Midnight Club is set in a hospice for teenagers, where the titular club has vowed that the first of them to die will come back and contact the others from beyond the grave. I have a feeling someone is going to be sorry they signed up for this.
Where to watch: Netflix
In this movie from horror juggernaut Blumhouse, Robert moves to his new wife’s childhood home town only to discover it’s filled with Southern gothic shit like spooky old dudes, decaying mansions, and, worst of all, a haunted painting of a civil war soldier who looks exactly like Robert.
Where to watch: Video on demand
OK, this is a Halloween ‘special presentation,’ not a movie, but it’s from Marvel, it’s an homage to the Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s, and it has werewolves, so I’m including it here. Plus, look at the trailer! Black and white? Old school cinema panache? Werewolves? I’m in.
Where to watch: Disney+
The title character of Grimcutty is some sort of scary meme that comes to life and escapes the computer world to terrorize people. Any movie that tries to mine the unique depersonalization and loneliness of life online to create scariness has a lot of potential.
Where to watch: Hulu
Spirit Halloween is a feature film based on a store that’s only open for a month every year, so it’s a curiosity more than anything else. This kid horror outing probably won’t be scary to many horror fans and, honestly, it probably won’t be good, but there’s a possibility that any unseen film could be a masterpiece— so why not Spirit Halloween?
Where to watch: VOD
I don’t want to call anyone a liar, but I doubt Halloween ends; these movies have been coming out since 1978 after all. In this one, Jamie Lee Curtis is menaced by Michael Myers and a lot of other people are butchered. It’s familiar, but in a good way. To horror fans, a new Halloween movie is like a family reunion, and I’m looking forward to welcoming Michael Myers back like I welcome my brother-in-law Dana at the barbecue.
Where to watch: Theaters
If you like offbeat, elevated horror movies, Piggy might be for you. This Spanish movie has earned a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes for its star’s gutsy performance and its use of slasher horror tropes to comment on the banality of human cruelty.
Where to watch: VOD
Anthology movies usually flop, but the VHS series has found a sweet spot—it’s been going strong since 2012, with six movies in the series and a devoted fan base. The hook of VHS 99 is that all of its stories are set in 1999 and told through found footage. I look forward to see what kind of nightmares these up-and-coming horror directors can cook up in the unfairly-maligned found footage genre.
Where to watch: Shudder
Judging by the trailer, this is one of those horror movies that sticks its grimy fingers into the deeply buried primal trauma in your brain and just, like, roots around in there. The idea of going back to your hometown and finding that your mother, and everything else, is a little different in a way you can’t quite place is so creepy.
Where to watch: Hulu
This British film is fairly obscure, but early screenings have earned positive reviews, and I like the premise: Upper-crusty British assholes hunting children for sport is a solid subject for a movie. Plus, I really liked Get Duked, in which upper-crusty Scottish assholes hunt children for sport, so the concept is proved.
Where to watch: VOD
As soon as you see a nun in a horror movie trailer, you know it’s going to have exorcisms, priests, and a little girl possessed by the devil. So it’s not exactly the most groundbreaking idea for a movie, but neither is ‘a guy goes nuts and kills everyone,’ and that’s been the plot of at least a dozen great films.
Where to watch: Theaters
Calling Wendell & Wild a horror movie is stretching the definition of ‘horror’ a bit, but this dark fantasy was directed by Henry Selick, the uncompromising genius behind Nightmare Before Christmas, and Coraline, and it’s Selick’s first movie since 2009, so attention must be paid.
Where to watch: Netflix