It’s Halloween! Sort of! There won’t be parties or trick-or-treat-ing this year (though there will be plenty of mask-wearing!), but we’ve got you covered for those nights in front of the TV. I’ve asked some of my colleagues at Lit Hub and CrimeReads to join me in recommending some favorite October movies. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s fun. Grab a bag of fun-sized candy bars to eat all by yourself, and you’re all set.
Diabolique, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot (1955)
Based on the novel by Boileau-Narcejac (a pair of writers, actually), this midcentury horror-noir from one of my favorite directors, Henri-Georges Clouzot, is the perfect Halloween movie. Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot play the mistress and wife (respectively) of a sadistic schoolmaster (Paul Meurisse) who plan the perfect murder to rid their lives of him. But when the murder is done and his body vanishes, the tables begin to turn. It’s excellent, absolutely chilling feature—the best film Hitchcock never made (and, IMO, better than most films Hitchcock did make). (This is just an enthusiastic endorsement… I’m not knocking Hitchcock.)
–Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads and Lit Hub Staff Writer
Practical Magic, dir. Griffin Dunne (1998)
Every year is a very good year to watch Practical Magic (seriously, I recommend this movie on this site every October), but this year is a particularly special year because Alice Hoffman’s novel (the movie’s lifesource) turns 25 and she published the prequel story, Magic Lessons, earlier this year! In case you have been living under a rock for the past quarter century, this phenomenal film stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman—two sister witches who were born into a terrible curse that dictates that any man who falls in love with a woman in their family will die. It happened to their father, and their poor mother died of a broken heart thereafter. Sent to live with their Midnight-Margarita-making aunts (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest who, to my eyes, were an early on-screen representation of a very cool queer couple!) in a sleepy, superstitious town that fears and ostracizes them, the girls have different methods of coping. Sandra Bullock barrels through life with her head down, hoping to avoid love and just blend in. Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to experience adventure. Fast-forward many years into the future, and we find that Nicole Kidman is in a relationship with an abusive man. She needs her sister’s help to escape his clutches. So begins one of the greatest movies of our time! (I will die on this hill!!) Spoiler alert: there might or might not be a murder and an exorcism, but if you’re squeamish like me, don’t worry! The early film effects don’t make this nearly as creepy as it could be, making it the perfect just-spooky-enough Halloween movie. This is a story about the magic of sisterhood, unleashing vengeance on Bad Men, and the quiet bravery of love. Did I mention the ’90s soundtrack? Watch it just for the few seconds of Nicole Kidman belting out “A Case of You” as she drives into the sunrise.
–Katie Yee, Book Marks Associate Editor
Suspiria, dir. Luca Guadagnino (2018)
As someone who prefers to peek into the cinematic world of horror every now and then (and especially in October), I couldn’t help but recommend Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of the classic Suspiria, which cranks up palimpsestic, arthouse film aesthetics so high that you can occasionally forget you’re watching a scary movie. The film clocks in at almost three hours and features heavy-hitters like Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Alek Wek, Chole Grace Mortez, and Mia Goth. The muted wintery aesthetic is rightfully accompanied with slithering worms, broken bones, ghoulish breathing, the occasional jump-scare, and plenty of blood and guts to make your toes curl. And I mustn’t forget: the ending is so unexpected that you’ll feel you’ve just emerged from a fever dream (and that’s probably because—spoiler—it is and is not). Suspiria has all you need for, what will likely be, an intense night you won’t forget—or one you’ll hope not to remember.
–Rasheeda Saka, Lit Hub Editorial Fellow
May, dir. Lucky McKee (2002)
In Lucky McKee’s 2002 cult classic, May Canady is lonely and alienated, scarred by the childhood trauma of being rejected for her lazy eye and obsessed with the dolls that became her friends instead. Things start to look up for May when she begins dating a mechanic and flirts with a coworker, but for May, rejection is never far away, and her need for connection will eventually drive her to extreme measures to achieve it. Truly the perfect film for quarantine.
–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Eyes Without a Face, dir. Georges Franjou (1950)
Georges Franjou’s Eyes Without a Face remains one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen. It’s so grim and tragic and a little mad. It’s about a plastic surgeon who kidnaps young women and surgically removes their faces, in attempts to graft new faces onto that of his own daughter, whose own face was badly disfigured in a car accident. She wears a face-like mask while awaiting a successful surgery, but she is growing increasingly repulsed by her father’s work. Kept in her father’s mansion, along with tons of German shepherds and doves he keeps to conduct animal testing, she feels like a prisoner there, herself. The surgeries are not successful, and too many young women have gone missing… it’s not long before a young woman is sent undercover there. But what she finds, no one might believe. The film’s representation of the doctor’s madness as stemming from his obsession with “correcting” his daughter’s disability and difference, as well as his highly misogynistic, almost-Oedipal obsession with female ideal beauty, keeps its disability politics in check. (Though it is worth stating that the film is a little too comfortable comparing its disfigured heroine to the animals in her father’s lab. While the film’s condemnation of animal testing is important, this slippage is unproductive.)
–Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads and Lit Hub Staff Writer
Ghostbusters, dir. Paul Feig (2016)
Finally, a Halloween movie that pertains to my interests: it’s not remotely scary and it’s mostly about Kate McKinnon (at least for me). This 2016 remake of the classic Ghostbusters story is, like the original, set in New York City, but, unlike the original, features an all-female lead cast including McKinnon, Kristin Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Melissa McCarthy, with a secondary cast that includes a famous Chris. Sure, it received lukewarm reviews, and sure, classifying it as a Halloween movie might be a bit of a stretch, but I would watch these leads do anything together; the fact that they’re chasing ghosts and smashing things around my favorite city is just a plus, as is this 40 glorious seconds of McKinnon dancing to DeBarge.
–Corinne Segal, Lit Hub Senior Editor
Beetlejuice, dir. Tim Burton (1988)
Come for Winona Ryder’s best role as the child of horrible people who befriends a recently deceased ghost couple and stay for the “Day-O” and “Jump In the Line” dance scenes.
–Katie Yee, Book Marks Associate Editor
Donnie Darko, dir. Richard Kelly (2001)
Anyone who has shared a house with someone in the throes of a breakdown knows Richard Kelly’s 2001 masterpiece is realism dressed up in the spooky. There’s something terrifying about the film’s central image, an airplane engine falling out of the sky and crashing through the ceiling into the room that Donnie Darko, the teenager hero, played by a brilliant Jake Gyllenhaal, would have been in had he not been out walking again. The way Donnie begins to wake up miles from the house, not sure how he got there, is classic psychosis behavior. The appearance of hallucinations, like the giant bunny, Frank, who talks to him, that too is familiar, and the way Kelly shoots them they are funny and weird too, in the way madness sometimes has a kind of sense to it. “Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit,” Donnie Darko asks finally, in a darkened cinema when Frank turns up, to which Frank replies: “Why are you wearing that stupid man suit.” Gyllenhaal wanders through this film increasingly alone is his mangled reality, a side-smile grows scene by scene. His hair disheveled, his face turned ever more inward until it’s like a mask. I don’t know why its low budget effects are so effective; maybe it’s because the film let’s us watch Donnie’s growing madness straight on. We see how easily it is to lose everything and how alone you can wind up, even with others around you.
–John Freeman, Lit Hub Executive Editor
Scream, dir. Wes Craven (1996)
I’m normally not one to shy away from some of the horror genre’s more brutal, unsettling offerings, but this Halloween season I’ve been getting my anxiety fix from the news. I’d been thinking about Lovecraft Country and Get Out recently, which reminded me of how good and fun Scream is. The classic Wes Craven slasher revitalized the horror industry in the late 1990s by playing with the genre’s more or less formal conventions. The villain was funny. The film itself was often so tongue-in-cheek, so boldly self-referential, that some scenes made you forget you were watching a frightening movie in which the wisecrackers could still get killed off. I love landmark moments in film history, and I’m not sure there would’ve been a Get Out or a Midsommar or any of the other genre-bending indie horror flicks in recent years had Craven’s satire not paved the way.
–Aaron Robertson, Lit Hub Assistant Editor
Ready or Not, dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (2019)
I loved this comic slasher film, starring Samara Weaving as a young woman marrying into a billionaire family dynasty without realizing they’re going to wind up attempting to sacrifice her at midnight on her wedding night. It’s a wonderful satire on elitism and class in America, and a fun (sometimes heavy-handed) take-down of patriarchal institutions in general. If you’re looking something to watch with a friend, I highly suggest this. I saw this with my friend Eleni in theaters, last summer, and we sat in the last row and ate doughnuts the whole time. The movie will make your blood run cold at times, but this memory warms my heart.
–Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads and Lit Hub Staff Writer
Alien, dir. Ridley Scott (1979)
Given that the scariest movie I’m willing to consume without complaint is Jaws (barring an overwater plane crash, I can always avoid the ocean), it took me until last year to finally answer Sigourney Weaver’s siren call and watch Alien (I’m also pretty certain that I’ll never be in space). Sigourney’s entire vibe is enough for the price of admission; her absolute competency makes me feel safe, even on a spaceship owned by an evil corporation inhabited by a chestburster alien doing what chestbursting aliens do. Also, the cat survives. (Tip for new and old Alien fans: listen to Carmen Maria Machado’s episode on The Scaredy Cats Horror Show podcast by the hosts of Reply All. She knows… a surprising amount of fun stuff about Alien.)
