Halloween 2025 film recommendations for a very bad, bad time

8 hours ago

Brock Wilbur,

If you’re reading this, I just want to say ‘thank you’ for being a reader of The Pitch. We all appreciate you, and our team gets a bit emotional about our readers… especially around the holidays. And what is Halloween if not our biggest holiday? What’s scarier than being a journalist? Only a couple of things.

Here’s my list of a few films that might’ve flown under your radar, if you’re looking for a good/bad horror time tonight. Most of these are new, with a couple of throwbacks I’ve recently rewatched. If you’ve got company coming to spend the night, impress them with your impeccable taste.

V/H/S/Halloween is easily the most fun horror film of 2025. The anthology series enters its tenth year with this outing, and while the names are not as flashy as some previous collections, this is easily the best in a long, long time. Nothing here is trying to launch a feature film spin-off or even a filmmaker’s next career phase. This is just all killer, no filler horror. It is gooey, loud, stupid, clever, and absolutely unhinged. If you’ve got friends over, I highly recommend this for illicitting a “scream-along” atmosphere. Fair warning: chunks of this are not for the squeamish. But also the anthology nature means that if you’re distracted by trick-or-treaters or loud pals, no one will lose track of the story.

The Monkey is Osgood Perkins’ similarly toned throwback to silly, comic book, nightmarish bloodfests. It’s funny as hell, based on a Stephen King short story, and has a twisted sense of humor that nothing on this list compares to. What starts small spirals into something much, much bigger, while also being one of the most interesting father-son narratives in 2025. Perkins certainly has a lot to unpack in the area, and you can feel an unnerving degree of it up on screen.

Weapons was my favorite film of the year across all genres, and Zach Cregger’s pivot from sketch comedy to perplexing little mystery-box horror flicks is only the latest in a line of comedy-to-horror careers (like Jordan Peele) that prove the darkest ideas are born from punchlines where no one is laughing.

Final Destination: Bloodlines is a zany, almost annoyingly good addition to one of horror’s highest hit-to-miss-ratio franchises. Amid a few years of truly dreary, tired legacy sequels to reheated franchises, I was caught off guard by how hard this flick would go. It’s on Top 10 lists for the year across all my friend groups, and if you’re looking for horror that will delight some All Hallows’ guests, this has something for everyone.

VFW

The Wolf of Snow Hollow

In MadS, a French teenager heads to his dealer for a wild new drug before a night of partying. But when he picks up an injured woman on the way home, things take a bizarre and surreal turn. The entire flick is a single shot, and the young filmmaker behind it is someone we’re keeping tabs on. Again, nothing else quite like this on the list, and the rules of the road get weird. This is one of those that you stumble upon late at night and then think about randomly for years to come.

Crawl

Caveat

Mind Body Spirit

Exhuma is the highest-grossing film in South Korean history, and for good reason. The genre-hopping epic tale starts with a rich family facing a ghost problem and gets darker with each ten minutes that slip by. Even critics that hate horror have to hand it to a feature this stunningly constructed.

Companion allows Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid to just play a cat-and-mouse game to their hearts’ content, and frankly, that’s all I need to make 90 minutes worth any price of admission. Science fiction, rom-com, and some true heartbreak all come together for a lack of jump scares but plenty to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Malum is a remake of a film from all of the same people called Night Shift that came out a few years back. As much as I prefer the original’s title, Malum delivers the movie that audiences deserve.