Halloweekend may have already passed, but it’s never too late to watch a good horror movie. Since my dad has always been an avid lover of horror movies, I’ve joined him in watching them over my lifetime. I have watched plenty of good ones that I end up thinking about for days, and there are some movies that are quite laughable. Here are a few recommendations for some great scary movies to watch on each platform.
Netflix
1. The Babysitter (2017)
Now, this movie does provide some comedic relief in a handful of scenes. It’s one of the best comedy horror movies I’ve ever seen. In the movie, Cole has a pretty cool babysitter he calls Bee. One night, while his parents are away, as a typical babysitter would, Bee invites some friends over after Cole goes to bed. He ends up waking up and sees all of them in the middle of a satanic ritual. After they find out he saw what happened, all hell breaks loose in the house to keep Cole quiet while he tries to escape. Overall, it was a really good movie, and I enjoyed all of it. There’s even a sequel that just came out recently that you should watch after.
2. The Ritual (2017)
This movie was pretty creepy, and I watched it at night which made it even creepier. There’s a group of guys who are backpacking through the Scandinavian woods after the death of their friend. Not only is there tension in the group, some of them blame the friend’s death on another guy in the group. One of them ends up injuring his ankle, so they attempt to take a shortcut to the lodge they are heading to through some woods they know nothing about. They end up being followed and targeted by something they can’t see at first and have no idea what it could be. This movie was different for me; I had to pause it at times to calm myself before hitting play again. It was really freaky, and I never could have guessed what was behind the terror they were experiencing. I thought it was so great that I made my roommate watch it with me last month since she hadn’t seen it.
3. The Darkness (2016)
This movie, for some unknown reason, is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. I watched it once before. Then, when it got put on Netflix over the summer, I watched it about three times again in the next couple of days because it was just that good to me. There’s a family that takes a trip to the Grand Canyon. Before heading back home to LA, their son finds some mysterious rocks with strange markings on them and decides to bring them home with him. After returning, the son starts acting strangely. Whatever was with those rocks starts haunting the rest of the family, and they have to fight to stay alive.
Hulu
1. The Cabin In the Woods (2011)
This is a movie where it ends up being about something I never would have expected it to be. You can take all the guesses you want, but I doubt anyone will be able to figure everything out before it’s all explained to you at the end. There’s a group of friends who take a trip to a cabin in the woods for a vacation. They start being killed off one by one by different forms of evil that you would only see in the movies. The reason why is something you’d never think of.
2. Texas Chainsaw (2012)
Alexandria Daddario is one of my favorite actresses, so maybe I’m biased when I say this a good movie. Daddario plays a young woman named Heather who inherits a home in Texas from a grandmother she’s never heard of. She’s given a package when her and her friends first arrive at the home from her grandmother’s lawyer that she doesn’t open, which would have been very helpful to her from the beginning. Her family, the Sawyers, are known to the town as murderers. Decades ago, the family’s home was burned down since they were blamed for the town’s many disappearances. Now, Heather has no idea what came along with the house she inherited.
3. Friend Request (2016)
This movie was one that I thought was going to be one that I laughed at just by looking at the cover, but I actually ended up having to watch some of the movie behind my hands, which was surprising since I’m not easily spooked. Laura, who just like us is a college student, receives a friend request from a not-so-popular girl named Marina. However, Marina starts acting a bit obsessed which results in Laura unfriending her. After Laura does so, Marina ends up taking her own life. Laura ends up having no control over her own social media posts with disturbing things being posted on her page, and people stop talking to her over time. Her friends start dying too, so Laura has two battles to fight to get her life back to normal after encountering Marina.
Amazon Prime Video
1. Hereditary (2018)
I never truly knew what was going on in this movie. It was a bit confusing but all the way disturbing for me. After that scene, I had to stop watching it and finish the movie the next day. If you’ve seen this movie already, then you know what scene I’m talking about. There is a family dealing with the loss of a grandmother. Soon, they’re dealing with a loss that hits even closer to home. They start being haunted by different family spirits and find cryptic items around the house. I did not know what to expect going into the movie, and it left me even more confused at the end. However, after reading explanations about the movie, it’s still one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever watched.
2. Midsommar (2019)
This is one of those films that is disturbing yet so fascinating that you just can’t stop watching. It starts off with a girl’s sister killing herself and their parents. While dealing with the loss of her family, the other sister, her boyfriend, and his friends visit one of the friend’s hometown for a festival that is held once every 90 years, which he is writing a thesis on. They have traditions we would consider pretty strange, and there’s just so many layers to the movie that it’s hard to explain it in a few sentences.
3. The Possession (2012)
I haven’t seen this movie in a while, but it still freaks me out whenever I think about it. A girl named Emily buys a box from a yard sale, not knowing what’s inside. Soon, her family is terrorized as she starts becoming very overprotective of the box and eventually is possessed by whatever the box contained.
Disney+
1. Halloweentown Series (1998)
All of the movies on Disney+ are classics, but for those who haven’t seen this movie, it’s about a girl and her younger siblings who follow their grandmother home to a place called Halloweentown. They soon find out that they come from a family of witches and Marnie, the oldest sibling, goes into training. Over the four movies, they battle different supernatural evils that continuously attempt to take over the world.
2. Hocus Pocus (1993)
Max, his sister, and their friend go explore an abandoned house. Allison, the friend, tells them a scary story and Max brushes it off until he ends up freeing some evil witches who lived in the house a long time before. They have to find the witches’ magic spellbook with the help of a magical cat before the witches get to it and use it to become immortal.
3. Frankenweenie (2012)
This movie tugs at my heartstrings just because I love dogs so much. Victor Frankenstein isn’t very popular at school, with his only friend being his dog, Sparky. When his dog passes away, his science teacher gives him some advice on how to bring his dog back and he successfully brings back Sparky. Soon after, his classmates end up stealing his idea and start bringing other animals back to life, some with not so good intentions.