The 15 Best Movies to Watch on Halloween

Most Halloween movie lists make the same mistake. They rank the best horror films ever made, put a pumpkin on top and call it a Halloween list, as if the only question that matters is which film is objectively better.

The Shining is probably a stronger film than Ghost Ship. That does not mean anyone wants to watch The Shining at nine in the evening while friends are arriving dressed as vampires and somebody is still looking for the bottle opener. A brilliant new psychological horror can have almost no Halloween atmosphere at all, and a slightly ridiculous early-2000s movie with a 14% critics score can be exactly what October 31 needs.

So instead of one big list, we split it into three top fives, each for a different kind of Halloween night: the classics that actually feel like October 31, the new horror that is getting seriously interesting, and the 2000s films we kind of miss, bad CGI included. We argued about these inside the TGK team for a while, so treat this as our editorial pick, not a formula or an IMDb leaderboard.

Quick Answer

If you only pick one, make it Halloween (1978) for a classic night, Trick 'r Treat if you want a film that takes place entirely on Halloween, or Hokum if you want something new with witches in it. The Ring is the scariest film in this guide and Hocus Pocus the least scary, and Resident Evil is the only pick you cannot stream yet, because it is still in cinemas.

How to read each pick

Every film gets an award, a Halloween Vibe score and a Scare Level, both out of five, plus its runtime, the moment of the night it suits best and where to stream it in the US, checked on 24 October 2026. The two scores are our own calls, not IMDb's.

Halloween Vibe is how much a film feels like October 31. A 5 means costumes, pumpkins, witches or masks are right there on screen, a 3 means proper horror atmosphere without the Halloween imagery, and a 1 means it could be set in any week of the year. Scare Level is how frightening it is. A 1 is fine for anybody, a 3 means real tension and a few jumps, and a 5 means it might follow you to bed. Rotten Tomatoes critic scores are there for context and decided nothing.

The Halloween Classics

These are the films that turned Halloween into a look. This ranking is about how each one became part of the tradition, what it still looks like on screen and how well it has aged, not about which screenplay is best.

1. Halloween (1978)

Award: The Definitive Halloween Classic · Halloween Vibe 5/5 · Scare Level 3/5 · 91 min · Best watched: as the main event · Watch: Shudder, AMC+, free with ads on Plex · Rotten Tomatoes 97%

Michael Myers escapes from a psychiatric hospital and goes back to Haddonfield, where he starts stalking a group of teenagers on Halloween night, with Jamie Lee Curtis as the babysitter who has no idea what is coming and Donald Pleasence as the psychiatrist trying to stop him.

Recommending Halloween on Halloween is almost embarrassingly obvious, but the film is the reason so many of the night's images exist. John Carpenter made it on a tiny budget, and the famous white mask was a cheap Captain Kirk mask painted white, which is very 1978 and somehow made it even creepier. The quiet suburban streets, the piano theme Carpenter wrote himself and the patience of the camera became the template every slasher after it copied. It has aged in one obvious way: if you grew up on modern jump scares, the first hour feels slow. That slowness is the point, and nearly fifty years later people still turn up at parties in that mask.

2. Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Award: Best Gothic Halloween Atmosphere · Halloween Vibe 5/5 · Scare Level 2/5 · 105 min · Best watched: early in the evening · Watch: Paramount+ · Rotten Tomatoes 71%

Johnny Depp plays Ichabod Crane, a New York constable sent to a small village to investigate a string of beheadings the locals blame on the Headless Horseman, with Christina Ricci and Miranda Richardson alongside him.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been a Halloween story since Washington Irving published it in 1820, and Tim Burton's version is the one that made it look the way people now picture it. If someone asked us to describe Halloween without showing a single pumpkin, we would probably just put this on: fog, twisted trees, a village that seems to be rotting in the cold, autumn colours drained almost to grey and a headless rider on a black horse. Because so much of it was built as real sets, it has aged better than plenty of fantasy films made twenty years later. It is not very scary, which is why it works so well before the darker films.

3. Scream (1996)

Award: Best Halloween Slasher With Friends · Halloween Vibe 4/5 · Scare Level 3/5 · 111 min · Best watched: with friends · Watch: Hulu, Paramount+ · Rotten Tomatoes 78%

A masked killer starts picking off teenagers in the small town of Woodsboro, and the twist is that the characters have all seen horror movies and know exactly how this is supposed to go. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette lead it, and Kevin Williamson wrote it.

Scream is not actually set on Halloween, which is the only reason its vibe score is not a 5. Ghostface became one of the masks you see at every Halloween party anyway, and the film understands horror well enough to make fun of it while still working as a proper slasher, which is why that opening scene still lands on people who know it is coming. Seen today, the landlines and huge mobile phones are part of the fun. The self-aware jokes feel familiar now, but only because so many films copied them from this one.

