Last Updated on 31 October 2025
Through the month of October 2025, I’m watching one scary movie every night. My criteria for selecting the movies is that they are free to stream on at least one free platform and that they have a decent IMDb rating. (Some are only free until October 31.) For each movie, I’m giving a letter grade for how scary they are and for my overall impressions and enjoyment, along with a few comments.
Below is the list and schedule, with links to free streaming. I invite you to join me and comment below.
| Date | Movie | Streaming Platform | IMDb Rating | Scariness Grade | Overall Grade | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1 | 28 Days Later (2002) | Pluto | 7.5 | C | B+ | Fast zombies are always scarier. Classic story of surviving an apocalypse, but also has plenty of light-hearted moments to balance. Interesting use of music, mostly choral or similar. The scariness was more from the idea of getting infected than from getting chased by zombies, and then from the survivors and what they would do survive. |
| Oct 2 | Hell House LLC (2015) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 6.4 | B | B | It’s a found-footage movie that combines interviews from a documentary crew with photos and videos from a haunted house tragedy that happened 5 years earlier. As usual for this kind of movie, the creepiness/scariness builds over the course of the movie. There are two sequels to this movie. |
| Oct 3 | The Craft (1996) | Tubi | 6.5 | D | B | While IMDb used terms like “folk horror” and “teen horror,” it wasn’t a particularly scary movie. More like a high school drama movie with a witch theme. Fun story, though, and may have been one of the earlier movies to popularize so much witch terminology. It was interesting to see these actresses early in their careers. |
| Oct 4 | The Ring (2002) | Tubi, Pluto | 7.1 | A | A- | Lots of great scary goosebumpy moments! Good use of reflections and background movements to create scares. The threat of imminent death always makes a movie scarier. The movie wasn’t perpetually scary, because the mystery being solved helped break it up. Oh, and I always enjoy it when horror movies take something normal like a phone ringing and turn it into something scary. |
| Oct 5 | The Changeling (1980) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 7.1 | C+ | A | After experiencing tragic personal losses, a music professor moves to Seattle and ends up renting a gigantic historical house that’s haunted. The use of creepy music made me keep looking in the background for some subtle thing, but apparently it was just to set the mood. Not super scary, but creepy, ghostly, and a very good haunting-based mystery. |
| Oct 6 | Bone Tomahawk (2015) | Tubi, Pluto | 7.1 | B- | A+ | The first half of the movie was basically a decent western movie. I did really enjoy their vocabulary! 😁 It didn’t get scary until the last 40 minutes, when the main people reached the troglodytes. So many familiar faces, too, including Matthew Fox, David Arquette, Sid Haig, & Sean Young. Made me want to watch Lost again. |
| Oct 7 | Suspiria (1977) | Tubi, Roku | 7.3 | B | C+ | Written, directed, and music composed by Dario Argento (and Goblin). This movie is legendary and I’ve never seen it. It has a 7.3 rating on IMDb, with over 114k people voting! Interesting use of colored lighting. Weird, creepy movie about dancing, mystery, and witches, with many implausible moments that made me roll my eyes and say “Really!” Still, I’m glad to have seen it. |
| Oct 8 | Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 6.9 | D | B | Two residents of a nursing home, an old Elvis and an old African-American who claims to be President John F. Kennedy, have to fight an evil southern-style Egyptian mummy. Bruce Campbell was hilarious and perfect! The movie was mostly humorous, but the mummy parts were a little scary. The music helped. |
| Oct 9 | An American Werewolf in London (1981) | Tubi, Roku | 7.5 | B | B+ | A couple American college students get attacked by a werewolf while on a walking tour of Britain. One dies and one begins to change after a few weeks. The real effects (this was before computers) of him physically becoming a werewolf, especially the face, are legendary. Overall, a decent movie with some scary moments. |
| Oct 10 | Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) | Tubi | 8.2 | B+ | A+ | Great movie, great music, great story. Set in Spain in 1944, after their Civil War is over, but rebels are still fighting in the mountains. It’s a dark, creepy, sometimes scary, sometimes violent movie, but tells a great story. The only official version is in Spanish with English subitles. Director Guillermo del Toro intentionally kept the film in Spanish to preserve its authenticity, emotional tone, and cultural context, as the story is deeply rooted in Spanish history and setting. |
