Bring On the Spooks: The 2023 Spooky Season Watchlist

It's The Most Scariest Time of the Year...And No One Is More Excited To Talk Spooky Season Lists Than I Am.

The 2023 Spooky Season is officially here.

The lines at Halloween Horror Nights and Howl-O-Scream, respectively, are wildly packed - I'm talking 2-hour waits. Pumpkin spice flavors are available over the counters of coffee shops across the country, and bars, too (gotta try some pumpkin spice beer, if you can). Lastly, it's officially the season of enjoying a little horror and a little terror.

I've maybe spoken about my love of horror movies a few times, but we're now officially going on 7 years of this annual list. Between streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Tubi (yes, Tubi), and being an AMC Stubs A-List member, I get a pretty good dose of exposure to horror titles classic, past, and present. That's why this list has come about.

Every year I compile a list of some of the best horror titles to watch for the Halloween Season. Each year since the last four years, has been committed to introducing (and maybe even possessing) non-Horror watchers dabble in the world of possession movies, slashers, monsters, and afrosurrealism.

Read: Spooky Season 2022 Watchlist

Where last year's list highlighted The Horror Classics, Horror Noire, Uncomfortable Scares, New Age Horror, and Good Ol' Scares & Chills. These five categories highlighted movies across history, calling out the different levels of scares that only make the movies more appealing. This year's list is broken down into 4 smaller groups of movies.

One thing I don't and won't be including in lists like these are RottenTomatoes scores, or general reviews from audiences and critics. These are top movies that I've seen myself, or have intentions to watch soon. Being said, some horror movies are great because they're bad, or they bad because they're simply too much. That combination of factors means that sometimes even the best (or most extreme) movies have a one-time watch value. None of that matters to these lists, so enjoy.

For Beginners

Let me introduce you to the genre that is horror. It's a genre that makes call outs and criticisms about the society we live in. It's the genre that turned Octavia Spencer into a horror baddie in 2019's Ma. While not every title is focused on the supernatural, they poke holes in what we look at as the comfortable norm, or status quo of society. For this year's list, and for the first time I've included 1995's The Craft, a story about four high school outcasts who commit themselves to becoming witches and taking full advantage of their new found powers.

Despite the fact that some of the movies in For Beginners include supernatural elements, like The Craft (1995) and Carrie (2013), the rest of the category is a great example of what happenes when the big bad is nothing more than men and women who live among us, hiding their worst intentions. Stephen King's Misery (1990) is a great example of this, evening villifying the actions, intentions, and passions of a stan almost ten years before the term was coined by Eminem.

BIGGER BOOS

Once you've graduated from that initial batch, it's time to crank things up. Bigger Boos fit the criteria of the titles that do include the supernatural, the evil, and the beginnings of what are the extremes. Bigger Boos is that exactly. While a film like Before I Wake (2016) could have been included in the first group, there is an element of uneasiness and some scares involved that put you on a roller coaster before closing out with a very beautiful, heartfelt ending.

One sleeper that made its way to the list was The Uninvited (2009). Pyschologically wild, the movie is directed by The Guard Brothers and stars Elizabeth Banks and Emily Browning and has one of the wildest plot twists that may feel like it give inspiration to Joker (2019). Uninvited is proof that if you dig deep enough into modern American horror, you'll end up in the Korean market. The movie is based on Kim Jee-woon's The Tale of Two Sisters, and follows a young girl returning home from her time in a psychiatric ward to the welcome of her sister following the death of her mother. When she discovers that her dad has found new interest in a new, younger lover, the stress of new family dynamics weighs heavily on her.

The rest of the list includes classic like Poltergeist (1983), The Conjuring (2013), and the the terrifying and uneasy break-and-enter horror, The Strangers (2008) starring Liz Tyler.

BEWARE

The category of Beware brings up the worst case scenarios of all of the things we fear in our world. The Faculty (1997) brings us to a world reminiscent of the Body Snatchers at a middle American high school featuring all the outcasts and cast members - jocks, cheerleaders, goth girls, geeks, etc. Featuring a loaded cast of cameous including Usher, Salem Hayek (Frida), John Stewart (The John Stewart Show), Josh Hartnett (Oppenheimer), Elijah Wood (The Hobbit), Famke Janssen (X-Men), and Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day), The Faculty is one of the best 90s teen horror movies that makes honest commentary on the stereotypes of high school type casts.

On the flipside, Upgrade (2018) has made its way back on the list, which felt natural considering we are now in the age of AI, the singularity, and talks of Elon Musk putting microchips in the brains of possible volunteers (or Twitter Blue subscribers...idk). On the other side of the technology side, Midsommar (2019) has also made a comeback to the list. With two trips to Europe this year, I couldn't help but revisit this Ari Aster banger for it cryptic imagery of a distant Scandanavian religious cult in what a lot of people miss out on as a really good breakup/glow up story.

TOP TIER TERRORS

For our greater group, Top Tier Terrors, you either finish this list strong or search puppy videos on TikTok to help recover. These are the movies that I consider to have done a great deal at solidifying horror, both in niche fandom as well as its massive pop culture influence. Almost all of these movies share a particular scene that shakes up the watching experience and keeps you on the gripping your arm rest tightly in the movies.

Topping the list, The Exorcist is still undoubtedly a Top 5 Horror movie almost 50 years later, and with the upcoming sequel The Exorcist: Believer release October 5th, it is only right we slap that spinning head, floating bed, and puddle of poureed peas back into this bitch!

Doctor Sleep (2019) doesn't quite gets its recognition for being a movie that shares the same uncomfortable undertones as its prequel, The Shining (1982). Inspired by the 2013 sequel book by Stephen King, Doctor Sleep can be huddled together with a few other entries in this list that each hold the taboo element of having children be the victims of evil.

Super duper taboo.

Social commentary has only gotten stronger in the horror genre as of late. Gone are the days of "Sins of My Father" themes from the 1980s. New age horror has been putting the topics we brush aside right in our faces and doesn't let us look away at all. Barbarian (2022) did this really well with the absolutely despicable AJ, played by Justin Long, while articulating in the most obvious ways how ridiculously obtuse rape culture sounds from the average unlovable flashy fuckboy.

With aliens and extraterrestrials back in the main focus, give The Fourth Kind (2009) a shot to enjoy what happens when we push fiction and marketing so good, it's bad for a small Alaskan town.

And to cap off the viewing experience, strap yourself in for Evil Dead Rise (2023).

If you're looking to enjoy Halloween without the jump scares, but looking for a good time in the Tampa Bay area, be sure to check out the upcoming Halloween Party at Ybor City's The Cuban Club October 21st hosted by 13 Ugly Men. Alex Auguste will be a specially invited guest shooting content and enjoying the night. For more details, see more at The Vivid Life Tour page.