Peacock’s Halloween collection is impressive — here are the hidden gems

Peacock is adding all kinds of horror movies to its already impressive lineup of spooky fare. The streaming service is taking Halloween extra seriously this year, with over 500 scary movies (and TV episodes) available to watch throughout October.

As you might imagine, with that many movies, quite a few of them aren’t worth your time, but plenty of others are all-time classics, and movies every horror fan should know. But the real treat in this massive lineup are the great hidden gems. To help you sort through all 500 titles, and figure out which ones you may not have seen but are worth your time, here are five great under-the-radar horror movies on Peacock you should watch this October.

Dead Silence (2007)

Image: Universal Pictures

You almost certainly know horror auteur James Wan kickstarted his directing career with the original Saw and then sent it into the stratosphere with movies like Insidious, The Conjuring, Furious 7, and Aquaman. But what you might not know is between his low-budget days on Saw and those massive blockbuster hits, he made a movie about a killer puppet called Dead Silence. It’s a bizarre and fascinating bridge movie for one of the greatest living horror directors, but it’s also a pretty fun movie on its own and definitely deserves your time.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

Image: Warner Bros.

Dominion is an Exorcist prequel that stars Stellan Skarsgård and was directed by Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver and director of many excellent movies about men contemplating their choices. So it shouldn’t be any surprise to learn this movie is about the internal conflict of Father Lankester Merrin when he was a young man, confronting the horrors of both Pazuzu and British imperialism, long before he met Regan or set foot in Chris MacNeil’s Washington, D.C., apartment.

Thirst (2009)

Image: First Look International

A uniquely wonderful movie that’s equal parts creepy and full of romantic longing, masterful Korean director Park Chan-wook’s vampire movie brings cinema’s most classic monsters into the modern day by making their bloodlust a stand-in for shame and sin.

Silent Hill (2006)

Image: Davis Films/Konami

This movie doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Not only is it one of the best video game movies ever made, it’s also a very creepy (and gory) horror movie that does a great job of capturing the games’ mounting existential dread. You already know the premise: A girl gets lost in Silent Hill and someone else has to go rescue her, only to find all manner of untold horrors within the abandoned town. While there are bits and pieces of CGI that don’t quite hold up, the rest of this movie includes some truly terrifying creatures and sequences, and an absolutely devastating ending that few horror movies can match.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

Image: Shout! Factory

There aren’t enough good werewolf movies, but Ginger Snaps is the rare exception in the often mediocre genre. With the classic metaphor of transformation being tied straight into puberty, Ginger Snaps follows two sisters after one gets bitten by a wolfman. What follows is part high school drama and part horror movie, with plenty of sibling love on both sides.

You can find the rest of the expansive Halloween collection on Peacock. In addition to the picks above, we highly recommend catching up with classics like John Carpenter’s The Thing and Prince of Darkness, the Saw franchise ahead of Saw X, or Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, either again or for the first time.