As it is officially spooky season, this month’s TTR is stuffed full of horror movies, some good, some not so good. Allow me to assist you with your scary movie choices in the coming days to help you get your spook on! You can also check out Terror Tapes for tons of other inspiration, or DOTT’s Halloween Movie Guide for a more specific helping hand!

Without further ado, let’s get into it…

October’s TTRs consists of: Arcadian, Barbarian, The Borderlands, Don’t Move, Gonjiam, Hocus Pocus 2, I Saw the TV Glow, Longlegs, MaXXXine, Mr Crocket, Pearl, The Platform 2, Pumpkinhead, Speak No Evil (2022), Speak No Evil (2024), Stopmotion, Tarot, Terrified, Trap, and When Evil Lurks.

Director: Benjamin Brewer
Writer: Mike Nilon
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, Sadie Soverall, Samantha Coughlan, Joe Dixon

Nicolas Cage has certainly found himself becoming something of a Scream King in recent years. In Arcadian, Paul (Cage) and his two teenage boys live in a fortified house that is built to withstand attack from creatures that only come out at night. When one of his boys goes missing one night, Paul sets out to find him, and their lives begin to unravel as a result. The film does a good job of creating a dystopian world that pits friends against friends (and even has something of a Romeo and Juliet plot line), though it relies a lot on well-used tropes to create a frightful world. The performances of Cage, Martell and Jenkins as a tight-knit, if fractious, family gives it some depth, and the creature design is bizarre (apparently based on Goofy..?) but is used to creepy effect in some scenes.

Director: Zach Cregger
Writer: Zach Cregger
Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Richard Brake, Matthew Patrick Davis

Once in a while, a truly creepy horror film comes along to surprise us amongst all the pretenders. On arriving at her Airbnb in a sketchy Detroit neighborhood, Tess (Campbell) finds that another tenant, Keith (Skarsgård), has already booked the place. They decide to share the place, which is owned by actor and accused rapist AJ (Long), for the night, but upon further inspection, Tess finds that the house is hiding some awful secrets. Much like the house within, this film has lots of twists and turns, much more than meets the eye, and often isn’t what you think it is. It has plenty of highly creepy moments that build well and will have even hardened horror enthusiasts hiding behind their hands, as well as gruesome moments of fear and disgust. Not to mention, the true psychological horror of the whole thing lends a sorrowful depth to the story. Cregger has created something that is grounded in real issues and builds much of its fear off of that.

Director: Elliot Goldner
Writer: Elliot Goldner
Cast: Gordon Kennedy, Robin Hill, Aidan McArdle, Luke Neal

Found footage can be a tough technique to get right, but The Borderlands does a pretty good job of it. A group of three men, consisting of a sceptical religious brother, a tech expert and a priest, are sent to Devon in the English West Country to investigate supernatural occurrences eminating from an old church that has recently reopened, the apparent location of a “miracle”. In truth, this film could have been a three-star rating if it weren’t for the ending. It gets off to a bit of a slow start, and the casual shots of apparently empty interior and exterior locations are under-utilised, but they do work well to build the tension. There are elements of films such as The Omen and The Blair Witch Project that make it ever so creepy, and although the story itself might be a little up and down, the terrifying ending is one of the best film pay-offs ever, possibly even leaving you wanting to know more.

Directors: Brian Netto, Adam Schindler
Writers: T.J. Cimfel, David White
Cast: Kelsey Asbille, Finn Wittrock, Moray Treadwell, Daniel Francis

The title of this film is certainly suggestive, but don’t be fooled. On a visit to the place of her son’s untimely death, Iris (Kelsey Asbille) finds herself running for her life when Richard (Finn Wittrock) injects her with a substance that will paralyse her body if she doesn’t get help soon, even if that means putting others in Richard’s firing line. The premise actually sounds rather dull, but the majority of the film does better than that, albeit in fits and starts. Asbille puts in a great performance (yes, even when she’s paralysed), and although Wittrock’s performance is also good, his psychotic character is full of cliches and isn’t particularly deep or interesting as a villain.

