11 Spooky Flicks To Stream For Halloween

Found footage films just keep on being creepy. Even when you think you're prepared for all the usual jolts and jumps, a real, solid twist on the genre can have you glancing over your shoulder for weeks. That's especially true of the ambiguously pitched and strangely endearing Creep, where a super charming performance leaves you never quite sure who you're rooting for. Set over a short span of time with just a couple characters, this one will keep you guessing until the final frame.—AIMEE CLIFF

Watch on Netflix.

The plot of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers is as follows: humans are being replaced by alien duplicates; each is a perfect copy of the person replaced, only devoid of human emotion. A treat for your brain while you’re at the voting booth this presidential election season!—CHRIS JONES

Watch on Hulu.

I think about these three atypical sci-fi flicks a lot, and not just because of the subtle, unsettling twists they take. The One I Love is technically, I guess, a sci-fi rom-com; Coherence and The Invitation both start with a mumblecore L.A. dinner party template and then proceed to go fucking nuts.

Run through them marathon-style and your head'll be spinning: on top of those skeletal structures, they find room to support comets and cults and more doppelgängers than you could comfortably fit in a Honda Odyssey. But what really strikes me about all three is how much they do with so little — in each case, there's almost nothing more than a handful of cast members and one central, beguiling location. Each movie is a case of human beings answering the question what do you do when you have no money? not with go home but with make some wild shit.—AMOS BARSHAD

Watch on Amazon: The One I Love, Coherence, The Invitation

Poltergeist III features dazzling in-camera (that means no CGI) special effects inside a Trump-like Chicago skyscraper that almost make up for its tiresome plot. But you can’t unsee the screaming Lara Flynn Boyle rebirth scene! She saw the other realm and it was hellish.—CHRIS JONES

Watch on Hulu.

There are a lot of people who don't find The Babadook scary. That may be because its plot revolves around a pop-up children's book, and its villain is an illustrated character that manifests in shadows. To me, the idea of a cursed book is terrifying, but what is even more terrifying is the depiction of the struggle of a single mother caring for her disturbed son. Their intense, fraught relationship hinges on the possibility of the mother causing her son harm — her worst nightmare.—LEAH MANDEL

Watch on Amazon.

I live in fear of the past, and the personas I once wore. They were incomplete halves, confused and at times cowardly pieces of an imperfect whole. They were not the best versions of myself. So I bury those former selves and the memories attached to them somewhere deep. I use them as lessons, but mostly I try to forget them. Black Mirror's "The Entire History of You" — in which dystopian earth dwellers have been implanted with a chip that allows every memory and experience from birth to be played back ad infinitum (either in front of your eyes or on a screen) — is the literal manifestation of this fear I carry. Fuck that.—JASON PARHAM

P.S. The new season is creepy as hell, too. Especially "Playtest."

Watch on Netflix.

12 years before he created Orphan Black, John Fawcett made Ginger Snaps, a turn-of-the-century werewolf flick about two death-obsessed teenage sisters. It's essentially a feature-length metaphor for the horrors of puberty, and is almost as funny and freaky and gross as actually being in high school. Almost.—PATRICK D. MCDERMOTT

Watch on Hulu.

Set in New England in 1630, The Witch follows a farmer, his wife, and their five children as they leave their colonial plantation and set up on their own. In isolation, on the edge of an ominous forest, the family endures not only the hardships of poverty in winter but a series of mysterious and disturbing events — like the disappearance of a child. What makes The Witch so thrilling is its patient narrative and its characters' steadily growing agitation — both with the supernatural and with each other.—LEAH MANDEL

Watch on YouTube.

Over three hours of archival footage, veteran documentarian Adam Curtis links disparate-seeming horrors: Syria and Ronald Reagan’s role in the start and spread of suicide bombing; the New York fiscal crisis of 1975 and the invention of Donald Trump; Colonel Gaddafi’s propped-up ascent and collapse in Libya; a dozen bad bank stories; and countless other bummers. In a hot time for true crime documentaries, Curtis covers tragedies that are planet-sized.—DUNCAN COOPER

Watch on BBC.