Do you are feeling that? That chill within the air, that tingling sensation behind your neck? It might solely imply one factor. That’s proper: Halloween season is as soon as once more upon us!
Right here at Polygon, we love horror. We cowl all of it yr spherical, whether or not it’s rating the scariest new releases of the yr or curating lists of the spookiest horror motion pictures to observe on Netflix.
We particularly love Halloween, although, a vacation devoted to all issues scary and spooky. Which is why, yearly for the previous 4 years, Polygon has put collectively a Halloween countdown calendar, deciding on 31 of our employees’s prime horror-themed or Halloween-adjacent picks throughout motion pictures, TV, and on-line movies all through the month of October, all obtainable to observe at house. It’s been a lot enjoyable, in truth, we’re doing it once more — with an all new batch of movies, reveals, and movies to select from.
Every single day for the month of October, we’ll add a brand new suggestion to this countdown and inform you the place you’ll be able to watch it. So curl up on the sofa, dim the lights, and seize some popcorn for a spine-tingling marathon of Halloween-adjacent delights.
Picture: Anchor Bay Leisure
The place to observe: Out there to stream on Plex and Pluto TV with adverts and to lease on Amazon
Kicking off the Halloween horror film season is a fragile artwork. Only a few days into the official begin of fall, it’s necessary to select precisely the proper film to subtly shift that chill within the air from cozy to spooky as gently as you’ll be able to. With that in thoughts, we’re easing into Halloween this yr with Dario Argento’s Phenomena, an ideal mix of spooky, campy, and bleak that units that stage good for the frights to return.
Phenomena takes place in a distant city in Switzerland at a boarding college the place Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of a well-known American actor, is the most recent pupil. The one downside is there’s additionally a serial killer rampaging via the city, and when Jennifer witnesses one of many murders, her life is all of the sudden in grave hazard. The excellent news is she has an inexplicable telekinetic energy over bugs to assist preserve her alive.
And whereas the film isn’t fairly as foolish because the premise would indicate, it’s among the many most weird and enjoyable of the numerous sleazy slashers of the Nineteen Eighties. However what really elevates it to a particular place is that it’s one of many uncommon horror motion pictures the place the supernatural is seemingly wholly on the facet of fine. It’s uncommon {that a} film lets us unambiguously root for the magical energy at its heart, giving the entire thing the unusual, otherworldly feeling of a very grotesque fairytale.
All of this makes for a tremendously entertaining and odd thriller film, and an effective way to start a month stuffed with horror motion pictures. —Austen Goslin
Picture: Sony Photos Dwelling Leisure
The place to observe: Shudder, AMC Plus
Anthony Waller’s 1995 horror thriller is a premise straight out of a waking nightmare. Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), a mute particular results make-up artist, is in Moscow understanding of a dilapidated film studio on a low-budget slasher. After returning to the constructing after hours to select up an necessary piece of kit, Billy by chance locks herself inside with no method of getting in contact with both her sister Karen or her sister’s boyfriend Andy. Issues rapidly go from dangerous to worse when she secretly stumbles upon the filming of a snuff movie perpetrated by a pair of Russian gangsters. When the gangsters suspect that another person is contained in the studio, Billy should discover a technique to escape undetected earlier than her personal life is put into hazard.
Mute Witness is a terrific cat-and-mouse homicide thriller full of teeth-clenchingly tense sequences and a compelling lead efficiency courtesy of Marina Zudina. The primary hour of the movie is expertly paced and edited, ingratiating the viewer throughout the structure of the studio earlier than transitioning right into a mad-dash climax that’s breathtaking and terrifying to behold. If that isn’t sufficient to pique your curiosity, the movie touts a quick but memorable cameo look by Sir Alec Guinness (Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia) in one in all his last on-screen performances. —Toussaint Egan
Picture: Warner Dwelling Video
The place to observe: Out there to lease on Amazon and Apple
In the event you ever get uninterested in the identical outdated restaurant cuisines, the reply is commonly to search for a fusion restaurant that mixes a few your favorites, taking spices and strategies from completely different cultures and mashing them up into one thing new. The identical goes for horror motion pictures: In the event you’re bored of the standard executions of all of the acquainted tropes, a style mashup like 1998’s Fallen could also be one of the best ways to seek out some new taste in acquainted concepts.
