Playlist Of 20 Must-Watch Halloween Movies For 2018
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With darker evenings and the nights starting to get colder, Halloween is the perfect time of year get cozy in front of the television, dim the lights and scare yourself senseless by rewatching some classic horror movies.
We've put together the ultimate Halloween movie playlist for 2018, which includes the latest supernatural blockbusters, as well Halloween-themed family favourites and some of the scariest movies of all time.
With just under a month until Halloween, you have plenty of time to work your through this list with copies of these must-see Halloween movies available on DVD, Blu-ray and through streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
20. Paranormal Activity
The 2007 found footage style supernatural film, 'Paranormal Activity' starts our list. The movie follows the story of a young couple, Katie and Micah, who suspect their house might be haunted and place a camera in the bedroom over night. The activity starts off slowly and very realistically but the dark force that's haunting them soon gets much more sinister.
The film is perfect for Halloween and if you like it, there are five more in the series, all of which revolve around a sinister demon named Toby. What makes the movies all the more terrifying because of the way it is shot, using consumer devices like camcorders, phones, laptops and security cameras.
19. The Blair Witch Project
The movie was the first of its kind, the start of the found footage genre, and while most of the movie shows nothing more but the lots documentary makers attempting to make their way through the forest, at the end of the film a ghostly house appears from nowhere and the gang meet their fate. The movie was so realistic that when it was released in 1999 many people thought it was real.
18. Hereditary
The first 2018 horror movie in our list and the fourth highest grossing of the year. It's a great modern interpretation of a classic haunting storyline. After the family matriarch passes away, a grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences, and begin to unravel dark secrets.
17. Scream
As this modern slasher movie was released more than 20 years ago, now-a-days I struggle to remember the difference between 'Scream' at the perfect parody of it, 'Scary Movie', but if you watch either this Halloween you won't be disappointed. Wes Craven as a director is your guarantee that this is one worth watching. It tells the story of a bunch of teenagers who are terrorised by a gruesome killer a year after the murder of one of their mothers.
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16. The Others
This Nicole Kidman supernatural thriller might not be quite as good the second time around due to its unexpected twist. Nicole plays a woman who lives in a darkened old house on the channel island at some point after World War II. Her two photosensitive children becomes convinced that her family home is haunted.
15. The Cabin In The Woods
'The Cabin In The Woods' was a well publicised movie when it was released in 2012, but the movie is probably not what you think it is. You could be mistaken for thinking the film is something it isn't. It starts out like a really stereotypical lost teen gory horror, but before long the true nature of the movie is revealed and you'll never guess what it is.
14. Poltergeist
The original 1982 'Poltergeist' has the feel of a loveable Steven Spielberg family movie, with all the scares you'd expect from a Wes Craven horror. The 2015 re-make, which is almost identical, just slightly modernised received mostly negative reviews, but we thought it was well worth a watch too, even if it can't quite replicate the charm of the original.
The plot revolves around a young family who are plagued by ghosts after moving into their new home. At first the ghosts appear friendly, moving objects around the house to the amusement of everyone, then they turn nasty and start to terrorise the family before they kidnap the youngest daughter.
13. 10 Cloverfield Lane
Just listing this movie here is a bit of a spoiler because when watching this movie it seems like anything but a horror movie. However, anyone familiar with the original 'Cloverfield' movie should know that this follow-up is hiding a big secret. Although the movie is part of the 'Cloverfield' franchise, the strong characters and compelling storyline soon make you forget that this had anything to do with the 2008 found-footage movie in which New York is under siege by alien creatures.
In this 2016 sequel, which can be watched without having watched the first, a young woman awakens to find herself in a mysterious bunker after a car accident. She's being held by a man named Howard who breaks the news to her that the outside world has be poisoned and is unsafe. However, Howard's intentions soon become questionable and Michelle is left wondering if it is better inside or out there.
12. The Omen
When this movie was released in 1976, it was not only the fifth highest-grossing movie of the year, but also considered to be the scariest movie ever, so terrifying in fact that many writers refused to work on the project. This level of fear might have been helped by an advertising campaign the warned cinema goers to take special note of any odd occurrences happening around them.
The plot revolves around mysterious deaths surround an American ambassador. Could the child that he is raising actually be the Antichrist, the Devil's own son?
