The best underrated horror movies are films that critics and genre fans rate far above their audience size, such as Lake Mungo, Cure, Session 9, Messiah of Evil, and Possum. These 31 underrated horror movies give you one for every night of October, grouped by the kind of fear each delivers. Every title comes with verified US streaming, rental, and Apple TV availability.

Every horror fan knows one person who never recommends the film everyone has already seen. Ask them what to watch on a Friday in October, and they name something you have never heard of, then watch your face for the next ninety minutes. Ginger Snaps earned $2,554 in US theaters, according to Box Office Mojo. Martin, the film George A. Romero called his favorite of his own work, cannot currently be streamed, rented or bought digitally anywhere in the US. Neither fact tells you anything about how good those films are.

An underrated horror movie is one whose reputation among critics and genre fans runs well ahead of the number of people who have seen it. Usually that gap comes from a shelved release, a tiny distributor, a foreign-language barrier, or a marketing campaign that never happened. This list is built the way your cinephile friend builds one: for what each film does to you, not for how famous it is.

The 31 films below give you one for every night of October, split into five moods.

Fun cult films open the marathon and work with a room full of people.
Slow-burn films build dread through patience rather than jump scares.
Genre-benders mix horror with documentary, romance, radio drama and the western.
International picks cover Japan, South Korea, Mexico and a South Sudanese refugee story set in England.
The last group collects overlooked classics made before 1990.
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> If you want platform-by-platform picks outside horror, the Screendollars Complete Streaming Guide covers every major service.

Where to watch: Streaming availability verified via JustWatch on October 7, 2026. Availability is in the US and was verified at the time of writing; check JustWatch for your region. Streaming rights change frequently, so confirm before you press play.

Underrated Horror Movies at a Glance

The table below lists all 31 underrated horror movies with their director, mood group, main US streaming home, and one verified fact. Streaming reflects JustWatch US as of October, 2026.

Film	Year	Director	Mood group	US streaming home	Key fact
Trick 'r Treat	2007	Michael Dougherty	Fun cult	HBO Max	Warner Bros. postponed its 2007 theatrical release; it reached home video in October 2009
Ginger Snaps	2000	John Fawcett	Fun cult	Peacock; free on Tubi	$2,554 US box office
The Stuff	1985	Larry Cohen	Fun cult	Free on Tubi and Pluto TV	Released by New World Pictures in June 1985
House (Hausu)	1977	Nobuhiko Obayashi	Fun cult	HBO Max; free on Tubi	First US theatrical run came in 2010
Re-Animator	1985	Stuart Gordon	Fun cult	Free on Tubi	$2.02 million US box office (Box Office Mojo)
Session 9	2001	Brad Anderson	Slow-burn	AMC+	Shot inside the abandoned Danvers State Hospital
The Innkeepers	2011	Ti West	Slow-burn	Prime Video, Shudder; free on Tubi	Filmed at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, Torrington, Connecticut
Saint Maud	2019	Rose Glass	Slow-burn	Prime Video, MGM+	Won the BIFA Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director
The Wind	2018	Emma Tammi	Slow-burn	Shudder, AMC+	$28,252 US box office (Box Office Mojo)
A Dark Song	2016	Liam Gavin	Slow-burn	Shudder, AMC+	No recorded US box office on Box Office Mojo
The Blackcoat's Daughter	2015	Oz Perkins	Slow-burn	Prime Video	Premiered at TIFF 2015; US release March 2017
Kill List	2011	Ben Wheatley	Slow-burn	Shudder, AMC+	Michael Smiley won the BIFA for Best Supporting Actor
Possum	2018	Matthew Holness	Slow-burn	Prime Video; free on Tubi	Score by The Radiophonic Workshop
Lake Mungo	2008	Joel Anderson	Genre-bending	AMC+; free on Tubi	Premiered at the Sydney Film Festival, June 2008
Noroi: The Curse	2005	Kōji Shiraishi	Genre-bending	Shudder, AMC+; free on Tubi	No US theatrical gross
Pontypool	2008	Bruce McDonald	Genre-bending	Philo only	$3,865 US box office (Box Office Mojo)
The Endless	2017	Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead	Genre-bending	Prime Video, Peacock; free on Tubi	Premiered at Tribeca, April 2017
Bone Tomahawk	2015	S. Craig Zahler	Genre-bending	Shudder, AMC+; free on Tubi	Shot in 21 days on a $1.8 million budget
Cure	1997	Kiyoshi Kurosawa	International	Rent or buy only	Criterion edition, spine #1155
Pulse (Kairo)	2001	Kiyoshi Kurosawa	International	Philo, AMC+ (Amazon Channel)	Screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2001
The Wailing	2016	Na Hong-jin	International	Hi-YAH, fuboTV; free on Rakuten Viki	$49.85 million worldwide (Box Office Mojo)
Tigers Are Not Afraid	2017	Issa López	International	Shudder (Amazon and Apple TV channels)	Premiered at Fantastic Fest, September 2017
His House	2020	Remi Weekes	International	Netflix	Remi Weekes won the 2021 BAFTA for Outstanding Debut
Kuroneko	1968	Kaneto Shindō	International	Criterion Channel	Criterion edition, spine #584
Night of the Demon	1957	Jacques Tourneur	Classic	Philo, Night Flight Plus; free on Tubi	Released in the US in 1958 as Curse of the Demon, cut to 82 minutes
Carnival of Souls	1962	Herk Harvey	Classic	Prime Video, MGM+	Made for $33,000
Messiah of Evil	1974	Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz	Classic	Shudder, AMC+, MGM+; free on Kanopy	Shot in 1971, first screened in December 1974
Martin	1977	George A. Romero	Classic	Not streaming in the US	Shot in Braddock, Pennsylvania
The Changeling	1980	Peter Medak	Classic	Philo; free on Tubi	Won 8 Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture
Possession	1981	Andrzej Żuławski	Classic	Shudder, Kino Film Collection	Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at Cannes 1981
Prince of Darkness	1987	John Carpenter	Classic	Prime Video	$14.18 million US box office (Box Office Mojo)

