The best Halloween horror movies and specials to watch in 2022

Is there something higher than Halloween season?

Certain, right here at Polygon we cowl horror year-round. We now have our rolling lists of one of the best horror motion pictures you’ll be able to watch at dwelling and one of the best horror motion pictures on Netflix which are up to date each month of the 12 months.

However even for year-round horror followers, Halloween is a particular time of 12 months.

For the previous two years, Polygon has put collectively a Halloween Countdown calendar, providing a Halloween-friendly film or TV present obtainable to observe at dwelling each day of October. We’re delighted to deliver that again as soon as once more, with 31 spooky alternatives to maintain the temper going all month lengthy.

Every single day for all the month of October, we’ll add a brand new suggestion to this Countdown and let you know the place you’ll be able to watch it. So curl up on the sofa, dim the lights, and seize some popcorn for a terrifying and entertaining host of Halloween surprises.

Oct. 1: Audition (1999)

Picture: Arrow Movies

In Audition, Takashi Miike’s 1999 psychological horror-thriller, love is a consensual fiction. Years after dropping his spouse to a terminal sickness, widower Shigeharu Aoyama is urged by his son to get again out on the planet and discover somebody. Aoyama agrees to a proposal by his good friend, a movie producer, to participate in an audition for a nonexistent movie with a view to discover a potential bride from the candidates. His search in the end leads him to Asami Yamazaki, a fantastic former ballerina with a murky previous.

As Aoyama grows nearer to his new love curiosity, he finds himself caught deeper and deeper in an online of intrigue that threatens to tear him aside emotionally, psychologically, and sure — even bodily. There’s something darkish inside Asami, sure, however there’s a latent darkness inside Aoyama too, arguably even darker. The one distinction is that Asami has embraced that darkness and made it her personal.

Miike’s movie holds its playing cards comparatively near its chest for many of its run time, unspooling its tightly wound thriller like garrote wire earlier than peeling again its pores and skin of meet-cute artifice to disclose a pulsing mass of horrors roiling beneath. The movie descends right into a macabre fugue state of assumptions, misdirections, and cinematic sleights of hand, with desires that really feel virtually actual set in opposition to a actuality too terrifying to be something however. Ultimately, although, these are simply phrases. Solely ache might be trusted. —Toussaint Egan

Audition is on the market to stream on Arrow Video and Hello-Yah!, without spending a dime with advertisements on Tubi, and without spending a dime on Kanopy with a library card. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy on Vudu and Apple.

Oct. 2: The Vanishing (1988)

Picture: The Criterion Assortment

It’s not a horror film, per se, and but Stanley Kubrick mentioned that The Vanishing was probably the most horrifying movie he had ever seen. This Dutch thriller from 1988 — usually referred to by its authentic title Spoorloos, in order to not confuse it with an inferior 1993 American remake by the identical director, George Sluizer — performs it cool, like a easy lacking particular person case. Rex and Saskia are a younger couple road-tripping by means of France. They’re taking a break at a service station when Saskia abruptly, and fully, disappears.

Initially, the horror of the scenario is within the banality of it: the sensation that it may occur at any time, to anybody. Sluizer underlines this with the matter-of-fact realism of his location taking pictures. Then, barely greater than 20 minutes in, he wrong-foots the viewers with an abrupt shift: We’re following Raymond, a contented French household man who seems to be rehearsing a kidnapping. The thriller of what occurred to Saskia appears already to be solved. What subsequent?

The best way the movie — primarily based very carefully on Tim Krabbé’s novella The Golden Egg — skips so rapidly previous the anticipated construction of a thriller thriller must sap rigidity, however actually it builds an virtually philosophical unease. As Raymond, performed with a chilling brightness by Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, walks us by means of the “how” of his crime, the “why” turns into a gnawing, way more troubling query. We skip ahead three years and discover Rex obsessive about discovering out what occurred to his misplaced love. When a solution is obtainable, we share his starvation for it fully, and observe him to what could be probably the most plainly horrifying ending of any movie, ever. It is a minimal masterpiece of existential dread. —Oli Welsh

The Vanishing is on the market to stream on The Criterion Channel, or for digital rental or buy on Apple and Amazon.

Oct. 3: Rampant (2018)

Picture: Properly Go USA Leisure

One of many nice joys of horror is the array of subgenres it affords, and the subgenres inside subgenres that spool out of that. Take the monster film, as an illustration. It’s a subgenre of horror by itself, and inside it you’ve gotten the vampire film, the werewolf film, and the zombie film, simply to call a couple of. After which you’ll be able to dive even deeper and discover one thing like Rampant, which mixes the zombie subgenre with an unlikely pairing: the historic courtroom drama interval piece.