11. The Conjuring
A great modern supernatural movie, made even creepier by the fact that is is based on the true life case files of two of the most famous paranormal investigators of all time, husband and wife, Ed and Lorraine Warren. In this movie, the first of several in the franchise, we find out what happened when the couple came to the assistance of the Perron family, who experienced increasingly disturbing events in their farmhouse in Rhode Island in 1971.
10. IT
This Goonies-esque 2017 horror, based on Stephen King's terrifying clown, Pennywise, is set in the small town of Derry in 1989. A group of local kids, nicknamed "the losers club" encounter the clown, who is actually a shapeshifting monster who preys on the children in the small Maine town.
This movie tells just the first half of Stephen King's story, the sequel, Chapter 2, is scheduled for release in September 2019.
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9. The Wicker Man
This classic horror was remade in 2006, but make sure you put the 1970s original on your Halloween playlist. The creepy movie is set in a Scottish island village where a police sergeant is sent to search of a missing girl who the townsfolk claim never existed. Stranger still are the rites that take place there.
8. The Exorcist
One of the most famous horror movies of all time, complete with demonic possession, head spinning and projectile vomiting. The idea of a demonic possession isn't too far removed from reality, the Catholic church have taken possessions very seriously in the past and there have been countless real-life exorcisms. The movie is based on a novel by William Peter Blatty. Aspects of the novel were inspired by the exorcism of a young boy in Maryland in 1949.
7. A Quiet Place
'A Quiet Place' is the highest grossing horror movie of 2018 and is set in a nightmarish post-apocalyptic world where monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing are on the loose. The movie follows the Abbott family, who struggle to survive in a desolate New York City in a new era of utter silence.
6. Halloween
In the 1978 horror, which stars Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis, we meet the sinister and unforgettable anti-hero, Michael Myers. 15 years after he murdering his sister on Halloween night, he escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield to kill again.
Director, John Carpenter, made sure the scary movie has the desired effect by ensuring that audience couldn't relate to the character of Michael Myers. The character itself was based on Carpenter's experience in college touring a psychiatric hospital where he met a child who stared at him "with a look of evil".
5. Get Out
Described as a "cultural phenomenon", the movie, which stars the excellent Daniel Kaluuya, is one of just a handful of horror movies to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie is focused around a young black guy in a mixed race relationship. When he visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, things start off as odd and uneasy but as things get weirder, a terrifying truth is revealed.
4. The Shining
Stanley Kubrick turned Stephen King's iconic Overlook Hotel into the setting of one of the greatest movies of all time, with a truly disturbing manic performance from Jack Nicholson. He plays a father who take his family to the isolated hotel for the winter where an evil spiritual presence takes advantage of his psychological weakness and drives him to violence, while his psychic son sees horrific images of the past and the future.
3. Ghostbusters
The movie that gave birth to this very website. Peter, Egon, Ray and Winston were the fearless paranormal experts who first sparked my interested in paranormal. Now over 30 years on, the movie has everything you need for a Halloween movie marathon. Slime, slapstick comedy and plenty of spooky goings on in New York City.
Don't be too quick to write off the 2016 reboot, 'Answer The Call', the all-female cast revived the movie and brought it to a new generation. Sadly, it received unwarranted bad reviews, mostly from people who didn't like the idea of female ghostbusters and didn't even bother watching the movie. Even before it's release, the trailer was the most dislike movie trailer in the history of YouTube... but we here at Higgypop still love the new version almost as much as the original.
2. Shaun Of The Dead
Who's says the perfect Halloween movie can't be a comedy? Clearly not cinema goers, the average audience rating on this movie puts it near the top of our list and makes it the best rated zombie movie in the top 20. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost star in this British comedy horror.
Simon plays a man who decides to turn his moribund life around by winning back his ex-girlfriend, reconciling his relationship with his mother, and dealing with an entire community that has returned from the dead to eat the living. But how do you defeat a crowd of flesh-hungry zombies? Well, like all good plans, it involves going to the local pub.
1. Let The Right One In
Topping out list is a horror movie that might not be considered a classic, it's not even that well known, but it does have the highest score of all the movies on our list, based on averages from audiences and critics alike. The movie, released in 2008, is a Swedish romantic horror film based on a novel of the same name.
Oskar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl. She can't stand the sun or food and to come into a room she needs to be invited. You guessed it, 'Let The Right One In' is a vampire flick.
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