Fun Cult Horror Movies to Start Your Halloween Marathon

The best fun cult horror movies to open a Halloween marathon are Trick 'r Treat, Ginger Snaps, The Stuff, House, and Re-Animator. All five play well with a room full of people, because each one mixes its scares with jokes, color, or gross-out set pieces. None of them asks for silence, which makes them the right way to start a long night.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Director: Michael Dougherty
Starring: Brian Cox, Anna Paquin, Quinn Lord
Country: United States
Runtime: 82 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on HBO Max and Philo, plus the HBO Max and AMC+ channels on Amazon. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

Trick 'r Treat (2007) is an anthology of interlocking stories set on a single Halloween night in a small Ohio town, where anyone who breaks the holiday's traditions pays for it.

Michael Dougherty's film belongs at the top of the marathon because its subject is Halloween itself: the costumes, the candy, the jack-o'-lanterns left burning on the porch. Warner Bros. postponed its planned October 2007 theatrical release, and the film reached North American home video on October 6, 2009. That quiet arrival is how it became a cult object rather than a hit.

Arrow Video released a 4K UHD edition in October 2024, so the version you can find today looks far better than the DVD most fans first saw.

Best for: Halloween night itself, after the last trick-or-treaters have gone home.

The Screendollars Take: Trick 'r Treat is not an anthology. It is a rulebook. Every story turns on a tradition someone ignores, and Sam, the small trick-or-treater in the burlap-sack mask, exists to enforce them. Dougherty overlaps the stories in time, so a figure in the background of one becomes the center of the next, and the whole town starts to feel like one trap. You will think twice before blowing out a jack-o'-lantern early.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

Director: John Fawcett
Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Kris Lemche
Country: Canada
Runtime: 108 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Peacock Premium, Peacock Premium Plus and Philo, plus the MovieSphere+ channel on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi, Plex, and The CW. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

Ginger Snaps (2000) follows two death-obsessed teenage sisters in a Canadian suburb whose bond starts to crack after the older one, Ginger, is bitten by a werewolf.

John Fawcett's film uses the werewolf story to talk about puberty and sisterhood, and its deadpan dialogue is why it plays so well with a group. It premiered at Fantasy Filmfest in Munich in August 2000 and received a Special Jury Citation at the Toronto International Film Festival that September. Its US theatrical run, in October 2001, earned $2,554, according to Box Office Mojo.

That number is the whole case for this list in one line. A film that critics and genre fans have championed for a quarter of a century barely registered in American theaters.

Best for: Watching with your sister, after the rest of the house has gone to bed.

The Screendollars Take: Ginger Snaps is not a werewolf movie. It is a movie about a girl watching her sister become someone she no longer knows. Emily Perkins plays Brigitte as the watcher, hunched and quiet, while Katharine Isabelle lets Ginger grow louder and surer with every scene. The transformation effects matter less than the moment the sisters' childhood promise to stay together stops meaning the same thing to both of them. The monster here is growing up, and only one of them wants to.

The Stuff (1985)

Director: Larry Cohen
Starring: Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris
Country: United States
Runtime: 87 minutes
Where to watch (US): Free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, YouTube and Free Movies Plus, and free with a library card on Hoopla. Subscription through the Shout! Factory channel on Amazon. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

The Stuff (1985) is about a sweet white substance found bubbling out of the ground and sold to America as a dessert, until it turns out to be alive and hungry.

Larry Cohen wrote and directed it as a satire of advertising and appetite, and the fake commercials and jingles matter as much as the monster. New World Pictures released it in June 1985. Its reputation has grown through home video ever since, and Arrow Video issued a 4K UHD edition in July 2025.

Watch it once, and every brightly packaged snack in your kitchen will look slightly suspicious.

Best for: The snack break halfway through the marathon, with dessert already on the table.

The Screendollars Take: The Stuff is not a monster movie. It is a commercial that eats its own customers. Cohen shoots the dessert like a breakfast-cereal ad, all bright kitchens and happy families, and the horror comes from how willingly everyone keeps eating. Michael Moriarty plays the corporate saboteur hired to find out what is in it, with a lazy charm that keeps the film light even when the Stuff starts moving on its own. Four decades later, its joke about buying whatever we are told to buy lands harder than it did in 1985.

House (1977)

Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi
Starring: Kimiko Ikegami, Kumiko Ohba, Ai Matsubara
Country: Japan
Runtime: 88 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on HBO Max and Philo, plus the HBO Max channel on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi, Plex, Shout! Factory TV and Free Movies Plus, and free with a library card on Kanopy. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

House (1977), released in Japan as Hausu, follows a schoolgirl who takes six friends to her aunt's remote country house for the summer, where the house begins to eat them.

Nobuhiko Obayashi developed the story with his young daughter, Chigumi, and the film's fears look like a child's fears: a hungry piano, a cat that knows too much, a house with an appetite. Toho released it in Japan in July 1977, but its first US theatrical run did not come until January 2010, after a 2009 screening at the New York Asian Film Festival. The Criterion Collection released it on home video in October 2010.

It took 33 years to reach American cinemas, which makes it the most delayed arrival on this list.

Best for: The point in the night when everyone is tired and needs something loud, bright and strange.

The Screendollars Take: House is not a haunted-house film. It is a haunted-house film imagined by someone who has never been frightened by one. Obayashi layers painted backdrops, animation, and superimposed images, and the girls carry nicknames like Gorgeous, Fantasy, and Kung Fu that sum up their one trait. The film breaks every rule of realistic horror, and that refusal is what makes each death feel so wrong. Bring the friend who claims they have seen everything.