Director: Jung Bum-shik
Writer: Jung Bum-shik, Park Sang-min
Cast: Wi Ha-joon, Oh Ah-yeon, Yoo Je-yoon, Park Ji-hyun, Lee Seung-wook, Park Sung-hoon, Mun Ye-won

Another fairly solid Korean horror, Gonjiam makes use of a setting based on a real place. After hearing about an abandoned haunted asylum, the crew of a horror web series head to the asylum to film a live stream with the hope of capturing paranormal events, but they all get a whole lot more than they bargained for. The asylum setting is used to full effect, and the scenes that take place just outside the building are also just as creepy. With clear inspiration from the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Gonjiam doesn’t present much in the way of originality story-wise, however the scares are pretty decent, particularly in the third act, and the performances are strong with clear characterisation that differentiates the characters well.

Director: Anne Fletcher
Writer: David Kirschner, Blake Harris, Jen D’Angelo
Cast: Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo, Lilia Buckingham, Sam Richardson, Doug Jones

The 1993 original film has certainly gained momentum as Millennials (mainly) who grew up watching the film have entered adulthood (some of us far into adulthood by now) and hoped for a sequel. Well, finally they got their wish. The Sanderson sisters, Winifred (Midler), Mary (Najimy) and Sarah (Parker), are back and causing more havoc than ever in their search for immortality, while two teenage girls are tasked with stopping them. It’s fun to see the sisters explore the modern world a little more and see/hear their reactions, and the actresses fall seamlessly back into their original roles. The movie is more dull where the kids are involved in comparison to the ’93 film, but between the Sandersons and the Halloween setting, there’s still a lot to enjoy in this sequel.

Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Writer: Jane Schoenbrun
Cast: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst, Emma Portner

This is one of those films that isn’t as black and white as it appears on the surface. Young teens Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) bond over their shared love of an odd young adult TV show called The Pink Opaque. As the timeline progresses through Owen’s life, Maddy comes and goes, and she explains to Owen a strange story that revolves around their lives being fully entwined with The Pink Opaque. On the surface, it is at once interesting, captivating and suitably creepy, with odd-looking characters and a particularly creepy antagonist in The Pink Opaque, but it also works wonderfully as an allegory for transgender issues, and not just for the way the characters are presented – it has a depth to it that not a lot of films of this genre can effectively convey amongst the creep factor, and much of that is down to Smith’s stunning performance that is full of feeling and Lundy-Paine’s own intense scenes that, while a little cumbersome at times, pull you right in to the story.

Director: Osgood Perkins
Writer: Osgood Perkins
Cast: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt

Long before Longlegs was released, there was much hype surrounding it, perhaps in part due to Perkins’ own link to horror through his father, Psycho‘s Anthony Perkins, and in part due to the premise. FBI agent Lee (Monroe) is on the trail of a serial killer named Longlegs (Cage) who may be linked to an event from her childhood. While she also exhibits some clairvoyant abilities, Lee struggles to keep up with the killers hints in his letters, until they start to get too personal for Lee. Although it stands as an ok film, it does not live up to the said hype. It’s a slow-burner, which some may enjoy, but it can feel like the story is dragging at times. Cage puts up another weird but pretty good performance, but Monroe’s character doesn’t seem to have a lot to her. The psychotic aspects of the film are pretty good, and it has its few-but-far-between moments of creep, but it’s not quite the frightening film many seem to claim it is.

Director: Ti West
Writer: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, Kevin Bacon, Simon Prast, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Giancarlo Esposito, Halsey, Lily Collins

In this third installment of the X trilogy, Maxine Minx (Goth) continues her quest for stardom six years after the events of X by auditioning for a film that should take her career away from adult films. All the while, the infamous serial killer Night Stalker is hunting and murdering women across California, and the killings are much closer to home than Maxine realises. The entire trilogy is excellent, but each film also stands alone individually, MaXXXine being no exception. There is plenty of gore and gruesome scenes, as to be expected from a film in this trilogy, and Goth’s performance is fantastic, her ability to convey Maxine’s naivete and strength simultaneously is career-defining. The way the story comes to a head is shocking and satisfying for fans of this trilogy.

