13 horror films for the movie fan who has seen everything to watch this Halloween

Think you’ve seen it all? Wait until you’ve watched these (Picture: Shutterstock/ Getty/ Metro) There’s a chill in the air, leaves on the ground and pumpkins are carved, which means only one thing – Halloween is here. Now that summer is behind us, spooky season has crept up on us, and the horror film marathons that come with it. October has plenty of disturbing delights on the big screen with The Devils, Dracula, Whalefall, and Resident Evil, all frightening and delighting horror fans. But for the film fans who have seen it all, from the big-budget slashers to the indie psychosexual cannibal flicks, finding something new to add to your watchlist can be difficult. But never fear – or do, as we’re talking about horror films – we’re here with some top underrated gems to make your skin crawl and spine shiver. Get your pillow ready to hide behind. Hallowarrior Where to watch: Shudder Milly Shapiro became a horror icon with the release of Hereditary in 2018, and now, her latest genre flick has come to Shudder. Hallowarrior, directed by Ben Sottack, is set four years after a mysterious plague wiped out humanity. It centres on 16-year-old Pumpkin (Shapiro), who believes herself to be the last person alive on Earth. Obsessed with Halloween, she has decorated her entire rural family home in jack-o-lanterns, while stockpiling candy and broadcasting a radio message inviting people to join her. One day, three travellers arrive on her doorstep – Thalia (Shannyn Sossamon), the ruthless leader of a cannibal group; Thalia’s husband Royce (A.J. Bowen); and teenager Wendy (Ajani Russell). Desperate for connection, Pumpkin lets them in, but soon realises their dangerous true intentions. Crushed Where to watch: Rent and buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Rakuten TV After shocking audiences on the festival circuit, Simon Rumley’s Crushed is finally available to stream at home. Crushed follows Father Daniel (Steve Oram), who leads a small procession in Thailand. He lives with his wife, May (Nattapohn Rawddon), and their 10-year-old daughter, Olivia (Margaux Dietrich), practising their beliefs and spending quality time with friends. One night, Olivia is left traumatised when Marcus (Nadech Chatwin), the son of Daniel’s fellow clergyman Stephen (Kevin Lea Davis), shows the youngster a horrific video of animal cruelty. Soon after, her cat, Missy, vanishes, prompting the family to search for the missing feline. But Daniel and May soon find themselves in every parent’s worst nightmare when, after a day of searching for Missy, Olivia doesn’t return home. The Cycle Where to watch: Shudder Perfect for the true crime fans this Halloween season, The Cycle has landed on Shudder just in time to chill you to your bones. Directed by Jordan Downey, the horror thriller follows forensic anthropologist Dr Meg Garland (Deborah Ann Woll), who runs a research facility studying human decomposition to help solve cold cases. She is called to a brutal crime scene alongside local police officer Ian (Will Hochman) and his father, Marks (Jeffrey Donovan), where a mother and daughter have been brutally killed However, a third body is found among the carnage: that of Meg’s estranged father, Peter, who had been missing for 36 years. As Meg investigates his disappearance and the mystery that surrounds his body being unnaturally preserved compared to the other two victims, she is taken down a dark and supernatural path. The Devil’s Doorway Where to watch: Rent and buy on Prime Video and Apple TV Irish horror has really made its mark on the genre with several unique and terrifying offerings encapsulating the unique folklore of the Emerald Isles. Aislinn Clarke’s landmark 2018 film The Devil’s Doorway follows priests Father Thomas Riley (Lalor Roddy) and Father John Thornton (Ciaran Flynn) who are sent to investigate a possible miracle at a Magdalene Asylum in Ireland. The asylums, also known as laundries, were real homes run by the church for ‘fallen women.’ The priests in the film discover horrors beyond their imagination, reflecting the real-life scandals that surrounded laundries such as the initial discovery of 155 unmarked graves in the convent grounds of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Dublin in 1993. Amulet Where to watch: Rent and buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, Rakuten TV, and the Sky Store British horror chiller Amulet dazzled audiences at its 2020 Sundance Film Festival premiere, and it’s available to watch now. Written and directed by Romola Garai, it tells the story of Tomaz (Alec Secareanu), a homeless ex-soldier who is found by a nun, Sister Claire (Imelda Staunton) after the derelict building he was living in is burned down. Sister Claire offers Tomaz a place to stay with a woman named Magda (Carla Juri) and her dying mother. While the two are at odds with each other at first, Tomaz soon begins to win Magda over as he does handiwork around the home. He soon begins to witness and experience unusual paranormal phenomena, while also being dogged by flashbacks of his former country, which he escaped to reside in London. Be My Cat: A Film For Anne Where to watch: FOUND With an abundance of found footage horror releases in the subgenre following the release of The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and V/H/S, it can be tricky to find something fresh. FOUND, a free streaming service available in the UK, is dedicated purely to found footage horror films and it boasts an array of lesser-known titles to feast your eyes upon. Among them is the notorious Be My Cat: A Film For Anne, a disturbing horror film that was Romania’s first-ever found footage film. Directed, written, produced by, and starring Adrian Țofei, it follows an aspiring filmmaker who goes to extreme levels to convince actress Anne Hathaway to star in his film. Infirmary Where to watch: Shudder For more found footage frights this Halloween season, head over to Shudder for festival favourite Infirmary. Set in 2023, Nicholas Pineda’s