Re-Animator (1985)

Director: Stuart Gordon
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton
Country: United States
Runtime: 84 minutes
Where to watch (US): Free with ads on Tubi, and free with a library card on Hoopla. Rent or buy on Apple TV and Fandango at Home. No subscription service carries it.

Re-Animator (1985) follows a medical student whose new roommate, Herbert West, has invented a glowing green reagent that brings the dead back to life, though never quite right.

Stuart Gordon adapted an H.P. Lovecraft story about the obsessive Dr. West and played its gore for laughs, which is why it still works with a crowd. It opened unrated in October 1985 and earned $2.02 million in the US, according to Box Office Mojo. Ignite Films released a 4K edition for its 40th anniversary in 2025.

It is the most widely seen film in this group, and still far less seen than its influence deserves.

Best for: The last film before midnight, when the room is loud, and nobody wants to sleep yet.

The Screendollars Take: Re-Animator is not a splatter movie. It is a screwball comedy with a body count. Jeffrey Combs plays Herbert West with total seriousness, clipped and offended, as if every corpse that misbehaves is a personal insult. Gordon times the gore like slapstick, letting each escalation land a beat after you think the scene is over. The laughter is what lets the film get away with everything else.

Slow-Burn Horror Movies That Build Dread Instead of Jump Scares

The best slow-burn horror movies that build dread instead of jump scares are Session 9, The Innkeepers, Saint Maud, The Wind, A Dark Song, The Blackcoat's Daughter, Kill List, and Possum. A slow-burn horror movie spends most of its running time on atmosphere, character, and unease, then releases that tension late. These eight reward a quiet room and your full attention.

Session 9 (2001)

Director: Brad Anderson
Starring: Peter Mullan, David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon
Country: United States
Runtime: 100 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on AMC+ (including its Apple TV and Amazon channels) and Philo. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home. No free option.

Session 9 (2001) follows an asbestos-removal crew on a rushed one-week job inside an abandoned mental hospital, where one of them starts listening to the recorded therapy sessions of a former patient.

Brad Anderson shot the film inside the real Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts in the fall of 2000, and the building gives the film a texture no set could. It premiered at the Fantasia festival in July 2001 and earned $378,176 in its US release, according to Box Office Mojo. Anderson won Best Director at the Sitges festival that year.

The film's reputation has grown almost entirely through word of mouth, which is exactly how it should reach you.

Best for: A weeknight alone, with headphones on and the volume up.

The Screendollars Take: Session 9 is not a haunted-asylum film. It is a film about a man running out of money and time. Peter Mullan's Gordon has a new baby and a failing business, and the job's impossible deadline presses on him harder than any ghost. Anderson plays the patient's taped interviews over empty corridors, so the most frightening voice in the film belongs to someone you never see. The last tape answers a question the film has been quietly asking since its opening scene.

The Innkeepers (2011)

Director: Ti West
Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis
Country: United States
Runtime: 101 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video, Shudder and Bloodstream, plus the AMC+ and Screambox channels on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Plex, Fandango at Home Free and Amazon MX Player. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

The Innkeepers (2011) follows two bored employees who spend the final weekend of a closing New England hotel trying to record proof of its resident ghost.

Ti West filmed it at the Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Connecticut, on a $750,000 budget, after strange occurrences there during the making of his earlier film, The House of the Devil. It premiered at SXSW in March 2011 and earned $78,396 in its US release in February 2012, according to Box Office Mojo.

If you know Ti West from X, Pearl and MaXXXine, this is the quieter film that shows where his patience comes from.

Best for: A rainy Sunday afternoon, with the lights left on for the first hour.

The Screendollars Take: The Innkeepers is not a ghost story. It is a workplace comedy that slowly forgets to be funny. Sara Paxton and Pat Healy spend most of the film bickering, killing time and daring each other, and West lets those dead hours run long so you relax. When the fear arrives, it arrives in a building you have learned room by room. The patience is the trap, and you walk into it gladly.

Saint Maud (2019)

Director: Rose Glass
Starring: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle, Lily Frazer
Country: United Kingdom
Runtime: 84 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video, MGM+, fuboTV and Philo, plus the MGM+ channels on Amazon and Roku. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

Saint Maud (2019) follows a devout young private nurse who becomes convinced she must save the soul of her new patient, a dying former dancer.

Rose Glass's debut feature was funded by Film4 and the BFI and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019. StudioCanal released it in the UK in October 2020, and A24 released it in the US on January 29, 2021. Glass won the BIFA Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director.

Morfydd Clark, who later played Galadriel in The Rings of Power, gives the performance that made her name here.

Best for: A late night when you want something short and sharp, finished well before midnight.

The Screendollars Take: Saint Maud is not a possession film. It is a portrait of loneliness that has found God and will not let go. Morfydd Clark plays Maud with a terrible eagerness, talking to God as if he were her only confidant, while Jennifer Ehle's Amanda treats that faith as entertainment until it stops being funny. Glass keeps the camera close on Maud's face, so you stay inside her certainty almost to the end. The final shot lasts barely a second, and it is the image you will carry out of the room.

The Wind (2018)

Director: Emma Tammi
Starring: Caitlin Gerard, Ashley Zukerman, Julia Goldani Telles
Country: United States
Runtime: 88 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder, AMC+, Sundance Now, Philo and YouTube TV, plus the Shudder and AMC+ channels on Amazon and Apple TV. Free with a library card on Kanopy. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

The Wind (2018) follows a woman living with her husband on the empty plains of the 19th-century American frontier, who becomes convinced that something evil travels in the wind.

Emma Tammi's first solo feature, written by Teresa Sutherland, premiered in the Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018. IFC Midnight released it in the US on April 5, 2019, and it earned $28,252, according to Box Office Mojo.

Tammi went on to direct Five Nights at Freddy's (2023), which makes this small, severe debut the best way to see what she can do with almost nothing.

