The best Halloween movies and TV shows on Netflix UK

Creator Charlie Brooker
Cast Jon Hamm, Hayley Atwell, Rupert Everett, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Forget ghosts, witches and vampires, the real world is much more terrifying than the supernatural. Charlie Brooker’s dark and disturbing TV series will change the way you look at the world around you, specifically the technology we’re all hooked on. You’ll end up questioning reality and morality – and feeling pretty damn scared of your phone.  

Directors Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
Cast Winona Ryder, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard

If you haven’t lost a week bingewatching all four seasons of Netflix’s spookily retro TV show, Halloween is the perfect time to get hooked. Inspired by ET, Stephen King and all things ’80s, the story started as a group of kids in search for their missing friend in small town Indiana, and has gone in all sorts of wild ‒and increasingly horrifying ‒ directions since.

Director Steven Spielberg
Cast Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss

It made an entire generation scared of the ocean and forever smeared the reputation of the great white shark, but Spielberg’s inaugural blockbuster is still absolutely perfect after all these years – and damn scary, too. Admit it: you still jump when poor Ben Gardner makes his surprise cameo during Hooper’s underwater reconnaissance mission. And the iconic ‘you’re gonna need a bigger boat’ scene, where get our first good look at ol’ Bruce? Forget the ocean – you’ll think twice about getting into the bathtub.

Director Mike Flanagan
Cast Kate Siegel, Hamish Linklater, Zach Gilford

A critical and cult favourite upon release, this unsettling miniseries focuses on a young man returning to his small, vaguely New England-y island hometown after a four-year prison stint for manslaughter, who arrives at the same time as an enigmatic priest – which happens to be when strange happenings begin going down. The show unfurls slowly, but stay with it, and it’ll stay with you.   

Director Leigh Janiak

Cast Sadie Sink, Maya Hawke, Gillian Jacobs

If Stranger Things sounds a little too intense, this adaptation of Goosebumps author RL Stine’s teen-focused book series is, despite the name, a few degrees lower in fear factor, and has a similar premise. (It even shares cast members Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke.) Spread across multiple decades, the trilogy follows a group of kids attempting to figure out why their small US town is cursed, and what they can do to bring it to an end.

Creators Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Cast Jenna Ortega, Gwendoline Christie 

Every few decades the cobwebs get blown off The Addams Family, and this reboot may just be the coolest makeover the ooky-spooky franchise has ever received. All credit for that goes to the magnetic Jenna Ortega as the titular sullen teen, who goth-danced into 150 million homes, making it the second-most watched English-language show on Netflix. To be fair, she had the Cramps, and Christina Ricci had MC Hammer – it’s not an even competition.

Director Jim Henson
Cast Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie

Everyone loves Labyrinth, the goofy fairytale about a lost baby, a brave girl and a rock-star Goblin King with a courgette down his trousers. What you forget is how unnerving Jim Henson’s movie can get: all those furry monsters and weird puzzles, and the trash-heap scene is truly creepy. A perfect film for the more cautious Halloween viewer.

Director James Wan
Cast Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey

Name a more iconic duo than James Wan and Patrick Wilson. We’ll wait. All right, maybe that’s a stretch. Still, the pairing has produced not one but two of the biggest mainstream horror franchises of the last decade. The original Insidious predates The Conjuring and stars Wilson as a school teacher whose son is afflicted by a touch of the ol’ demonic possession. If nothing else, it contains one of the all-time great jump scares, which we won’t dare spoil, even now.

Director Ruben Fleischer
Cast Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

More zany than scary, this high-energy zomcom is a crazy fun ride regardless, owing to an excellent ensemble cast. A nerdy college kid (Eisenberg) and hardened survivalist (Harrelson) are an odd couple pairing only a zombie apocalypse could bring together, but who are nonetheless thriving… until a pair of con artist sisters (Stone, Breslin) cross their path. And even though it’s been a decade and a half, don’t let anyone spoil the surprise mid-movie cameo.

Creator Victor Fresco
Cast Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, Liv Hewson, Skyler Gisondo

This charmingly goofy comedy-horror series introduces the greatest innovation to the braineater genre since fast zombies: the slowly transforming zombie. Drew Barrymore is a suburban SoCal real estate agent who begins gradually showing signs of being undead, complicating – though in some cases bettering – her home life with her husband (Olyphant) and teenage daughter (Hewson). It was prematurely cancelled on the edge of a cliffhanger, which makes for an annoying binge, but it’s one of Netflix’s most underrated original series.