In Fallen’s case, director Gregory Hoblit and screenwriter Nicholas Kazan put the serial-killer procedural thriller and the possession horror story in a blender and use concepts and strategies from each to boost the drama. Hoblit is a police-show vet (Hill Avenue Blues, NYPD Blue, LA Regulation, um, Cop Rock) who retains the motion grounded and gritty, even because the supernatural edge pushes the story removed from the style’s regular beat.
Denzel Washington stars murder detective John Hobbes, with John Goodman as his associate Jonesy. The 2 males (working below a sinister lieutenant performed by Donald Sutherland) just lately cracked a homicide case that despatched a serial killer (Elias Koteas) to the gasoline chamber. After his loss of life, although, the killings begin once more, and Hobbes and Jonesy begin working a brand new case that appears to be the outdated case. Horror vets will know the place that is going lengthy earlier than they do, however Hoblit ramps up the eerie pressure as Hobbes’ life begins to unravel.
A number of horror entails folks encountering the supernatural for the primary time and fumbling for a response that may allow them to survive, however the stakes at all times appear greater when the protagonist is in legislation enforcement and in concept has to observe procedures, obey guidelines, and presume innocence. (See additionally: The Hidden, Angel Coronary heart, Longlegs, and so on.) Washington makes for a terrific rule-following cop who’s caught in a terrifying state of affairs the place not one of the guidelines he’s discovered can presumably apply. The result’s a solidly creepy film with simply the slightest tinge of understanding camp. —Tasha Robinson
Picture: Scream Manufacturing facility
The place to observe: Prime Video, Peacock, Shudder
Creature function administrators usually cite Jaws as inspiration for holding again on full monster carnage till the top — the much less you present, the scarier it’s. Screw off! If a film guarantees an enormous mutant alligator terrorizing town, then we greatest see an enormous mutant alligator terrorizing that metropolis, and sometimes!
Excellent news: Alligator is strictly that, with the added bonus of nice performances, a depraved humorousness, and a contact of social commentary.
Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Breaking Dangerous) stars as detective David Madison, a cop with a status for doing good whereas dropping his companions within the warmth of motion. When phrase of a killer alligator prowling the sewers reaches the floor, Det. Madison springs into motion with a Dr. Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker), a herpetologist whose no-bullshit strategy to amphibian analysis paves the way in which for a basic zinger-filled romance. Solely the legendary John Sayles may squeeze a throwback screwball romance right into a killer alligator film and nonetheless discover room to stay to the bumbling forms.
Very similar to Jaws, Sayles and director Lewis Teague interrogate the failed establishments that permit a 36-foot hyper-metabolic alligator to run rampant in Chicago — not solely can the cops not get their shit collectively, however the alligator is simply dino-like after consuming a biotech firm’s discarded animal carcasses, all radiated with development components. In contrast to Jaws, Teague places his large alligator puppet to good use, snapping its jaws on numerous victims, from alleycats to random youngsters in a pool. Blood splatters, Chicagoans run for pricey life, Det. Madison complains about his receding hairline, and by the top, issues go increase. Alligator isn’t tremendous scary, however it’s a raucous good time, a lower above most monster B-movies of any period. —Matt Patches
Picture: Scream Manufacturing facility
The place to observe: Out there to lease on Amazon and Apple
Park Chan-wook is within the prime tier of residing filmmakers for me, so after all I’m keen on even the “minor” works in his catalog. Stoker, his solely English-language film so far (though he’s made two English-language miniseries, together with the unbelievable The Little Drummer Lady), is an eerie, atmospheric psychological thriller that’s an ideal match for individuals who need to take part in spooky season with out getting too scared.