Best for: A windy night, ideally in a house that creaks.

The Screendollars Take: The Wind is not a western. It is a film about what isolation does to a mind with nobody to check it against. Caitlin Gerard carries long stretches of the film alone, and Tammi cuts back and forth through time so you are never certain which threat came first. The constant sound of the wind does the work a score usually does. By the end, you are listening for it too.

A Dark Song (2016)

Director: Liam Gavin
Starring: Catherine Walker, Steve Oram
Country: Ireland and United Kingdom
Runtime: 100 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder, AMC+, Sundance Now, Philo and YouTube TV, plus the Shudder and AMC+ channels on Amazon and Apple TV. Free with ads on Xumo Play. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

A Dark Song (2016) follows a grieving mother who rents a remote house in Wales and hires an occultist to perform a months-long ritual that should let her speak to her dead son.

Liam Gavin's debut feature is an Irish-British co-production shot in rural Wales. It premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in July 2016, and IFC Midnight distributed it in the US. Box Office Mojo records no US gross for it at all.

The ritual at its center draws on the Abramelin operation, and the film treats occult practice with an unusual, almost procedural seriousness.

Best for: A night when you can watch with your phone in another room.

The Screendollars Take: A Dark Song is not an occult horror film. It is a film about grief that does the paperwork. Most of its running time is rules, chores, fasting, and arguments between Catherine Walker's Sophia and Steve Oram's Solomon, two people who do not like each other and cannot leave. Gavin treats the ritual as labor, so when something finally answers, you feel you have earned it as much as she has. Its ending reaches for something gentler than you would expect from a film this hard.

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

Director: Oz Perkins
Starring: Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton
Country: Canada and United States
Runtime: 93 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video. Free with ads on Fandango at Home Free, YouTube,e and Xumo Play. Rent on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Fandango at Home and Spectrum On Demand. Buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) follows two girls left behind at their Catholic boarding school over winter break, while a troubled young woman travels toward the school through the snow.

Oz Perkins's directorial debut premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2015, under the title February. It then sat on the shelf until A24 and DirecTV released it in 2017, and its US theatrical run earned $20,435, according to Box Office Mojo.

Perkins later made Longlegs (2024). Anyone who liked that film should start here, because this is where his style was first fully formed.

Best for: A cold February night, as the original title suggests.

The Screendollars Take: The Blackcoat's Daughter is not a possession film. It is a film about being left behind. Perkins splits the story into two threads and lets you assume how they connect, then quietly corrects you. Kiernan Shipka's Kat waits for parents who never arrive, and the film treats that abandonment as the real wound and the evil as whatever moves in to fill it. Its last scene is one of the saddest in modern horror.

Kill List (2011)

Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Michael Smiley
Country: United Kingdom
Runtime: 95 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder, AMC+, Sundance Now and Philo, plus the AMC+ channels on Apple TV, Amazon and Roku. Free with a library card on Kanopy. Rent or buy on Apple TV and Amazon Video.

Kill List (2011) follows an ex-soldier turned contract killer who, short on money and struggling at home, takes a job working through a list of three targets with his old partner.

Ben Wheatley's second feature premiered at SXSW in March 2011 and opened in UK cinemas on September 2, 2011. Michael Smiley won the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor. Its US theatrical gross was $29,063, according to Box Office Mojo.

Severin Films released a 4K UHD edition in December 2025, the clearest sign yet that this film has found its audience the slow way.

Best for: A night when you want a film to make you uncomfortable long before it makes you scared.

The Screendollars Take: Kill List is not a hitman film. It is a domestic drama that walks, very slowly, into a nightmare. The opening act is dinner parties, money arguments, and a marriage under strain, played so naturally that the violence feels like an intrusion when it comes. Wheatley never explains the people who hired these men, and the film is far more frightening for it. Few horror endings follow you to bed the way this one does.

Possum (2018)

Director: Matthew Holness
Starring: Sean Harris, Alun Armstrong
Country: United Kingdom
Runtime: 85 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video and Philo, plus the Screambox channel on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi, Plex, Fandango at Home Free, and Prime Video's free tier. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

Possum (2018) follows a disgraced children's puppeteer who returns to his childhood home in Norfolk, carrying a hideous puppet he cannot get rid of, and moves back in with his cruel stepfather.

Matthew Holness, best known as the co-creator of the comedy series Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, adapted Possum from his own short story in the 2008 anthology The New Uncanny. His debut feature premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2018, with a score by The Radiophonic Workshop. Dark Sky Films released it in the US in November 2018.

It grossed $33,225 worldwide, all of it outside the US, according to Box Office Mojo.

Best for: A grey afternoon, when you want unease rather than shocks.

The Screendollars Take: Possum is not a puppet horror film. It is a film about a memory that refuses to stay buried. Sean Harris barely speaks, and he plays Philip with his shoulders, folded inward like the puppet's legs. Alun Armstrong's stepfather fills the silence with needling, crude talk, and The Radiophonic Workshop's score makes the empty Norfolk coast sound like a forgotten public-information film. It is the most uncomfortable 85 minutes on this list.

Strange, Genre-Bending Horror Movies Worth Tracking Down

The best strange, genre-bending horror movies worth tracking down are Lake Mungo, Noroi: The Curse, Pontypool, The Endless and Bone Tomahawk. Each one borrows the shape of another kind of film, whether a grief documentary, a TV investigation, a radio broadcast, a cult drama, or a western, and lets horror leak in slowly. They are the films most likely to surprise someone who thinks they know how horror works.

Lake Mungo (2008)

Director: Joel Anderson
Starring: Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin Sharpe
Country: Australia
Runtime: 87 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on AMC+ (including its Apple TV and Amazon channels) and Philo, plus the Lionsgate+ and Howdy channels on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi and Plex. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

Lake Mungo (2008) is a fake documentary about an Australian family whose teenage daughter drowns, and about the strange images that begin to appear in their photos and home videos afterwards.

