10 Recent Horror Films to Watch for Halloween 2024

It’s the Halloween season, which means it’s time to break out the horror movies! The classics are sure to grace your television this year. The original Beetlejuice might warrant a rewatch, with the sequel out earlier this fall. Some slashers could be thrown into the mix, like Friday the 13th, Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. You might even toss on some kid-friendly fare in The Nightmare Before Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, before the sun sets.

While the classics might never get old, it’s always a good idea to freshen up your playlist with newer horror movies. But where to start? Here are some newer horror films to consider, most of them from 2023 and 2024, and where to watch them this Halloween.

Cole Sprouse as the Creature and Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows in Lisa Frankenstein. Michele K. Short/© 2024 Focus Features LLC

Lisa Frankenstein

How to Watch: Streaming on Prime Video and available on Blu-ray

The Frankenstein story gets an ’80s makeover in this absurd teen romance from director Zelda Williams and screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno). The unfortunate Lisa is drawn to a recently resurrected Victorian man’s corpse, and an unorthodox bond forms between them as she gains more confidence while chopping up new body parts for her undead boyfriend. It’s a wonderfully weird horror film that isn’t afraid to go to some surreal sexual places.

Full review: “Lisa Frankenstein Is a Jolt of Fun” by Joe Praska

Totally Killer

How to Watch: Streaming on Prime Video and available on Blu-ray

For those who like some sci-fi silliness in their horror, Totally Killer is a mixture of retro slashers and Back to the Future. The key to stopping the Sweet 16 Killer involves the teenager Jamie traveling back to 1987 and preventing her town’s dark history of murders. The film is a charming mixture of questioning 1980s cultural standards, slasher movie logic, and time travel paradoxes.

No One Will Save You

How to Watch: Streaming on Hulu

If you like horror films with more fright than dialogue, try No One Will Save You, a sci-fi horror picture that favors visual horror without speaking a word. In a small town, the lonely Brynn finds herself hiding in fear from the aliens with psychic powers that are invading her town. As her backstory is slowly revealed, she tries to outsmart and kill the aliens, which are trying to abduct her and infect her with a parasite. The film takes some wild routes and has a weirdly chilling ending that involves the nature of embracing trauma.

Thanksgiving

How to Watch: Streaming on Netflix and available on Blu-ray

Why should Christmas get to bleed into Halloween? Where’s the love for Thanksgiving, with its grim history of colonialism and amped-up consumerism? In the tradition of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving gives this holiday its slasher picture, based on that faux trailer he made for 2007’s Grindhouse. While he uses Thanksgiving’s iconography and traditions, plenty of vicious gore is spun in this slasher mystery, sure to satisfy the appetites of horror fans who like their slashers extra gruesome.

Full review: “This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful for Eli Roth” by K. R. Curses

In a Violent Nature, an official selection of the Midnight program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Sundance Institute

In a Violent Nature

How to Watch: Streaming on Shudder and available on Blu-ray

If you’ve seen all the classic slasher films and want something a little different, look no further than In a Violent Nature. The entire film is told from the perspective of a masked killer stalking his victims in the woods, bound by a tragic backstory and cursed with the ability never to die. That concept alone could make a decent slasher film, but showcasing every silent trek through the woods and the eavesdropping before the killing starts creates a unique tension. The film also has one of the goriest moments you’ll see in any movie this year. The horror fans who have seen it all need to see this one.

Infested

How to Watch: Streaming on Shudder

Anyone who doesn’t like finding spiders in their home will absolutely hate Infested. But you won’t be disappointed if you’re willing to indulge this French creature film about murderous spiders taking over an apartment complex. The intense dose of arachnid-based horror explores the fears of trying to kill a giant spider in the bathroom or fleeing from a horde of them in the dark. There’s some solid commentary on gentrification amid the terror, but the spider-centric kills are the real draw of this film, making Infested the ultimate spider horror movie.

V/H/S/85

How to Watch: Streaming on Shudder and available on Blu-ray

The V/H/S anthology horror films have grown on me over the years to the point they’ve become my favorite ongoing series of found-footage horror. V/H/S/85 is one of my latest favorites, featuring stories about science experiments gone awry, water that revives the dead, demons encountered by Mexican broadcasters, murderous cults, and psychic premonitions of death. Some of these stories overlap cleverly and make great use of playing into the 1985 setting.

Abigail

How to Watch: Streaming on Peacock and available on Blu-ray

A group of misfits are hired to kidnap a little girl. Little do they know they’ve been lured into a dangerous house where they’ll be picked off one by one in the most shocking, brutal, and comical deaths. To keep this film surprising, I’ll avoid the major twist that turns this picture into a wild dose of biting horror. Take my word on this: Don’t look up anything about Abigail, and go in as cold as you can. You won’t regret it once the twist is revealed.

Alisha Weir as Abigail in Abigail. Universal Pictures

Malignant

How to Watch: Streaming on Peacock and Max and available on Blu-ray

Like Abigail, Malignant involves a shocking twist reveal that I won’t spoil here. But what starts as a supernatural horror investigation quickly turns into an action horror film as a bizarre revelation blows the lid off the film, transforming it from a good horror film into an over-the-top ride of a mind-bending horror film. If you dig films like Darkman, consider Malignant for a double feature.

Barbarian

How to Watch: Streaming on Hulu, Disney+, and Prime Video

On the surface, Barbarian may seem like a typical monster-in-the-basement type of horror story. The truth is it’s a wildly subversive film that tinkers with the genre and our preconceptions of it. The second you think you have it pegged for a particular type of movie, something odd happens in the wild tonal shifts that creates a much different mood. This dark and twisty film comes from the playful mind of director Zach Cregger (The Whitest Kids U’ Know), and he manages to find the perfect ways to keep this type of horror unpredictable and fascinating.

What will you be watching?