8 Great Scary Movies to Watch for Halloween

With Halloween just a few days away, now is the best time to get your spook on by watching some seriously creepy and scary movies.

Here are eight of our favorite movies to watch this Halloween season.

The Others (2001)

IMDB:
A woman named Grace retires with her two children to a mansion on Jersey, towards the end of the Second World War, where she’s waiting for her husband to come back from battle. The children have a disease which means they cannot be touched by direct sunlight without being hurt in some way. They will live alone there with oppressive, strange and almost religious rules until she needs to hire a group of servants for them. Their arrival will accidentally begin to break the rules with unexpected consequences.

Imagine living in your home, secluded from the rest of the world when you suddenly start to hear and see strange things. Sounds like a typical ghost story, right? The ending has a little twist that sets it apart from your typical “oh no, we have ghosts” plot-line. It moves a little slow, but honestly, I think the writer was trying to have your imagination scare you, rather than what you saw on the screen.

Scream (1996)

IMDB:
1 year after her mother’s death, Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and her friends started experiencing some strange phone calls. They later learned the calls were coming from a crazed serial killer, in a white-faced mask and a large black robe, looking for revenge. His phone calls usually consist of many questions, the main one being: Whats your favorite scary movie? Along with many scary movie trivia, ending with bloody pieces of innocent lives scattered around the small town of Woodsboro.

The movie that divulged the “rules” of a great scary movie. Scream has it all and does it without being predictable. It’s a Wes Craven movie so expect a bit of creativity covered with a smothering of blood.

28 Days Later (2002)

IMDB:
Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. The naive activists ignore the pleas of a scientist to keep the cages locked, with disastrous results. Twenty-eight days later, our protagonist, Jim, wakes up from a coma, alone, in an abandoned hospital. He begins to seek out anyone else to find London is deserted, apparently without a living soul. After finding a church, which had become inhabited by zombie-like humans intent on his demise, he runs for his life. Selena and Mark rescue him from the horde and bring him up to date on the mass carnage and horror as all of London tore itself apart. This is a tale of survival and ultimately, heroics, with nice subtext about mankind’s savage nature.

We all know what a zombie is. Slow moving and has an insatiable appetite for human flesh. But, what happens if, instead of slow moving, like my 8-year-old doing his homework, they sprint after you like Usain Bolt breaking another world record? That’s what 28 days later’s zombies are like. They’re angry, hungry and will chase down anything alive.

The Mist (2007)

IMDB:
Everyone thinks of it as a harmless lightning storm. When Dave Drayton notices a strange mist on the lake, he thinks nothing of it. When he, his son, Billy Drayton, and his neighbor Brent Norton travel to the supermarket, the unthinkable happens. On their way to the market, they see the army, firefighters, and the police heading toward the mist. When he sees this Brent mentions something about “Project Arrowhead”, a secret military project that no one knows about. As they are shopping, they see three soldiers walk in, pick up a few things, then head toward the mist. All eighty of the store’s shoppers have no clue what is going on until an old man runs in the market with a bloody nose and declares “Something in the mist!” He tells them to close the door. About five seconds after they close the door, the entire store shakes, as though it has been lifted several feet above the ground. When David is asked to check on the generator, he finds the loading dock door being pushed on by …

Inspired by the novel written by the legendary Stephen King, The Mist dives into the psychology of who would be the monster when facing the unknown, the beasts we cannot see, or us.

The Conjuring (2013)

IMDB:
In 1971, Carolyn and Roger Perron move their family into a dilapidated Rhode Island farm house and soon strange things start happening around it with escalating nightmarish terror. In desperation, Carolyn contacts the noted paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, to examine the house. What the Warrens discover is a whole area steeped in a satanic haunting that is now targeting the Perron family wherever they go. To stop this evil, the Warrens will have to call upon all their skills and spiritual strength to defeat this spectral menace at its source that threatens to destroy everyone involved.

The creepiest stories tend to be the ones based on real life events. Whether you believe in demons and ghosts or not, The Conjuring is enough to give most movie watchers the chills.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

IMDB:
Five teenagers head off for a weekend at a secluded cabin in the woods. They arrive to find they are quite isolated with no means of communicating with the outside world. When the cellar door flings itself open, they, of course, go down to investigate. They find an odd assortment of relics and curios, but when one of the women, Dana, reads from a book, she awakens a family of deadly zombie killers. However, there’s far more going on than meets the eye.

The Cabin in the Woods has all of the ingredients for a great thriller, and decide to go that extra mile and add a bit of dark humor with it. While we watch a group of young adults who get stuck in a cabin without a means of reaching the outside world, we also witness those who are behind it all in a rather humorous manner.

Event Horizon (1997)

IMDB:
In the year 2047 a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the long lost starship “Event Horizon”. The ship disappeared mysteriously 7 years before on its maiden voyage and with its return comes even more, mystery as the crew of the “Lewis and Clark” discover the real truth behind its disappearance and something even more terrifying.

What happens when you create a new type of propulsion that creates a wormhole to jump from one time and place to another? While you’re moving through that wormhole, where are you really?

Let the Right One In (2008)

IMDB:
Oskar, a bullied 12-year old, dreams of revenge. He falls in love with Eli, a peculiar girl. She can’t stand the sun or food and to come into a room she needs to be invited. Eli gives Oskar the strength to hit back but when he realizes that Eli needs to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a choice. How much can love forgive? Set in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982.

Let the Right One In takes a different approach to the typical horror flick. Instead of a sadistic person going on a rampage, instead, it’s a small girl that, by appearance, looks harmless. Soon you discover she’s not so defenseless after all. What do you do?