It’s India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) 18th birthday. Her father (Dermot Mulroney) has died, and her mom (Nicole Kidman) has welcomed his youthful brother (Matthew Goode) into their house. What follows is a Hitchcockian gothic fairy story stuffed with sensory delight. The rating is pitch-perfect within the eerie environment it supplies, and Park by no means fails to ship memorable photographs.
Oh, and enjoyable reality: The film was written by Wentworth Miller, of Jail Break/CW-verse fame, below a pseudonym. —Pete Volk
Oct. 6: Physician Who, “The Empty Baby” and “The Physician Dances”
Picture: BBC
Physician Who has two tones: the triumph of mind and romance over brute drive and cynicism, and heebie-jeebie-inducing horror that retains younger viewers peeking via their fingers, hiding behind the sofa, or dreading the occasional nightmare about it for years.
This two-parter from the primary season of the franchise’s 2005 reboot embodies the very best of each. Positive, it’s the one which gave us the indelible Physician line, “Simply this as soon as… all people lives!” But it surely’s additionally an episode that made me, a grown-ass grownup, fearful of my very own ringing condominium intercom. Set in London through the Blitz, the Physician and co. battle an odd plague that appears to be transmitted via telephones.The cellphone rings, you choose it up, a creepy little British baby voice on the opposite finish says, “Are you my mummy?” 5 minutes later there’s a knock in your door, and the creepy little British baby is there carrying a gasoline masks, saying “Are you my mummy?” and BAM, you’re a gasoline masks zombie now. Tens of millions of Physician Who followers have by no means recovered. —Susana Polo
Picture: Artisan Leisure
The place to observe: MGM Plus, YouTube
Adrian Lyne’s flawed however engrossing psychological horror film Jacob’s Ladder has had wide-ranging impression, given its average success, inspiring Konami’s Silent Hill sport sequence and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Chalk that as much as the movie’s scary, hallucinogenic visuals, which symbolize Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer’s descent into insanity.
Jacob’s Ladder is ostensibly a film about a military vet and divorced dad making peace along with his demons, that are introduced as corporeal torturers in Lyne’s darkish thriller. Jacob (Tim Robbins) experiences disturbing visions of shapeshifting apparitions pursuing him via a dirty and harmful Seventies New York Metropolis. Looking for solutions, Jacob learns he’s not the one one affected by unusual visions; members of his former platoon are, too, and so they imagine they have been the victims of a secret authorities drug-testing operation.
As Jacob’s hallucinations intensify on a collision course with actuality, he’s tormented by the reminiscences of the household he’s separated from — which features a very younger Macaulay Culkin! — and guided by his fierce chiropractor, performed by Danny Aiello. Because the head-spinning fact about Jacob’s visions are revealed, Jacob’s Ladder virtually calls for an immediate rewatch. That’s simple to suggest, as a result of regardless of its nightmarish horrors and stylized gore, Lyne’s film can be one thing of a unusually comforting rewatch. —Michael McWhertor
Picture: Darkish Sky Movies
The place to observe: Shudder, Prime Video, Peacock
Magic is an inexplicable movie within the filmographies of just about everybody concerned in it. It’s a nasty little psychological chiller, a faintly dirty, sub-Hitchcockian programmer from 1978 a few ventriloquist whose life has been taken over by the vicious dummy who represents his id which explains for this troubled, introverted man’s surprising success. But it surely stars Anthony Hopkins and is directed by Richard Attenborough from a script by William Goldman with a rating by Jerry Goldsmith! You don’t get far more prestigious than that in ’78.
