It’s finally time for my favorite holiday, which means dressing up in awesome costumes, candy, and the best part of it all: The scary movies. As someone who grew up watching horror movies, I consider myself some kind of connoisseur of them, and I’m here to give you my certified scary movie cycle for the season.
Starting off not too scary, you have to watch The Fault in Our Stars. This is a movie about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love, and I really don’t need to say any more. If you’re having a scary movie marathon, this is a perfect place to start. It’s scary, but predictable in the way Scream is.
Moving in the same direction, a movie that I controversially don’t find scary is The Titanic, but I still think it’s worth it to add to your scary movie marathon. Do you see where I’m going with this? I was going to say this movie is predictable, similar to The Fault in Our Stars, but it’s less predictable; we know exactly what happens. Also, Rose and Jack quite literally knew each other for a couple of days. The scariest part of the whole movie is (spoiler alert) the ship sinking.
There are no other scary movies that aren’t really scary on my radar, so with a crazy jump on the scariness meter, I must add Coco. And look, I know Disney Pixar is known to make their movies crazy scary with Up, Big Hero 6, or The Fox and The Hound (should I keep going?), but Coco really stands out to me. Easily the scariest movie I’ve seen, in recent times, about family dynamics surrounding the Day of the Dead. I wasn’t planning on putting it on my list, but now that I’ve mentioned The Fox and The Hound, we can add it. Relationships and love can be pretty scary at times, but once a movie brings animals into it, I’m terrified.
Now this next movie is a little unconventionally scary, but walk with me for a second. Spider-Man: No Way Home. When you think of a scary movie, this movie might not be the first thing popping up in your head, but it’s scary. Borderline spine-chilling. Not only do the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home directly follow the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home, so Peter Parker is going through everyone around him dying, but the ENDING. I don’t think I’ve ever been so haunted leaving a theater as I was the night I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home. If you do choose to watch this movie during your marathon, I urge you to watch any movie Spider-Man is featured in. It will make it that much scarier.
I could go on and on with movies all day, but to keep this list brief, I’m going to top it off with Beautiful Boy. Similar to what makes the Spider-Man movies so scary to me, Tom Holland and Timothee Chalamet have a certain look in their eyes that really drives home the horror of these movies. Another awful, terrifying movie about family but also addiction.
A few honorable mentions: La La Land (I’ve never seen it, so I can’t in good conscience add it to my list), The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Dead Poets Society, Me Before You, Bridge to Terabithia, and A Walk to Remember.
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