Spooky shows and movies to watch this Halloween

Halloween is a good time for a TV marathon, featuring gripping and spooky tales. Netflix has some big handfuls of tricks and treats with a solid slate of movies and shows worth streaming to get in the spirit. It offers more than a few supernatural horror movies, and even titles on the lighter side. Marking Halloween today, here are some movies and shows you can watch on the platform. 

Midnight Mass (2021)

Midnight Mass

Created by Mike Flanagan, "Midnight Mass," released on Netflix in September,  brings several things to the table with plot twists, suspense and creepy elements. The series focuses on the residents of Crockett Island, a tiny island with just over 100 inhabitants. When their church's head priest, Monsignor Pruitt, falls ill on a mission trip, younger priest Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater) is sent to fill in for him. Soon enough, the residents of Crockett island suspect Hill is not what he appears to be. If you like the gore of spooky shows, there's a little bit of that and there are plenty of heartwarming and deeper moments for those who enjoy the dramatic points.

The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) 

"The Haunting of Hill House" is the first season of Mike Flanagan's The Haunting anthology and might just be the scariest show on Netflix. The series is a modern retelling of Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name. But this adaptation reimagines the characters as a family, all living in the House and being tormented by its restless spirits. The second season, "The Haunting of Bly Manor", is a modern reimagining of the classic ghost story "The Turn of The Screw" by Henry James.

The series forgoes jump scares for a slow-burning horror designed to get under the audience's skin. It became popular for hiding ghosts in plain sight in many scenes, adding to the mystery and creep factor.

Haunted (2018)

"Haunted" is a horror anthology, which tells a different creepy tale every episode. Each starts with a group of survivors sitting in a circle setting the scene before they tell their story. This gives the series a documentary feel, despite those telling the story also being actors. The show's monster of the week style works well, as some viewers will find some stories more disturbing than others.

Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

Annabelle Comes Home

Horror sets in when a young girl lets the demonic doll Annabelle out of her cage in this nightmarish third film from the "Annabelle" series. Renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren have kept the doll locked up— until Annabelle's evil is reawakened and she sets her sights on the Warrens' 10-year-old daughter. 2014's "Annabelle" is also streaming on Netflix. 

Nightbooks (2021)

Nightbooks

This family movie features an enchanted apartment that belongs to an evil witch (Krysten Ritter), who roams from building to building, capturing little kids who she either gobbles up or puts to work. When she kidnaps one little boy (Winslow Fegley) with a knack for telling scary stories and forces him to tell her one each night, he and a fellow captive (Lidya Jewett) craft a plan to find a way out of her grasp. Full of visual tricks, the movie will actually give you an unexpected bit of scariness, and acts as a great entry into horror for younger audiences.

Fear Street Trilogy (2021)

Fear Street Part One: 1994

Netflix's ambitious series of three interconnected movies based on the classic R L Stine books are truly gory, yet fun. All are directed by Leigh Janiak and Part One: 1994, introduces audiences to the cursed town of Shadyside and the teens who have been afflicted. The second jumps back in time to 1978 where a killer is stalking a camp, and the third, set in 1666, explains how this all started. Drawing from horror classics like "Scream", the "Fear Street" movies mix gruesome kills with tongue-in-cheek laughs.