4. Hocus Pocus (1993)

Award: Best Halloween Warm-Up · Halloween Vibe 5/5 · Scare Level 1/5 · 96 min · Best watched: while everyone arrives · Watch: Disney+ · Rotten Tomatoes 42%

A teenager accidentally brings three witches back to life in Salem on Halloween night, and Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy spend the rest of the film causing chaos.

Hocus Pocus is a family fantasy comedy rather than a horror film, and critics were never fans. It found its audience later through years of October TV reruns, which is exactly how it turned into a yearly ritual for so many people. Nobody said Halloween has to start with somebody getting murdered. This is the film for when people are still arriving, someone is making drinks and half the room is still getting into costume, and nothing else on this page does that job as well.

5. Friday the 13th (1980)

Award: Best Old-School Slasher Night · Halloween Vibe 2/5 · Scare Level 3/5 · 95 min · Best watched: on a slasher night · Watch: Netflix, Paramount+ · Rotten Tomatoes 49%

A group of counsellors try to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp with a tragic past, and start getting killed one by one.

We will be honest about this one. A summer camp in the woods has very little to do with October, and its vibe score says so. We thought about swapping it for Beetlejuice, which looks far more like Halloween, but every Halloween night needs one straight slasher that is not a comedy, and Friday the 13th is the old-school version of that night: cheap, isolated, full of practical effects and with a low-budget feel modern productions never manage to fake. It has not aged perfectly, and some of that roughness is what makes it fun now. Just know that the hockey-masked Jason everyone pictures does not show up here. The mask only arrives in Friday the 13th Part III, in 1982.

Also worth watching

• Beetlejuice (1988): Best Halloween Look Without the Scares. Burton again, with Michael Keaton as the worst possible ghost to hire. It is pure Halloween visually and barely scary at all. HBO Max.

• The Shining (1980): Best Psychological Descent. Probably the strongest film of anything on this page, but its atmosphere is snowbound cabin fever, not Halloween. HBO Max, until October 31.

• The Exorcist (1973): Best Possession Horror. A landmark, and a much heavier night than anything in the top five. HBO Max, until October 31.

• The Silence of the Lambs (1991): Best Psychological Thriller. A TGK favourite, but closer to crime horror than festive viewing. MGM+.

Modern Horror: New Nightmares

This ranking sticks to 2025 and 2026, and it is about something different: what these filmmakers are doing that horror was not doing ten years ago, and how each film gets under your skin. Three of these films are also on our best horror movies of 2026, but that list ranks them as films. This one ranks them for Halloween night, which is why the order is different.

1. Hokum (2026)

Award: Best Modern Supernatural Horror · Halloween Vibe 4/5 · Scare Level 4/5 · 107 min · Best watched: as the main event · Watch: Hulu · Rotten Tomatoes 90%

Adam Scott plays a reclusive novelist who travels to a remote hotel in rural Ireland to scatter his parents' ashes and becomes fixated on a local legend about a witch said to haunt the honeymoon suite.

It takes first place here because it is the only new film on this list with a witch, a haunted room and old folklore, which is about as close to Halloween as modern horror gets. Damian McCarthy, who made Caveat and Oddity, does not chase you with jump scares. He builds dread out of damp corridors, objects in the wrong place and locals who clearly know more than they say, and the grief underneath it is what makes it heavier than a regular ghost story. Adam Scott seems to be everywhere lately, and horror suits him better than you would expect. Personally, I still associate him with Parks and Recreation, which makes watching him come apart in something this dark even more interesting.

2. Backrooms (2026)

Award: Best Liminal-Space Nightmare · Halloween Vibe 3/5 · Scare Level 4/5 · 110 min · Best watched: late in the evening, lights off · Watch: HBO Max · Rotten Tomatoes 86%

A furniture-store owner and his therapist find a way through the store's basement into an endless network of empty rooms, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve in the leads.

This is horror that could only come from the internet. Kane Parsons started it as a YouTube series and was 20 when he directed the film, and it finds fear in places that look familiar and feel completely wrong: yellow wallpaper, buzzing lights and rooms that keep going. There is barely a monster for long stretches, and it does not need one. I think it fits Halloween better than Obsession in pure atmosphere, because sometimes an empty room with the wrong lighting is scarier than anything with teeth.

3. Obsession (2026)

Award: Best Twisted Modern Horror · Halloween Vibe 3/5 · Scare Level 4/5 · 108 min · Best watched: with people who can handle cringe · Watch: Peacock, moving to Netflix on November 17 · Rotten Tomatoes 93%

A music-store clerk uses a novelty wish-granting toy called the One Wish Willow to make his friend Nikki fall in love with him, and getting exactly what he wished for turns into a nightmare.

