Key facts
- What to watch: Our favorite Halloween movies
- Where to watch: Paramount+
- Genres: Horror, sci-fi, and kids & family
- Staff picks are:
Looking for Halloween movies to watch on Paramount+? Our staff picks range from the family-friendly Monster High: The Movie to found-footage horror films Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. Also on the list: Sleepy Hollow, Crawl, The Faculty, Slanted, and the Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise epic War of the Worlds.
Read on for the creepy Halloween movies our writers recommend streaming on Paramount+, and check out the Peak Screaming Collection for more Halloween viewing.
1. Paranormal Activity
It’s the found-footage supernatural thriller that kicked off the creepy cinematic universe. The first film in the Paranormal Activity franchise focuses on a young couple (played by Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) who discover something otherworldly is haunting them. Once they set up a camera to record the phenomena, the real frights begin… Writer-director Oren Peli tightens the screws in this endlessly suspenseful low-budget chiller.
The original Paranormal Activity was followed by Paranormal Activity 2, Paranormal Activity 3, Paranormal Activity 4, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, and Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin. All seven movies in the franchise are streaming now on Paramount+. – Joseph McCabe, Contributor
WATCH NOW: Paranormal Activity
2. Rosemary’s Baby
Question: Do you enjoy a good night’s sleep? What’s that? Did you say “yes”? Then skip this item. I am telling you: Skip it. Don’t read it. And definitely do not watch this 1969 horror classic starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and Ruth Gordon who 100% does not play a kindly neighbor in said 1969 horror classic. Oh, now I’ve done it. I’ve said too much. You’re going to watch Rosemary’s Baby, aren’t you? I get it. I was like you once: Trusting, innocent, really into pre-war New York City apartment buildings. Then I watched Rosemary’s Baby. Oh, boy. Now, I gotta tell you, I am still into pre-war New York City apartment buildings, but I am totally breaking the lease if Minnie Castevet (Gordon) introduces herself as my new kindly neighbor. – Joal Ryan, Editor
WATCH NOW: Rosemary’s Baby
3. Sleepy Hollow
Heads will roll! Director Tim Burton partners with star Johnny Depp for the third time with this fun reimagining of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Here, Depp’s Ichabod Crane is a skittish police constable investigating a series of grisly murders in the eponymous New York town. Along the way, he falls for Christina Ricci’s winsome Katrina Van Tassel and runs afoul of Christopher Walken’s ghoulish Headless Horseman. An Oscar® winner for Best Art Direction, Burton’s first R-rated horror film, released in 1999, offers decapitations galore. It’s the stuff October dreams are made of. – Joseph McCabe, Contributor
WATCH NOW: Sleepy Hollow
4. The Faculty
If you’re a millennial who hasn’t seen Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 teen horror flick since you were a teen yourself, you may have forgotten how stacked the cast is. The Faculty doesn’t just star half of young Hollywood, Y2K edition (Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall, Shawn Hatosy, and Usher – all great). It also features folks that you may not have clocked as being famous during your viewings as a young person. Watch it again. This sci-fi scream-fest – about a high school invaded by alien parasites – is absolutely worth another (or first) look. And for my money, it’s most worth it to see the “grownup” actors playing against type and seemingly having a blast. Salma Hayek and Famke Janssen, often cast for their gorgeousness and gumption, depict meek nerdlings who let loose only once infested by the organism. Then there’s the comedian Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame, portraying a teacher whose infection allows him to launch students twice his size clear across a science lab. Add Robert Patrick to the mix, a man famous for playing a shape-shifting robot assassin, here embodying a shapeshifting alien assassin, and you’ve got the chef’s kiss of casting. – Joan Kubicek, Staff Writer
WATCH NOW: The Faculty
5. Cloverfield
Director Matt Reeves (of The Batman fame) made his genre film breakthrough in 2008 with this chilling found-footage kaiju hit. Conceived and produced by J.J. Abrams (Super 8), scripted by Drew Goddard (World War Z), and starring a cast of then emerging stars (including Mean Girls’ Lizzy Caplan and Transformers: Age of Extinction’s T.J. Miller), it’s a wild, nasty giant monster/alien invasion movie told from the perspective of a handful of young New Yorkers desperate to survive the night. Cloverfield’s success paved the way for today’s kaiju film renaissance in the U.S. – Joseph McCabe, Contributor
WATCH NOW: Cloverfield
6. War of the Worlds (2005)
Superstar Tom Cruise battles to save his estranged family from alien invaders in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster take on H.G. Wells’ classic novel War of the Worlds. No stranger to extraterrestrials, Spielberg as always expertly interweaves spectacle with interpersonal drama, and his alien tripods are nightmare fuel. Narrated by Morgan Freeman and co-starring Dakota Fanning as Cruise’s precocious daughter, War of the Worlds is more than a terrifying sci-fi horror epic – released in 2005, it tackles America’s fear of sudden, unforeseen attacks in the wake of 9/11. – Joseph McCabe, Contributor
Editor’s note: War of the Worlds is the second Spielberg-Cruise movie after Minority Report, also now streaming on Paramount+. For more Tom Cruise films available to stream, see our guide to the greatest Tom Cruise movies on Paramount+, including the Top Gun and the Mission: Impossible movies.
WATCH NOW: War of the Worlds (2005)
7. Crawl
Nature runs amok in French horror auteur Alexandre Aja’s Crawl. As a Category 5 hurricane rips apart a small Florida town, flood waters rise, and a daughter and her dad wind up trapped in the crawl space under their home – along with some huge, hungry alligators. English actress Kaya Scodelario is a compelling heroine as a young University of Florida swimmer tasked with saving her estranged dad, as well as their beloved dog. Crawl, released in 2019, is perfect viewing for fans of survival horror…though the claustrophobic may wish to steer clear. – Joseph McCabe, Contributor
WATCH NOW: Crawl
8. Monster High: The Movie
Many Halloween movies are creepy. Monster High: The Movie is charming. So, why give yourself nightmares, when you can comfortably stream this family-friendly 2022 Nickelodeon/Paramount+ production in which werewolves, vampires. and more, sing, dance, and scuffle through adolescence? If you know Monster High: The Movie is based on the doll-turned-book-turned-TV-turned-pretty-much-everything franchise, then candied apples for you. If you’ve never heard of the multi-media behemoth, then treats (no tricks!) for you, too: Monster High: The Movie needs no introduction. Charmers, after all, know how to put you instantly at ease. – Joal Ryan, Editor
WATCH NOW: Monster High: The Movie
9. Slanted
This one’ll stick with you. Written and directed by Amy Wang, the body horror movie Slanted is about Joan Huang (Shirley Chen) an Asian-American teen desperate to fit in with her popular white classmates in a high school where pics of prom queens from years past line the walls. Not a single photo resembles Joan, nor will this year’s prom court shoo-ins give her the time of day. She realizes that she can’t beat ’em, but she can join ’em – through the plastic surgery work of Ethnos, an ethnic modification company transforms her into her own blonde, white idea of feminine perfection (played, post-op, by Mckenna Grace). But this “fix” doesn’t come without plenty of downsides, both physical and moral. There’s limited blood and gore in this film, but it’ll absolutely keep you squirming. – Joan Kubicek, Staff Writer
WATCH NOW: Slanted
All titles subject to availability.
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