| Oct 11 | Night of the Living Dead (1968) | Tubi | 7.8 | A | A | The classic movie that launched the modern zombie craze and set our stereotypes and sense of what zombies are. The music definitely added to the unsettling and creepy vibe. The pursuit by zombies started very early in the movie, which was a nice change, rather than building the back story and only encountering the “monsters” in the last half hour. That kept the tension high for most of the movie. Pretty graphic for 1968, too. Typical roles for this kind of movie, including the helpless girl, the selfish & stubborn man, the young guy, and the leader. The ending was pretty iconic/ironic, too. |
| Oct 12 | Let the Right One In (2008) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 7.8 | D | A+ | This is the original Swedish version with English subtitles. A boy who is getting bullied meets a girl who just moved in next door. Eventually he learns that she is a vampire. “She’s been 12 years old for 200 years.” Great movie. More of a poignant pre-teen romance story than a scary vampire movie. But I still recommend it. |
| Oct 13 | The Frighteners (1996) | Tubi | 7.1 | B- | A- | A Peter Jackson movie (with Danny Elfman music) about a man who can communicate with the dead and uses the ghosts to con people. The ghosts are all characters, almost making it a comedy, until the guy sees the evil spirit responsible for so many people in town dying. Then he has to try to stop it, despite the psycho FBI guy. That’s where the movie turns from a ghost-comedy to more of a horror story with people trying to escape death (literally). |
| Oct 14 | The Wailing (2016) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 7.4 | A | B+ | This is a Korean movie with English subtitles. When you have to watch closely to get all the words, you end up paying closer attention to the movie and catch more of the subtle scary things. It’s not quite a zombie movie, not really a vampire movie, but there’s a sickness and a kind of possession involved. There’s a definite spiritual element to the story and the tension is pretty strong for most of the long movie (2:36). Really unique — I’ve never seen a movie quite like this before. |
| Oct 15 | Sleepy Hollow (1999) | Pluto | 7.3 | B | A | A really good movie from Tim Burton and Danny Elfman with an impressive cast (Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Christopher Walken, Christopher Lee, Casper Van Dien, Ian McDiarmid, Jeffrey Jones, and Richard Griffiths). It’s a modern-day retelling of the famous story by Washington Irving with some adaptations, testing science against the unknown. |
| Oct 16 | Donnie Darko (2001) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 8.0 | D+ | B | This was a weird and dark movie. Quite a few familiar faces, but the story was odd and more psychological than scary. The time travel element didn’t go where I thought it might, and the ending leaves you to puzzle out the story as a whole and try to put all the pieces together. Michael Andrews’ score and the songs chosen for the soundtrack were relevant and helped set the mood, hinting at the meaning behind the events. |
| Oct 17 | The Wicker Man (1973) | Tubi | 7.5 | D | C | Set on an island off the coast of Scotland. This one is more of a mystery than a horror movie. The bulk of the movie is a Puritan police officer searching for a missing girl and determined to bring the pagan residents of the island to “justice.” It’s more about the intolerance and arrogance of some Christians who insist they are correct and no other beliefs can be valid. The reveal at the end explains the entire rest of the movie. |
| Oct 18 | The Burrowers (2008) | Tubi | 5.7 | B | B+ | Another western horror movie. Clancy Brown, William Mapother, and Doug Hutchison were also in Lost. 🙂 A family of settlers was taken and the rescue party doesn’t know that it was by creatures that live underground. |
| Oct 19 | Brain Dead (1990) | Tubi, Roku | 5.9 | C- | B- | Not a traditional horror movie, this one is really psychological. The main character is a brain scientist and after experimenting on a live person, he begins going mad and hallucinating. It leaves you (and the main character) wondering what is real and what is imagined. Was he a doctor? A patient? Something else? |
| Oct 20 | The Babadook (2014) | Tubi, Pluto | 6.8 | A | A- | A widowed mother and her 6-year-old “out of control” son find a disturbing book called “Mister Babadook” in their house. The boy already has a preoccupation with a monster, but after they read the book, they start seeing and hearing signs of the Babadook. The boy apparently sees it, but then they both start seeing/hearing things that get more and more scary. I’ve heard that the monster could be a metaphor for the mother’s grief or mental illness. |
| Oct 21 | Scream (1996) | Pluto | 7.4 | A- | A- | So many familiar faces in this movie! After Wes Craven had directed 7 Nightmare on Elm Street movies, he started the Scream movies, where people became afraid to answer the phone. This is one of the few slasher movies on my list. Stereotypical plot and the killer is never the person you think it is. |