Obsession is number one on our best horror movies of 2026 and still is, but as a Halloween film it sits third, because the horror comes from a relationship rather than from anything spooky. Curry Barker comes from comedy, and you can feel it in how the film uses awkwardness as a weapon, letting a scene go on just past the point where you want to look away. It has become a Halloween thing on its own anyway. Nikki is one of the popular costumes of 2026, Universal sells an official version that comes with a One Wish Willow prop, and she roams the park at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights. We will not spoil what the wish does.

4. Weapons (2025)

Award: Best Unsettling Mystery · Halloween Vibe 2/5 · Scare Level 4/5 · 128 min · Best watched: after midnight · Watch: HBO Max, Prime Video · Rotten Tomatoes 93%

Seventeen children from the same school class run out of their homes at exactly 2:17 in the morning and disappear, and the whole town is left looking for answers, with Julia Garner and Josh Brolin among the people trying to work out what happened.

What makes it new is the structure. Zach Cregger tells the story in chapters from different characters' points of view, so every section changes what you think you know, and the fear comes from not understanding what you are looking at until very late. I really liked Weapons, but I am still not completely convinced it is a Halloween movie. It works better after midnight, when everyone has stopped laughing and is ready to pay attention, and given the plot, the right time to start it is probably somewhere around 2:17 a.m.

5. Resident Evil (2026)

Award: Best Survival Horror Experience · Halloween Vibe 2/5 · Scare Level 3/5 · 94 min · Best watched: in a cinema · Watch: in cinemas only, not streaming yet · Rotten Tomatoes 96%

A medical courier has to fight his way through one very long night in Raccoon City as an outbreak turns everything around him into a nightmare.

Check your local cinema before you plan around this one, because as of 24 October you cannot stream or rent it anywhere. I finally watched it, and it has a very strong start and runs a bit out of steam towards the end, but Cregger gets the most important thing right, because it feels the way playing the games felt. He skips the lore and the legacy characters, so you do not need to have played anything, leans on practical effects for the infected, and Austin Abrams makes the courier a funny, awkward lead who gets real laughs. It is survival horror and action, so do not expect the slow dread of Hokum or Weapons.

For me, though, Resident Evil still means Milla Jovovich and the original 2002 film. She is practically inseparable from the name, even if critics only gave that one 36%.

Modern alternatives

• Buddy (2026): Best Twisted Childhood Nightmare. Kids get trapped inside a 1990s-style children's TV show and have to escape its sinister unicorn host, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key. Casper Kelly directs Cristin Milioti, Topher Grace and Patton Oswalt. Rent or buy.

• Bring Her Back (2025): Best Deeply Disturbing Horror. The Philippou brothers' film about two step-siblings and a deeply wrong foster mother is the pick if you care more about emotional intensity than seasonal atmosphere. HBO Max, and number four on our horror list.

• Send Help (2026): Best Survival Horror-Comedy. The premise is interesting, but we have real reservations about the effects, the character decisions and a few unintentionally ridiculous moments. It was the one film we would skip in our best movies of 2026. Hulu.

The 2000s Horror Club

Low-rise jeans, nu-metal soundtracks, VHS tapes on their way out, flip phones and CGI that looked amazing for about eighteen months. This club is pure nostalgia, and we are not going to pretend every film in it is a masterpiece. Some were very commercial, some got bad reviews and some have scenes that look ridiculous today, but the casting, the music, the mix of practical and early digital effects and the completely irrational character decisions have a charm that polished modern horror often lacks.

1. Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Award: Best Halloween Night in a Movie · Halloween Vibe 5/5 · Scare Level 3/5 · 82 min · Best watched: as the main event · Watch: HBO Max, until October 31 · Rotten Tomatoes 84%

Four linked stories play out on Halloween night in a small Ohio town, tied together by Sam, a tiny trick-or-treater in a burlap sack mask who punishes anyone who breaks the rules of Halloween. Anna Paquin and Brian Cox are in it.

This is the most Halloween-specific movie across all three rankings, with pumpkins, costumes, trick-or-treating, monsters and black comedy all packed into one night. Even its release story is very 2000s. Warner Bros. pulled it from its 2007 cinema date and it ended up going straight to DVD in October 2009, back when a horror film could still find its cult on a supermarket shelf. A little weird, sometimes funny and sometimes ridiculous, it is very much a product of its era, and that is part of its personality rather than a problem. It leaves HBO Max after Halloween, so this is the year to watch it.

2. Jennifer's Body (2009)

Award: Best 2000s Horror Aesthetic · Halloween Vibe 3/5 · Scare Level 2/5 · 102 min · Best watched: on a nostalgia night · Watch: Hulu, Starz, Criterion Channel · Rotten Tomatoes 47%

Megan Fox plays a popular high-school girl who becomes possessed and starts killing, and Amanda Seyfried is the best friend watching it happen.

