8 Best Movies to Watch This Spooky Season, According to Mental Floss Editors

People wait all year for fall: to pick pumpkins, stroll beneath colorful trees, and put on films that send them straight into spooky season, give or take a few startled shrieks. 

Some prefer nostalgic titles that strike a balance between spook and scare, while others choose films that raise the hairs on their arms and send their minds racing, from Derry, Maine, to Haddonfield, Illinois. 

Whether you’re waiting for the Great Pumpkin with Charlie Brown or anticipating Michael Myers’ return, spooky season is a haunting mix of thrillers, cult classics, and horror pictures, all unfolding in the same cozy setting we return to every October.

So grab a blanket, light a fall-scented candle, and press play on the eight best movies to watch this Halloween, according to Mental Floss editors.

The Shining (1980)

🎃 Logan's Pick

Nothing says spooky season like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. From “Here’s Johnny” to “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," it captures every ounce of supernatural horror and psychological thrill present between the lines of Stephen King’s classic novel. 

Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their son Danny pack their bags and head to the ominous Overlook Hotel (in all its haunted glory), where Jack is appointed caretaker for the winter season. 

Charles Grady, the winter caretaker before him, went mad and murdered his family, and Danny (and Tony) know something Jack doesn’t. From the cleverness of “REDRUM” to the ghost twins urging Danny to play with them “forever and ever and ever” in the blood-soaked hallways, The Shining is a maze (both literally and figuratively) of isolation, fear, and expertly written madness, perfect for getting into the spirit of Halloween. 

Death Becomes Her (1992)

🎃 Logan's Pick

There’s no better time than October to press play on the flesh-rotting, dark comedy masterpiece that is Death Becomes Her. Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis star in a love triangle so twisted you can’t help but grab some popcorn (or candy corn) and watch the chaos unfold. 

Jealous frenemies Helen Sharp and Madeline Ashton are consumed by vanity and obsessed with eternal youth, only to suffer (literally) from immortality. After sustaining fatal injuries, the women, using Madeline’s husband Ernest (Willis) as a pawn for their own insecurities, now desperately need him to patch up their decaying bodies. From broken necks to gaping stomach holes, they must be constantly painted and repaired, lest they live the rest of their immortal lives disembodied. 

But what happens when Ernest is no longer around to put them back together? 

Twitches (2005)

🔮 Nitya's Pick

Y2K witchcore is immortalized in Twitches, a cozy Disney Channel Original Movie starring Sister, Sister stars Tia and Tamera Mowry that I love revisiting whenever fall rolls around. The film follows the classic twins-separated-at-birth trope before bringing magical Coventry-born sisters Alex and Camryn together on Halloween—which also happens to be their 21st birthday.

Different as can be, the sun-amulet-adorned social butterfly Camryn (Tamera) and the soft-spoken, moon-driven Alex (Tia) quickly realize the extent of their combined magic. Side by side, they band together as Twitches (a portmanteau of "twin" and "witches") to face the Darkness and save their homeland.

Beyond the nostalgia and peak 2000s wardrobe, if you’re paying close attention, you might tap into the movie’s hidden Greek mythology details: the sisters' real names, Apolla and Artemis, directly mirror the Olympian twins of the sun and moon.

The Witch (2015)

🔮 Nitya's Pick

Robert Eggers's The Witch offers a less sparkles, more wrinkles take on witch folklore that's far more austere than aspirational. Subtitled "A New-England Folktale," this 2015 gothic horror film transports viewers directly into a barren, autumnal 17th-century landscape that feels oppressive all on its own. It’s a testament to Eggers's direction, considering the weathered old-hag witch only actually appears on screen twice in the entire movie.

We follow a devout English family banished from their Puritan colony who build an isolated farm on the outskirts of a dense forest. When their infant son abruptly vanishes under teenage daughter Thomasin's care, religious paranoia and accusations of witchcraft begin to tear the family apart from the inside out.

It plays out like a live-action colonial nightmare, relying on real 17th-century diaries, possession accounts, and period folklore for its dialogue and mounting paranoia. Between Anya Taylor-Joy's breakout performance and the presence of Black Phillip—the family's creepy billy goat—it's a must-watch for fans of slow-burn, New England Gothic horror.

Halloween (1978)

👻 Natalie’s Pick

You can’t get more classic than John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece, Halloween. The slasher that introduced villain Michael Myers and final girl Laurie Strode into the world changed the horror genre forever—and spawned multiple sequels and remakes. The premise is simple: a high school girl babysits on Halloween night and is terrorized by an escaped mental hospital patient with history in the town. 

Returning to the fictional Haddonfield, Illinois, where he killed his sister 15 years ago, Michael is ready to cause more destruction.

If you call yourself a fan of horror or Halloween and you haven’t seen this movie, what are you doing? Jamie Lee Curtis is iconic in the starring role, and the movie is widely credited with popularizing the slasher genre, inspiring other fantastic franchises to come.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

👻 Natalie’s Pick

Another Halloween favorite of mine that I watch every year is Trick ‘r Treat, an anthology horror movie directed by Michael Dougherty. Taking place in the fictional town of Warren Valley, Ohio on Halloween night, we follow different groups of characters as they navigate the spooky holiday.

From young women picking out costumes and partying in the woods, to kids investigating a local urban legend, the town has one thing in common: a creepy little masked trick-or-treater named Sam is after them.

Trick ‘r Treat has all the makings of a fun Halloween movie, from suspense and gore to comedy and that wonderful spooky season aesthetic. Succession’s Brian Cox and True Blood’s Anna Paquin play supporting roles, bringing familiar faces to the story.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

🦇 Eden's Pick

Halloween month is the ideal time to revisit the movie that kickstarted the found-footage movement and sparked a number of conspiracy theories of its own. The Blair Witch Project follows three film students who disappear after venturing into the woods to film a documentary about the Blair Witch legend, leaving behind only the footage they captured. 

The movie’s marketing efforts led many to believe it contained actual footage left behind by people who really did vanish. But even when you know it’s pure fiction, the movie is an extraordinarily haunting work that will have you looking over your shoulder, seeking out faces in the trees. There’s something sparse, desolate, and completely terrifying about the handheld cinematography and raw performances delivered by the actors here, and it’s not hard to understand why this film remains a horror classic decades after rumors that it was real were dispelled. 

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

🦇 Eden's Pick

Given Tim Curry’s death in August of 2026, it’s the perfect time to pull out your fishnets and turn on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. (Then again, when is it not the perfect time?) This musical film follows a straight-laced young couple, Brad and Janet, who wind up at a mysterious mansion during a rainstorm—and naturally, their lives will never be the same.

Curry is impossible to look away from as the mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter here, and the musical numbers are impossibly catchy. Rocky Horror is very much a horror show, too, designed to shock and subvert expectations as much as it is made for singing along and throwing rice at the screen. There's no better film for getting in the theatrical spirit at the heart of Halloween.

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