Director: Brandon Espy
Writer: Brandon Espy, Carl Reid
Cast: Jerrika Hinton, Ayden Gavin, Elvis Nolasco, Kristolyn Lloyd, Alex Akpobome, Riley Vinson, Jabari Striblin

Taking the concept of a children’s show and flipping it on its head to become a horror isn’t anything new, but it doesn’t mean the results cannot be enjoyed. In Mr Crocket, recently widowed mother Summer (Hinton) struggles to cope with her son Major’s (Gavin) behaviour, until she finds a video tape of a kids TV show, named after its creator, Mr. Crocket (Nolasco), that Major enjoys. When Major goes missing, Summer links his disappearance to that of other children in the neighbourhood, many of whom have been abused in some way, and they all stem from the children watching Mr. Crocket. If Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers got together with Freddy Krueger, this film would be the outcome. While Mr. Crocket has its gory moments (pretty much from the off) and tries to delve down the themes of parenthood and abuse, it lacks any real substance to hold it up, coming across as merely a horror for the sake of horror. The true horror lies in the suffering of the children, rather than the character of Mr Crocket himself. Some will certainly gain some entertainment from this film (and perhaps some laughs from some of the dialogue), but it tapers off quite early on.

Director: Ti West
Writer: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright

The second installment of the X trilogy tells the story of Pearl, a woman who wants to be a movie star and will stop at nothing to make that happen and make everyone see her for the star she is, even if that means taking lives. There’s a huge psychological aspect to Pearl, with much of it based around abuse and fear, prominently set to the backdrop on WWI and the Spanish flu pandemic. Pearl herself is a complicated character, with parts of her life coming across as pitiful, but her personality acting as a block for any sympathy she could gain from audiences. Just as with parts one and two of the trilogy, there is plenty of shock, horror and gore to accompany the strong performances and story.

Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Writer: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, David Desola, Egoitz Moreno, Pedro Rivero
Cast: Milena Smit, Hovik Keuchkerian, Natalia Tena, Óscar Jaenada, Ivan Massagué

In a vertical hole with hundreds of levels, inmates, some there for crimes, some out of choice, are randomly thrown together, living two-per-floor. Through a wide hole in the middle, a platform carrying food steadily moves between floors, only stopping for a couple of minutes to allow the inmates to eat. However, the lower in the hole one is, the less likely it is one will get any food, due to the greed of others. In this prequel to the popular first film, the inmates have attempted to create a structured hierarchy to allow everyone to get an equal amount of food, but it doesn’t always go to plan. The film itself doesn’t quite live up to the first, as it perhaps tries to delve too deep (pun not intended) into the themes of the premise, but it does provide more gore and shocks. The cast is more numerous which can get a little confusing as to the role they each play, but it’s worth a watch if the first film left you intrigued about the concept.

Director: Stan Winston
Writer: Stan Winston, Mark Patrick Carducci, Richard Weinman
Cast: Lance Henrickson, Jeff East, John D’Aquino, Kimberly Ross, Joel Hoffman, Cynthia Bain, Kerry Remsen

As far as 80s creature features go, this one is quite fun and fairly decent. When a group of teenagers accidentally fatally injure a young boy, his widowed father Ed (Henrickson) takes his body to a witch. She cannot bring him back, but she offers Ed revenge, which comes in the form of a demonic creature known locally as ‘Pumpkinhead’. The film doesn’t have the most original plot, and has definitely taken a lot of inspiration from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, but between some good performances and excellently done animatronics and special effects (not at all surprising considering this is a Stan Winston film, the king of special effects), it stands up well as an underrated cult classic of 80’s B-movie horror that makes great use of animatronics and VFX. Even if the story is somewhat lacking and the characters a little weak, the monster more than makes up for much of it.

Director: Christian Tafdrup
Writer: Christian Tafrdup, Mads Tafdrup
Cast: Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja van Huêt, Karina Smulders, Liva Forsberg, Marius Damslev

In this highly creepy story, a Danish couple and their clingy daughter meet a Dutch couple and their tongueless son while on holiday in Tuscany. The Dutches invite the Danes to stay at their remote home in the Netherlands for a few days, but while there the Danish couple witness bizarre antics from the Danes and are disturbed by the way they treat their son. This original version of Speak No Evil plays on subtlety to build the terror extremely well, and the disturbing incidents are not forced down your throat to incite suspicion, but rather to unnerve until the horrifying climax. The whole thing is paced very evenly and very much sums up what psychological horror is, taking things to the extreme.

