Netflix: Five best bets to stream for Halloween (including a hidden gem)

Netflix has a pretty hefty horror roster year-round, but they really beef up their content in October. Some of their Netflix and Chills additions from prior years have become repeat Halloween watches for me (I’m looking at you, The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, even though Netflix tragically cancelled you after only one fabulous season).

My short list of recommendations consists of mostly newer content, but I did include one older film that I feel is underappreciated. These are listed in alphabetical order, so I am in no way ranking them…they are just horror projects that I personally enjoyed.

All of Us Are Dead – This Korean zombie series is not only bloody and fast-paced, it has plenty of heart to go along with the horror. When a badly botched science experiment leads to the dreaded zombie apocalypse, a group of students are stuck inside their high school, fighting to survive.

Mixed in with the typical teen angst are some pretty intense battle scenes, budding relationships and emotional storylines. Also, there is a nice plot device involving infected people becoming half-zombies, so that’s a little different. All in all, it’s an enjoyable 12-episode series, and if you can’t handle subtitles, it is dubbed in English.

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story – True crime fans are no doubt very familiar with the story of Dahmer, who tortured, killed and cannibalized at least 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991. But, Evan Peters (American Horror Story) brings Dahmer up close and personal in his portrayal, which is so dead-on, it’s often hard to watch.

A Ryan Murphy series, Dahmer not only goes into sometimes squirm-inducing detail about the killer’s fascination with entrails and methods of subduing and killing his victims, it also shines a spotlight on law enforcement’s consistent bungling of the case. There were multiple occasions that dead bodies and other evidence were literally right under their noses, yet Dahmer continued killing for years.

Malevolent – For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this chilling 2018 horror film doesn’t get more attention. It even stars Florence Pugh, who most horror fans know from Midsommar!

A brother and sister, along with a small team of “paranormal investigators” have been running a fake business, taking advantage of people who believe their house is haunted, or want to contact loved ones who have passed. Angela (Pugh) has been posing as a medium, but hasn’t told her brother she has started actually having real experiences. She wants to get out of the business, but Jackson talks her into doing one more case.

When elderly Mrs. Green asks them to come to her house and stop a group of girls’ ghosts from screaming, things get pretty terrifying. There’s a great, very well-played twist in the story, and it gets surprisingly horrifying.

The Midnight Club – You simply can’t go wrong with a Mike Flanagan series on Netflix. The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass are now joined by The Midnight Club, which is based on Christopher Pike’s novel of the same name.

A group of teens at a hospice facility meet each night at midnight to exchange scary stories, while also promising that whichever of them dies first will make every effort to communicate with the others from beyond the grave.

In typical Flanagan fashion, the hospice is creepy and full of dark corners and mysterious figures. It’s an engrossing story with rich character development…and I recently read that it set a record for the most jump scares in a single scene. That happens in the very first episode, by the way.

The Movies That Made Us – In its third season, this Netflix series chose to focus mainly on horror films. If you love documentaries that tell you how horror films are conceived and made, along with plenty of interesting trivia, this is the series for you.

The films included in this season are Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Friday the 13th, Robocop, Aliens and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Each is entertaining and filled with fun facts.

I also recommend any Mike Flanagan series available on Netflix, the aforementioned The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, Marianne, Black Summer, Haunted, Incident in a Ghostland, Hush and The Babysitter. Enjoy!

Do you appreciate the horror content on Netflix? Let us know which pick(s) you will be watching from our list in the comments section.