Find the dark, disturbing or attention-grabbing movie to get into the spirit of the spooky season.
Not into horror but still want to get into spirit this October? Here are 10 great movies that don’t stick to the typical horror/ thriller layout. With a wild mix of genres and tones, there’s something on this list for every occasion, and every audience. Because of its variety, this list isn’t ranked! It would be unfair to put two movies with drastically different fortes against each other – value is subjective, so feel free to rank these movies however you like! Provided is a key of various factors to suit each audience’s comfort levels and preferences to help you find the perfect film.
👁 Visually disturbing | ✴Attention grabbing | ☠ Darkness |
This serves as a warning to the viewer! It also helps determine whether you’d want to watch it alone, or with a group of friends. Freakier movies are great, but take precaution if you scare easily. Recommended strategies include comfort food, company, and keeping the lights on. | It’s important to note that this rating is only comparable to other movies on this list. A movie that ranks low in this category is a movie you might watch by yourself with no distractions, or as background noise at a party. A high ranking movie is great as the main attraction of a party or to watch solo. | This ranking is important for determining the tone you’re looking for. If you want to be truly traumatized by the end of the night, aim for the darkest on this list! If you’re looking for fun times and heebie-jeebies, try something milder on this scale. |
Coraline
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 👁 👁 • ✴✴✴✴
Coraline is a Halloween classic. An adaptation of Niel Gaiman’s original story, directed by Henry Selick, this is just too good to pass up. It follows the story of a young girl exploring her new house, and uncovering an alternate reality through a secret passage. The movie’s exaggerated, unnerving claymation style and twisted story pack a punch that separates it from other PG movies of its time.
The saturated color palette, over-the-top acting and horrific character design are all incredibly captivating, making it a great pick for a spooky movie night, or to watch solo.
Spirited Away
☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 👁 • ✴✴✴✴
With colorful characters, delicate scenery, and a rich story, Spirited Away makes a great movie to watch during any season. The child labor, greedy spirits, and threat of a girl’s parents being turned into pigs and cooked for their meat make this movie perfect for Halloween. This Ghibli-animated film takes the audience on an adventure to a bath house run by spirits. Chihiro, a frightened young girl, has to work hard to protect her parents from the greedy spirit witch, Yubaba. The mix of childlike wonder and uncanny world-building create this perfect, cozy October pick.
The Village
☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 👁 • ✴✴
M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village has to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing horror movies there is. The color coordination and wardrobe are gorgeously entangled into the fabric of the story, and the monster design is excellently unique. The story and characters are engaging, the scenery and design are stunning, and the twist ending is just what you’d expect (or rather, wouldn’t expect) from an M. Night Shyamalan production. The Village is a perfect introduction to the horror genre, gently pushing the audience out of their comfort zone, while staying relatively jumpscare free. However, the movie does pack a punch, reflecting on the darkest aspects of human society as a whole, exploring the atrocities that occur in everyday life. The film presents a unique blend of beauty and terror that can be perfectly paired with a dreary fall day.
Labyrinth
☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 • ✴✴✴
In 1986 the world was graced with the dark fantasy masterpiece that is Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. The uneasy atmosphere of the movie’s dreary color palette, and eerie puppetry (or muppetry, as it were) are combated by the goofy characters and dynamite soundtrack. Having David Bowie star as the iconic Goblin King Jareth added a whole new dimension to both the music and acting departments of the film. The movie’s sense of urgency, and sometimes off-putting character design, give it just the right amount of tension to be a contender on this list. There’s never a bad time to watch David Bowie contact juggle in the most elaborate outfit ever, with the most elaborate eyebrows ever, but Halloween is an especially good one! The odd melancholic nostalgia of an old movie, a sassy man with crazy hair, and the goblin-ification of a baby is all you need to make a good Halloween a great one.