The film takes place throughout the seventeenth century, underneath the Joseon dynasty in Korea. The film is stuffed with political intrigue: The protagonist is an conceited younger prince known as again dwelling after his brother’s demise solely to seek out political machinations already in progress when he arrives. The courtroom is struggling to determine the way to cope with the close by Qing dynasty in China (the place our protagonist grew up), with totally different factions forming.

After which there are the zombies. Sure, a zombie outbreak arrives, recalibrating the significance of this royal battle for some (however not all) of its gamers. Our protagonist discovers this on his means dwelling, and makes an attempt to persuade his father (and his father’s advisors) to do one thing about it. That results in some breathtakingly brutal swordplay motion in a pitch-perfect style mashup for the ages. –Pete Volk

Rampant is on the market to stream on Hello-Yah!, FuboTV, and Viki, or without spending a dime with advertisements on Tubi, Crackle, Plex, Pluto TV, and Freevee. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy on Amazon, Apple, Vudu, and Google Play.

Oct. 4: Seconds (1966)

Picture: Paramount Photos

Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and aliens don’t have anything on the unstoppable technique of growing old. All of us will become older, life will get exponentially troublesome, and the one particular person ready for us on the end line is Loss of life. John Frankenheimer constructed Seconds round such midlife terrors, granting New York banking exec Arthur Hamilton the chance to pretend his personal demise, reconstruct his physique within the type of Rock Hudson, and transfer to sunny Southern California as a sizzling, youthful dude named Tony Wilson. Like a small animal tramped underneath the sunlamp of the Santa Barbara solar, we see Hudson spiral by means of paranoia and remorse, replete with bare grape mashing and alcohol-fueled breakdowns. For sure, the grass is never greener, and the one factor scarier than getting outdated is staying younger.

The movie met boos at Cannes and puzzled critics who have been accustomed to main man Rock Hudson being simply that — a standard main man. However the movie has aged nicely, pun totally meant. James Wong Howe’s cinematography, nominated for an Academy Award, holds the viewer inches from Hudson’s face, bends actuality by means of a fish-eye lens, and one way or the other makes stunning younger our bodies into nauseating bundles of limbs and flesh. And Hudson, now indifferent from his Private Model for many viewers underneath the age of 70, undercuts his Hollywood beauty with a humble efficiency of a person in full collapse. —Chris Plante

Seconds is on the market to stream without spending a dime with advertisements on Pluto TV, or without spending a dime with a library card on Kanopy. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Oct. 5: Bride of Chucky (1998)

Picture: Common Photos

The fourth film of the wickedly humorous Youngster’s Play franchise takes the killer doll sequence in an thrilling new route. Bride of Chucky ditches Andy, the younger boy adopted by the murderous Chucky doll within the first three motion pictures, and as a substitute follows two clueless youngsters (Katherine Heigl and Nick Stabile) who unwittingly take two murderous dolls on a highway journey and begin to suspect one another when the our bodies begin dropping.

The sinister inversion of the teenager highway journey film can be enjoyable sufficient, however it’s the addition of Jennifer Tilly that basically makes Bride of Chucky sing. For the uninitiated within the Youngster’s Play universe: The Chucky doll is possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif). Tilly performs Ray’s former lover and confederate, Tiffany, who brings the doll again to life and turns into a murderous doll herself.

The result’s two {couples} road-tripping collectively however unable to speak with one another. Heigl and Stabile’s Jade and Jesse are your typical youths in love — nonetheless attending to know one another and never totally trusting but — whereas Chucky and Tiffany’s bickering and delicate manipulations make this a joyous and twisted enjoyable time. Add in some breathtaking imagery from director Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason) and cinematographer Peter Pau (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Killer) and you’ve got a franchise sequel nicely price your time. —PV

Bride of Chucky is on the market to stream on Peacock. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.

Oct. 6: Lifeless Ringers (1988)

Picture: twentieth Century Fox

Visually, 1988’s Lifeless Ringers have to be one among David Cronenberg’s tamest motion pictures — aside from one extraordinarily disturbing dream sequence round midway by means of, and one grisly however out-of-focus lengthy shot on the finish. In any other case, this can be a movie composed of speaking heads in pristine, orderly areas, and varnished in Eighties designer opulence: tearooms, working theaters, penthouses. His common physique horror is extra implied within the gleaming, twisted contours of medical implements than really proven. But it could be his most devastating movie.

