It’s finally spooky season once again, and with it comes all the festivities and traditions of Halloween! You decorate your house with all the necessary things, and you make big plans to go to costume parties. Parents make sure to take their kids out to all biggest houses on the street for trick or treating. While Halloween is a holiday that certainly seems to have become mostly commercialized, it wasn’t always that way.

Obviously, Halloween isn’t all about dressing up and eating your weight in candy. A holiday that is believed to have started over 2000 years ago, it’s deeply rooted in Celtic history. The ancient Celts had a festival called Samhain, where people would make bonfires and dress up in costumes in an attempt to ward off evil spirits and ghosts. Now, the trick or treating aspect of today’s Halloween is derived from the Christian Holiday All Saints Day. Eating treats and carving pumpkins were something that evolved from All Saints Day. One tradition that certainly wasn’t around when Halloween started, was scary movies!

Halloween Movies

These days Halloween is the time of year to watch all of the spookiest, spine-chilling, horror genre films that get you in the spirit. From Slasher films with iconic characters like Jason, Michael Myers, Jigsaw, Freddy Krueger, Chucky, and Ghostface. To monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Predator and The Xenomorph (From Alien). All these characters have their place in the horror space. One category of horror that is either love or hate is the paranormal space. Some of the biggest films ever have been from the supernatural category. Films like “The Shining”, “Poltergeist” “the Exorcist” and “Paranormal Activity” are some of the biggest hits. In honor of the Halloween season, I have crafted a list of the best movies to sit down and watch for Halloween 2023.

• Friday The 13th (The Collection)

  Friday the 13th is absolutely Iconic and my second all-time favorite slasher series. I think what makes it so great is that it’s simple at its core. A story about a kid Jason Vorhees, who was bullied and ultimately allowed to drown by inattentive camp counselors at Crystal Lake. He returns as a hulking figure whose only goal is to seek his revenge on those who wronged him. With 8 films in the original series dating back to 1980, Jason evolves into a killing machine with zero time for discrimination. If you’re looking for a weekend marathon of horror movies, look no further than the Friday the 13th collection.

• The Halloween Collection

  When I said that Friday the 13th was my second favorite slasher series, I wasn’t lying. That’s because my all-time favorite is Halloween. Michael Myers is a little more complex than Jason Vorhees as yes, he was once a kid, but evil lived within him. Michael’s reign of terror begins when he murders his older sister Judith because she had sex with her boyfriend when she was supposed to be watching him. Michael of course returns as an adult to continue his killing spree. Throughout all 13 films, Michael appears to be much more than just a man. As the original plotline concluded with “Halloween Ends”, you hear the main character Laurie and others admit that he is not flesh and blood, he is the essence of evil. Essentially Michael Myers isn’t killable, because he isn’t alive, he is evil himself.

• Sinister

  Sinister may be the most devious horror film I’ve ever seen. Anytime a movie focuses on using children to murder families, its chilling. This movie centers around a writer played by Ethan Hawke, who moves his family into a home ripe with sinister supernatural ties in order to draw up inspiration to write his own novel. He gets much more than he bargained for after uncovering an ancient evil being, that has been using children to carry out murders for centuries. This is definitely a must watch film for the Halloween season!

• The Conjuring Collection

  The Conjuring is probably one of the most well-done horror films ever. The movie was also a huge success at the box office. Making over $319 million with a budget of $20 million, qualifies as a smash hit. The conjuring was one of the select movies in the genre that spent 20 million to actually get a good on-screen product.

  The story follows renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren as they investigate the Annabelle case, where 2 friends claim to have a possessed doll. After contacting a medium, they allowed the spirit, to possess the doll. Unable to be rid of it, the hauntings got worse and worse, causing them to reach out to Ed and Lorraine for help. The most interesting part of the Conjuring for me is that it is based on reality. Ed and Lorraine Warren were real paranormal investigators and did actually deal with a famous exorcism in the 1970’s and the movie shows chilling evidence of this fact at the end. Absolutely a must watch if you have or haven’t seen it!

• A Nightmare on Elm Street

  A Nightmare on Elm Street is iconic for the mere concept of the horror. The villain Freddy Krueger is created after he was killed by parents of school children that he was accused of molesting. The true terror lies in the concept of how Freddy Krueger kills. Most of the time people would assume your safe in your dreams, well not with Freddy. Freddy Krueger has the ability to not only travel into and alter your dreams, but he can also kill you in them. The kicker is, when Freddy Kills you in your dream, you die in real life!

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