It is absolutely never too early to start getting in the Halloween spirit. Pumpkin spice has officially arrived, there’s a pumpkin patch on every corner, and the debate over whether candy corn is actually good is raging once again. And while this year’s Halloween is sure to be a bit different, the #1 way to get in the spooky spirit is still with a good movie, whether it’s a seasonal classic, a new horror gem, or a family favorite that just screams fall vibes.
At the moment, Netflix doesn’t have much in the way of actual Halloween-themed movies (hopefully some more will pop up as October approaches.) But no worries, the streaming service still has plenty of horror-tinged films from spooky to terrifying, and we’ve narrowed down the list to the best, scariest, and downright fun movies in the bunch. So grab the candy corn (if that’s your thing), fire up some apple cider, and settle in for the best Halloween movies on Netflix right now.
Editor’s Note: This post was last updated on October 29th to include Nightbooks, Labyrinth and Hell Fest.
Nightbooks
Director: David Yarovesky
Writers: Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis
Cast: Winslow Fegley, Krysten Ritter, Lidya Jewett
Somewhere between spooky and downright scary, Nightbooks is a wonderful new entry in the “gateway horror” canon that’s delightful for (not too young) kids and adults alike. The Sam Raimi-produced YA adventure stars Krysten Ritter as a glamorous but very wicked witch who traps children to do her bidding. Following two kids (played by Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett) attempting to escape her grasp, Nightbooks builds a fantastical world of magic and monsters that steers clear of gruesome gore while still delivering plenty of ooey-goeey scares. It’s one of the best Netflix originals of the year and the perfect pick for folks looking for something new to add to their Halloween watchlist. – Haleigh Foutch
Labyrinth
Director: Jim Henson
Writer: Terry Jones
Cast: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Brian Henson, Ron Mueck
Labyrinth isn’t scary, heck it’s not even spooky all that often, but if your favorite part of Halloween is the pageantry, oh baby, does Labyrinth have pageantry. And with stunning work from the Jim Henson Company, it also has all kinds of curious creatures, exquisite world-building, and the fantastical sense of otherworldly oddity we all love about the holiday that celebrates the thinning of the veil. Oh, and David Bowie rocked the socks off a whole dang generation as the Goblin King. Jennifer Connelly stars as Sarah, a teenage girl who has to journey through a magical maze after her baby brother is taken by the Goblin King, encountering all kinds of curious creatures, surreal settings, and ultimately, a magical masquerade. It might not be an outright “Halloween movie,” but it’s got all the right spirit where it counts, and a soundtrack full of classics that make a regular appearance on plenty of seasonal playlists. – Haleigh Foutch
Watch Labyrinth on Netflix
Hell Fest
Director: Gregory Plotkin
Writers: Seth M. Sherwood, Blair Butler, Akela Cooper
Cast: Amy Forsyth, Reign Edwards, Bex Taylor-Klaus, and Tony Todd
If you’re looking for more of a straight-up slasher with all the Halloween trappings, Hell Fest is a solid recent addition to the Halloween watchlist that you might have missed. Set in a horror theme park during Halloween season, Hell Fest follows a group of teens stalked by a masked killer as they make their way through the spooky mazes. While the filmmaking veers towards familiar by-the-books slasher beats, the setting itself is fun and energetic enough to keep things chugging along and at a tight 89 minutes, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome. Bonus: It has horror legend Tony Todd living it up as the theme park’s creator. It’s an underseen seasonal treat with a clever concept and fantastic setting that hits all the right beats, even if the rhythm ultimately feels a bit too familiar. – Haleigh Foutch
Watch Hell Fest on Netflix
ParaNorman
Directors: Sam Fell and Chris Butler
Writer: Chris Butler
Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Casey Affleck, Anna Kendrick, John Goodman, Alex Borstein, Leslie Man, Jeff Garlin, Elaine Stritch, and Tucker Albrizzi
Here’s a perfect Halloween movie that both kids and adults will appreciate. The stop-motion animated film ParaNorman hails from LAIKA, the same studio behind movies like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, and it revolves around a young kid named Norman who has the ability to see and speak with the dead. This ability comes in handy when his small Massachusetts town is overrun by terrifying ghosts, and his friends and family rely on him to try and reason with them. The story draws heavily from iconic 80s movies like The Goonies and E.T. but never feels derivative, and it sets the mood for that Spooky Season spirit with a lot of references to the Salem Witch Trials and such. But what really sets ParaNorman apart is that it goes to surprising places, carrying with it an emotional message about bullying and anger, and the complexity of emotions that kids can sometimes feel. – Adam Chitwood
Watch ParaNorman on Netflix
Hubie Halloween
Director: Steven Brill
Writers: Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler
Cast: Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, Kevin James, Ray Liotta, Shaquille O’Neal, Maya Rudolph, Steve Buscemi, and Noah Schapp
Okay so Hubie Halloween may not be “high art,” but if you’re looking for a silly comedy with all the Halloween trappings, this might be a good pick for you. The Adam Sandler film follows a deli employee in Salem, Massachusetts who fancies himself a “Halloween Monitor” on Halloween. The role becomes much more serious when news arrives about an escaped convict. This movie is silly and frankly not great, but it’s a valid choice if you’re looking to watch something that’s very Halloween-themed. – Adam Chitwood
Watch Hubie Halloween Netflix
Crimson Peak
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, and Charlie Hunnam
Everyone loves a great ghost story, and nobody tells a ghost story like filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. The director’s underrated 2015 film Crimson Peak is less a horror movie than a gothic romance, but there are scares and terorrs to be sure. Set in 1901, the story follows an aspiring author (Mia Wasikowska) who meets a dashing English gentleman (Tom Hiddleston) and falls in love. The two quickly marry, and she moves to a remote part of England to live in an aging estate with her new husband and his icy sister (Jessica Chastain). The estate ends up being full of ghosts, and frightful twists abound as our young protagonist finds herself in over her head. This is the perfect Halloween movie for folks who love Gothic stories with a capital “G.” – Adam Chitwood