Jeremy Irons performs similar twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle, who run a profitable fertility clinic in Toronto. Beverly, quiet and delicate, tends to the apply and the sufferers whereas the urbane Elliot climbs the medical institution ladder. They dwell collectively and typically faux to be one another, so shy Beverly can benefit from the fruits of Elliot’s womanizing. However their symbiotic relationship begins to fray and peel when Beverly falls in love with Claire (Geneviève Bujold), an actress and affected person who can’t bear youngsters as a result of she has three chambers in her womb.

Beneath Lifeless Ringers’ glassy floor, feeling runs deep and chilly. The extraordinary psychodrama that develops between the three characters — however largely between the dual brothers — builds to a conclusion that’s each appalling and shifting. On the movie’s coronary heart are the unimaginable performances given by Irons and captured by Cronenberg with cautious, unshowy craftsmanship. With out leaning too closely on figuring out make-up or tics, Irons not solely innately distinguishes Bev and Ellie, however builds an intimacy between them that’s as tender as it’s eerie. It’s like watching one particular person tear themselves in two after which clumsily attempt to seal the wound. Lifeless Ringers is the stuff of tragedy in addition to horror. —OW

Lifeless Ringers is on the market to stream on HBO Max. Additionally it is obtainable without spending a dime with a library card on Hoopla and Kanopy, or for digital rental or buy through Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 7: The Preserve (1983)

Picture: Paramount Photos

Michael Mann has a repute as a slick, streetbound auteur. Movies like Thief, Warmth, and Collateral embrace the metropolis as a labyrinth, and crime as a psychological check. The Preserve, his 1983 bounce to extra blockbuster fare, is basically nothing like these movies — aside from an extreme quantity of temper.

Set in 1941 Romania, across the time the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, the movie finds a German battalion stumbling upon a mysterious construction dubbed “The Preserve.” Two savvy troopers hope to loot what they suppose is treasure inside. As an alternative, their heist unleashes Radu Molasar, a golem-like destroyer of worlds. Whoops!

When members of the infantry begin winding up lifeless, a vile SS commander (performed with ruthlessness by Gabriel Byrne) reveals up to determine what the heck is happening. Naturally, he begins killing individuals, too. Mann slides between extra stark drama that one may anticipate from a movie plunging headfirst into World Warfare II geopolitics, whereas throwing supernatural curveballs that guarantee each nook of the story feels haunted. Ultimately, Scott Glenn reveals up as a protector of the native village, which is being tortured by each Nazis and Radu Molasar, and the race is on to place an finish to it.

Backed by Tangerine Dream’s ecclesiastic synth rating and staged in among the most stunning, light-streaked stone units ever made (can a Romanian temple be a liminal house?), The Preserve is, little doubt, B-movie schlock. However within the arms of a grasp like Mann, it’s given the clever haze of a nightmare. —Matt Patches

The Preserve is on the market to stream on The Criterion Channel, and without spending a dime with advertisements on Pluto TV. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy through Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 8: Samurai Jack — Episode XXXV: Jack and the Haunted Home

Picture: Warner Bros. Animation

Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack is a sequence that incorporates multitudes. The premise of the present, regarding a samurai prince who’s transported right into a dystopian future by his nemesis, a tyrannical shape-shifting demon, and compelled to trek throughout a wierd and alien new world in seek for a means again dwelling, is one which afforded a wealth of storytelling alternatives that ranged from epic and comical to somber and horrifying. Episode 35, “Jack and the Haunted Home,” suits squarely within the latter class.

Whereas touring alone one evening, Jack occurs upon a bit lady crying in a forest. Chasing after her in an effort to console her, he finds himself drawn to a mysterious home whose malevolent power plagues him with beginning visions of an evil power preying upon helpless household. Jack’s drive to rescue the lady and her household from mortal peril nevertheless threatens to ensnare himself within the clutches of a spirit who thrives on reworking the home into an unimaginable labyrinth from which there isn’t a escape.

“Jack and the Haunted Home” is an particularly spectacular episode, not only for its express horror-centric premise, however for its depiction of the demon itself — a writhing mass of darkish tendrils that coalesce right into a ukiyo-e-style dragon with a leering jaw and piercing eyes. It’s a incredible episode that strikes a eager steadiness between unnerving terror and the extra action-focused emphasis of the sequence as an entire. —TE

Samurai Jack is on the market to stream on HBO Max. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy through Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 9: Steven Universe — Chille Tid

Picture: Cartoon Community

Steven Universe is not any stranger to horror, and notably physique horror. A Crystal Gem’s physique is the manifestation of their Gem — which itself is immutable — permitting them to shape-shift at will. It’s a part of what makes the present stunning; the Gem characters are all canonically nonbinary and may select the physique and gender expression that fits them. It additionally provides the present fertile floor to do terrifying issues, like depict the consequence of Gem “experiments” that produce disgusting, roiling plenty of animated disembodied limbs.