| Oct 22 | The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) | Tubi | 8.0 | C | B | This is the oldest movie on my list, over 100 years old! So, of course, it’s a silent film. The music they put over it was very repetitive, but that was added later, of course. A hypnotist uses a somnambulist to commit murders from his carnival sideshow. It was probably pretty scary for its time. It is widely regarded as a revolutionary film that helped define the horror genre and established the artistic potential of cinema. Critic Roger Ebert called it arguably “the first true horror film.” The film’s significance lies in its groundbreaking use of German Expressionism, characterized by distorted sets, exaggerated lighting, and surreal visuals that created a nightmarish atmosphere, making it a landmark in visual storytelling. |
| Oct 23 | Pet Sematary (1989) | Pluto | 6.5 | C+ | C+ | Based on the book by Stephen King, who also wrote the screenplay. A grieving father discovers an ancient burial ground behind his home with the power to raise the dead. He buries his cat there after it’s killed by truck, and it comes back, but it’s different and “bad.” Then tragedy strikes and his young son is killed by a truck. So, of course, you know what he has to do, even though it’s wrong. |
| Oct 24 | Fright Night (1985) | Tubi | 7.0 | B- | B | A high schooler believes that his new neighbor is a vampire. Nobody believes him, so he calls on an actor from a hosted TV horror show (Roddy McDowall) to help him, even though he doesn’t really believe either. The vampire is played by the same actor that was Prince Humperdinck in Princess Bride. |
| Oct 25 | Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 7.0 | C+ | A+ | A French creature feature overdubbed into English, set in France in the 1760s. Very interesting European cinematography, with various closeups (like rain in a puddle or eyes blinking or slow-motion birds flying) mixed in with the bigger picture. A chevalier and his Native American friend are investigating numerous attacks by a wolflike creature. When they actually got to fighting the creature and its keepers, it was pretty impressive. Not really scary, but a great creature movie. Another long movie, too (2hrs, 22min). |
| Oct 26 | Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) | Tubi, Roku | 7.4 | C | B | Some say that this 1979 Werner Herzog version is even better than the original 1922 Nosferatu. It’s also pretty close to the book. Klaus Kinski certainly is a super-creepy Dracula. I don’t know if the movie is that scary or more creepy, but it’s the full story of Dracula buying a house in the west. Herzog chose to restore the original names of Dracula, Harker, Van Helsing, etc. |
| Oct 27 | Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 7.5 | D+ | A+ | One of my all-time favorite movies! It’s a switcheroo — a common horror trope is a group of college students going to a cabin for spring break and then start getting killed, but in this one, the main characters are a couple hillbilly guys, super nice, who buy a cabin to use as a vacation home, but then these college kids show up and start dying accidentally. |
| Oct 28 | The Masque of the Red Death (1964) | Tubi, Pluto | 6.9 | C- | B | A sadistic prince (Vincent Price) uses his castle as a luxurious safe haven amid a “Red Death” plague and finds his festivities terrorized by the arrival of a mysterious stranger. Much is made of using the metaphor of the battle between Satan and Christianity, but it’s really about the battle to survive the plague that is sure to enter the castle and pleasing the prince who has limitless power, except over the Red Death. Not super scary by today’s standards, but suspenseful and scary for the mid 1960s. |
| Oct 29 | Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) | Tubi, Pluto, Roku | 6.7 | C | B | In a small Southern town, four bigot vigilantes wrongfully execute a mentally-challenged man, but after the court sets them free, they begin to mysteriously experience deadly “accidents.” The victim was hiding in a scarecrow when they shot him, and now a scarecrow is showing up near one after the other, and then they turn up dead. It was a little scary, but since it was mostly about a spirit of the dead coming back and serving justice, that took away some of the scariness. |
| Oct 30 | The Evil Dead (1981) | Tubi, Pluto | 7.4 | B- | C | Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons. I know it’s a classic and it basically launched Bruce Campbell’s career, but I found it almost boring. Maybe it was original and scary back in the early 80’s, but now…. So much of the movie was people being stupid (like wandering deep into the woods at night in a bathrobe calling “Is someone there?”), making dumb choices, or just not reacting when they should. |
| Oct 31 | Halloween (2018) | Tubi | 6.5 | A | A | The plotlines and connections between the various Halloween movies can be confusing. This is the 11th movie in the series, but was designed to be a sequel to the original 1978 movie, only 40 years later. Michael Myers is being transported between facilities and escapes. He begins killing again, leading to a final showdown with Laurie and her family. The familiar music by John Carpenter added to the mood. |
