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Do you feel that? That chill in the air, that tingling sensation at the back of your neck? It can only mean one thing. That’s right: Halloween season is once again upon us!
Here at Polygon, we love horror. We cover it all year round, whether it’s ranking the scariest new releases of the year or curating lists of the spookiest horror movies to watch on Netflix.
We especially love Halloween, though, a holiday dedicated to all things scary and spooky. Which is why, every year for the past four years, Polygon has put together a Halloween countdown calendar, selecting 31 of our staff’s top horror-themed or Halloween-adjacent picks across movies, TV, and online videos throughout the month of October, all available to watch at home. It’s been so much fun, in fact, we’re doing it again — with an all new batch of films, shows, and videos to choose from.
Every day for the month of October, we’ll add a new recommendation to this countdown and tell you where you can watch it. So curl up on the couch, dim the lights, and grab some popcorn for a spine-tingling marathon of Halloween-adjacent delights.
Oct. 1: Phenomena
Where to watch: Available to stream on Plex and Pluto TV with ads and to rent on Amazon
Kicking off the Halloween horror movie season is a delicate art. Just a few days into the official start of fall, it’s important to pick exactly the right movie to subtly shift that chill in the air from cozy to spooky as gently as you can. With that in mind, we’re easing into Halloween this year with Dario Argento’s Phenomena, a perfect blend of spooky, campy, and bleak that sets that stage just right for the frights to come.
Phenomena takes place in a remote town in Switzerland at a boarding school where Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of a famous American actor, is the newest student. The only problem is there’s also a serial killer rampaging through the town, and when Jennifer witnesses one of the murders, her life is suddenly in grave danger. The good news is she has an inexplicable telekinetic power over insects to help keep her alive.
And while the movie isn’t quite as silly as the premise would imply, it is among the most bizarre and fun of the many sleazy slashers of the 1980s. But what truly elevates it to a special place is that it’s one of the rare horror movies where the supernatural is seemingly wholly on the side of good. It’s rare that a movie lets us unambiguously root for the mystical power at its center, giving the whole thing the strange, otherworldly feeling of a particularly grotesque fairytale.
All of this makes for a tremendously entertaining and odd mystery movie, and a great way to begin a month full of horror movies. —Austen Goslin
Oct. 2: Mute Witness
Where to watch: Shudder, AMC Plus
Anthony Waller’s 1995 horror thriller is a premise straight out of a waking nightmare. Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), a mute special effects makeup artist, is in Moscow working out of a dilapidated movie studio on a low-budget slasher. After returning to the building after hours to pick up an important piece of equipment, Billy accidentally locks herself inside with no way of getting in touch with either her sister Karen or her sister’s boyfriend Andy. Things quickly go from bad to worse when she secretly stumbles upon the filming of a snuff film perpetrated by a pair of Russian gangsters. When the gangsters suspect that someone else is inside the studio, Billy must find a way to escape undetected before her own life is put into danger.
Mute Witness is a terrific cat-and-mouse murder thriller packed with teeth-clenchingly tense sequences and a compelling lead performance courtesy of Marina Zudina. The first hour of the film is expertly paced and edited, ingratiating the viewer within the layout of the studio before transitioning into a mad-dash climax that’s breathtaking and terrifying to behold. If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, the film touts a brief yet memorable cameo appearance by Sir Alec Guinness (Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia) in one of his final on-screen performances. —Toussaint Egan
Oct. 3: Fallen
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon and Apple
If you ever get bored with the same old restaurant cuisines, the answer is often to look for a fusion restaurant that mixes a couple of your favorites, taking spices and techniques from different cultures and mashing them up into something new. The same goes for horror movies: If you’re bored of the usual executions of all the familiar tropes, a genre mashup like 1998’s Fallen may be the best way to find some new flavor in familiar ideas.
In Fallen’s case, director Gregory Hoblit and screenwriter Nicholas Kazan put the serial-killer procedural thriller and the possession horror story in a blender and use ideas and techniques from both to spice up the drama. Hoblit is a police-show vet (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, LA Law, um, Cop Rock) who keeps the action grounded and gritty, even as the supernatural edge pushes the story far from the genre’s normal beat.
Denzel Washington stars homicide detective John Hobbes, with John Goodman as his partner Jonesy. The two men (working under a sinister lieutenant played by Donald Sutherland) recently cracked a murder case that sent a serial killer (Elias Koteas) to the gas chamber. After his death, though, the killings start again, and Hobbes and Jonesy start working a new case that seems to be the old case. Horror vets will know where this is going long before they do, but Hoblit ramps up the eerie tension as Hobbes’ life starts to unravel.
A lot of horror involves people encountering the supernatural for the first time and fumbling for a response that will let them survive, but the stakes always seem higher when the protagonist is in law enforcement and in theory has to follow procedures, obey rules, and presume innocence. (See also: The Hidden, Angel Heart, Longlegs, etc.) Washington makes for a terrific rule-following cop who’s stuck in a terrifying situation where none of the rules he’s learned can possibly apply. The result is a solidly creepy movie with just the slightest tinge of knowing camp. —Tasha Robinson
Oct. 4: Alligator
Where to watch: Prime Video, Peacock, Shudder
Creature feature directors often cite Jaws as inspiration for holding back on full monster carnage until the end — the less you show, the scarier it is. Screw off! If a movie promises a big mutant alligator terrorizing the city, then we best see a big mutant alligator terrorizing that city, and often!
Good news: Alligator is exactly that, with the added bonus of great performances, a wicked sense of humor, and a touch of social commentary.
Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Breaking Bad) stars as detective David Madison, a cop with a reputation for doing good while losing his partners in the heat of action. When word of a killer alligator prowling the sewers reaches the surface, Det. Madison springs into action with a Dr. Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker), a herpetologist whose no-bullshit approach to amphibian research paves the way for a classic zinger-filled romance. Only the legendary John Sayles could squeeze a throwback screwball romance into a killer alligator movie and still find room to stick to the bumbling bureaucracy.
Much like Jaws, Sayles and director Lewis Teague interrogate the failed institutions that allow a 36-foot hyper-metabolic alligator to run rampant in Chicago — not only can the cops not get their shit together, but the alligator is only dino-like after consuming a biotech company’s discarded animal carcasses, all radiated with growth formula. Unlike Jaws, Teague puts his giant alligator puppet to good use, snapping its jaws on countless victims, from alleycats to random kids in a pool. Blood splatters, Chicagoans run for dear life, Det. Madison complains about his receding hairline, and by the end, things go boom. Alligator isn’t super scary, but it is a raucous good time, a cut above most monster B-movies of any era. —Matt Patches
Oct. 5: Stoker
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon and Apple
Park Chan-wook is in the top tier of living filmmakers for me, so of course I’m fond of even the “minor” works in his catalog. Stoker, his only English-language movie to date (although he’s made two English-language miniseries, including the fantastic The Little Drummer Girl), is an eerie, atmospheric psychological thriller that’s a perfect fit for people who want to participate in spooky season without getting too scared.
It’s India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) 18th birthday. Her father (Dermot Mulroney) has died, and her mother (Nicole Kidman) has welcomed his younger brother (Matthew Goode) into their home. What follows is a Hitchcockian gothic fairy tale filled with sensory delight. The score is pitch-perfect in the eerie atmosphere it provides, and Park never fails to deliver memorable images.
Oh, and fun fact: The movie was written by Wentworth Miller, of Prison Break/CW-verse fame, under a pseudonym. —Pete Volk
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