One of the best things about October (aka Halloween) is the fact that it coincides with the official start of Cozy Season. When the leaves start to fall, the temperatures drop, and corner stores begin to bring out the ghost and skeleton costumes, there’s nothing better than curling up in a cozy blanket, sipping a seasonal beverage and freaking yourself out with a lineup of spooky movies. To celebrate all things Halloween-adjacent, we’ve put together a list of the very best spooky movies to watch this Halloween.
Psycho (1960)
Is there a more famous—or more frightening—shower scene in all of cinema? Alfred Hitchcock created the perfect horror film with Psycho, utilizing clever camera tricks and a delightfully disquieting performance from Anthony Perkins to iconic effect.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)
Watch Bette Davis and Joan Crawford battle on screen, then read about the Hollywood legends’ hysterical diva-like behavior and rivalry on set.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Amazon, or YouTube.
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Audrey Hepburn stars as a blind woman who manages to thwart intruders by shutting off all the lights in her apartment. The audience is put into her shoes, only able to decipher what is going on by listening to the men thumping around the house trying to kill her.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Rosemary’s Baby remains unrivaled for utter psychological horror…just don’t let Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes’s Satanic neighbors ruin New York City for you.
How to watch: Stream it on Apple TV, Paramount+, Prime Video, or YouTube.
The Exorcist (1973)
A frightening movie about demonic possession with even scarier real-life history.
How to watch: Stream on MAX, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
With such a brilliant cast – Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn—and especially funny script, Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein flips Mary Shelley’s classic story upside-down.
How to watch: Stream on MAX.
Carrie (1976)
The original Mean Girls, but with pig’s blood. This movie is truly the material of teen-outcast nightmares.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, MAX, or YouTube.
Halloween (1978)
Despite having a budget of just $300,000, John Carpenter’s Halloween quickly became a cult classic, redefining the horror genre in its wake. In 1978, it grossed $70 million worldwide — the equivalent of about $251 million today — and launched the career of Jamie Lee Curtis. It also launched no less than 13 sequels and counting.
How to watch: Prime Video
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Scary houses, more murder, this time with 1979 James Brolin. Even scarier? The story is based on a real house.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
The Shining (1980)
An aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic (Jack Nicholson) accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of a historic and isolated hotel and moves his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son in with him. Things go badly very quickly.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Ghostbusters (1984)
This film about a ghost-catching squad is another Halloween cult classic that’s fun for the whole family. It’s got supernatural entities and it’s lots of comedy.
How to watch: Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
Fatal Attraction (1987)
An ’80s classic: Michael Douglas and Glenn Close bump heads as a culpable (married) businessman and the fling who won’t go away quietly.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Beetlejuice (1988)
A recently deceased couple summon an eccentric, green-haired demon named Beetlejuice to help them scare away the new tenants in their home. But Beetlejuice’s unorthodox services come at a heavy personal price, and things quickly escalate.
How to watch: MAX, Prime Video, or YouTube
The Witches (1990)
Anne Hathaway’s turn as the Grand High Witch may have got a lot of attention, but nothing can compete with Anjelica Huston’s completely horrifying and totally fabulous performance in the 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s tale.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
The Addams Family (1991)
Follow the story of the Addams, a creepy but charming family played memorably by, among others, Anjelica Huston and Christina Ricci. There are three Addams Family movies, and this first one centers around an imposter claiming to be Gomez Addams’ missing brother, Uncle Fester.
How to watch: Apple TV, Prime Video, Paramount+, or YouTube.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
The story follows Buffy, an appearingly normal popular high school girl. After being told about her destiny as a vampire hunter by a mysterious man (Merrick), she pairs together with Pike to help take down a powerful vampire named Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and the all other obstacles high schoolers are up against.
How to watch: Stream on MAX
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The best of both worlds—you can watch this one now and in December! It’s a little spooky, of course, but mostly adorable.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Disney+, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker make this the ultimate Halloween throwback.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Disney+, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble (1993)
Before there was The Row, there were the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen films, and Double, Double Toil and Trouble is one of the Olsens’ most captivating dramatic turns.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Casper (1995)
The Christina Ricci film that launched a thousand debates about whether Casper the human being cute makes Casper the ghost automatically cute, too. Prepare to rehash.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Scream (1996)
Scream is about a masked murderer referred to as “Ghostface” who stalks a group of high schoolers. The film is just as scary as it is campy, providing slasher movie thrills alongside creative, meta commentary about the nature of horror movies.
The Craft (1996)
A new girl with a dark past moves to Los Angeles and befriends three students who aren’t exactly popular, but are far more interesting than they seem.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Hulu, Prime Video, or YouTube.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
It’s the original ’90s blockbuster that deserves your time, with its satisfying jump scares and sense of ever-increasing horror. Best of all, it’s also the project that first brought Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. together.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, MAX, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Practical Magic (1998)
You’ll want to become a witch after watching this iconic ’90s film. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman star as witchy sisters navigating love, death, and magic.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Hulu, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Halloweentown (1998)
A Disney Channel original film from the era before they were all about tweens becoming pop stars.
How to watch: Stream on Disney+, Prime Video, or YouTube.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
If you want thrills, chills, and genuinely shocking plot twists, you needn’t look any further than The Sixth Sense. It’s not only an emotional, affecting ghost story, but it also features scary good performances from co-leads Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment.
