At the cinema two films with completely different moods have just hit the screens: It Ends and Ice Cream Man, while the horror continues in a cinecomic variant with Clayface, the Italian take on the genre of The Stranger, and in the more carefree, family-friendly fare of Shaun, the Sheep: Farmageddon (or “Shaun the Sheep: Life of a Sheep” in some markets). Many of you will also have glimpsed Carrie, Mike Flanagan’s series that reinterprets Stephen King’s iconic novel and its earlier adaptations, and those among you who were savvy enough to subscribe to the best streaming platform of all—together with MUBI—namely Apple TV, I hope you’ve seen Widow’s Bay; and if not, run to catch it.
But beyond these standout titles, platforms often boast catalogs so vast and algorithms so silly that they tend to push the same things over and over, even for fans who have already gone to the cinema and who want to keep celebrating Halloween under the banner of horror. And so, as last year, we went rummaging through the darkest corners of these catalogs to identify for you 6 films that you may not have seen yet and that we are fairly confident will send shivers down your spine and give your All Hallows’ Eve evening the thrill you’re after.
6 films to watch on Halloween 2026
- Autopsy
- Cuckoo
- Deathwatch
- Get Away
- Mockingbird
- Psycho Killer
Autopsy
Let’s be frank: what better place to celebrate Halloween than a morgue? Even more so if it’s a small, family-run mortuary, and even more if outside it’s night and a thunderstorm rages, isolating you completely from the outside world. If, on the autopsy table, there’s the body of a young woman who shows no external signs of trauma or violence, yet conceals mysteries and surprises inside, well, we’ve got the cherry on top. All this unfolds in Autopsy, the first, terrifying American film by Norwegian director André Øvrelal (Øvredal) who shot it in 2016 and assembled a cast that includes the great Brian Cox and the then-emerging Emile Hirsch (a career that would later take some detours). The corpse is portrayed by Olwen Kelly: both when she is motionless and when… well, you’ll see. You can stream it on Prime Video.
Cuckoo
Cuckoo is one of those films that uses horror, but in a strange way. It’s the sophomore effort of German director , and it follows Gretchen (the American actress and model Hunter Schafer), a 17-year-old who, after her mother’s death, goes to join her father and his new family in the German Alps. There, the father and his new wife are planning a new wing for a resort that seems to fuse the vibe of the Great Northern Hotel from Twin Peaks with the dancing academy from Suspiria. Once there, Gretchen discovers that what looks like a dreamlike tourist spot hides something dark. The cast also features Dan Stevens, and the film is available on Netflix.
Deathwatch
Now a leap back in time, because this film is from 2002 and is set in 1917, right in the trenches of the First World War, on the Western Front. The story of Deathwatch, directed by M. J. Bassett, centers on a small group of English soldiers who, after a bloody skirmish, lose their bearings in the fog and find refuge in an abandoned German trench. They soon realize that something strange has occurred there, someone is meeting a grim fate, and the men begin to suspect they are not alone. The cast is notable for its then-relatively unknown young actors, including Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, and Matthew Rhys. Deathwatch is available to stream on Prime Video.
Get Away
Revived by works like The Witch and Midsommar, folk horror is a subgenre that many devotees adore, yet remains somewhat underexplored. A relatively recent addition to streaming on Netflix is a film that has slipped under many people’s radar, and that interprets folk horror through a partly parodic, humorous lens (taking cues from certain routines of Edgar Wright—and it’s no accident that the lead is Nick Frost, long-time sparring partner of Simon Pegg in Wright’s films), while also leaning into pure splatter. It’s titled Get Away, and it tells the story of a British family who decide to spend a vacation on a remote island in Sweden. On that island, however, a disturbing local tradition centers on a masked serial killer and bizarre pagan rites.
Mockingbird
Bryan Bertino never quite achieved “a household name” status in contemporary horror, despite delivering films that are tight, thought-provoking, and terrifying—works that range from The Strangers to the recent Vicious. Among his projects, perhaps the least known is his second feature, titled Mockingbird – Live from Hell, directed in 2014 with Jason Blum as producer. It is a truly original found footage film in which three people (a husband, a college student, and an unemployed guy) receive a box containing a camera and a note with precise instructions: if they stop filming or fail to carry out the tasks, they will die. Once again, the streaming home is Amazon: Prime Video.
Psycho Killer
We close these Halloween recommendations for 2026 with the latest entry in the mix, and recently added to Disney+: Psycho Killer. It’s a film that applies the rules of horror to a serial killer thriller, telling the story of a young female police officer who tracks the serial killer nicknamed the “Satanic Slasher” who murdered her husband, who was also a police officer. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, the brains behind Seven, the movie marks Gavin Polone’s first feature directing job. Do note: while many American critics blasted the film, a number of defenders rose to praise it fiercely. And you, what will you think?
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