Halloween is just around the corner, and The Indiependent’s film writers are here to suggest what to watch this spooky season!
The Butterfly Effect (dir. Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber)
As autumn arrives and Halloween approaches, the long, golden days of summer fade, giving way to darker, more mysterious nights. The world feels vivid, surreal, and touched by the strange—a perfect backdrop for The Butterfly Effect (2004). While not a traditional Halloween film, its unsettling atmosphere and mind-bending themes fit perfectly with the season’s spirit of fear, transformation, and uncertainty.
The Butterfly Effect follows Evan Treborn (played by Ashton Kutcher), a young man who discovers he has the power to alter his past. But as Evan learns, changing the past is far from simple. Each attempt to rewrite history ripples through time, creating unintended and often devastating consequences that reshape not only his life but the lives of his childhood friends, including his first love, Kayleigh.
What makes this film a must-watch for an autumn night is its haunting exploration of fate, choice, and consequence. The more Evan tries to fix things, the more he is confronted with the terrifying truth that sometimes, there is no “right” decision. As he grapples with impossible choices and heart-wrenching sacrifices, we are left questioning our own lives, our decisions, and the unseen forces at play in shaping our future.
For a film that brings psychological intensity and thought-provoking fear, The Butterfly Effect is perfect viewing as the nights grow longer and the shadows deepen. While not a traditional horror film, The Butterfly Effect evokes a deep sense of dread and existential terror. The film’s dark, moody tone and disturbing twists leave you haunted, pondering the butterfly effect of your actions. Making it the ideal film for a dark gloomy night.
Words by Jack Dennison-Thompson
Under the Skin (dir. Jonathan Glazer)
Films about extraterrestrial species are usually far more focused on the human characters’ reaction to the aliens than the otherworldly beings themselves.
Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin (2013) breaks this mould in the most disturbing of ways, with creatures whose motives – though explained somewhat in a literal sense – are so removed from human emotion that it’s chilling to watch them play out.
Depicted through unbearably slow pacing that forces us to sit with these horrifying encounters, Glazer’s eerie, naturalist compositions and Mica Levi’s unforgettably haunting score make this an unlikely, but highly effective, horror film.
Words by Cian McGrath
The Return of the Living Dead (dir. Dan O’Bannon)
If you’re a fan of comedy horror, gooey practical effects, or just want to expand your pallet beyond modern horror, allow me to recommend The Return of the Living Dead (1985).
Taking place over one fateful night in Louisville, Kentucky, The Return of the Living Dead follows two hapless medical warehouse employees as they accidentally release a toxin that raises the dead, causing chaos for themselves and a group of punks who were just trying to enjoy the peaceful cemetery next door.
The soundtrack is banging, the zombies are gross, and there’s an oddly playful sense of Nihilism seeping through the whole piece that makes for some great comedy moments.
Words by Camille Murray
The Sixth Sense (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)
The Sixth Sense (1999) could easily be classified more as a thriller than a horror—the guts and gore are minimal (although there’s enough to spook the jumpier among us), the narrative weighed down instead by a constant sense of unease.
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid learning the twist for this film, it’s a revelation. Even if you do know what’s to come, watching how well-constructed the story is, how M. Night Shyamalan masterfully plays with perspective to keep us—and protagonist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis)—out of the loop, is fascinating. Stellar performances and a gripping soundtrack from James Newton Howard round it all out to make an all-time classic.
Words by Lucy Carter
The Strangers: Prey at Night (dir. Johannes Roberts)
Scream IV, Scream VI, Hush and Ready or Not all featured in the list I wrote last year, of the best modern horrors, so I’ll shine a light elsewhere this Halloween.
Having rewatched M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin the other night, that deserves an honourable mention too, but it is the ultimate slasher The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018), that I am imploring you to watch this spooky season.
Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler features, need I say more?
The tension levels that this film builds are no joke, particularly with the chase scenes, not to mention that the jump scares are effective. The camera work is also fairly classic for a slasher and yet it still works.
Prey at Night goes a step beyond its 2008 predecessor whilst also doing what the first one did well.
This film is evidence that Bailee Madison has well and truly completed the switch from child star to a serious acting figure with Lewis Pullman and Martin Henderson delivering strong performances as her brother and father too.
“Why are you doing this?” followed by “Why not?” doesn’t quite pack the same punch that “Because you came” does, yet this shortcoming is almost redeemed by the chilling “But we’ve just started”.
This 86-minute thrill ride is well worth your time this Halloween.
Words by Jamie Rooke
The Blair Witch Project (dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez)
Twenty-five years ago, The Blair Witch Project (1999) premiered, disrupting not only the horror genre but the entire ecosystem of modern filmmaking. With a budget of just $35,000, it was shot over eight days with three actors improvising their way through a haunted camping trip, and went on to gross an improbable $248 million, making it one of the most profitable films ever.
But it wasn’t only the numbers that mattered – it was the manner of the thing. At the time, the found footage conceit wasn’t just a narrative device; it was a sly rebuke to Hollywood’s glossy, overproduced horrors of the time. Here was a film that chose to show you nothing and, in doing so, made you see everything.
The film’s minimalist aesthetic – three unknown actors stumbling through the woods with handheld cameras – spoke to something primal, coaxing audiences to confront their own fear of the unseen. And then there was the marketing, making innovative use of the internet long before viral marketing became the norm, directors Myrick and Sanchez constructed a website that treated the fictional legend as historical fact, inviting viewers to fall down a digital rabbit hole of their own making.
It didn’t just make indie horror cool; it made it scrappy, smart, and uncomfortably close to home. Without it, there’s no Paranormal Activity, no Cloverfield. It reshaped cinema for a new generation of indie filmmakers and that’s not bad at all for a film with such humble beginnings.
Words by James Morton
Alien (dir. Ridley Scott)
Coming off the back of a resurgence in the sci-fi genre, the original Alien (1979) movie has a plot largely taken from previous horror B-Movies made throughout the 50s and 60s.
But what makes this vision from Ridley Scott so powerful is in how much it commits to this, with it’s grounded, realistic feeling vision of truckers in space helping to create an experience that feels incredibly authentic and claustrophobic in a way no previous creature feature had.
The cast are all incredible throughout, whilst the titular Xenomorph remains a classic of horror cinema, with an iconic design from H.R. Giger, and, in this film, the mystery surrounding its origins and nature providing a real feel of cosmic horror.
Words by Daniel Goldstraw
The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick)
As with 2001: A Space Odyssey twelve years earlier, where Stanley Kubrick had aimed to make the “proverbial good science-fiction movie,” Kubrick’s decision to tackle the horror genre with an adaptation of the novel The Shining (1980) by Stephen King proved to be the new benchmark in the genre for years to come afterward.
The slow pace and building tension throughout help to deliver an experience that is truly claustrophobic, whilst the extra layers added by Kubrick have led to continued analysis and debate around the film over the years since.
Words by Daniel Goldstraw
Support the Indiependent
We’re trying to raise £200 a month to help cover our operational costs. This includes our ‘Writer of the Month’ awards, where we recognise the amazing work produced by our contributor team. If you’ve enjoyed reading our site, we’d really appreciate it if you could donate to The Indiependent. Whether you can give £1 or £10, you’d be making a huge difference to our small team.