31 Nights of Halloween: one horror film a night in October

Night 1 · Thursday, October 1

On October 1, 1968, a black-and-white film shot near Pittsburgh premiered at the city's Fulton Theater and changed what a zombie was. Seven strangers barricaded in a farmhouse, a threat that comes in numbers, and survivors more dangerous to each other than the dead: the grammar the genre has been copying ever since. Duane Jones leads the cast, a Black hero at the top of the bill, which American cinema rarely offered in 1968.

Tonight because: we start where modern horror starts, on the anniversary of its premiere.

Night 2 · Friday, October 2

A house kept in darkness, two children who cannot bear daylight, and a mother who enforces the rules: every door must be locked before the next one opens. Alejandro Amenábar makes visibility itself the threat, and drawing the curtains becomes an act of survival.

Tonight because: the gentlest way into the month. Diffuse dread, very little shown.

Night 3 · Saturday, October 3

A woman reopens the orphanage where she grew up, and her son starts talking to a friend no one else can see. J. A. Bayona's first feature, produced by Guillermo del Toro, runs on the classic machinery of the haunted house, then ends somewhere far more painful than fear.

Tonight because: a ghost story that scares you, then makes you cry.

Content note: a missing child.

Night 4 · Sunday, October 4

An unauthorised adaptation of Dracula: Bram Stoker's widow won her case in court and the prints were ordered destroyed. Some survived, and so did Count Orlok. More than a century later, Max Schreck's silhouette on a staircase still belongs to the memory of cinema, even for people who have never seen the whole film.

Tonight because: to see the source before its countless reuses. Late, lights off, in a good restoration.

Night 5 · Monday, October 5

The scientist, the creature, the laboratory in the storm. In seventy minutes, James Whale fixed the image of the monster for good: Boris Karloff wears the face Jack Pierce, Universal's head of make-up, built for him, and plays a creature more lost than threatening.

Tonight because: the founding myth, told briefly and without cynicism.

Night 6 · Tuesday, October 6

Hill House, a researcher, and a few guests chosen for their sensitivity to the paranormal. Robert Wise builds his terror almost entirely out of sound and the characters' reactions: the house feels larger than any room we are shown. Not to be confused with the 1999 remake.

Tonight because: to slow down and let the walls do the work.

Night 7 · Wednesday, October 7

A devout police sergeant flies to a remote Scottish island to find a missing girl, and finds a community whose rites he cannot read. Written by Anthony Shaffer, with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, it is where folk horror begins, and the ending still lands. Not the 2006 remake.

Tonight because: folklore opens the month onto fear in broad daylight.

Content note: nudity.

Night 8 · Thursday, October 8

New England in the 1630s: a Puritan family, exiled from its settlement, builds a farm at the edge of the woods. Robert Eggers' first feature draws much of its dialogue from period writings and lets the threat circulate as much in the family's words as among the trees. And there is a goat you will not forget.

Tonight because: a slow, austere terror, to open a week of isolation.

Content note: death of an infant (implied), nudity.

Night 9 · Friday, October 9

Three film students walk into the Maryland woods to make a documentary about a local legend. The footage was found, the students were not. The film turns the absence of images into a strategy: the camera mostly records what it cannot explain, and half the world believed it was real.

Tonight because: a night to feel fear through sound.

Content note: very shaky camera.

Night 10 · Saturday, October 10

A TV crew follows firefighters into a Barcelona apartment building, and the building is sealed behind them. Shot almost entirely from the reporter's camera, the film promises access to reality, then turns every floor into the limit of what the lens can capture. Found footage does not get any tighter.

Tonight because: to speed up the month, abruptly.

Content note: gore, very shaky camera.

Night 11 · Sunday, October 11

Six friends go caving in a system that appears on no map. Before anything else shows up, the space itself has already closed off every option: the walls get closer, the light gets shorter. Neil Marshall knows exactly how much darkness an audience can take.

Tonight because: for those who already struggle in tight spaces. Consider yourselves warned.

Content note: violence, gore, claustrophobia.

Night 12 · Monday, October 12

A commercial towing crew is woken early to answer a signal from nowhere. Ridley Scott turns a workplace into a trap: corridors, procedures and collective decisions become the enemy's best allies, one bulkhead at a time.

Tonight because: isolation moves into space, the night before an Antarctic base.

Content note: violence.

Night 13 · Tuesday, October 13

An Antarctic research station, twelve men, and something that can take the shape of any of them. John Carpenter destroys trust before the creature even has to show itself: the whole film becomes a test that no one can be sure of passing.

Tonight because: a group viewing where everyone suspects everyone. And a film worth owning on disc.

Content note: gore, body horror.

Night 14 · Wednesday, October 14

San Francisco, and the people you love are almost themselves. Philip Kaufman's remake of the 1956 classic makes the near-perfect copy the most frightening thing of all: it turns intimacy into suspicion, one neighbour at a time.

Tonight because: the night after The Thing, another problem of imitation, this time in the heart of a city.

Night 15 · Thursday, October 15

A woman on the run stops at a motel off the highway, below a house on the hill. Alfred Hitchcock moves the centre of the story at the exact moment the audience thinks it knows whom to follow. The famous images are only half the shock; the structure is the other half.

Tonight because: to rediscover the narrative jolt behind the pictures everyone knows.

Content note: violence.