How to watch: Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
Blair Witch Project (1999)
The flashlight-lit fake documentary that introduced the “found footage” horror film still manages to be scary, even today.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Paramount+, or Prime Video.
American Psycho (2000)
“I’m into, uh, well murders and executions, mostly,” says Christian Bale as self-indulgent banker turned sociopath Patrick Bateman, who goes around committing homicide after homicide in impeccable ’80s suits.
How to watch: Apple TV, Prime Video, Peacock, or YouTube.
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
After coming across an abandoned church on their drive home from college, siblings Rish (Gina Philips) and Darry (Justin Long) catch the attention of an age-old monster. The film follows the duo as they run for their lives, trying to avoid becoming the prey of The Creeper.
How to watch: Apple TV
Saw (2004)
Bloodshed to the max, if you that’s you’re thing. Avoid if you’re not into it.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Twitches (2005)
In this Disney Channel Original Movie, Tia and Tamera Mowry play twin witches with polar opposite personalities. Born into royalty in the magical kingdom of Coventry, the sisters are separated at birth and adopted by two different families on Earth. On their 21st birthday, the twins finally find each other, discover their powers, and join forces to save Coventry from an evil entity known simply as The Darkness.
How to watch: Disney+ or youTube
Monster House (2006)
On Halloween night, DJ finds himself on his own with a terrible babysitter. After calling his friend Chowder for a game of basketball, the boys find trouble when the ball bounces into the neighbor Nebbercracker’s lawn. Known for terrorizing kids who trespass, Nebbercracker has a heart attack as the ball crosses into his property. The boys go over to find out what happened, and quickly realize that the house is alive — and it’s a monster.
How to watch: Stream on Hulu.
Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
There are various stories being told in this film. It all takes place in the same area, on the same evening, and is more than capable of putting you in the Halloween spirit.
How to watch: Prime Video
The Mist (2007)
This Stephen King adaptation tells the story of a small group of people in Bridgton, Maine who meet in a supermarket to find supplies after a thunderstorm and begin to notice an eerie mist cloaking the presence of monsters among them. Caution: the movie is actually scarier than the book.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Jennifer’s Body (2009)
It may be campy, but this Megan Fox/Amanda Seyfried black comedy is a cult classic for a good reason.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, MAX, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Paranormal Activity (2009)
If you love scary movies, we’re pretty sure one is for you. The premise is simple: A couple moves into a haunted house and documents the supernatural activity with a simple home camera. The results? Sheer, untainted horror.
How to watch: Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
Black Swan (2010)
Terrifying in a deep, dark, psychological way, despite being set in the charming world of ballet.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
Hotel Transylvania isn’t just funny, it’s animated, so it’s not exactly frightening. This film is a story about Count Dracula running a hotel that caters specifically to every monster imaginable. But life for the monsters at Hotel Transylvania flips upside-down when a human comes along, leading to lots of drama that only Dracula can fix.
How to watch: Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
The Conjuring (2013)
There are haunted house movies and then there’s The Conjuring. Director James Wan’s film balances terrifying practical effects with shocking horror movie set pieces in this haunted house tale based on a true story.
How to watch: MAX, Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
Oculus (2013)
This psychological thriller—which follows a young woman who is convinced that an antique mirror is haunting her family—turns the fear-o-meter up a few notches.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube.
The Babadook (2014)
A excellently crafted, deeply disturbing exploration of motherhood, grief, and guilt is the real horror that remains well past the final scene.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Hulu, Prime Video, or YouTube.
It (2017)
You’ll never look at clowns the same way again after watching this film that tells the tale of a psycho killer clown that murders and feeds on children in a small town in Maine.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, MAX, Prime Video, or YouTube.
Malevolent (2018)
Florence Pugh stars in this horror film about a paranormal detection racket that gets a very real assignment.
How to watch: Stream on Netflix.
Apostle (2018)
A British horror film, set in 1905, and about a drifter who sets out to save his sister from a religious cult.
How to watch: Stream on Netflix.
Midsommar (2019)
An insane Swedish death cult attempts to reel in a group of terrified American students in this psychological thriller.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Paramount+, Prime Video, or YouTube
The Night House (2021)
In a haunted upstate New York lake house, a grieving widow (played by the inimitable Rebecca Hall) encounters her dead husband—and enters into a looking-glass version of her marriage that completely unravels her. Directed by the new horror-auteur David Bruckner, this one has scares like you wouldn’t believe.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
Candyman (2021)
The Nia DaCosta-directed, Jordan Peele-produced sequel to the ’90s horror film of the same name is a thrilling ride—the story of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Anthony McCoy, an artist who moves to the Chicago neighborhood once haunted by the titular hook-wielding menace, and begins work on a new exhibit inspired by his crimes. Predictably, chaos ensues.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Prime Video, or YouTube
Pearl (2022)
This incredible horror movie stars Mia Goth as a 1918-era young woman on the brink of madness who will stop at nothing in her pursuit of stardom.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV, Paramount+, Prime Video, or YouTube
Run Rabbit Run (2023)
Succession fans will love this film, which stars Sarah Snook as a fertility doctor whose young daughter’s strange behavior hints at the reemergence of a ghost from the past.
How to watch: Stream on Netflix.
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