A Handful of Movie Recommendation for Halloween 2025
Celebrate the season with these cinematic nuggets.
It’s October, the month when people allow themselves to catch a few spooky movies. As my scary-film season extends to the rest of the year, it only feels pertinent to throw out a few recommendations for those in search of a movie or two to celebrate the impending arrival of Halloween.
Weapons
I doubt that anybody expected Weapons, a mystery/horror film with a light comedic touch, to be a late-summer blockbuster, but so it was, and deservedly so. The film follows an elementary school teacher whose entire class – except for one student – disappears in the middle of the night without a trace of their whereabouts. The town blames the only common denominator in the equation, Mrs. Grady, but, frankly, when a class full of kids disappears, something malevolent is almost sure to be blamed. And, when the remaining child’s bonkers aunt shows up, things start taking a turn.
Writer/director Zach Cregger has put together a movie that certainly is eerie at times, and a small handful of jump scares is paired with genuinely snicker-worthy scenes. Weapons can easily be enjoyed by even those who aren’t a fan of the genre, something a two-hundred-and-sixty-five-million-dollar box office gross can attest to.
The film is currently available on VOD and will begin streaming on HBO Max sometime this month.
Barbarian
Speaking of Zach Cregger, this is where his mainstream run started. To describe Barbarian without giving away an early twist is difficult, but suffice it to say, this, too, is ostensibly a horror movie, albeit one with a lot more dark comedy than Weapons. I’ll leave the plot description to IMDb: “A woman staying at an Airbnb discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems.” Going beyond that would ruin the experience.
What I can say is that Justin Long gets to let loose as the soon-to-be-canceled actor/creep who owns the Airbnb. It’s a good performance, and I enjoy the Nic Cage-type work Long has turned in lately.
Barbarian streams on Hulu1 and Netflix in other countries.
The Thursday Murder Club
For some lighter fare, the popular cozy-crime book, The Thursday Murder Club, has been adapted into a Netflix movie, with a murderers’ row of mature actors. We’re talking Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley, joined by (relatively) younger faces like David Tennant, Naomi Ackie, and Tom Ellis.
The film centers around four retirees who have formed an amateur cold-case crime-solving club. When the owner of their retirement village is murdered, the gang sets out to solve the crime, whilst trying to save their home from a developer looking to turn it into luxury condos.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say The Thursday Murder Club is an all-time classic, but it is entertaining, and I have a soft spot for old pros delivering enjoyable performances. And the movie is full of those.
Final Destination: Bloodlines
The second surprise blockbuster of 2025 is the sixth entry in the Final Destination franchise. This is a soft reboot, and you don’t need to know anything about the previous films to enjoy Bloodlines.
The high-concept plot deals with a group of teens who, at some point, cheated death and thus escaped their fates. Death is not a forgiving force, and soon starts chasing down the kids to correct the anomaly in the timeline.
Bloodlines is, to say the least, a colorful film, and with a box office gross exceeding $300 million, it has propelled the franchise squarely into the mainstream. It might not be everybody’s cup of tea – Death is a macabre killer – but it’s unhinged enough to be morbidly entertaining.
Companion
This is, for all intents and purposes, the 2025 version of The Stepford Wives, and one that is pretty successful at that. This is mainly due to some great performances by Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid, who unabashedly lean into Companion’s silly sort of satire.
Much like Barbarian, it’s better to go into Companion blindly – if you like The Stepford Wives, you will enjoy it. In the end, this, too, is a story of gender roles and toxic masculinity, just with a modern twist. Scary? Not really, but easily as camp as its inspiration.
Companion streams on HBO Max.
Drop
Finally, here’s more of a grown-up thriller. Drop follows Violet, who has just started dating after the death of her abusive husband. During a dinner at a skyview restaurant, she begins receiving threatening cellphone messages from an unknown person, who tries to push her into stealing and disposing of her date’s camera. Who sends the messages and what is on the camera are the big questions.
Most of Drop is set inside the restaurant, which gives the movie – and I hate to use this word – a Hitchcockian feel. The film is almost entirely devoid of violence, relying instead on tense back-and-forths between the messenger and Violet – frankly, the type of movie I prefer.
Drop streams on Peacock. Check it out, as the world really needs more movies that rely on clever storytelling.
Do the films mentioned feel a bit pedestrian? Somewhat too mainstream? No worries – I got you covered.
Every October, I update my (too) long-running movie website, One Star Classics. Here, I primarily write about films that don’t receive the same exposure as those in the studio system. And, during the Halloween season, I feel it’s pertinent to give some attention to those who are drowned out in a sea of big-name titles.
Today’s review is of Descendent, a cerebral sci-fi film that mixes UFO abductions with a man’s fears of fatherhood – a good movie for those who enjoy mindbenders.
Check out One Star Classics if you like, and, if you’re really a person of taste and elegance, subscribe to the reviews via email. 🙏 You’ll basically only see emails during October.
We all know the virtual Yule Logs that have been the rage over the years, but there is also a Halloween equivalent: The Ghoul Log. I’m sure you can find these Jack o’Lanterns all over the map these days, but Shudder, the horror-based streaming service, has posted new ones for years. Check out the OG if you so like – if you have a desk with room for an iPad or whatever, they are nice to stream during the workday. Classes the joint up a bit.
I’d directly link to it, but as more and more of these streaming services have entered the enshittification phase of their existence, I couldn’t find a way to do so.