Watching scary movies at home is a noble tradition around Halloween. But the sheer number of options can be daunting and—let us be frank—so very many of them suck. Below, find a list of relatively below-the-radar scary movies that do interesting things with the genre, selected for variety and mood. All are available online, one way or another, and the website Decider.com is a good place to find what is streaming where.
My personal favorite in the sophisticated-scary realm, this 2008 Swedish film is a vampire story, ultimately, but it’s truly unlike anything else in the genre. Set in suburban Stockholm, the story follows a 12-year-old child who’s been 12 for about 200 years. The film’s mix of Gothic horror and early adolescent angst will make your heart race and ache at the same time. (The English-language remake, Let Me In, is pretty good, too.)
One of the most visually delicious scary movies ever made, this baroque 2006 fantasy is what director Guillermo del Toro made his bones (heh) with. The story is set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and concerns a young girl’s encounter with profoundly creepy mythological creatures. Del Toro’s visual fever dream was inspired by classic weird fiction, Catholic iconography, and his own experiences with lucid dreaming.
Director Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou is less a horror film than an exquisitely rendered blend of family drama, magical realism, and scary movie. A young Jurnee Smollett (who also stars in Lovecraft Country—watch it!) plays a 10-year-old with psychic “second sight” powers in 1960s Louisiana. If you notice a lot of little kids in these scary movies, that’s on purpose, and Eve’s Bayou is more artful than most in making the connection that growing up is scary as hell.
Those in the market for something on the goofier side will want to consider the horror-comedy-romance Warm Bodies. Nicholas Hoult stars as a sad-sack zombie several years into an undead apocalypse. He’s not too zombified, which helps explain his romance with Julie (Teresa Palmer), a human survivor. The twist is that Hoult’s zombie has eaten the head of Julie’s ex, giving him access to memories of love. The tone is reminiscent of funny-scary classics like An American Werewolf in London, plus you get an extended cameo from John Malkovich.
Gothic and moody, The Awakening is a good choice for those who prefer the calm spookiness of haunted mansions on the moors. Rebecca Hall plays a paranormal investigator who visits a 1920s English boarding school menaced by the ghost of a dead boy. The story has the twistiness of a murder mystery and the handsomeness of a period prestige picture.
On the space-horror tip, Lawrence Fishburne and Sam Neill headline this ambitious 1997 sci-fi film, which involves a derelict and possibly sentient spacecraft recently returned from, well, hell. The film pulls from Russian science fiction and classic haunted house films like The Shining to deliver some intriguing riffs on traditional cosmic horror themes. Heads up, though: it’s pretty gory.
Speaking of The Shining, that film is, in my embarrassingly considered opinion, the single best scary movie ever made. Everyone has seen it, though, so here’s an option for the serious nerds: Room 237 is a documentary on the film’s weird and enduring resonance in the culture. Director Rodney Ascher specializes in fringe theories and theorists, and here we get a parade of interpretations on the film, including Native American genocide, fake moon landings, the Holocaust, Greek myths, and a half dozen other hypotheses. Our current trouble with conspiracy theories lends the film a different kind of scariness.
A quick list of other recommendations, if you’re still in a pinch:
Near Dark, Under the Skin, The House of the Devil, Monsters, Get Out, The Conjuring, Mama, Stoker, and The Witch.
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