What’s up Octobocops, it’s Halloweason. Let’s get spooked. Here are some movies of the horror and horror-adjacent genres that you might watch by yourself or with a party of friends or with the spirit of a long-deceased duke who lives in inhabits your house. This is part five; you know the goddamn drill by now.
A couple of notes for those who are new to the list:
This is being posted on October 2, 2017. For humans of the future who find this, the links may not all be up to date. Some might even expire by November 2017. Click at your own risk.
I try to offer both breadth and depth of options on this list, but it is by no means exhaustive. I’m sorry if a favorite of yours got left off. There’s a chance I just haven’t seen it yet. Feel free to reblog and add some of your favorites, but please make sure a movie is actually currently available on Netflix before jumping my shit about some nonsense I “forgot,” please and thank you.
This list is based upon movies that are available on Netflix in the US. I have no idea what is streaming on Canadian Netflix or British Netflix or Slovenian Netflix. How would I know this. Why would I know this. Please do not expect me to know this. Feel free to be the Canadian/British/Slovenian Benito and make your own list applicable to your own countryhumans.
Horror movies, by their nature, have horrific things in them. Most of these movies are violent; lots of them deal with torture, abuse, and mental illness. If some element of this jumps out to me while I’m writing these up, I’ll mention them, but if you are sensitive to or have issues with certain types of content, you might look an individual movie up on Common Sense Media first to check for content warnings.
While there are always good horror movies to be found on Netflix, if you really like scary movies, you should just get a Shudder subscription (or even just the free trial!). It has an unbeatable, well-curated selection.
All right let’s get to the goddamn movies what say
Classics (this section seems to get smaller every year):
We Are Still Here (Barbara Crampton is in this; her name will be mentioned a few more times on this list because she is apparently a major selling point for some people)
At the Devil’s Door (from the maker of The Pact; not as good, still interesting)
The Void (Lovecraftian cult shit; very cool visuals and practical effects)
Baskin (subtitled; super gory; also, the protags are asshole cops who tell transphobic stories and say homophobic slurs and talk about bestiality at the beginning, so heads up; worth a watch if that doesn’t bother you)
Extraordinary Tales (animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe stories narrated by famous people; a mixed bag, but cool)
Darling (okay, so: this is a really beautiful and atmospheric film that I, generally speaking, recommend; however, it is kind of “artsy,” there is not a lot of dialogue, it is in black and white, there are some light strobing effects, rape does not occur on screen but is implied to have happened in a character’s past)
Beyond the Gates (I actually did not like this very much, but some people might find it interesting, especially if you like–wait for it–Barbara Crampton)
Turbo Kid (this is not really horror, but if you like horror, especially splatter stuff, you will probably like it; it is good as shit)
Gerald’s Game (new shit from Mike Flanagan and it’s really great. Deals with lots of hard issues like abuse and such so maybe take a look at content issues if you are sensitive to that kind of stuff. Also definitely not for the squeamish, so head’s up. That said, it’s really really good)
80s/90s shit:
Hellraiser (not my style, but maybe you like this stuff, iunno)
“But, Benito!” I hear you cry. “I don’t have Netflix for some reason! What about some other streaming services?” Yeah, all right. Here are some quick hits that are definitely not exhaustive. Just a couple of party jams you might enjoy if you’ve burned through the Netflix list.
What’s on Hulu though
10 Cloverfield Lane
Monster Squad
Fright Night (the original; a must watch if you haven’t seen it)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
From Dusk Til Dawn
An American Werewolf in London
Hatchet
Pumpkinhead (check this one out if you haven’t seen it)
The Blob
I Saw the Devil (amazing)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either version)
Shaun of the Dead
The Loved Ones
Wolfcop
The Thing
Rigor Mortis
Borgman
The Descent
Bloodsucking Bastards
Willow Creek
Berberian Sound Studio
Plus a bunch of shit that’s also on Netflix
What about Amazon Prime you idiot
The Girl with All the Gifts
Them (not Them!)
The Witch
Hell House LLC
Neon Demon
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Nosferatu
Green Room
Little Shop of Horrors (the Corman one, not the musical)
The Blackcoat’s Daughter
The Bay
Society
The Last Man on Earth
The Last Exorcism
What We Do in the Shadows
Amazon Prime is hard to navigate so that’s all. If I left off a favorite, it’s not because I don’t like it. It’s because it didn’t pop up in the first 20 pages of search results.
