Michael Myers does not own October—even if nobody has been brave enough to tell him

By Rory Jackson

Let us begin by acknowledging the obvious: Halloween is one of the greatest horror movies ever made.

John Carpenter’s original transformed suburban streets, carved pumpkins and a cheap William Shatner mask into permanent pieces of horror history. Michael Myers has become so closely associated with October 31 that removing him from a Halloween movie marathon can feel like celebrating Christmas without Santa Claus.

The problem is that Michael has thirteen movies.

At some point, the rest of the holiday deserves access to the television.

Halloween horror is bigger than Haddonfield. It includes haunted attractions, demonic parties, murderous clowns, cursed broadcasts, poisoned candy and enough terrible decisions to keep every emergency room in America busy until Thanksgiving.

For this list, we wanted movies that do more than frighten us. These films capture some essential part of Halloween itself: the costumes, the darkness, the neighborhood legends, the parties, the cheap decorations and the strange freedom that arrives when everyone is allowed to become somebody else for one night.

Michael Myers can sit this one out.

He has earned the rest.

10. Murder Party

There are Halloween parties you regret attending, and then there is the one in Murder Party.

Chris Sharp finds an invitation to a mysterious gathering and decides to attend despite having no idea who invited him, where he is going or why the words “murder party” are written directly on the invitation.

Some people require more warning than others.

Armed with a homemade cardboard costume and almost no survival instinct, Chris enters a warehouse filled with pretentious artists planning to murder him in the name of their work. What follows is bloody, ridiculous and considerably smarter than its low-budget appearance initially suggests.

Murder Party understands the awkward side of Halloween: lonely people attending bad parties, costumes held together with tape and strangers desperately trying to appear more interesting than they really are. Then it adds power tools.

It is not the biggest movie on this list, but it may be the one most likely to make you reconsider accepting an invitation from somebody you barely know.

Best reason to watch: A cardboard knight faces the most dangerous group imaginable—artists looking for attention.

9. Cobweb

Halloween is supposed to be the one night when children are encouraged to believe there may be monsters hiding inside every dark house.

In Cobweb, Peter does not have to believe.

He can hear one inside the wall.

His parents insist the noises are products of an overactive imagination. Because they are played by Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr, two performers capable of making an ordinary family dinner feel like a hostage situation, their reassurance is not especially comforting.

Director Samuel Bodin fills the family home with long hallways, dark corners and the nagging suspicion that every adult knows more than they are willing to admit. Halloween decorations surround the neighborhood, but Peter remains trapped inside with parents who refuse to let him participate.

The movie eventually reveals more than it probably should. Before that happens, Cobweb creates an effective childhood nightmare about the terrifying possibility that your parents are not protecting you from the monster.

They are protecting the monster from you.

Best reason to watch: A deeply unpleasant family secret scratches from the other side of the bedroom wall.

8. WNUF Halloween Special

If you grew up watching local television, WNUF Halloween Special may convince you that you have already seen it.

Presented as a recorded 1987 television broadcast, the film follows a reporter investigating a supposedly haunted house on Halloween night. The program comes complete with awkward anchors, questionable experts, technical problems and an endless parade of fake regional commercials.

Those advertisements are not interruptions. They are part of the experience.

The movie recreates the texture of old television with obsessive precision. It feels worn, cheap and strangely comforting until the investigation begins sliding toward something much darker.

Viewers expecting constant scares may become impatient. WNUF Halloween Special is less interested in sprinting toward the haunted house than in rebuilding an entire lost evening of television around it. The result feels like a VHS tape discovered in a box that should have remained closed.

It is funny, nostalgic and increasingly unsettling—the perfect background noise for a Halloween party until everybody realizes they have stopped talking.

Best reason to watch: It creates an entire night of 1980s local television, including commercials for businesses that never existed.

7. The Guest

The Guest does not look like a traditional Halloween movie at first.

Then the school dance begins.

Dan Stevens plays David, a polite soldier who arrives at the Peterson family home claiming to have served with their deceased son. He is respectful, helpful and remarkably good at solving problems.

Unfortunately, most of his solutions involve violence.

Director Adam Wingard gradually transforms the movie from a domestic thriller into a neon-soaked Halloween nightmare. By the time David enters a school decorated with fog machines, plastic skeletons and a genuinely irresponsible corn maze, the film has become an eighties slasher wearing the uniform of an action movie.

Stevens is terrific because he never lets David’s charm disappear completely. Even when the truth becomes obvious, some small part of us understands why the family allowed him inside.

That may be the most frightening thing about him.

Best reason to watch: Dan Stevens walks through a Halloween maze like somebody genetically engineered to improve your October.

6. Night of the Demons

If an abandoned funeral home seems like a good place for a Halloween party, you may already be beyond our ability to help.

Night of the Demons sends a collection of teenagers into Hull House for a night involving costumes, alcohol, supernatural possession and the sort of party planning that eventually requires an exorcist.

The movie is pure late-eighties horror excess. The characters are broad, the dialogue is ridiculous and subtlety never makes it through the front door. None of that matters once the demons arrive.

Angela’s dance sequence alone has earned the film permanent placement in the Halloween canon. Amelia Kinkade moves through the funeral home as though the music itself has become possessed, delivering a scene that is seductive, strange and completely unforgettable.

Night of the Demons does not merely take place on Halloween. It feels like Halloween: cheap scares, bad behavior, loud music and the certainty that somebody is going to have to explain all of this to the police.

Best reason to watch: Angela Franklin throws a Halloween party that becomes legendary for all the wrong reasons.