Watch Crimson Peak on Netflix
Monster House
Director: Gil Kenan
Writers: Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, and Pamela Pettier
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Jason Lee, and Catherine O’Hara
The 2006 CG-animated film Monster House is a solid pick if you’re looking for a haunted house story that’s appropriate for kids. As the title suggests, the story takes place in a neighborhood where one sentient house terrorizes its residents on Halloween. It’s up to the kids in the neighborhood to prove the house is evil, and to try and stop its reign of terror. – Adam Chitwood
Watch Monster House on Netflix
The Fear Street Trilogy
Director: Leigh Janiak
Writers: Leigh Janiack and Phil Graziadei (Part One), Zak Olkewicz (Part Two), Phil Graziadei and Leigh Janiak and Kate Trefry (Part Three)
Cast: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Sadie Sink, and more
For the ultimate Halloween movie marathon, you can’t go wrong with the Fear Street trilogy. These three movies were released this past summer, and offer up a buffet of slasher and horror movie goodness, tracking one story across three different timelines. It begins with Fear Street: 1994, where teens in the town of Shadyside are chased by unkillable slashers who they believe are tied to a curse on the town. Fear Street: 1978 is a full-on summer camp slasher as more is revealed about the curse and town’s backstory, and the final installment Fear Street: 1666 tells the full origin story of the Shadyside witch. All three movies are a blast. – Adam Chitwood
Watch Fear Street on Netflix
The Conjuring
Director: James Wan
Writers: Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, and Lili Taylor
If you just want to watch something that’s going to scare the heck out of you, watch The Conjuring. The film that spawned a franchise opened in 2013 to blockbuster box office, as audiences flocked to this tale of horror. Inspired by true events, the film finds paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) coming to the assistance of the Perron family at their Rhode Island farmhouse in 1971. The scares in this one are terrifying, and while sequels and spinoffs have furthered the mythology, nothing touches the original in terms of pure nightmare fuel. – Adam Chitwood
Watch The Conjuring on Netflix
The Ritual
Director: David Bruckner
Writer: Joe Barton
Cast: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton
It’s been a long wait for David Bruckner’s first feature film, but fortunately, it was worth it. The filmmaker behind standout segments in Signal and V/H/S made his feature debut this year with The Ritual, a Netflix original that digs into the well of shame and regret to mine piercing, distinctly adult terrors. Oh, and there’s a great monster too. The Ritual follows four friends into the woods, where they venture out mourn the death of a dear friend, but once they’re there, a spindly, scarcely seen creature haunts them every step of the way. Bruckner takes his time building the terror, offering brief glimpses at their monstrous stalker and using the natural camouflage of the forest to his advantage in staging his scares, and between the chilling looks at the creature, he takes his time fleshing out the trauma shared by these old friends and the conflicts that would threaten to tear them apart even if they weren’t being hunted by a supernatural force. The end result is a mature, understated horror movie that slowly settles in under your skin with plenty of spooky folklore vibes that feel right at home in the Halloween season. — Haleigh Foutch
Watch The Ritual on Netflix
I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House doesn’t have much in the way of story, but what it lacks in narrative, it makes up in atmospheric chills and slow-burn dread. That said, if you like your horror with propulsive action, move right along to the next entry because this one’s definitely a slow burn. The payoff is the sensation that you’re watching some immersive, slippery nightmare unfold on screen.
Writer-director Oz Perkins never gets flashy or too-clever with his tale. Instead, he sets a simple table with elegance. Told in dulcet, almost whispered voiceovers by Ruth Wilson’s hospice nurse, Lily, the film makes two things clear from the start — ghosts are real, and Lily is about to become one of them. As always, Wilson is enchanting on screen and her terror is always convincing. Pensive and patient, the movie is more about mortality than ghosts (though it’s got one or two chilling visual gags up its sleeve), and the unavoidable fact that death waits, unrelenting, for us all. — Haleigh Foutch
Watch on Netflix Here
A Ghost Story
Director/Writer: David Lowery
Cast: Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara
If you want to add an existential crisis to your Halloween funtimes, then A Ghost Story is for you! This 2017 drama finds Casey Affleck playing a man who dies but then comes back to haunt his wife (Rooney Mara) and her house. There are no big special effects, it’s simply Affleck wearing a white sheet and moping around. But the construction of the film, and the incredible score, drive home the largess of existence and the sorrow of loss. This one’s certainly unique. – Adam Chitwood
Watch on Netflix Here
The Babysitter
Director: McG
Writer: Brian Duffield
Cast: Samara Weaving, Bella Thorne, Judah Lewis, Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, Emily Alyn Lind, Andrew Bachelor, Leslie Bibb, Ken Marino
This action-packed horror comedy sets a perfect Halloween mood for folks who might be looking for a little blood-soaked thrill without giving themselves nightmares. Based on a killer script from Brian Duffield, The Babysitter stars Samara Weaving in an absurdly stunning, star-promising performance as the titular babysitter, who’s hiding some deviously dark secrets from the boy she sits for. Indulging in a bit of a rebellious streak one night, the kid doesn’t take the shot she gives him and stays awake long enough to walk right into a Satanic ritual, setting off an insane, combustive series of events that pit him against a bunch of beautiful and ambitious young adults who are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want. Robbie Amell , in particular, has deliciously unhinged charisma, but in general, the whole movie is crackling with personality and crowd-pleasing surprises. — Haleigh Foutch
Watch on Netflix Here