My SO and I are always looking for good movies, shows, etc. to fill the month of October. We like things that are atmospheric, cerebral, or just fun. But a lot of the standard recommendations are your typical slasher movies and the like, disgusting body horror, kids movies that we have no interest in, and things that are just plain miserable.
Here’s some things we’ve liked to one degree or another from previous years.
Action Horror / Horror That’s Actually Enjoyable
- Aliens
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula
- Fright Night
- Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
- The Mummy (1999)
- Silence of the Lambs
- Sleepy Hollow (Great? No. Fun? Yes.)
- Termors 1 & 2
- Various Stephen King Mini series (IT, The Stand, Rose Red)
Funny and Spooky
- Army of Darkness
- BeetleJuice
- Bubba Ho-Tep
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (movie)
- The Burbs (didn’t love it, but a good fit)
- Death Becomes Her
- The Frighteners
- Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
- Ghostbusters 1 & 2
- Gremlins 1 & 2
- High Anxiety
- Little Shop of Horrors (not really into musicals, but still a good fit)
- Shaun of the Dead
- What We Do in the Shadows (movie)
- Various MST3K horror movie episodes
- Young Frankenstein
Anthology Shows (inherently hit or miss)
- The Twilight Zone (60s)
- The Outer Limits (90s)
- Tales From the Crypt
Old Timey Classics
- Dracula
- Frankenstein (actually underwhelming, but it was a good fit)
- The Haunting (1963)
- The Haunting of Hill House (with Rifftrax, but still counts)
- The Last Man on Earth
- Psycho
- The Invisible Man
Barely Qualifies as spooky but still good:
- Dark Man
- The Dead Zone (movie)
- Men in Black
- Pacific Rim
- The Shadow
- They Live
The TV show version of What We Do in the Shadows is also quite good, I think, and very much traffics in the same themes as the movie, if even a bit sillier.
We both liked What We Do in the Shadows, but neither of us loved it. I’ve been suggesting giving the show a try but my SO is always a bit resistant to starting a new show, and the prospect of trying to squeeze a season into a limited time frame only has only made that worse. But it’ll probably happen sooner or later.
It’s worth it. Such a great show.