supernatural horror follows rookie security guard and former Marine Edward Yoon (Paul Syre Lee) on his first night shift at the abandoned Wilshire Infirmary, an old psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles. He works alongside Lester Wooley (Mark Anthony Williams), a cynical senior guard and ex-cop, and mysterious administrative assistant Ms. Downey (Danielle Kennedy). As the night progresses, the guards encounter strange, unexplainable occurrences and shifting shapes caught on the building’s fixed security feeds and body cameras. Penny Lane Is Dead Where to Watch: Shudder If you like your comedy pitch black and your horror drenched in gore, look no further than Australian chiller Penny Lane Is Dead, directed by Mia’Kate Russell. Set during the hazy summer of 1986, high school graduate Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding), her best friend and secret girlfriend Toni (Tahlee Fereday), and their fragile friend Amy (Alexandra Jensen) take a trip to an isolated beach house to celebrate their college acceptances. The peaceful getaway takes a turn when Penny’s resentful cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn) crashes the gathering uninvited and orchestrates a malicious prank to feed her a drug-laced cupcake. She is thrown out of the beach house when Penny is found unconscious, and in retaliation, Kat contacts her unhinged boyfriend Angus (Ben O’Toole) and his associates to seek revenge. Sumala Where to watch: Netflix Indonesia is well known for producing spine-chilling supernatural horror films, with Rizal Mantovani’s 2024 film Sumala standing out among its peers. Based on a chilling rural urban legend, Sumala is set in the Semarang Regency during the late 1940s and begins with wealthy landowner Soedjiman (Darius Sinathrya) and his wife Sulastri (Luna Maya) struggling with infertility Under immense pressure to produce an heir, Sulastri secretly visits a black magic shaman to help her conceive, making a pact with the devil. There is a strict condition to her pact: she will give birth to twin girls, one kind and normal, the other deformed and tied to the devil, and must raise both with love until their 10th birthday. When the twins, Kumala and Sumala, are born, Soeddijam is horrified by Sumala’s deformities, and immediately murders her and discards of her body. As Kumala reaches her 10th birthday, the broken terms of the pact manifest, and the vengeful spirit of Sumala possesses the vulnerable Kumala. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum Where to watch: Prime Video and Shudder Sceptics may think twice about what they do or don’t believe after watching Jung Bum-shik’s terrifying Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum. The supernatural found footage flick follows Ha-joon, the owner of the popular horror web series Horror Times, who recruits a six-member crew to explore the real-life, notoriously abandoned Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital. The crew aims to hit one million live viewers by breaking into the facility and attempting to open the mysterious, sealed-off Room 402, filming the entire adventure as they go. However, once the team moves deeper into the abandoned hospital, they start to encounter increasingly sinister phenomena. The House with Laughing Windows Where to watch: Arrow Player Pupi Avati is an icon in Italian cinema, with many considering his 1976 folk tale The House with Laughing Windows his best work. The film follows Stefano (Lino Capolicchio), a young art restorer who travels to a secluded village in the Valli di Comacchio area of Italy. He has been hired to restore a graphic and disturbing church fresco, and soon after arriving, begins a romance with a local schoolteacher, Francesca (Francesca Marciano). The longer he stays in the village, the more he finds himself surrounded by an atmosphere of deep paranoia and hostility, receiving strange phone calls warning him to leave town, and discovering a tape recorder in the attic with the voice of the fresco’s painter discussing his terrible crimes. MOM: Mothers Of Monsters Where to watch: Prime Video Much of parenting is a nightmare – from hazy newborn days to toddlers acting like terrors and moody teenagers – but this film is truly stomach-turning and focuses on a situation that will surely haunt any parents watching. M.O.M.: Mothers of Monsters, on Prime Video, is the debut film from long-standing TV showrunner Tucia Lyman and features a very real horror at the centre of its plot. A mother suspects her teenage son is plotting a school shooting, and she is forced to take matters into her own hands when the authorities in place to prevent tragedy do not heed the warning signs. She installs a system of spy cameras in their home, capturing a series of disturbing videos that seem to confirm her worst fears, leading her to find an online community of other ‘mothers of monsters’. Poughkeepsie Tapes Where to watch: Prime Video and Tubi The Poughkeepsie Tapes, a mockumentary released in 2007, proved so realistic that many viewers believed it to be real. The film tells the story of a mysterious and brutal serial killer operating in Poughkeepsie, New York. In 2001, police in Poughkeepsie, New York, raid an abandoned home and discover 10 bodies buried in the backyard alongside a massive cache of more than 800 videotapes. The tapes chronicle the crimes of an elusive serial killer who comes to be known as the Water Street Butcher. The story of his brutal murders is told through a series of faux interviews with law enforcement and people connected to the case, as well as the haunting titular tapes captured by the murderer. This article was originally published on October 28 2024. Arrow MORE: Eerie baby doll among disturbing sewer discoveries dredged up before Halloween Arrow MORE: Top Boy star Jasmine Jobson reveals Jaq faces ‘complete change’ in Netflix sequel series Arrow MORE: The best horror video games of 2026 to play this Halloween Switched On Get plugged into the week’s must-watch shows, unmissable moments, and expert reviews with Metro TV Editor Sabrina Barr.