Happily, none of those luminaries condescend to the fabric or attempt to costume it up as one thing it’s not, and so Magic is simply what it needs to be — a scary, twisted film that’s by turns amusing and disturbing. Hopkins, who discovered close-up magic and ventriloquism for the function, is mesmeric and uncanny within the movie’s greatest scenes, that are simply him arguing with himself as Fat (the dummy) tries to stop Corky (the person) from reconnecting along with his outdated love (Ann-Margaret). Magic is a bitter little tablet that will get to the guts of why puppets are so sinister. —Oli Welsh
Picture: The Criterion Channel
The place to observe: Criterion Channel
In the event you’re on the lookout for a slow-burn psychological thriller with a brutal giallo-esque third act that’ll have you ever gripping the sting of your seat, Subsequent of Kin is the horror film for you. The movie facilities on Linda (Jacki Kerin), a younger girl who inherits possession of a retirement neighborhood from her estranged mom who has just lately handed. As weird and unexplainable happenings start to happen round the home, together with a sequence of suspicious deaths, Linda grows to suspect that her mom’s loss of life could not have been from outdated age and that she herself is likely to be subsequent.With eerie slow-motion sequences and disorienting dolly zoom pictures, Subsequent of Kin conjures a way of nauseating environment and chilling terror that elevates it far past its “Ozploitation” origins. In contrast favorably to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining by none aside from Quentin Tarantino, Subsequent of Kin is a cult-classic horror movie that’s greater than worthy of creating the time for. —TE
Oct. 10: Planet of the Vampires
Picture: Kino Lorber
The place to observe: Free with a library card on Hoopla, free with adverts on Plex, or obtainable to lease on Amazon and Apple
Mario Bava, usually dubbed the “Grasp of Italian Horror,” made many iconic low-budget style motion pictures, together with the legendary Black Sunday and the heist film Hazard: Diabolik. However I’ve a selected love for his sci-fi horror film Planet of the Vampires.
Made on a finances of about $200,000, Planet of the Vampires follows a crew of house explorers who crash-land on… properly, you realize. It hits nearly each conceivable aesthetic observe you’ll need from such a enterprise. Bava claimed the set of the planet was composed of two plastic rocks and a set stuffed with smoke, which is just exceptional when you think about how tangible the planet feels. You possibly can see its affect everywhere in the science fiction motion pictures which have adopted, from Ridley Scott’s Alien motion pictures to the newest Aquaman. —PV
Oct. 11: Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
Picture: Hanna-Barbera Productions/Warner Bros. Animation
The place to observe: Max, or obtainable to lease on Amazon and Apple
Right here is the skeleton key to all fashionable media: Everybody desires to be Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Each single one! Scooby and the gang have damaged up and gone their separate methods, till one intriguing case pulls them again in. And whereas Daphne is gunning for one thing larger than a person in a fancy dress, Thriller Inc. may need bitten off a bit greater than they’ll chew with this one.
In the event you can keep in mind the occasions when getting this dangerous boy on VHS was the peak of each know-how and funky factors, you then keep in mind absolutely the proper hook of a thriller that this 78-minute function delivers. And within the years since, attempt as they could, Hollywood has chased that very excessive. The trade will attempt to get the gang again collectively, they’ll carry again outdated franchises that haven’t made a film in a decade, and they’ll flip the script on who the “dangerous man” actually is. However Zombie Island, with all its Thriller Machine mannerisms and the pop punk delights of the “It’s Terror Time Once more” sequence, is the blueprint, and the proper addition to any spooky season (or only a spooky Saturday). —Zosha Millman
Picture: Focus Options/Laika Leisure
The place to observe: Prime Video, free with adverts on Pluto TV and Tubi, or obtainable to lease on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Laika’s follow-up to the much-beloved Coraline is simply as creepy and quirky — and completely deserves extra love. ParaNorman facilities on Norman, a lonely 11-year-old who can see and converse to ghosts. His household is judgmental and his friends mock him, although he has one buddy in a fellow outcast. The 2 boys meet Norman’s long-lost great-uncle, who may also talk with ghosts, and he warns them that one thing sinister will quickly fall upon the city.
The stop-motion animation is charming, and it definitely will get spooky at occasions, as zombies start to assault the city. But it surely’s family-friendly sufficient that it by no means will get too scary; there’s simply sufficient spooky paranormal antics for a enjoyable little shiver down the backbone.
There’s a well-known trope in Halloween-related media, the place the ghost of a wronged witch (generally explicitly tied to the Salem Witch Trials, generally simply in an adjoining witch trial in an identical New England city) wreaks havoc and mayhem. ParaNorman takes that trope and provides it a twist — one which resonates far more. —Petrana Radulovic