Director: James Watkins
Writer: James Watkins
Cast: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Aisling Franciosi, Alix West Lefler, Dan Hough

In this American remake of the 2022 Danish film, an American couple with a troubled marriage and daughter that can’t be without her toy bunny meet an English couple with a mute son while on holiday in Italy. Having just moved to London, the Americans are invited to the isolated Devon home of the English couple to stay for a few days. While there, the Americans witness disturbing behaviour from the English couple, particularly toward their son. The 2022 film plays on subtlety while this adaptation unceremoniously rams the events down your throat and makes the story much more predictable. It does however supersede the original in its setting – not even the cosy English farmhouse can deplete the unsettling events that occur in the isolation of the English countryside. McAvoy’s performance is also extremely disturbing, with psych horror being a genre he has really grown a talent for over the years.

Director: Robert Morgan
Writer: Robert Morgan, Robin King
Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Stella Gonet, Tom York, Therica Wilson-Read, Caoilinn Springall

Using stop-motion is never a bad idea when it comes to horror. After her controlling mother finally passes away, Ella (Franciosi) continues work on the stopmotion film they were making together. As she does, Ella’s grapples with her grip on reality, seeing much of her life play out via the stopmotion characters she creates, as well as little girl who intially pays her friendly visits but then begins to torment Ella. The horror in this film builds quite well, with plenty of gore and psychologically thrilling aspects. The actual stopmotion scenes are creepy with very well designed characters, and make for a good change of pace, but overall the film does feel like it’s lacking something big, perhaps a proper reasoning for Ella’s descent into madness.

Director: Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg
Writer: Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg
Cast: Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Jacob Batalon, Avantika, Humberly González, Wolfgang Novogratz, Larsen Thompson, Olwen Fouéré

We’ve had many a movie about ouija boards, so perhaps it’s about time tarot cards had their time in the horror spotlight. A group of college students rent a mansion for one of their birthdays, with one of them being an avid tarot reader. On finding a deck in the house, she reads the cards for each of her friends. As dangerous events begin to occur to each of them based on the card drawn for them, the group track down a tarot expert, who tells them you should never use someone else’s deck, particuarly this one that once belonged to an astrologer who cursed the deck after a terrible fate befell her. Sometimes, horror films are made to make a quick buck without any real effort put into the dialogue, the story or the performances. This is one of those films. If you are the kind of person that is easy to scare, you may enjoy this one, but if you are any kind of horror afficianado, stay well away from this poorly made film.

Director: Demián Rugna
Writer: Demián Rugna
Cast: Maximiliano Ghione, Norberto Gonzalo, Elvira Onetto, Julieta Vallina, Demián Salomón

In this creepy Spanish horror, a few neighbours living on the same street simultaneously experience supernatural events, and so two paranormal investgators dig into the occurrences and the lives of the neighbors on the street, eventually discovering they all have one thing in common. With a very interesting premise, though not so well executed, Terrified has plenty of frights but could have afforded to be a little longer in order to go into more depth about the entities harrassing the neighbourhood. Apparently a sequel is underway, so hopefully we can get more in the way of an explanation for the film’s events, in which case this film would work well as an introductory film to an expanding series.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Writer: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills

In Shyamalan’s latest offering, Cooper Abbott (Hartnett), a firefighter by day, takes his teenage daughter to the concert of a popstar whom she idolises. On seeing the tight security and police presence at the concert, Cooper comes to find out that the concert is a trap set to capture a serial killer, the serial killer being Cooper himself. If you think my telling you that Cooper is the killer is fully spoiling the film, it isn’t, it is revealed in the trailer and very early on in the film, as purposely done by Shyamalan. It’s clear to see that Shyamalan tried to turn a mystery thriller on its head by revealing the killer virtually from the off, with the film being about the trap laid for him rather than trying to actually find the killer, but it just doesn’t work. It had the potential to be a good premise, it was just poorly executed. The pacing is slow, the three act structure is so clear cut to the point of being like three separate films, and it lacks substance. Hartnett’s performance was good, though. Well done him.

Director: Demián Rugna
Writer: Demián Rugna
Cast: Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomón, Silvina Sabater, Luis Ziembrowski

This one is the better of the two Demián Rugna films on this list. When the people of a small town discover a demon making its way through them, a handful band together to try to rid the town of its presence before it can take over all of the townspeople and commit further atrocities. This film features great cinematography, body horror prosthetics and makeup, making it quite a gruesome horror with genuine shocks to go along with its enticing premise. The final shot is particularly aesthetically pleasing and will leave you with a morbid yet satisfying taste in your mouth.