Joel Anderson's film premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on June 18, 2008, played SXSW in March 2009, and reached US audiences through the After Dark Horrorfest series in 2010. Box Office Mojo records no US gross for it. Umbrella Entertainment released a 4K UHD collector's edition in December 2025.

It has spread almost entirely through recommendation, which makes it the purest example on this list of a film your cinephile friend found first.

Best for: Late at night with someone who loves true-crime documentaries and thinks they cannot be fooled.

The Screendollars Take: Lake Mungo is not a found-footage film. It is a grief documentary that happens to contain a ghost. Anderson uses talking-head interviews, home video, and news footage so convincingly that the Palmer family's quiet mourning feels real long before anything supernatural appears. The scares sit inside ordinary frames, and you find them by looking again, the way the family does. The most frightening thing in the film is a secret, not a spirit.

Noroi: The Curse (2005)

Director: Kōji Shiraishi
Starring: Jin Muraki, Marika Matsumoto, Satoru Jitsunashi
Country: Japan
Runtime: 115 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder, AMC+, Philo and Night Flight Plus, plus the Fandor, Screambox and Midnight Pulp channels on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

Noroi: The Curse (2005) is presented as the final documentary of a paranormal researcher who has disappeared, assembled from footage of his investigation into a string of unexplained events across Japan.

Kōji Shiraishi builds the film from TV clips, interviews, and handheld footage, and lets its separate threads connect slowly over nearly two hours. It never had a US theatrical release, and for years it was hard to see outside Japan. Shudder later made it widely available, and Arrow Video included it in its J-Horror Rising Blu-ray box set.

It is now the film horror fans recommend to each other when someone says found footage has nothing left to offer.

Best for: Midnight, with your phone in another room, because you will want to catch every detail in the background of each shot.

The Screendollars Take: Noroi is not a found-footage film. It is a puzzle box built out of daytime television. Shiraishi mixes variety-show segments, psychic demonstrations, and shaky street footage, and for a while it plays almost like a parody of Japanese TV. Then the threads start to tie together, and the clips you laughed at turn out to be evidence. When it ends, you will want to rewatch the first twenty minutes immediately.

Pontypool (2008)

Director: Bruce McDonald
Starring: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly
Country: Canada
Runtime: 93 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Philo only. It is not available to rent or buy digitally in the US, including on Apple TV, so DVD and Blu-ray are the other options.

Pontypool (2008) traps a fading radio shock jock in the basement studio of a small-town Ontario station on the morning that reports of violent mobs start coming in over the phones.

Bruce McDonald directed it from a screenplay by Tony Burgess, adapted from Burgess's 1995 novel Pontypool Changes Everything. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008, and its US release through IFC Films in 2009 earned $3,865, according to Box Office Mojo.

Its only US streaming home is a live-TV package, and it cannot be rented or bought digitally at all, which is exactly why it belongs on a list like this.

Best for: A night when you want to listen as much as watch, with the lights off and the sound turned up.

The Screendollars Take: Pontypool is not a zombie movie. It is a radio play about what happens when words stop meaning what they mean. Almost everything happens off-screen, reported by callers and heard through the studio speakers, and Stephen McHattie's gravel voice becomes the film's main special effect. McDonald keeps the camera in one room and makes you build the outbreak in your own head, which is worse than anything he could have shown. You will be careful with your words on the way out of the room.

The Endless (2017)

Directors: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
Starring: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Country: United States
Runtime: 111 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video, Peacock Premium, Peacock Premium Plus, Philo and Bloodstream, plus several Amazon channels. Free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Plex, YouTube, Xumo Play and Fandango at Home Free, and free with a library card on Kanopy and Hoopla. Rent on Amazon Video and Fandango at Home. Available on Apple TV.

The Endless (2017) follows two brothers who escaped a remote cult camp as young men and return for a visit after a strange videotape arrives, only to find that the members have not aged a day.

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead directed the film and play the brothers themselves. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2017, and Well Go USA released it in the US in April 2018, where it earned $272,020, according to Box Office Mojo. The pair went on to direct episodes of Moon Knight and Loki for Marvel.

It also connects to their earlier feature, Resolution (2012), in ways that reward anyone who watches both.

Best for: Two people who like to argue about what they just watched.

The Screendollars Take: The Endless is not a cult movie. It is a film about two brothers who remember the same childhood differently. Benson and Moorhead's easy, irritated rapport grounds a story that keeps getting stranger, from a tug-of-war rope that disappears into the sky to people trapped in short loops of time. The horror is cosmic, but the real stakes are whether one brother can stop deciding for the other. Watch Resolution afterwards, and the whole thing opens up again.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Director: S. Craig Zahler
Starring: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins
Country: United States and United Kingdom
Runtime: 132 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder, AMC+, Sundance Now and Philo, plus the Shudder and AMC+ channels on Amazon and Apple TV. Free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

Bone Tomahawk (2015) follows a small-town sheriff and three men who ride out across the desert to rescue captives taken by a clan of cave-dwelling cannibals.

S. Craig Zahler's directorial debut was shot in 21 days at Paramount Ranch on a $1.8 million budget. It premiered at Fantastic Fest on October 1, 2015, and opened in limited US release on October 23, 2015. The final act contains one scene of extreme violence that has become the film's most discussed moment, so know that going in.

It is the only western on this list, and the one most people will warn you about.

Best for: A long Saturday night when you have more than two hours and a strong stomach for the last act.

The Screendollars Take: Bone Tomahawk is not a horror film for most of its running time. It is a patient, talkative western that earns every minute of its brutal final act. Zahler gives the four riders long conversations about books, bad legs a, nd the women waiting at home, and Richard Jenkins's backup deputy, Chicory, nearly steals the film with his rambling small talk. Because you know these men so well by the time they reach the caves, what happens there carries real weight. Few films make you care this much before they make you flinch.