On this vein, “Chille Tid” provides kid-accessible visible language to severe ideas like energy, consent, codependency, and martyrdom. The episode focuses on fusion, which up till this level has been depicted as extremely stunning. Fusion permits two Gems to morph collectively to create a bigger Gem with the persona of their relationship. And the present treats this act with pleasure and reverence, constructing a lot storytelling across the energy of loving others. It additionally teaches the lesson that coercing one other Gem into fusion is a deep breach of belief. (And by the best way, in Gem World tradition, fusing with a unique sort of Gem is a big taboo — one other little bit of incisive real-world commentary from Steven Universe.)

In “Chille Tid,” Lapis, a depressed and extremely highly effective Crystal Gem, fuses with Jasper, a mercenary despatched to destroy the Crystal Gems on Earth. The fusion is repugnant. Lapis martyrs herself — shackling herself to an abuser and sinking them into the ocean. You may see the massive character they create combating in opposition to water-created handcuffs that spring from the ocean. That is solely made worse when you recognize Lapis’ backstory: She solely not too long ago escaped imprisonment from an enchanted mirror. It’s a deeply horrifying episode, particularly for youngsters’s tv, but in addition as an grownup — in case you have ever escaped an abuser, you recognize the sensation too nicely. The imagery is unforgettable as a result of it’s actual.

For these of you who fear, Lapis does break away. And he or she does finally dwell in a renovated barn with Peridot, leading to among the finest fanons of the present. —Nicole Clark

Steven Universe is on the market to stream on HBO Max and Hulu. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy through Amazon.

Oct. 10: The Final Winter

Picture: Antidote Movies

Larry Fessenden’s underseen 2006 horror masterpiece The Final Winter was means forward of the climate-horror wave that the remainder of the world is simply simply catching up on. The film follows a hodgepodge combine of presidency officers, scientists, and researchers despatched to the freezing wilderness of Alaska in hopes of discovering oil. The workforce is most involved with digging right into a wildlife reserve, and whereas the federal government’s liaison, Ed Pollack (performed with menacing cruelty and almost-cartoon ranges of evil by Ron Perlman) is gung-ho about drilling, a couple of of the scientists aren’t so positive. After a number of warnings to not, the group digs into the ice and disrupts long-dormant spirits, inflicting, after all, all hell to interrupt unfastened.

Fessenden’s film is notable not only for how nice and watchable (and scary) it’s by itself phrases, but in addition for the way successfully it synthesizes so lots of the biggest horror subgenres into one story. It’s among the finest local weather change horror motion pictures, among the finest native-spirits-and-disturbed-land motion pictures, a incredible addition to the traditional horror canon of the arctic expedition gone horribly improper, and even suits properly subsequent to different government-creep-in-way-over-their-head motion pictures like Aliens.

However for all its time spent tapping into horror historical past, The Final Winter’s finest characteristic is how unsettlingly it presents its personal theme. So far as the film is worried, humanity is basically a parasite to the pure world, and all the things that goes improper is the world merely combating again to defend itself. Loads of motion pictures present visions of the tip of civilization, however few aside from The Final Winter make it seem to be the one cheap choice. —Austen Goslin

The Final Winter is on the market for digital rental or buy through Amazon and Apple TV.

Oct. 11: Close to Darkish

Picture: F/M

“Can I’ve a chew?”

A horny vampire western positively oozing with “cool,” there isn’t a different film like Close to Darkish. Kathryn Bigelow’s outstanding solo directorial debut began a superb streak, main proper into Blue Metal, Level Break, and Unusual Days.

Bigelow needed to make a Western, however studios weren’t precisely champing on the bit to fund these within the Eighties. So she and co-writer Eric Crimson got down to mix the Western with one other style almost as outdated as cinema itself: the vampire film. The current successes of Fright Night time and The Misplaced Boys didn’t harm, both.

Close to Darkish has incredible motion set-pieces — a barroom brawl and a shootout in a bungalow stand out particularly for his or her rigidity constructing and use of sunshine, respectively. It’s additionally darkly humorous, and stuffed with biting dramatic irony (a vampire giving a hickey to an unsuspecting neck, some acute early wordplay the place your data that this can be a vampire film adjustments all the things).

