Every October, the best streaming services unleash the usual suspects for best horror movie recommendations for spooky season: Halloween, Hocus Pocus, Trick ’r Treat, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, as someone who spends most of the year watching horror films (and writing about them), my seasonal viewing tends to lean toward those that evoke the Halloween spirit without ever mentioning it.
The truth is, the best Halloween movies don’t need pumpkins or masks, because it's all about evoking the scent of rotting leaves, the hum of something ancient beneath the surface, and the creeping sense that the world is slightly off its axis. Here are eight films I return to every October, and not because they’re about Halloween, but because they have the “vibe” of the season.
Robert Eggers' The Witch (2015)
A lot of people call Robert Eggers one of the best modern horror directors, and that reputation started with The Witch. It doesn’t look or feel like a typical Halloween movie, but it feels like something old and sinister has been unearthed.
Set in 1630s New England, the slow-burning horror flick follows a Puritan family exiled from their community, trying to survive on the edge of a dark, unforgiving forest. Isolated and stretched thin, their belief in God and in each other starts to fracture as something evil starts creeping in.
From its brutal opening to the witches’ sabbath finale, The Witch plays mind games. Eggers doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares, but builds tension through authentic language (so good that I purchased the screenplay) and the movie’s atmosphere.
Anya Taylor-Joy, in her breakout role as Thomasin, brings a quiet intensity and is part of the reason it remains one of her best movies.
David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014)
David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows features one of the most unsettling horror villains in recent memory, not a monster with a single face, but one that constantly changes, moving from body to body like a cursed STD. The film doesn’t take place in October, but it might as well. It lives in a kind of endless dusk, full of bare trees, outdated cars, and the quiet rot of suburban life.
Disasterpeace’s synth-heavy score contributes to numerous incredible horror music moments that add to the unease, transforming everyday streets into dreamlike dead zones. Watching it during autumn feels like walking home alone after a Halloween party, quiet, cold, and humming with the sense that something’s not quite right.
Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2001)
Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others is gothic horror done to perfection. It’s all fog-drenched estates and whispering children. It's one of a handful of PG-13 scary movies that is actually terrifying.
Nicole Kidman gives one of her most restrained performances as Grace, a devout woman trying to protect her photosensitive children from the outside world, only to discover that the haunting may be coming from within. Set in post-World War II England, the film evokes the stillness of a household that has lost its sense of purpose.
It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to light candles, draw the curtains, and surrender to the season’s melancholy.
Ari Asters' Hereditary (2018)
Hereditary might be the ultimate Halloween movie, but it isn’t. No pumpkins, no costumes, just sunlight, grief, and the slow rot of a family coming apart. Still, few films capture the mood of October better.
Plenty of horror films deal with grief, but Hereditary towers over the rest. The family home becomes a living thing, infected from within. Toni Collette’s performance as Annie Graham is a full-body breakdown. She wasn’t just snubbed for an Oscar, but robbed. Her rage and sorrow are so raw, and if you’ve experienced a personal loss, then you know it feels like she stops acting and is living the pain. Ari Aster trades in slow, creeping dread for scares that are structural. Miniatures echo the real world, while seance lighting flickers through hallways. And by the time we reach the final scene, a literal crowning of generational doom, we, the audience, are begging for a reprieve.
Henry Selick’s Coraline (2009)
On paper, Coraline is a children’s movie. In practice, it’s one of the most disturbing animated films ever made.
Henry Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novella invites us into a pastel-colored dreamscape that slowly peels away to reveal something monstrous. Coraline Jones, voiced by Dakota Fanning, finds a secret door to a mirror world where her “Other Mother” seems too perfect, until she offers to sew buttons over Coraline’s eyes.
The film’s tactile stop-motion texture gives it a hand-crafted eeriness; every fabric wrinkle and flicker of candlelight feels alive. Coraline is Halloween for the imaginative, as well as a timeless story about curiosity and the danger of getting exactly what you wish for.
Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961)
Before The Others, there was The Innocents. Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw remains one of the most psychologically precise ghost stories ever filmed.
Deborah Kerr stars as a governess who becomes convinced the spirits of former servants possess her young wards. What makes the film timeless isn’t the hauntings themselves, but the uncertainty surrounding them. We don’t know if the ghosts are real or if the governess is losing her mind.
Freddie Francis’s luminous black-and-white cinematography is stunning, with every reflection, every open window, feeling like a portal. Modern horror owes a debt to The Innocents, and watching it in October feels like paying homage to the genre’s haunted lineage.
Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015)
Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak is a gothic fever dream. It’s not a horror film in the conventional sense, as it's more a romantic tragedy drenched in blood and candle wax, but its imagery is pure Halloween bliss.
Mia Wasikowska plays Edith, a writer drawn into a marriage with a doomed baronet (Tom Hiddleston), and his sinister sister (Jessica Chastain) along for the ride. Their decaying mansion bleeds red clay through its floors, as if the earth itself were hemorrhaging.
Del Toro treats horror as a form of art history, referencing Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and The Haunting, while crafting a visual world that feels like a haunted museum exhibit. I’m so excited for his Frankenstein to land on the 2025 movie schedule, because the man knows how to make heartbreakingly sincere, macabre masterpieces.
Jack Clayton's Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Jack Clayton (again!) directed this under-appreciated book-to-screen adaptation of the classic Ray Bradbury novel. It's a film that should be a Halloween staple, but never quite found its audience. However, fortunately for you, this one has just landed on streaming; all you need is a Disney+ subscription.
Set in a small Illinois town, Something Wicked This Way Comes captures the bittersweet essence of fall better than almost any movie. A mysterious carnival arrives, offering townsfolk their deepest desires, at a soul-shattering cost.
Jason Robards delivers a quietly devastating performance as a father confronting his own aging and regret, while Jonathan Pryce’s Mr. Dark oozes charisma and menace. It’s a movie about temptation, and the price of second chances, which are the very emotions that stir every October when the air cools and the world seems briefly bewitched.
Why These Movies Capture The Spirit Of The Season
Halloween doesn’t just live on a date on the calendar, but in the atmosphere of the fall season. It's flickering candlelight, whispering trees, and the feeling that something ancient has taken notice of you. It, as I said before, is a vibe.
Each of these films taps into that same electricity at the intersection of something sacred and fascinating. So this year, skip the predictable slashers and put on something that makes your soul ache a little. Because the best Halloween movies, in my opinion, don’t need jack-o’-lanterns, they just need that spooky season spirit.
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