–Eliza Smith, Lit Hub Podcast Fellow
The Exorcist III dir. William Peter Blatty (1990)
If you’re looking for a lumpy-but-gripping thriller, check out The Exorcist III, written and directed by William Peter Blatty, the author of the original Exorcist and the novel that would become the basis for the threequel, Legion. Except it’s not really a sequel to the Exorcist one and two; the film’s production company had to force Blatty to shoehorn an exorcism scene into the end of the film, to give you an idea of how little bearing its predecessors have on the movie’s content. Still, it’s a compelling flick, with whiplash-inducing tone pivots from goofy to sinister and some big-swing performances from George C. Scott and Brad Dourif. If nothing else, it’s worth a watch to find out what happens when an author becomes an auteur.
–Calvin Kasulke, Account Manager
Hocus Pocus, dir. Kenny Ortega (1993)
I honestly cannot tell you the last time I watched Hocus Pocus (maybe 2010?) but I’m pretty sure I could describe it scene for scene from memory. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najmy are a coven of witches invited to the present day by LA native and now Salem, Massachusetts relocated Omri Katz. By drinking young children’s blood, they can become immortal. It’s pretty creepy! Accompanied by his girlfriend and little sister (an adorable Thora Birch), Katz and a talking cat try to save the world. The fact that it takes place on Halloween makes it the perfect film to rewatch. Tis the season!
–Emily Firetog, Lit Hub Deputy Editor
Repulsion, dir. Roman Polanski (1965)
Directed by a Very Bad Man, and starring a Later Very Problematic But At The Time Super Hot Actress, Repulsion isn’t something I’d advocate spending money on—but if you happen to find it for free, this one is the ultimate woman going crazy in an apartment movie. Catherine Deneuve plays a naive young woman who’s already upset at the grabbing, clinging nature of the big city and its rude inhabitants. When her sister leaves their shared apartment to go on vacation, Deneuve’s delusions and reality blur, and the demons of her mind mesh with the predators of the real world. As a twist, delusional fear becomes a pretty effective weapon against a real life attack.
–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
The Invitation, dir. Karyn Kusama (2015)
I am a moderate horror movie fan married to an extreme horror movie fan, so my consumption of all things spooky is pretty constant throughout the year. Still, I can’t deny that it’s just more fun to watch something bone-chilling in the chilly days of October. This month, I recommend you find yourself a cozy blanket and a moderately brave loved one and watch The Invitation, a horror-thriller movie that takes place at a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills (I know—and it gets even scarier)! A man and his new girlfriend attend a dinner hosted by the man’s ex-husband and her new husband, along with a few other friends. Things get even more intense than you’d expect, and the final of the movie is one of the most haunting horror ending I’ve ever seen.
—Jessie Gaynor, Lit Hub Social Media Editor
Halloweentown, dir. Duwayne Dunham (1998)
Halloweentown tells the story of a perfectly normal suburban family that turns out to be half-magic on their mother’s side. Their grandmother (Debbie Reynolds!!) visits once a year, on October 31st, when the portal between Halloweentown and Earth is open, but this time she needs their help to save her home from a mysterious and evil force. I realize how ridiculous this sounds, but if you were a ’90s kid, you probably also watched this movie every year and can cite it as the reason you were extremely disappointed when your thirteenth Halloween rolled around and you discovered you were, in fact, not a witch.
–Katie Yee, Book Marks Associate Editor
I Know What You Did Last Summer, dir. Jim Gillespie (1997)
Sexily untroubled teens Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Ryan Phillippe become significantly more troubled when they cover up a hit and run and are subsequently stalked by a hook-wielding killer.
Best line: “Nobody drives my car but me, you got that, shit smear?”
Best 90s song on soundtrack: “Clumsy” by Our Lady Peace
–Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor
Blue Velvet, dir. David Lynch (1986)
Every year in October I get an urge to revisit David Lynch’s small-town nightmare of a neo-noir and I usually make it about forty-five minutes to an hour in before the existential dread just gets too overwhelming and I have to put on some similar but less unnerving fare like Eyes Wide Shut. How do you describe the plot to this thing? It seems pointless, really. A kid home from college thinks something is up with his neighbors, he gets a girl involved, then there’s a lounge singer and Dennis Hopper worms into your consciousness. It’s about an American underbelly, sure, but I’m never too certain which belly we’re talking about exactly and what we’re doing underneath it, but I keep on coming back when the weather starts to turn. This year I made it to the part where they lip sync to Roy Orbison. That was all I could take. Next year I’m hoping to get to the Yellow Man reveal. We’ll see.
–Dwyer Murphy CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
