Horror, fittingly, is the unkillable genre. Just when you think it’s peaked – the exploitation-heavy ’70s, the slasher ’80s, the post-ironic ’90s – it gets a new leash of life and lurches back at you, claw hammer in hand. Like the transmogrifying alien in The Thing, there’s something in its bloodstream that keeps its scares relevant, keeps them reflecting our fears back at us in ways that are too damn frightening to resist.
Halloween, however, requires a very specific kind of horror film: it’s a time when spooks and scares, ghosts and ghouls take precedence over subtext and smarts. With that, and the genre’s recent purple patch in mind, here’s a few films from the last year or two that will scare you witless this week and enhance that gothic vibe. (If you’ve got younger viewers in the house, give this more family-friendly list a go instead.)
Our pick of the top Halloween movies for 2024
1. Heretic
Hands up: who had Hugh Grant down as this year’s answer to the Jigsaw Killer? The erstwhile romcom softboi shows new, darker shades in a fiendishly clever horror-thriller with big ideas and even bigger shocks. It’s not Grant’s first villainous turn – hello, Daniel Cleaver and that cannibal in Cloud Atlas – but when his seemingly hospitable would-be convert lulls a pair of guileless Mormon missionaries into a hellish labyrinthine, it’s a ride you really don’t want to miss.
In theaters now
2. Terrifier 3
Who knew there was such a large audience clamouring to watch a demon clown in a tiny hat give a guy a chainsaw enema? The third instalment of Damien Leone’s unrepentantly nasty slasher series shocked box-office watchers when it beat out that other deranged clown for the top spot in its first week. We’re not sure if that says something good or bad about society. But if you’re sick of mainstream horror movies half-stepping on gore, believe us: Leone spares no detail.
In theatres now
3. Oddity
One of the hidden gems of this year’s horror bumper crop, this Irish chiller feels like an extended Tales from the Crypt episode, and that’s meant as a compliment. A young woman is brutally murdered in her home. Months later, her blind, possibly psychic twin sister drops by seeking answers – and she hasn’t come alone. Director Damian Mc Carthy keeps the creep levels high, and detonates jump scares at just the right moments.
Streaming on Shudder, AMC+
4. The Substance
Sick, twisted and hilariously absurd – and that’s just the scene of Dennis Quaid eating prawns – Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror instant classic doesn’t so much smash the patriarchy as drown it in viscera. It’s perhaps more gross than really, truly scary, but it needs to be seen for Demi Moore’s bold performance alone.
Streaming on MUBI starting Oct 31
5. In a Violent Nature
Before The Substance and Terrifier 3, the most nauseating movie of the year was this ‘ambient horror’ slasher from director Chris Nash. In fact, it may still be the hardest to sit through, precisely because of the glacial pace and the eerie stillness that surrounds the violence. It’s the inverse of a famous horror maxim: in the forest, the only thing anyone can hear is you screaming – as you get your head pulled through your own bowels.
Streaming on Shudder, AMC+
6. Late Night with the Devil
Aussie brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes make found footage fun again in this mockumentary covering the night, in 1977, when a talk-show host attempted to commune with a demon live on the air. David Dastmalchian is excellent as an arrogant late-night also-ran so desperate to pop a rating he invites a young girl supposedly in the throes of demonic possession on as a guest. Bad idea for him, a wickedly good time for everyone else.
Streaming on Hulu, Shudder, AMC+
7. Abigail
She is small, but she is bitey. In this riotous horror-comedy with a balletic twist, a gang of criminals kidnap a young girl in a tutu and hold her for ransom, but soon learn that she is not as cute and helpless as she appears. Blood flows liberally as directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett chomp down on vampire tropes with undeniable gusto.
Streaming on Peacock
8. Stopmotion
As Ray Harryhausen’s skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts demonstrate, there’s nothing quite like stop-motion animation to deliver seriously uncanny scares. Brit filmmaker Robert Morgan takes the idea to a whole new level in this ingenious descent-into-madness freakout starring The Nightingale’s Aisling Franciosi. Registering at the intense and brooding end of the Halloween viewing spectrum, it’s a Grimm-like tale of an animator whose appalling creations come to life in nightmarish ways.
Streaming on Shudder
9. Immaculate
Nunsploitation? Wimple-core? Sydney Sweeney’s habit-forming horror is set in a convent that makes Black Narcissus look like a tranquil spiritual getaway. La Sweeney plays a holy Sister who discovers that all is not strictly Biblical within her order. Cue Grand Guignol frights and a bloody fight for survival that culminates in one of the best recent horror denouements this side of The Substance.
Available to rent on PVOD
10. Don’t Move
Horror movies have been hellbent on putting us off taking a serene walk in the woods for donkey’s years, but they’ve really upped their game recently. In a Violent Nature and Strange Darling have both turned the great outdoors into a stalkers’ playground, and Netflix’s new horror-thriller Don’t Move also wants you to know that, no, a jaunt into the countryside is unlikely to end without serious bloodshed. Its gnarly premise has a woman (Kelsey Asbille) on the run from a deranged serial killer (Finn Wittrock) while a paralysing toxin is slowly released into her bloodstream.
Streaming on Netflix
The best horror movies and shows of 2024 (so far) for a truly scary watch.