5 great horror films to watch this Halloween

Charlotte Whyatt • 27 Oct 2020 Features

Celebrate the spooky season with these seriously scary titles.

Many people are planning to have Halloween at home this year and there's no better way to spend your evening than to scare yourself silly by watching a horror film. Here's our pick of some of the best.

Midsommar (2019) - Currently streaming on Amazon Prime

The follow up to 2018’s Hereditary is a surreal, gory nightmare that also contains that type of horribly raw grief director Ari Aster is so good at capturing. Led by an excellent performance from Florence Pugh, it sees four American students swept up in a creepy Swedish cult. 

With the cult’s increasingly unsettling behaviour plus lots of psychedelic drugs, a lack of sleep and the perpetual daytime, Midsommar is incredibly effective at creating a sense of isolation and the feeling that you’re starting to lose your  grip on reality. 

Halloween (2018) - Currently streaming on Netflix

A direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic rather than Rob Zombie semi-successful remakes from the late noughties, Halloween brings back scream queen and all round horror legend Jamie Lee Curtis for another face off with Michael Myers. 

Curtis is excellent as this older, hardened version of Laurie who has been preparing her whole life for Michael’s return. Their final confrontation is genuinely thrilling with director David Gordon Green using some clever camerawork to subvert shots from the original. 

Hush (2016) - Currently streaming on Netflix

Before he developed the acclaimed The Haunting of Hill House, its creator Mike Flanagan also directed this smart and suspenseful slasher which sees deaf/mute horror author Maddie (Kate Siegel, who also co-wrote the film) battling against a creepy masked intruder while living alone in the woods.

It's a nice twist on a premise that's been done before and keeps things interesting by allowing Flanagan to create some incredibly tense and inventive set pieces. In the vein of You’re Next, Maddie is also a very likeable, resourceful lead who you actually want to see succeed.

Kill List (2011) - Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime

Ben Wheatley’s second project is a dark and terrifyingly brilliant mash-up of different genres with a truly unforgettable climax. It’s a film that you should know as little about as possible other than its basic premise, former soldiers Jay (Neil Maskell) and Gal (Micheal Smiley) take up contract killing to pay the bills. 

Again it’s superb at constructing a horribly sinister atmosphere, from the creeping feeling that the shadowy client they’re working for is guiding them toward something terrible to Jay’s spiteful, vicious arguments with his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring).

Apostle (2018) - Currently streaming on Netflix 

Apostle follows a troubled former priest Thomas (Dan Stevens) as he heads to a remote island off the Welsh coast to rescue his sister Jennifer (Elen Rhys) from an evil cult led by the fanatical Prophet Malcolm (a delightfully unhinged Micheal Sheen). 

What begins like a Wickerman ripoff soon evolves into a violent, fantastically original film that’s great at slowly building a sense of dread. In contrast to the latter’s beautiful Summerisle, this unnamed place is filthy and grey helping to add that feeling of isolation and madness.