The costumes are pitch-perfect, and the make-up is uncontrolled (the results to create the phantasm of burning pores and skin are merely astounding). However I can solely go up to now with out speaking about Invoice Paxton. Paxton, who performs the out-of-control vampire Severen, is a power of nature in Close to Darkish. He’s an electrical presence at each flip, equal elements menacing and attractive, and is probably the most memorable a part of an especially memorable film. —PV

Close to Darkish is on the market to stream on The Criterion Channel.

Oct. 12: Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Picture: Kaijyu Theater

There are numerous artistic methods to explain Shinya Tsukamoto’s 1989 body-horror masterpiece: “cult traditional,” “visionary,” “extremely fucked up,” to call a couple of. The outline I’ve kind of settled on is “transhumanist body-horror supervillain love story.”

The primary quarter-hour of Tetsuo hit like an adrenaline increase shot straight to the occipital lobe, chronicling the story of a salaryman and his girlfriend who by chance run over a mysterious eccentric with a body-morphing “metallic fetish.” Later, upon realizing they’ve each been contaminated with identical affliction, the couple probes on the newfound bodily, psychological, and sexual dimensions of their weird situation, all whereas their sufferer turned adversary plots his revenge from the shadows.

Tsukamoto’s magnum opus is horrifying, attractive, and endlessly authentic, consistently reinventing itself with frenzied stop-motion montage and cackling quick-cut audio cues that maintain the viewer on the fringe of their seat. Chu Ishikawa’s rating feels just like the religious antecedent to digital music acts like 9 Inch Nails and Portishead, with its droning industrial clamor and burst-fire drum loops searing into your eardrums like acid consuming away at sheet metallic.

Whereas a pure precursor to modern movies like Julia Ducournau’s Titane and David Cronenberg’s Crash, you’ll quickly sufficient uncover — even after greater than three many years and two sequels — there nonetheless hasn’t been the rest fairly prefer it since. If you happen to don’t have the abdomen for sadomasochistic body-modding or gore, it’s completely effective to provide this one a move. If you happen to do occur to provide it an opportunity, although, you’ll be handled to a visceral and unforgettable expertise. –TE

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is on the market to stream on The Criterion Channel and Shudder, or without spending a dime with a library card on Kanopy. Additionally it is obtainable for digital rental or buy through Apple TV.

Oct. 13: Rigor Mortis

Picture: Fortissimo Movies

Describing this Hong Kong vampire film is an especially sophisticated course of. On its floor, Rigor Mortis is a vampire/demon/ghost motion film. However once you dig a bit deeper, it’s additionally a mini time capsule and a tribute to the supernatural horror cinema of Hong Kong’s previous.

The film follows a person who arrives at a large concrete residence constructing that appears to be haunted by each spirit you possibly can think about. He’s a past-his-prime actor and intends to take his personal life. When he tries, twin spirits try and possess his physique, however then they’re stopped by a retired vampire hunter who now runs the residence’s restaurant. What else would a vampire hunter do when there aren’t any vampires left?

This complete sequence solely covers the film’s first 10 or so minutes, and is an ideal setup for the precise model of figuring out, in-on-the-joke supernatural motion ever current in Rigor Mortis — which after all does finally contain a vampire. It’s the type of early-2010s film the place all the surroundings is grey, simply so the manufacturing has an excuse to color it crimson when the fights come. All of this may occasionally sound ridiculous (and it positively is), however one way or the other Rigor Mortis manages to strike the right steadiness of a so-serious-it’s-silly tone and modulates between the 2 moods with ease. It pivots from scenes of individuals trapping spirits in wardrobes to somebody desperately making an attempt to carry out a religious ritual to resurrect their liked one, giving sufficient gravity to every that they will all come off as honest.

As entertaining as Rigor Mortis is, it additionally has a secret. Whereas not essential to getting the film, it does add one other stage of enjoyment. See, the protagonist is called Chin Siu-ho, which is additionally the title of the actor who’s taking part in him, who additionally occurred to be the star of the legendary Hong Kong horror sequence Mr. Vampire. In different phrases, it’s a film a couple of real-world retired actor/martial artist who as soon as performed a vampire hunter, now meets a fictional retired vampire hunter, after which joins in on the vampire searching yet one more time. –AG

Rigor Mortis is on the market to stream on Peacock and Hello-Yah!, without spending a dime with advertisements on Plex and Tubi, or for digital rental or buy through Amazon and Apple TV.