Tell me some good Shudder ones
The Innkeepers
A Tale of Two Sisters
The Gorgon
Lake Bodom
Prevenge
All the Phantasms (maybe not Ravager)
Shrew’s Nest
Noroi: The Curse
The House of the Devil
Black Sunday
Let the Right One In
Murder Party (highly recommended, esp for Halloween)
WNUF Halloween Special
Ghostwatch (play this at your party if you want to fucking win Halloween)
This list could be a million more entries long. Shudder rules.
What about Crackle/Vudu/YouTube/etc
Please shut up
As usual, please do me a solid and only circulate the current version of the list, so people aren’t clicking on dead links and thinking I’m an idiot. Again, this list is not and could not be completely exhaustive, and if I left off your favorite movie, I swear I was not targeting you personally. And, again, some of these movies are more interesting than they are good AND horror is a highly subjective experience, so your mileage may vary on some of these.
If you enjoyed this list, perhaps consider checking out some of my other Halloween-related posts:
Also maybe consider checking out my Letterboxd profile, where I rate and review movies of all types (but primarily horror) all year long and from all sorts of sources, in case you’re wondering what’s good on more than just Netflix. Also also, maybe take a look at some of my comics, several of which are appropriate for Halloween times.
So here is a back up comic Benito and I did in Invincible #13 in 2004. I was planning on posting them all in order (because HO MAN they are pretty awful), but I figured in honor of the return of the Walking Dead on tv I’d skip ahead and post this one. Sincerest apologies.
A couple of notes on this:
I’ve seen people making the “Walking Dad” joke here and there on Twitter. This is just an artifact to show that Nate and I got there NINE YEARS AGO, statistically speaking, before you had even started reading the book.
This was the second strip based on the premise of Nate and me getting hired to write the last two pages of a long-running (or a so-intentioned) series. The previous one ran in Invincible #6 and was a Y the Last Man parody called J the Penultimate Dude (BKV owns the original art for that strip). It was intended to be a running gag, but due to the pretty frantic, schizoid, little bit ADD nature of our backups, we never did another one on that premise. The intention is that they were all going to end with some variation of “It was all a dream! ….or WAS IT?” as that is, obviously the best possible ending.
The reason for the Baron Samedi dude is the idea that by the end of the Walking Dead/Dad, Rick/Mick would have seen his entire cast die off and evolve until all that was left was someone who could finally explain all the zombie/Dad stuff. It wasn’t meant to parody a particular character, just the nature of the rotating cast. And this was in 2004! Imagine comparing the cast then to the cast now!
Note how the art is a parody of Tony Moore’s art for exactly six panels, and then it’s a riff on Charlie Adlard.
Pretty sure that “I AM the Walking Dad!” speech precedes Rick’s “We ARE the Walking Dead!” speech by about a year.
I kind of hope Nate keeps posting these. Even though they’re pretty much all embarrassingly bad, this platform at least gives me a chance to explain myself.
Happy father’s dad
ALSO: If I recall correctly, the sleigh/vespa chase was some kind of weirdly strained reference to the Charlie Kaufman film Adaptation, which probably JUST came out before this was made or something. I believe there was a horse/motorcycle chase in the screenplay within the film.
Hey, guys, so here is a new project by me and Joel.
If you like the things I post about on this blog–ancient languages, Universal monsters, secret societies, and that fuzzy area where truth and fiction collide–you will like this comic. Its story elements will feel pulpy: mummies, vampires, rockets, aliens, and so on. But it’s all wrapped up in the tweed-jacket-with-suede-elbow-patches of academia.
If you want to see me at my most me, where I stop bothering to translate jokes I made in dead languages, this might be the comic for you. Best of all, all my weird tics are tempered by the deft hand of Joel Priddy, one of the best and most underrated cartoonists around. (Seriously: you should read Pulpatoon Pilgrimage and Gift of the Magi.)
People ask me fairly frequently when I’m going to have a new comics project out. Well: here it is. Help us out by spreading the word and sharing this post.
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Clark Kent by Frank Quitely [ All Star Superman ]
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All other Kents inferior.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly3p0cB91H1qc63ooo1_r1_500.jpg)
