Remember a few years back, when Netflix and Chills brought us tons of new original horror content in October? Netflix and Chills brought us The Haunting of Hill House, The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, Malevolent, The Haunting of Bly Manor…all genuinely good films/series.
While Netflix still give us some strong films and series during the spooky season, and the Netflix and Chills collection still exists, they definitely do not create as much of it themselves. It probably doesn’t help that their contract with Mike Flanagan ended.
I perused the upcoming Netflix Original additions for October, and only found three that I felt truly fit in for us folks who love horror and/or Halloween content, so let’s talk about each one.
October 3:
Monster: The Ed Gein story hits Netflix with the third season of Ryan Murphy’s Monster series. While I personally found Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story to be chilling and compelling, I just couldn’t get invested in season two’s Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. I watched it in its entirety, but I thought the unfounded incest storyline was just icky and unnecessary, and the Menedez brothers’ characterizations just made me dislike them.
Was Jeffrey Dahmer likeable? Absolutely not, but he was interesting in that he admitted to the murders he committed, and was actually relieved that he was captured so he could not kill again.
It remains to be seen what the Ed Gein storyline will be like, but given the nature of his crimes and MO, I’m intrigued, and will definitely be tuning in.
October 7:
True Haunting is brought to us from Producer James Wan, who is at least partly responsible for such iconic recent horror as Saw, Malignant, The Conjuring, Insidious and M3GAN. From the information available at this time, it looks like three episodes are dedicated to one supposedly true supernatural story, and two episodes are devoted to another.
According to Netflix, the synopsis is as follows: “Acclaimed master of horror James Wan brings his chilling cinematic vision to real supernatural stories.”
The first three episodes are titled Eerie Hall, and the remaining two are titled This House Murdered Me.
October 8:
Is it Cake? Halloween is a lighter-hearted Halloween series that should appeal to those who enjoy the Halloween shows on Food Network (as do I). Is it Cake? is a Neflix series, so this is just a holiday version.
The premise of Is it Cake? is simple: Talented bakers are tasked with creating cakes modelled after real objects, and must make those creations as ultra-realistic as possible. Judges are then presented with five of these objects, with one being the cake. If the judges can pick out the cake, the contestant is disqualified.
Obviously, in the Halloween version of Is it Cake?, the cake creations will be modelled after items associated with our favorite spooky holiday.
The four episode series is hosted by Mikey Day.
Stay tuned for an upcoming article that will focus on the best movies and series included in Netflix’s Netflix and Chills collection.