Best Halloween movies to watch: 31 days of horror this October

If there’s one thing we love here at Polygon, it’s the Halloween season.

We cover horror year-round, whether it’s the best horror movies you can stream at home or the best horror movies on Netflix, and generally, we have our finger on the undead pulse of the newest and ghastliest releases in horror. Even a top 10 list is available (ranking them by their scariness).

It is true that Halloween can be a spooky season, but it still deserves special celebration and attention.

For the past three years, Polygon has put together a Halloween countdown calendar, selecting 31 of our staff’s top horror-themed or Halloween-adjacent picks across movies and TV throughout the month of October, all available to watch at home. We’ve loved doing it, so much so that we’re bringing it back again — this time with a whole new batch of films and shows to choose from.

Every day for the month of October, we’ll add a new recommendation to this countdown and tell you where you can watch it. Grab some popcorn, turn down the lights and curl up in front of the TV for an entertaining and terrifying marathon.

Oct. 1, Messiah of Evil

Diamond Entertainment Group

What to Watch: Prime Video, Shudder, Pluto TV, Plex

A undersung classic of ’70s cosmic horror, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz’s Messiah of EvilThis is a nightmarish and surreal film that deserves to be a classic cult movie.

Arletty is a young girl who travels to Point Dume in California to find her father. A reclusive artist, Arletty has disturbing visions about an imminent apocalypse. After crossing paths with an eccentric aristocrat and his groupie companions, the group bears witness to the realization of the painter’s prophecy, as the townspeople are transformed into flesh-eating ghouls and the messiah of evil makes his return to the mortal realm.

Sometimes confusing and bizarre Messiah of EvilThis is an entertaining thriller with some memorable scenes. From a cross-eyed albino man gleefully devouring a field mouse whole to a unsuspecting woman watching a Western as the theater around her slowly fills with ravenous undead zombies, it’s a dreamy and frightening experience that lands somewhere between the ineffable gothic horror of H.P. Lovecraft meets the anti-consumerist messages of George A. Romero. These horrors are still terrifying 50 years on, and have the right mix of inadvertent humor and genuine terror. Messiah of Evil This is an entertaining film and the perfect start to horrors month. —Toussaint Egan