5. Haunt

Most haunted attractions promise that the monsters cannot touch you.

Haunt asks what happens when that promise is a lie.

A group of friends spends Halloween night searching for something more exciting than another crowded party. They discover an isolated haunted house offering an “extreme” experience and willingly surrender their phones before entering.

That decision should immediately disqualify them from adulthood.

The attraction begins with familiar masks, narrow passages and performers standing slightly too close. Then the group realizes the people behind those masks are not pretending—and some of them may be wearing masks for the benefit of everyone else.

Haunt takes the basic experience of walking through a seasonal attraction and removes every safety measure we depend upon. Locked doors stop being part of the performance. Weapons stop being props. The emergency exits are not particularly interested in emergencies.

It is direct, brutal and refreshingly committed to its premise.

Best reason to watch: It turns every uncomfortable moment inside a haunted attraction into a legitimate reason to panic.

4. Late Night with the Devil

On Halloween night in 1977, late-night host Jack Delroy attempts to rescue his struggling television program with a live supernatural event.

This goes poorly.

Late Night with the Devil presents the surviving footage from that broadcast, complete with commercial breaks, backstage moments and a host whose desperation becomes more dangerous than any demon.

David Dastmalchian is outstanding as Delroy. He understands that the character’s smile is both professional armor and a warning sign. Jack knows something is wrong, but he also knows people are watching. For a television host, the second fact may be more important.

The movie captures the theatrical Satanic panic of the seventies while recognizing that television has always been willing to exploit fear if the ratings are strong enough. It is funny, stylish and increasingly vicious as the broadcast moves beyond anything the network can control.

Halloween specials are supposed to offer harmless scares before returning viewers to their regularly scheduled programming.

This one invites something into the studio.

Best reason to watch: David Dastmalchian hosts the Halloween broadcast from Hell—and refuses to cut to commercial.

3. Terrifier

Before Art the Clown became a horror icon, he spent Halloween night stalking two women who made the mistake of attracting his attention.

That is all the motivation he needs.

Terrifier is rough, mean and unapologetically constructed around its villain. The story is minimal because Art is the story. David Howard Thornton turns silence into personality through exaggerated gestures, wounded expressions and the cheerful enthusiasm of a performer who has discovered an audience.

Then he reaches for the hacksaw.

The film’s low-budget ugliness works in its favor. Empty streets, dirty rooms and harsh lighting make the entire night feel abandoned. There is nobody coming to help because the world appears to have ended several blocks away.

Terrifier is not for everyone. Its violence is excessive, its sense of humor is cruel and its most infamous sequence remains difficult to defend at family gatherings.

Art would probably consider that a compliment.

Best reason to watch: The beginning of Art the Clown’s transformation from underground slasher villain into a modern Halloween mascot.

2. Hell House LLC

A haunted attraction assembled inside an abandoned hotel is already a terrible idea.

Opening it to the public is worse.

Hell House LLC follows the crew behind a Halloween attraction inside the Abaddon Hotel, where an unexplained disaster leaves fifteen people dead. Years later, recovered footage reveals what happened during the preparations and why everyone involved should have abandoned the building long before opening night.

The movie understands that haunted-house props become much less entertaining when they move without assistance. A clown mannequin standing at the bottom of a staircase should be harmless. When it changes position between camera shots, every survival instinct in the human body begins filing paperwork.

What makes Hell House LLC work is patience. The scares grow slowly in the background while the characters continue building an attraction inside a place that clearly does not want customers.

By the time the doors finally open, the distinction between performers, guests and whatever already lived inside the hotel has completely disappeared.

Best reason to watch: One clown standing perfectly still accomplishes more than most horror movies manage with an entire effects department.

1. Trick ’r Treat

No other horror movie understands Halloween as completely as Trick ’r Treat.

Michael Dougherty’s anthology moves through a small Ohio town where several stories unfold across the same Halloween night. A school principal hides a murderous hobby. Teenagers visit the site of a local tragedy. A young woman searches for the right man. An old grouch discovers that holiday traditions are enforced by something wearing orange pajamas.

Connecting everything is Sam, a child-sized figure with a burlap sack over his head and a deep respect for the rules.

Wear a costume.

Hand out candy.

Check what you eat.

Never extinguish a jack-o’-lantern before midnight.

These are not suggestions.

Trick ’r Treat is funny, gruesome and filled with the kind of autumn imagery most seasonal movies only manage during their opening credits. Fallen leaves cover the streets. Costumed children run between houses. Every porch glows orange, and every tradition appears to conceal an older, darker purpose.

The movie was delayed and mishandled before finding the audience it deserved. It has since become essential Halloween viewing because it does not simply use the holiday as a date on the calendar.

It believes in Halloween.

More importantly, it believes Halloween is watching.

Best reason to watch: Sam is the closest thing Halloween has to its own Santa Claus—except Santa rarely disembowels anyone for breaking holiday rules.

The Last Word

Michael Myers will always be waiting in Haddonfield, and we will always return to him.

But Halloween is too big for one killer.

The holiday belongs to haunted houses, local legends, bad parties, cursed television broadcasts and creatures hiding behind costumes. It belongs to children daring each other to approach the dark house at the end of the street. It belongs to adults who spend the rest of the year pretending they no longer believe in monsters.

These ten movies understand that Halloween is not simply a backdrop.

It is permission.

For one night, the dead can walk, the demons can dance and the clown across the street may not be wearing makeup.

Choose a movie, turn off the lights and leave the jack-o’-lantern burning.

Sam takes that last part seriously.