Editorials
10 Great Netflix Movies to Put on Your Halloween Watchlists
Netflix, like many streaming platforms this month, are rolling out the red carpet for horror with curated “Netflix & Chills” programming. While it’s packed with categories and titles that cover everything from family friendly TV specials to classic horror, it doesn’t include every horror movie available to stream in Netflix’s library.
If the overwhelming selection causes decision paralysis this Halloween season, consider this a starter pack of horror movies to add to your watchlists from charming horror-comedies to hidden Netflix gems.
28 Years Later
Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland return to the world they created in 28 Days Later. Instead of venturing down the expected path, Boyle & Garland introduce a quarantined UK largely forgotten by the outside world, with its survivors having forged new communities and simplified ways of life post-outbreak. Boyle plays with form, introducing a sensory assault through rapid cuts, a punishing soundscape, and immersive camerawork that employs a variety of techniques, including strapping cameras and iPhones to actors to evoke danger and suspense. Yet it’s the surprising third act, pivoting from intense horror to a cathartic, poignant meditation on death, along with an insane hook for the second installment that gets the new trilogy off to an intriguing start. Catch up on this 2025 release in October.
Cobweb
If you’re craving Halloween atmosphere, it doesn’t get more seasonal than the feature directorial debut of Samuel Bodin, creator of Netflix’s “Marianne.” Lizzy Caplan (“Castle Rock”) and Antony Starr (“The Boys”) star as parents whose peculiar behavior instills skepticism and paranoia in young son Peter (Woody Norman), exacerbated by a mysterious knocking on his bedroom walls. Bodin and screenwriter Chris Thomas Devlin’s R-rated horror fairy tale massively embraces its Halloween atmosphere. If you want full throttle scares, watch “Marianne.” For gateway thrills that go big on Halloween and bedtime story vibes, get cozy with Cobweb.
Dead Talents Society
Detention director John Hsu channels the mischievous supernatural spirit of Beetlejuice in this endearing horror-comedy. It follows the timid and recently deceased Rookie (Gingle Wang) as she tries to navigate life as a ghost. That means learning how to scare the pants off of people before fading away permanently in an afterlife where ghosts strive to become the spookiest urban legends and famous stars in the underworld. And competition is fierce. It’s a comedy where the characters are endearing and the jokes land, but it’s unafraid to embrace scares and blood.
Deadstream
The feature directorial debut from husband-and-wife filmmaking couple Vanessa and Joseph Winter follows a disgraced internet personality who attempts to win back his followers by livestreaming one night alone in a haunted house. It’s perfect for Halloween; YouTuber Shawn (Joseph Winters) gets decked out in holiday gear as he introduces his latest stunt as a Halloween event. Let’s just say that karma comes for Shawn in the form of mischievous and malevolent spirits. The Winters’ channel Sam Raimi in their delightfully gonzo horror-comedy full of bodily fluids, gore, and ghostly creatures.
Death Becomes Her
Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep, andGoldie Hawn starred in this satirical dark comedy that saw two women escalate their rivalry after discovering a potion that offers immortality. Of course, living forever isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be for the frenemies, as their tension leads to violence. This horror-lite comedy directed by Robert Zemeckis went toe-to-toe with Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the box office and emerged a commercial hit. It’s not hard to see why; Death Becomes Her is an infectious showcase for tremendous comedic talent and Academy Award-winning visual effects. It’s the precise combo of horror effects meets whimsical humor that hits harder this time of year.
Hellhole
At first glance, Bartosz M. Kowalski’s film appears to be a standard retread of exorcism horror, but quickly becomes apparent that it’s charting a new course. Set in 1957 Poland, Marick travels to a remote and regressive monastery that doubles as a sanitarium for women thought to be possessed by demons. While investigating a string of disappearances, Father Marick (Piotr Zurawski) stumbles into a centuries-old conspiracy of unspeakable horrors. This Polish Gothic horror movie oozes foggy atmosphere, but isn’t afraid to get gruesome. It builds to an unforgettable finale.
His House
Husband-and-wife Sudanese refugees Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) have been through more than most endure in a lifetime. They’ve fled their war-torn village, crossed the ocean, survived a degrading stint in a U.K. detention facility, and finally been granted an opportunity for housing in their new country. The home may be roomy, but they face hostility in and outside its moldy walls. Remi Weekes’s feature debut transforms the refugee experience into a petrifying horror film with expertly crafted scares. For all the existential terror Bol and Rial face in their new lives, the director also keeps a firm grip on the supernatural.
It’s What’s Inside
It’s What’s Inside. (L to R) Alycia Debnam-Carey as Nikki and Devon Terrell as Reuben in It’s What’s Inside. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
Dark secrets, resentment, and jealousy raucously bubble up to the surface in writer/director Greg Jardin’s feature debut. A pre-wedding reunion amongst former college friends begins with easy revelry as eight gather to reminisce and imbibe in mind-altering substances. Only no one knows just how mind-bending the night will become when a suitcase emerges to introduce a new party game, one that catapults the group into an identity-bending funhouse of sci-fi comedy and horror. It’s a twisty puzzle box that demands your attention to avoid missing crucial minutiae, but it rewards through saturated colors, meticulous visual plotting, and an irreverent tone. In other words, this is the perfect party movie to watch with friends.
The Ritual
Hellraiser director David Bruckner’s adaptation of Adam Nevill’s novel delivered a haunting creature feature. Beginning with a horror plot that feels like we’ve been there countless times before, in which a group of long-time friends ventures into the woods for a hiking trip, only for it to go horrifically awry, it quickly proves to be anything but ordinary. A creepy setting that invokes the eeriness of The Blair Witch Project gives way to a bleak monster movie rooted in Norse mythology. It also delivers one hell of a creature design. There’s a crisp autumnal atmosphere to this one that makes it perfect for Halloween viewing.
The Sentinel
In horror, sometimes the perfect home chooses you. For Allison Parker, a desire to strike out on her own finds her in a gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone that’s been converted into apartments. It’s a fantastic piece of real estate, but the place is packed with bizarre neighbors and strange activity. Allison soon finds herself haunted by both memories and unwanted visitors. Eventually, though, poor Allison discovers that she didn’t choose the apartment – the denizens of the building chose her. The sinister evil of the place has a specific purpose in mind for her. Religious horror collides with the haunted house in an unusual way.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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