The Best Underrated International Horror Movies

The best underrated international horror movies are Cure, Pulse, The Wailing, Tigers Are Not Afraid, His House, and Kuroneko. They come from Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and most of them earned only a sliver of their audience in the US. Subtitles are the only barrier, and every one of these films is worth clearing it for.

Cure (1997)

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Koji Yakusho, Masato Hagiwara, Tsuyoshi Ujiki
Country: Japan
Runtime: 111 minutes
Where to watch (US): No subscription service currently carries it, according to JustWatch. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

Cure (1997) follows a Tokyo detective investigating a series of murders committed by ordinary people who have no idea why they killed, each leaving the same mark on the victim.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival in November 1997. Janus Films brought a 4K restoration to US cinemas in October 2021, and the Criterion Collection released it as spine #1155 in 2022.

Koji Yakusho, who plays the detective, later won Best Actor at Cannes for Perfect Days (2023).

Best for: A night when you want to be unsettled rather than startled, and have nothing early the next morning.

The Screendollars Take: Cure is not a serial-killer film. It is a film about how little it takes to switch a person off. Kurosawa shoots most scenes in long, still wide shots, so the violence happens at a distance and without music, as if it were ordinary. Masato Hagiwara's drifter answers every question with a question, and Koji Yakusho's exhausted detective, already worn down by caring for his ill wife, slowly starts to sound like him. Watch the final scene twice.

Pulse (2001)

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Kato, Koyuki
Country: Japan
Runtime: 119 minutes
Rated: R
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Philo and through the AMC+ channel on Amazon. Rent or buy on Apple TV and Amazon Video.

Pulse (2001), released in Japan as Kairo, follows young people in Tokyo as the dead begin reaching the living through the internet and people start to vanish.

Toho released it in Japan in February 2001, and it screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes that May. Its US theatrical run earned $51,420, according to Box Office Mojo, and Dimension Films later remade it in English in 2006.

The remake is the version most Americans know. The original is the one to see.

Best for: Late at night, alone at your computer, if you are brave enough.

The Screendollars Take: Pulse is not a ghost story about technology. It is a film about loneliness that happens to arrive through a modem. Kurosawa's ghosts move wrongly, slowly and unevenly, and he often leaves them at the back of the frame where you are not looking. Rooms sealed with red tape and long shots of a dim, emptying city make Tokyo feel like it is losing people one at a time. A quarter of a century later, it plays less like a horror film and more like a forecast.

The Wailing (2016)

Director: Na Hong-jin
Starring: Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Chun Woo-hee
Country: South Korea
Runtime: 156 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Hi-YAH and fuboTV, plus the Hi-YAH, Fandor, Screambox a, nd Midnight Pulp channels on Amazon. Free with ads on Rakuten Viki. Rent or buy on Amazon Video. Available on Apple TV.

The Wailing (2016) follows a bumbling police officer in a remote Korean village where a strange illness and a string of killings begin soon after a Japanese stranger moves into the hills.

Na Hong-jin's film screened out of competition at Cannes in May 2016 and earned $49.85 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Only $786,633 of that came from the US. At South Korea's Blue Dragon Film Awards, it won Best Director and Best Supporting Actor for Jun Kunimura.

That gap between a major hit at home and a footnote in America is what earns it a place here.

Best for: A full evening with nothing planned afterwards, because it runs 156 minutes and will follow you to bed.

The Screendollars Take: The Wailing is not an exorcism film. It is a film about a father who cannot tell whom to trust. Kwak Do-won's Jong-goo starts as comic relief, a lazy cop who runs from trouble, and the first hour has real slapstick in it. Na slowly turns that comedy into panic once Jong-goo's young daughter falls ill, and Hwang Jung-min's frenzied shaman ritual is one of the most intense sequences in modern horror. Everyone asks Jong-goo to believe them, and the film never tells you who deserved it.

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)

Director: Issa López
Starring: Paola Lara, Ianis Guerrero, Rodrigo Cortes
Country: Mexico
Runtime: 83 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription through the Shudder channels on Amazon and Apple TV, the AMC+ channel on Amazon, and Philo. Rent on Amazon Video. Buy on Amazon Video and Fandango at Home. Available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017), released in Mexico as Vuelven, follows a girl whose mother disappears in a city ruled by cartel violence, and who joins a small gang of orphaned boys while the dead begin to follow her.

Issa López's film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 24, 2017, and won the Ariel Award for Best Make-Up in Mexico. Its US release earned $175,559, according to Box Office Mojo.

López went on to create True Detective: Night Country (2024), and this film shows exactly why HBO trusted her with it.

Best for: An evening when you want horror that leaves you heartbroken rather than jumpy.

The Screendollars Take: Tigers Are Not Afraid is not a fairy tale. It is a war film told from a child's height. López fills the children's world with small magical touches, a thread of blood that follows Estrella home and graffiti tigers that seem to move, and never lets that magic soften what the adults around them are doing. Paola Lara plays Estrella with a stillness that makes every decision she takes feel enormous. The three wishes she is given turn out to be the cruelest gift in the film.

His House (2020)

Director: Remi Weekes
Starring: Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Wunmi Mosaku, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba
Country: United Kingdom
Runtime: 92 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Netflix, including its Standard with Ads plan. It is not available to rent or buy anywhere in the US, including on Apple TV.

His House (2020) follows a refugee couple who escape war-torn South Sudan and are placed on probation in a run-down house in an English town, where something is already living in the walls.

Remi Weekes's debut premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, and Netflix released it worldwide on October 30, 2020. Weekes won the 2021 BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, and Wunmi Mosaku won Best Actress at the British Independent Film Awards.

