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 Thing (John Carpenter, 1982). Not gory, so much as gooey.
The Babadook.
The Mist. Based on a book by Steven King. King admits the movie ending is better than his own.
10 Cloverfield Lane. It’s standalone, don’t worry if you haven’t seen Cloverfield
Annihilation. The bear freaks me out.
Event Horizon. Sci-Fi/Horror
Original Ghostbusters from 1984.
Gremlins
No One Will Save You. The ending is weird, but the suspense is top-notch.
The 'Burbs. Classic Tom Hanks comedy.
Tremors.
What We Do in the Shadows
Event horizon is definitely not the type of movie OP is after.
The best thing about Event Horizon is how incredibly gorey it is. Definitely not what OP is after.
Seconding Annihilation. Was going to suggest it if nobody else did.
Based on OP’s likes The Thing is spot on
I love The Thing, specifically because it’s smart and has great atmosphere. And as with Tremors, I like seeing people behave intelligently and adapt to try to overcome the threat, rather than just having people be idiots so we can watch them die.
That said, it goes way past the line for my SO, who makes less of a distinction between gross creature effects and violent gore effects. Plus, it’s not like there isn’t some fairly extreme violence as well. The defibrillator scene for example.