Halloween isn't just a holiday celebrating everything that goes bump in the night.
It also is an opportunity to kick back, let loose, and have some fun.
A good Halloween movie is the same way. You'll find plenty of scares
in a good Halloween flick, but it should also be playful. After all,
Halloween is one of the rare holidays that anyone can enjoy. It's a day that's fun for everyone.
That's why, on this list, you'll find everything from slasher movies to horror-comedies
to children's films to documentaries, all of which perfectly encompass the spirit of day. So
go ahead. Warm up some cider, grab some candy, and get in the Halloween mood with these hidden gems.
Like many horror movies, The Guest gets off to an inauspicious start.
Shortly after Spencer and Laura Peterson's son Caleb dies in Afghanistan,
one of his army buddies, David, stops by their house to pay his respects.
"Would you like to come inside?"
"Thank you ma'am."
Despite his harmless exterior, there's a little more going on with David than it seems,
and it isn't long before the Petersons find themselves in their houseguest's crosshairs.
The carnage builds and builds until it culminates on Halloween night,
with a thrilling chase through the local high school's haunted house.
You'll come to The Guest for star Dan Stevens, who
absolutely slays as David. But you'll stay for the surprisingly witty script by horror
maestro Simon Barrett and the pitch-perfect direction by Adam Wingard. It's thrilling,
tense, and gory, and it's not a stretch to call it an instant Halloween classic.
"Well that's an interesting theory."
Halloween isn't the only scary holiday. With enough twisted imagination, any festive occasion
can become a horror show. Holidays, a 2016 horror anthology, proves it. In Holidays,
eight filmmakers transform some of the happiest days of the year into the most terrifying events
you'll ever see. On Valentine's Day, one schoolgirl's gift to her wayward crush
goes spectacularly wrong. On Mother's Day, a woman who can't stop getting pregnant
consorts with a coven of witches, with expectedly disastrous results.
And "Halloween," directed by Kevin Smith, is particularly unsettling,
even when compared to the rest of Holidays' offerings. "Halloween" begins when a creep
named Ian refuses to let his employees celebrate the holiday. It ramps up when the three women
decide to get revenge. And as for what happens next? You'll have to see it for yourself.
Holidays can get very graphic, and it's not afraid to play with topics that other movies consider
taboo. On the other hand, if pushing boundaries is your thing, you'll find a lot to love here,
whether you're celebrating Halloween or any one of Holidays' other gruesome festivities.
Ask any '90s kid which movie scared them the most, and there's a very good chance
they're going to give the same answer: The Witches. This live-action adaptation
of Roald Dahl's classic novel performed well with critics but flopped at the box office,
only to become a cult hit as the legions of children it traumatized reached adulthood.
Honestly, it's hard to decide which moment in this so-called
"kids' film" is the most disturbing, but there's one scene from The Witches that
stands out among all others: When Anjelica Huston casually reaches up
and rips her face off, showing audiences the monstrous form underneath for the first time.
"Whoa."
"Witches..."
It's a visual that's burned into the mind of every single kid who caught The Witches in
theaters or on VHS. Even today, it's still pretty scary. So go ahead. This Halloween,
share The Witches with the children in your life.
"Every child in England should be rubbed out. Destroyed."
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most important horror stories ever told,
but if you want to experience a fresh take on the story,
check out Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein.
This supremely offbeat and relentlessly meta mockumentary doesn't just reinvent the classic
tale. It skewers it completely. Stranger Things star David Harbour plays both himself
and his fictional father, David Harbour Jr., a celebrated stage actor who took himself a
little too seriously. Apparently, one of Harbour Jr.'s most infamous projects was,
you guessed it, Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein, a pseudo-sequel to Shelley's novel
in which Doctor Frankenstein pretends to be his own monster in order to secure research funding.
"Did my father have a compulsion to court disaster? And like Doctor Frankenstein,
did he have a desire to play God?"
And that's only half the story. Frankenstein's Monster's Monster,
Frankenstein is even weirder than it sounds, but if you're on its wavelength, it's a real treat.
Have you ever been to a Halloween party that went horribly bad? The kids in The Mansion sure have.
True, The Mansion's cast of twenty-somethings are actually celebrating New Year's Eve,
not All Hallow's, but the difference is negligible. The gang decides to cut
loose in a creepy old mansion and they spend almost the entire film in costume.
If The Mansion isn't a Halloween movie in fact, it's certainly one in spirit.
Anyway, you can probably guess how this story goes.
