This Halloween season, there were plenty of terrifying tales to choose from. From psychological thrillers to supernatural hauntings, there's something for everyone.
Think of this fantastically creepy offering as "Succession" with metaphysical twists, a wicked sense of comeuppance and blood. Lots of blood. This eight-part Netflix series from Mike Flanagan ("The Haunting of Hill House," "Midnight Mass") is loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name, but its eat-the-rich themes are evergreen.
It follows the obscenely wealthy and corrupt founders of a pharmaceutical company, conniving twins Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell). We meet them just as Roderick's greedy and loathsome offspring are dying one by one in brutal and gruesome fashions. Could it be payback for Fortunato Pharmaceutical pushing addictive painkillers on an unsuspecting public, or is there something even more sinister behind the success of the company and its CEOs? Look toward a mysterious woman from their past, Verna (Carla Gugino). She's everywhere, all the time and her name is an anagram of the raven.
Is Pat having a mental breakdown, or is there really a ghost in her new house that's telling her to kill? Starz's half-hour dark comedy "Shining Vale" has fun with every horror trope imaginable while exploring mental illness through the lens of a haunting.
"Women are roughly twice as likely as men to suffer from depression," says the series in an opening disclaimer. "Women are also roughly twice as likely to be possessed by a demon." Enter Patricia Phelps (Courteney Cox), a bestselling novelist whose follow-up book is way past overdue. Suffering from severe writer's block and a stale marriage, she and her family move from New York City to the quaint suburb of Shining Vale, where she hopes to finish her manuscript and mend her relationship with her emotionally stunted husband, Terry (Greg Kinnear).
But the old mansion and its resident ghoul (Mira Sorvino) have other plans. Now in its second season, this sharp-witted series from Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan reimagines the many tales of male authors suffering for their craft ("The Shining," "Misery") and puts a harried mom and her host of medications at the center of the story.
While America had "The Amityville Horror," England had the Enfield hauntings. A single mum, Peggy Hodgson and her four kids were terrified by the violent activity in their modest council house on a London estate and their story would later become the basis of "The Conjuring 2."
But this docuseries from Apple TV+ takes a closer look at the terrifying yet suspicious events that made headlines by mining the 200-plus hours of audio logs made in the home between 1977 and 1978, and comparing old and new interviews with witnesses who claimed to have been rattled by shaking walls, banging doors and flying chairs.
This four-part series from MetFilm and Concordia Studios goes as far as to re-create the Hodgson family home on a soundstage, replete with drab beige wallpaper and aging mid-century appliances. As actors lip-sync along to the actual recordings, cracks appear in the story and that's where things get interesting. They scrutinize the late paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse's findings, calling into question what really caused all the activity that made Hodgson an overnight celebrity in the British press.
Like "The Enfield Poltergeist," this documentary looks at the conflicting stories behind a boy's alleged demonic possession in 1980s Brookfield, Connecticut — a case that would mark the first time in U.S. judicial history that a demonic possession was used as a defense in a murder trial.
Interviewed here are the folks who actually lived to tell the tale, including David Glatzel (now in his 50s), who was 11 years old at the time his family claimed he was possessed, and his siblings. Together, they recall when their brother's erratic behavior caught the attention of celebrity demonologists and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, known for their inquiry into the alleged haunting in Amityville, New York, and how the chaos in their home led to a homicide that some still blame on a hellish entity. But their conflicting narratives shed new light on the case and the validity of the first devil-made-me-do-it defense.
It's 2023 when Det. Shahara Hasan (Amaka Okafor) finds a dead body on London's Longharvest Lane. The corpse is an unidentified naked man with a gouged-out eye and a curious tattoo. Det. Alfred Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) found the same body in the same spot in 1890. So does Det. Charles Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) in 1941, and Det. Iris Maplewood (Shira Haas) in 2053. They eventually learn that John Doe's death is caused by someone traveling backward in time, but why?
Finally, a ghost-hunting show with something entertaining to lean on when uncooperative apparitions don't materialize. Hulu's half-hour reality show follows five queer ghost hunters — a tarot card reader, a witch, a tech guru, a psychic and a paranormal researcher — as they launch investigations into paranormal activity at various haunted stops across the county.
Executive producer Kristen Stewart narrates this colorful spin on an old concept. She aims to "push past boundaries to bring acceptance to the misunderstood — living and dead" while looking fabulous in the process.
Now in its second season, this biblical, terrifying series from Spain follows exiled priest Father Vergara (Eduard Fernandez), an exorcist and ex-convict trying to escape his past in the small Spanish village of Pedraza. But the townsfolk begin experiencing supernatural activity of a hellish nature, and it's linked to an antique coin in Father Vergara's possession. The silver piece is one of those paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus and handing him over to the Romans, so suffice to say it's a bad penny. Enter demons, Vatican conspiracies, animals acting strangely and doomsday deadlines. This season, the battered population of Pedraza faces a new enemy, played by Paul Giamatti. Director Alex de la Iglesia describes the villain as "someone so perverse that even the devil fears him."
Wait, didn't "American Horror Story" return for its 12th season in September.? It did, but this is a spinoff of the Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck hit anthology series, its differences connoted in the last few letters of the shows' titles. The Halloween special offers a different horror tale with each new episode, and there are four to fear. A trailer for the episode titled "Tapeworm," featuring actor and former "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Lisa Rinna, explained what to expect in this splashy logline: "An up-and-coming model will stop at nothing in her hunger for success." It's probably best not to snack while watching.
OK, maybe this three-part documentary drops after Halloween, but a good cult story is evergreen. This series from director Cecilia Peck goes behind the scenes of a controversial dating site that attracts an online community of mostly single women by guaranteeing it will help them find and keep their true soulmate, a.k.a. their "twin flame." The site is run by the husband-and-wife team Jeff and Shaleia Ayan, and the series features the firsthand accounts of women who allege abusive indoctrination methods, encouragement to stalk their desired flame and manipulative tactics that made them doubt their very gender and sexual identities. The Twin Flames Universe is still actively recruiting new members, so here's a chance to witness the horror without paying thousands of dollars in class fees to the Ayans.
In case you missed these September releases, "The Changeling" and "The Other Black Girl" spin the unfortunate realities of postpartum depression and racism in the workplace (respectively) into suspenseful tales of gas-lighting terror.
And if you are in the mood for a movie instead, try streaming at least one classic Hammer horror film before handing candy out on the 31st. "Dracula A.D, 1972," "The Mummy" and "The Devil Rides Out" are just a few of the gothic, often groovy gems that were made by the British Hammer production house throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s. You'll find them on Max, Amazon Prime and lots of other platforms where Anglophiles appreciate the sinister charisma of Christopher Lee and the gentlemanly ghoulishness of Peter Cushing.