Over the Garden Wall
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 • ✴✴✴
While technically a series, Over the Garden Wall can be watched in one sitting, and thus, can be counted the same as a movie. The entire show is Halloween and fall themed, with pumpkin people, goofy costumes, witches, curses, and more. The show manages to be lightheartedly spooky, while also including surprisingly dark themes of death, grief, murder, and the afterlife. Beyond that, the show is very surrealist in nature, often making the viewer uncomfortable just through the tone presented in each episode. The show opens with a frog playing the piano, and only gets weirder from there. There are turtle-eating witches, kleptomaniac horses, musical numbers celebrating bad food combinations, and insane dream sequences, all of which make little to no sense, even in the context of the show. Any fall evening is a perfect night to slip into Patrick McHale’s cozy, beautiful, bizarre world of Over the Garden Wall.
Wolf Walkers
☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 • ✴✴✴
Wolf Walkers paints a gorgeous story of a found family working to become whole in an unforgiving puritanical world. The stunning animation from Cartoon Saloon and the creative eye of Tom Moore, the pairing responsible for movies such as Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, return to provide another breathtaking animated masterpiece. Vibrant fall scenery, witchcraft, and lycanthropy are just a few of the things this movie has to offer. Wolf Walkers does an excellent job balancing the bases of comfort and tension to make a perfect feel-good fall film.
Sixth Sense
☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 👁 • ✴✴
Sixth Sense is exactly what you’d expect from M. Night Shyamalan’s most famous movie. A dark, gritty atmosphere, a twist ending, incredible acting- it has it all! Bruce Willis stars as the movie’s central protagonist, a counselor trying to help a young boy with a debilitating anxiety disorder. It quickly moves from a movie about a psychiatrist working with a disturbed child, to a murder mystery. It’s a frightening twist on the kid detective trope that packs a punch with its existential themes of death and purpose. Despite all that, it’s an oddly heartwarming story of finding acceptance through grief. This multi-dimensional semi-horror movie is a chilling watch, perfect for the haunted month of October.
When the Wind Blows
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 👁 • ✴
Despite its adorable children’s book illustration style, When the Wind Blows is by far the darkest movie on this list. Jimmy Murakami’s animated film is based on a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs that shares its name, which follows the Bloggs, an elderly British couple preparing for a nuclear attack. Despite the urgency and hopelessness expected from someone in their situation, the Bloggs live in blissful ignorance, unwise to the nature of modern weaponry. The cheeriness that the characters present throughout the movie is part of what makes it so incredibly unnerving. The subversive use of tone, subject matter, and color make this movie a surreal and terrifying experience that’s hard to get out of your head.
Wizard of Oz
☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ • 👁 • ✴
While this might seem like an odd pick, The Wizard of Oz is pretty horrific when viewed through the right lens. The underlying terror isn’t as apparent in the story itself, but rather, production behind it. Both L. Frank Braums’s original work and MGM’s film adaptation are filled with wonder and nostalgia, but the history behind the scenes is filled with asbestos, aluminum poisoning and multiple people being set on fire. On its own, The Wizard of Oz is a great fit for autumn, with its Halloween inspired costume design, and cozy atmosphere. With a bit of research, it can be an excellently disturbing relic of the studios negligence regarding chemical poisoning and hazardous special effects. Either way, the musical classic makes a great watch as the season turns.
Velocipastor
☠ • 👁 👁 👁 👁 • ✴✴✴✴✴
Velocipastor, while over the top, is a cleverly designed parody monster movie filled with great comedy. It’s incredibly attention grabbing, guaranteed to keep people’s eyes on the screen with its over the top fight scenes and melodramatic characters. Brendan Steere made sure that each scene has something hilarious happening to engage the audience, whether it’s ninjas, explosions, or dialogue that makes the viewer do a double take. Monster movies are always a great option for October, and Velocipastor offers a hilarious, satirical approach to the genre that would make an incredible showstopper at a Halloween party.
Article by Maia Kinch
The Axe 