Because it went straight to Netflix, many viewers scrolled past it. It deserves better than a thumbnail.

Best for: A weeknight on the couch when you want a horror film that also has something to say.

The Screendollars Take: His House is not a haunted-house film. It is a film about what you carry into a new home. Weekes uses the classic tools- peeling wallpaper, voices behind the plaster, a door that should stay shut- and ties each one to the couple's journey and to the asylum rules that keep them in place. Wunmi Mosaku's Rial refuses to pretend the past is behind them, while Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù's Bol tries desperately to fit in. The ghost is real, so is the guilt, and the film will not let you separate them.

Kuroneko (1968)

Director: Kaneto Shindō
Starring: Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kiwako Taichi
Country: Japan
Runtime: 99 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on the Criterion Channel. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

Kuroneko (1968) follows the ghosts of two women murdered by soldiers in feudal Japan, who return to lure samurai to their deaths until the warrior sent to stop them turns out to be the son and husband they lost to war.

Kaneto Shindō, who also directed Onibaba (1964), made Kuroneko for release in Japan in February 1968. Nobuko Otowa won a Mainichi Film Concours award for her performance, and the Criterion Collection released the film as spine #584.

Onibaba is the Shindō film people know. Kuroneko is the one they should.

Best for: A rainy night when you want something black-and-white, quiet and beautiful.

The ScreenDollarsake: Kuroneko is not a ghost story. It is a tragedy about a family torn apart by men who make war. Shindō sets the bamboo grove against deep black, with figures lit like stage players, and the ghosts move with a cat's lightness that makes their violence look almost graceful. The young samurai who comes home a hero is handed an order he cannot carry out without destroying what he came home for. It is the most beautiful film on this list, and the saddest.

Overlooked Classic Horror Movies Made Before 1990

The best overlooked classic horror movies made before 1990 are Night of the Demon, Carnival of Souls, Messiah of Evil, Martin, The Changeling, Possession, and Prince of Darkness. Each one was cut, retitled, shelved, barely released or overshadowed by its director's more famous work. Together they cover three decades of horror that the usual classic lists skip.

Night of the Demon (1957)

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Starring: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis
Country: United Kingdom
Runtime: 96 minutes (UK version)
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Philo, Night Flight Plus, Midnight Pulp, Cultpix and Chilling, plus the Fandor, Screambox, Midnight Pulp and Cineverse channels on Amazon. Free with ads on Tubi, YouTube and Fandor. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video and Fandango at Home.

Night of the Demon (1957), released in the US as Curse of the Demon, follows an American psychologist who arrives in England to debunk a cult leader, only to be handed a rune-covered slip of parchment that may mean he has days to live.

Jacques Tourneur, who directed Cat People (1942), adapted M. R. James's story "Casting the Runes" from a screenplay by Charles Bennett. Columbia released it in the UK in November 1957 at 96 minutes, then in the US in June 1958 as Curse of the Demon, cut to 82 minutes. Tourneur objected to showing the demon on screen, and the producers overruled him.

If you can choose, watch the longer British cut.

Best for: A late show after a big dinner, when you want a classic that still bites.

The Screendollars Take: Night of the Demon is not a monster movie, whatever the poster promised. It is an argument between a skeptic and a man who knows better. Dana Andrews plays Holden as smug, rational, and slowly cornered. At the same time, Niall MacGinnis makes the cult leader Karswell almost charming, a man who throws a children's party and summons a windstorm in the same afternoon. Tourneur builds his best scenes on suggestion: a parchment that will not stay put, a dark corridor, a deadline nobody can stop. The producers made him show the demon, and his restraint everywhere else is why the film still works.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Director: Herk Harvey
Starring: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger
Country: United States
Runtime: 78 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video, MGM+, AMC+, fuboTV and FlixFling, plus the Shudder channel on Amazon. JustWatch lists no digital rent or buy option in the US, including on Apple TV.

Carnival of Souls (1962) follows a church organist who survives a car plunging off a bridge, moves to Salt Lake City, and finds herself followed by a pale man and drawn to an abandoned lakeside pavilion.

Herk Harvey, an industrial and educational filmmaker from Lawrence, Kansas, made it for $33,000, shooting in Lawrence and Salt Lake City. It premiered at the Granada Theatre in Lawrence on September 26, 1962. Harvey never directed another feature film.

One film, one budget smaller than most modern short films, and a reputation that has only grown for six decades.

Best for: A black-and-white double bill with Night of the Demon, back-to-back

The Screendollars Take: Carnival of Souls is not a ghost story. It is a film about a woman who refuses to belong anywhere, and a world that takes her at her word. Candace Hilligoss plays Mary with a cool detachment that the film treats as both symptom and provocation, and the organ score turns ordinary scenes into a funeral. Harvey's pale figures dancing in the empty pavilion cost almost nothing to film and are impossible to forget. It is proof that $33,000 and one good location can outlast a studio's whole slate.

Messiah of Evil (1974)

Directors: Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz
Starring: Marianna Hill, Michael Greer, Joy Bang, Anitra Ford, Royal Dano
Country: United States
Runtime: 90 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder, AMC+, MGM+, Fandor, fuboTV, Philo and the Apple TV subscription service, plus related channels on Amazon, Apple TV and Roku. Free with a library card on Kanopy and Hoopla, and free with ads on Free Movies Plus. JustWatch lists no digital rent or buy option.

Messiah of Evil (1974) follows a young woman who travels to a fog-bound California seaside town to find her missing artist father, and discovers that the townspeople are waiting for something to return under a blood moon.

Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the married screenwriters behind American Graffiti (1973), shot it in 1971, but it was not first screened until December 1974 and was then released under several different titles, including Return of the Living Dead. Sources still disagree on whether to date it 1973 or 1974. Radiance Films released a new restoration in 2023, made from a 4K scan of elements held by the Academy Film Archive.