A bunch of young men and women shacked up in a mysterious house with no cell reception,
lots of booze, and no one around for miles? It's only a matter of time before bodies
start dropping. And yet the unknown killer is far from the only problem. As they try
to unravel the mystery unfolding around them, long-simmering grudges bubble to the surface.
Unlike a lot of horror comedies, The Mansion doesn't have a special hook. Structurally,
it's a pretty straightforward slasher movie. It just happens to be one that's full of jokes.
Even better, almost all of the comedy comes from the characters themselves. The Mansion has a
talented cast, and they elevate a standard horror movie setup into something incredibly special.
Forget the parties, the costumes,
and the candy. You know what really makes Halloween great? The monsters.
Unfortunately, these days it can be hard to find fresh takes on well-established
mythologies. That's what makes movies like Wildling so exciting. Technically,
Wildling is a werewolf movie. In the film, a young woman with a tragic and mysterious past
starts undergoing weird bodily changes as she hits belated puberty. It doesn't take
long before her heightened senses and brand new claws clue her in to what's really going on.
Lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty isn't exactly new. What is new, however,
is how the story is told. Wildling has a strong indie movie vibe and fearlessly
tackles social issues. It's also anchored by a number of tour de force performances,
particularly from The Diary of a Teenage Girl's Bel Powley, who, as the lead,
more than holds her own against big-name actors like Liv Tyler and horror icon Brad
Dourif. You've seen werewolf movies before, but trust us, you haven't seen one quite like this.
As a new resident of Los Angeles, Sarah just wants to find a decent place to stay.
When she finds an apartment in a complex where everyone seems to get along regardless of age,
race, or social background, where the sense of community is off the charts,
and where the rent isn't going to break the bank, it seems almost too good to be true.
Spoiler: It is. While 1BR takes a little while to play its hand,
Sarah eventually learns that she's signed up for much more than she bargained for, and that
the seemingly loving community comes with a very, very high price. In hindsight, all those security
cameras she was told not to worry about probably should've been a tip-off. Give yourself over
to 1BR and enjoy the ride, but be wary. You'll never look at your neighbors the same way again.
"We'll take such good care of you, my dear."
It's one thing to watch demons and other supernatural creatures wreak havoc on your TV
screen. It's another to tangle with them in real life. Just look at Malachi Martin's story. Martin,
a disillusioned Catholic priest, claimed to have performed thousands of exorcisms
over the course of his life, and endured many injuries as a result.
Martin's whole bizarre story is laid out in Hostage to the Devil,
a documentary that traces his early days in the church, his ultimate disappointment with
Vatican II, and his departure from the faith. Not only did Martin suffer broken bones and
other wounds during his work, but some of his closest confidants claim his 1999 death
was the result of supernatural forces who wanted to stop Martin's anti-demon crusade.
His story is odd, eerie, and fascinating, and unlike fictional horror stories,
the demons don't go away when the credits roll.
Like the original 1995 anthology film this movie follows-up,
Tales from the Hood 2 contains a number of short segments that directly address
issues facing the modern Black community. In Tales from the Hood 2's framing sequence,
a prison tycoon develops a racist A.I. dedicated to stopping crimes before they happen.
"It can learn from first hand experience, but like a person it can also learn from second
hand experience. So, stories, fables, tales...that's where you come in."
In a segment called "The Sacrifice," a Black politician who has allied himself
with a vote-suppressing candidate is haunted by the ghost of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who
became a civil rights icon after his murder. "Good Golly" tackles the history of racist
propaganda in the United States, while "Date Night" handles gaslighting and sexual assault.
Just because Tales from the Hood 2 has a social conscience doesn't mean that it
isn't entertaining, though. Like its predecessor,
this anthology infuses politics with wit, humor, and plenty of frights, and somehow
manages to mix B-movie sensibilities with legitimately clever satire.
"I think it's gonna be quite amazing,"
Okay, maybe you don't like Halloween. While everyone else is out trick-or-treating or
heading to parties, maybe you'd prefer to sit at home, alone, where it's quiet and boring.
Well, too bad. As #Alive proves, even shutting out the outside world won't
save you from spooky dealings. In fact, it may even make things worse.
The movie centers on Oh Joon-woo, a professional streamer who decides to stay home when his parents
head out to run some errands. It's the last time he ever sees them. As fate would have it,
a zombie outbreak erupts, throwing South Korea into chaos and changing everything.
A lot of zombie movies have come out over the past few years, and it's hard to blame anyone who's
suffering from fatigue. Still, even if you're sick of the living dead, #Alive is worth checking out.
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