The best horror movies and Halloween specials to watch in 2022

Is there anything better than the Halloween season?

Sure, here at Polygon We cover horror Throughout the year. We have updated listings for best horror movies You can watch at home and The best horror movies on Netflix Which is updated every month of the year.

But even for year-round horror fans, Halloween is a special time of the year.

for the past two YearsPolygon has put together a Halloween countdown calendar, making a Halloween-themed movie or TV show available to watch at home every October. We’re happy to bring it back again, with 31 scary picks to keep you in the mood all month long.

Every day throughout October, we’ll add a new recommendation to this countdown and tell you where to watch it. So lie on the couch, dim the lights, and grab some popcorn for a spooky and entertaining batch of Halloween surprises.

October 1: Audition (1999)

in the test, the 1999 Takashi Miki psychological horror film Love is a harmonic fantasy. Years after losing his wife to a terminal illness, he urges his widowed son Shigaharu Oyama to go back into the world and look for someone. Aoyama accepts a proposal from his friend, a film producer, to take part in an audition for a film that does not exist in order to find a potential bride from the candidates. His search eventually leads him to Asami Yamazaki, a beautiful former ballerina with a mysterious past.

As Aoyama approaches his new love interest, he finds himself caught deeper and deeper in a web of intrigue that threatens to tear him apart emotionally, psychologically and yes – even physically. There is something dark within Asami, yes, but there is darkness lurking within Aoyama as well, arguably even darker. The only difference is that Asami embraced that darkness and made it her own.

Miike holds his papers relatively close to his chest for most of his runtime, unraveling a deeply wound puzzle like puncture wire before peeling his skin from a gentle rendezvous stunt to reveal a pulsating mass of horrors lurking beneath. The film descends into a horrific fugue of assumptions, misdirections, and cinematic hoaxes, with dreams that seem almost real versus a deeply terrifying reality. In the end, these are just words. Only pain can be trusted. – Toussaint Egan

the test Available to stream on Arrow Video and Hi-Yah!, Free with ads on Tubi, and Free on Kanopy with a library card. It is also available for digital rental or purchase voodoo And the apple.

October 2: Vanishing (1988)

Image: Standards group

It’s not a horror movie per se, yet Stanley Kubrick said it vanishing It was the scariest movie he had ever seen. This Dutch thriller from 1988—often referred to by its original title Spoorloos, not to be confused with a lousy 1993 American remake of the same director, George Sloiser—plays great, like the case of a simple missing person. Rex and Saskia are a young couple making their way through France. They are taking a break at a service station when Saskia suddenly and completely disappears.

At first, the horror of the situation lies in its banality: the feeling that it can happen to anyone at any time. Sluizer emphasizes this with the photorealistic realism of his location photography. Then, barely more than 20 minutes later, the audience mistook it with a sudden turn: We follow Raymond, a satisfied French family man who appears to be training an abduction. It seems that the mystery of what happened to Saskia has already been solved. What’s Next?

The way the film—based on Tim Crabbe’s novelist The Golden Egg—very quickly transcends the expected structure of a mystery thriller that should drain tension, but actually builds an almost philosophical angst. As Raymond, played by Bernard-Pierre Donadio, plays with chilling brightness, guiding us into the “how” of his crime, the “why” becomes a disturbing and disturbing question. We skip three years forward and find Rex obsessed with figuring out what happened to his lost love. When an answer is given, we totally share his hunger for it, and follow him to what may be the most clearly horrific end of any movie ever. This is a minimal masterpiece of existential dread. –Olly Welch

vanishing Available to broadcast on the Standard channel, or for digital rental or purchase on apple And the Amazon.