It is far from the scariest film here, and that is not why it made the list. This is 2009 in one film: Megan Fox at the peak of her post-Transformers fame, a script by Diablo Cody right after Juno, a Panic! at the Disco single on the soundtrack and dialogue that sounds exactly like the internet did that year. Critics and audiences both shrugged when it came out, and it has since become a cult favourite.

3. Final Destination (2000)

Award: Best Ridiculous Death-Trap Classic · Halloween Vibe 2/5 · Scare Level 3/5 · 98 min · Best watched: with friends · Watch: HBO Max · Rotten Tomatoes 50%

A teenager has a premonition that Flight 180 will explode just after take-off, gets himself and a few classmates off the plane before it does, and then death starts coming back for the survivors one by one. Devon Sawa and Ali Larter lead it.

Obviously these are commercial horror movies, and the reviews were never great. But come on, the concept is iconic. The killer is not a person but a chain of tiny everyday accidents, and the death scenes are so elaborate they are half horror and half Rube Goldberg machine. It is also gloriously 2000: Devon Sawa a few years after Casper, John Denver songs as a warning sign that something is about to go wrong, and characters making choices that are hard to defend. For a whole generation, the franchise changed how people looked at ordinary situations.

4. The Ring (2002)

Award: Best Childhood Nightmare · Halloween Vibe 3/5 · Scare Level 5/5 · 115 min · Best watched: late at night · Watch: Netflix, Paramount+ · Rotten Tomatoes 72%

Naomi Watts plays a journalist investigating a cursed videotape that supposedly kills anyone who watches it seven days later.

The scariest film in this whole guide, and the most 2002 idea imaginable: a horror film that only works because everyone still owned a VCR. I genuinely remember being terrified of this movie as a child, and not a little frightened, properly terrified. The Ring and The Grudge were the films that stayed with you long after the TV was turned off, which is a strange thing for a movie about a TV to manage. Gore Verbinski, who directed it, is also behind Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, one of our best movies of 2026.

5. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Award: Best Horror-Comedy Warm-Up · Halloween Vibe 3/5 · Scare Level 1/5 · 99 min · Best watched: to start the night · Watch: Peacock and AMC+, both until October 31 · Rotten Tomatoes 92%

Simon Pegg plays a London electronics salesman whose life is going nowhere, and a zombie outbreak mostly gets in the way of his plan to sort everything out at the pub. Nick Frost is his best friend and Edgar Wright directs.

It is one of our favourite films for starting the evening, very British, very funny and full of the kind of everyday details that make it feel like a real life interrupted by zombies. It is also a perfect 2000s time capsule, right down to the scene with the pool cues and Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. Most of its Halloween value is the mood it puts a room in, which is why it opens our movie night lineup below.

2000s alternatives

• Ghost Ship (2002): Best Guilty-Pleasure Horror. I am not going to pretend it is a great horror movie, and its 14% critics score agrees. Sometimes you want something atmospheric, a little ridiculous and very 2002, and the opening scene is one people still bring up more than twenty years later. AMC+, or rent it.

• The Grudge (2004): Best Supernatural Nightmare. The obvious double bill with The Ring, about a curse that spreads to anyone who walks into one Tokyo house. Free with ads on The CW app.

And no, The Cabin in the Woods is not here. It has the same audience but came out in 2012, which puts it in the wrong decade for this club.

The TGK Halloween Night Lineup

If you want us to plan the whole night, here is how we would run it.

Around 7 p.m., while people arrive: Shaun of the Dead. It is funny, easy to follow while people are still talking and getting drinks, and it gets the room into the mood without scaring anyone off. If there are kids around, swap it for Hocus Pocus.

Around 9 p.m., the main event: Trick 'r Treat or Halloween. This is the part of the night that should feel like Halloween, so pick whichever you have not seen in the longest time. Trick 'r Treat is the shorter one at 82 minutes, and Halloween is the one that started it all.

After midnight: The Ring. By now everyone has stopped laughing, the lights are off and you want something that properly scares people. If your group is still going at two in the morning, Weapons is the alternative, and you know what time to press play.

Shaun of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat and The Ring add up to just under five hours, which leaves time for food and arguments in between. Halloween does not have to be about finding the highest-rated horror film ever made. It is about picking the right one for the night you are having.

FAQ

What is the scariest movie in this guide?

The Ring is the only film we gave a 5/5 Scare Level. Hokum, Backrooms, Obsession and Weapons all get a 4/5.

Can I stream Resident Evil (2026) yet?

No. As of 24 October 2026, Resident Evil is only showing in cinemas in the US and is not available to stream or rent.

What is a good Halloween movie for people who do not like horror?

Hocus Pocus on Disney+ and Beetlejuice on HBO Max both have the full Halloween look with almost no scares.