Night 16 · Friday, October 16

Five young people on a Texas back road, an isolated house, a family. It was sold as a true story; it was not. Tobe Hooper's film feels like a document no one should have seen, and its brutality often exceeds what the camera actually shows: the sound and the editing finish the job.

Tonight because: the week turns abrasive.

Content note: violence, confinement.

Night 17 · Saturday, October 17

A vegetarian first-year veterinary student, a week of hazing, and a first taste of meat. Julia Ducournau's first feature, revealed at Cannes Critics' Week, is a coming-of-age story told through the flesh, with a control that is hard to believe for a debut.

Tonight because: French horror, before Titane.

Content note: cannibalism, gore.

Night 18 · Sunday, October 18

A string of murders hits teenagers who already know every rule of horror movies. Wes Craven makes that knowledge a dramatic engine rather than a protection: knowing the rules does not keep anyone alive. Not the 2022 sequel.

Tonight because: a playful breather in the middle of the month. A breather with teeth.

Content note: violence.

Night 19 · Monday, October 19

A graduate student researching urban legends follows one into the Chicago housing project where it is still told. Bernard Rose treats the repetition of a name as the way collective fear is passed on: say it five times in the mirror, or better, don't. Not the 2021 film.

Tonight because: to watch a rumour take shape. And a strong candidate for the shelf.

Content note: violence, gore.

Night 20 · Tuesday, October 20

A videotape, a phone call, seven days. Adapted from Kōji Suzuki's novel, Hideo Nakata's film puts copying at the heart of the curse: passing the image on becomes a way to survive. It launched the wave of Japanese horror in the West, and a cursed tape is the closest thing The Last Tape has to a family story.

Tonight because: the film closest to our obsession with formats. Watch The Ring tomorrow.

Night 21 · Wednesday, October 21

A journalist traces a recording linked to a series of deaths. Gore Verbinski's remake follows Ringu closely, which is exactly what makes it interesting: watched back to back, the two versions show what a single object becomes when it crosses a market and a language.

Tonight because: the night after Ringu, to compare how a curse travels.

Night 22 · Thursday, October 22

Two sisters come home to the family house, to an absent father and an unsettling stepmother. Drawn from a Korean folk tale, Kim Jee-woon's film is designed down to the wallpaper, and asks to be seen twice: the second time, everything changes meaning.

Tonight because: the week of possessions opens on a house that possesses its occupants.

Content note: violence, family abuse.

Night 23 · Friday, October 23

A widower stages a fake casting session to find himself a new wife. Adapted from Ryū Murakami's novel, Takashi Miike's film plays for an hour like a quiet, melancholy romance. Then it does not. Go in knowing as little as possible.

Tonight because: the most brutal change of register in the series.

Content note: torture, mutilation. For audiences who know what they are choosing.

Night 24 · Saturday, October 24

A mother watches her daughter change, and looks for help first from doctors, then from priests. William Friedkin gives the search for explanations all the time it needs, which is exactly why the turn towards ritual hits so hard.

Tonight because: the centrepiece of the possession week, on a Saturday night.

Content note: intense scenes, disturbing imagery.

Night 25 · Sunday, October 25

In a mountain village, a string of deaths and strange behaviour multiplies contradictory explanations. Every attempt to solve the mystery in Na Hong-jin's film adds another intermediary and pushes certainty further away, for two and a half hours.

Tonight because: a long Sunday screening, for accepting that you will not control everything.

Content note: violence, gore.

Night 26 · Monday, October 26

An American dancer arrives at a dance academy in Freiburg on a stormy night. Dario Argento uses primary colours as a weapon and Goblin's score as a second soundtrack of dread: the building becomes suspect long before its secret has a name. Not the 2018 remake.

Tonight because: a night when the image takes over. Watch it loud, on the biggest screen you have.

Content note: graphic violence.

Night 27 · Tuesday, October 27

After the grandmother's death, a family discovers what she left them. Ari Aster's first feature slides from family drama into outright horror, and the miniature houses Toni Collette's character builds invite you to see every room as a space already arranged by another will.

Tonight because: a demanding evening about what families hand down.

Content note: death of a child, disturbing imagery.

Night 28 · Wednesday, October 28

After a one-night encounter, a young woman is followed by something that walks towards her, slowly, and changes appearance. Always walking, never running. David Robert Mitchell's wide frames make you watch the ordinary figures in the background, and the Disasterpeace score does the rest.

Tonight because: watch it without your phone. The backgrounds matter.

Content note: nudity, violence.

Night 29 · Thursday, October 29

A winter caretaker moves into a mountain hotel closed for the season, with his wife and son. Stanley Kubrick's corridors go on longer than they should, and extend a story the occupants do not control.

Tonight because: the final climb, in a space that has become a labyrinth.

Content note: violence, domestic threat.

Night 30 · Friday, October 30

Four stories cross paths during one Halloween night in the same town, watched over by a small figure in a burlap mask who enforces the rules. Michael Dougherty passes details from one tale to the next, as if the holiday itself were editing the film.

Tonight because: October 30, to set out the costumes and the rules before the last night.

Content note: violence, moderate gore.

Night 31 · Saturday, October 31

Haddonfield, October 31. A man comes back to his hometown and starts following a high-school student. John Carpenter lets the mask wait at the back of the frame while ordinary life carries on in the foreground, and writes one of the simplest, most effective themes in the genre. Not the 2007 or 2018 films.

Tonight because: of course it ends here, on the night that gives the calendar its name.

Content note: violence.