It was Gloria Katz's only feature as a director.

Best for: Around 1 a.m., when the marathon starts to feel like a dream.

The Screendollars Take: Messiah of Evil is not a zombie movie. It is a nightmare about a town that has already given up. Two scenes made its reputation: a supermarket where the locals crowd around the meat counter, and a near-empty cinema that slowly fills with silent townspeople behind a woman who has not noticed them. Huyck and Katz light the father's mural-covered house in cold, washed colors that make every room feel like a gallery for the dead. Its year is disputed, and its titles kept changing, but its spell has never broken.

Martin (1977)

Director: George A. Romero
Starring: John Amplas, Lincoln Maazel, Christine Forrest
Country: United States
Where to watch (US): Not available to stream, rent, or buy digitally anywhere in the US, according to JustWatch on October 7, 2026. It is available only on physical media, including 4K UHD and Blu-ray.

Martin (1977) follows a shy young man who moves in with his elderly cousin in a declining Pennsylvania steel town, where the cousin is certain Martin is an old-world vampire and Martin, who uses razor blades instead of fangs, half believes it too.

George A. Romero shot it in Braddock, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1976, and Libra Films gave it a limited US release in May 1978. Romero called it the favorite of his own films. In October 2021, a long-lost black-and-white director's cut was found, and Second Sight released a 4K restoration in the UK in 2023.

It is the only film on this list you cannot watch online in the US today, and the one most worth buying on disc.

Best for: A late night when you want a vampire film with no castles and no capes.

The Screendollars Take: Martin is not a vampire film. It is a film about a lonely young man in a town that is dying around him. Romero shoots Braddock's empty streets with documentary flatness, then cuts to black-and-white flashes of gothic vampire imagery that might be memory or fantasy. John Amplas plays Martin as awkward and sad, more eager to confess to a late-night radio host than to hunt. Romero made his name on the living dead, but this is the film he loved most.

The Changeling (1980)

Director: Peter Medak
Starring: George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Melvyn Douglas
Country: Canada
Runtime: 107 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Philo, plus Screambox, Midnight Pulp and Night Flight Plus. Free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, YouTube and Fandango at Home Free. Rent Amazon Video and Fandango at Home. Buy on Apple TV.

The Changeling (1980) follows a composer grieving the deaths of his wife and daughter who rents a vast old mansion near Seattle, where a child's spirit begins trying to tell him something.

Peter Medak shot the film mostly in Vancouver and Victoria, although the story is set in Seattle. It premiered at the USA Film Festival in Dallas in March 1980 and won eight Genie Awards at the first ceremony, including Best Motion Picture.

It was a prestige Canadian production in its day, and it has slipped out of the conversation since. It belongs back in it.

Best for: A stormy night in an old house, or any house with a staircase you avoid after dark.

The ScreenDollars Take: The Changeling is not a haunted-house film. It is a mystery in which the ghost is the client. George C. Scott plays John Russell as a man too sad to be frightened, which is why he keeps listening when anyone else would leave. Medak builds his most famous scenes from almost nothing: a child's ball bouncing down a staircase, an empty wheelchair, a séance recorded on a tape machine. It frightens you with so little, and that is the hardest trick in the genre.

Possession (1981)

Director: Andrzej Żuławski

Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
Country: France and West Germany
Runtime: 124 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Shudder (including its Amazon and Apple TV channels), Philo and Kino Film Collection, plus the AMC+ channel on Amazon. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

Possession (1981) follows a spy who returns home to West Berlin to find that his wife wants a divorce, and their breakup spirals into something far stranger than an affair.

Andrzej Żuławski's film premiered at Cannes in May 1981, where Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress; she also won the César the following year. Its US release in October 1983 was cut to 81 minutes, and in the UK it was branded a "video nasty." A 4K restoration opened in US cinemas in October 2021, and its US total now stands at $1.16 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

The restoration has given it a second life, but most people still know it only by reputation.

Best for: The night you want to end with an argument, because no two people in the room will agree about it.

The Screendollars Take: Possession is not a monster movie. It is the loudest divorce film ever made. Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani play every scene at full volume, and Żuławski's camera circles them as if it cannot bear to stand still. Adjani's long breakdown in an empty subway passage is the scene people talk about, and it earns its reputation without a single effect. Whatever is growing in that other apartment, the marriage is scarier.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Lisa Blount, Victor Wong
Country: United States
Runtime: 102 minutes
Where to watch (US): Subscription on Prime Video, including its ad-supported tier. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, and Fandango at Home.

Prince of Darkness (1987) follows a physics professor and his graduate students, recruited by a priest to study a canister of swirling green liquid hidden beneath an old Los Angeles church, which may hold the essence of Satan.

John Carpenter wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass, and Universal released the film on October 23, 1987. It earned $14.18 million in the US, according to Box Office Mojo. It is the middle film of what is known as Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, between The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness.

Of the three, it is the one people skip, and the one that rewards you most for not skipping it.

Best for: October 31, as the last film of the marathon.

The Screendollars Take: Prince of Darkness is not a possession film. It is a physics lecture about the end of the world. Carpenter mixes quantum theory, Catholic secrecy, and siege-movie tension, trapping his scientists inside the church while vacant-eyed street people gather outside. The recurring dream, a grainy broadcast from the future showing a dark figure in the church doorway, is one of the most quietly upsetting images he ever filmed. End the month here, and it ends with a warning.

Most of these films reached you late, through a recommendation, a restoration, or a box set, because the market did not know what to do with them the first time. That delay is the best argument for watching them now, while they still feel like secrets. Pick one tonight, and next October you will be the friend with the list. For more films that slipped past their audience, the Screendollars guide to Hidden Gems on Every Streaming Platform picks up where this list ends.

31 Underrated Horror Movies Only Your Cinephile Friend Will Tell You About