The Halloween Countdown: 31 days of horror to watch

Do you feel that? That chill in the air, that tingling sensation at the back of your neck? It can only mean one thing. That’s right: Halloween season is once again upon us!

We especially love Halloween, though, a holiday dedicated to all things scary and spooky. Which is why, every year for the past four years, Polygon has put together a Halloween countdown calendar, selecting 31 of our staff’s top horror-themed or Halloween-adjacent picks across movies, TV, and online videos throughout the month of October, all available to watch at home. It’s been so much fun, in fact, we’re doing it again — with an all new batch of films, shows, and videos to choose from.

Every day for the month of October, we’ll add a new recommendation to this countdown and tell you where you can watch it. So curl up on the couch, dim the lights, and grab some popcorn for a spine-tingling marathon of Halloween-adjacent delights.

Where to watch: Available to stream on Plex and Pluto TV with ads and to rent on Amazon

Kicking off the Halloween horror movie season is a delicate art. Just a few days into the official start of fall, it’s important to pick exactly the right movie to subtly shift that chill in the air from cozy to spooky as gently as you can. With that in mind, we’re easing into Halloween this year with Dario Argento’s Phenomena, a perfect blend of spooky, campy, and bleak that sets that stage just right for the frights to come.

Phenomena takes place in a remote town in Switzerland at a boarding school where Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), the daughter of a famous American actor, is the newest student. The only problem is there’s also a serial killer rampaging through the town, and when Jennifer witnesses one of the murders, her life is suddenly in grave danger. The good news is she has an inexplicable telekinetic power over insects to help keep her alive.

And while the movie isn’t quite as silly as the premise would imply, it is among the most bizarre and fun of the many sleazy slashers of the 1980s. But what truly elevates it to a special place is that it’s one of the rare horror movies where the supernatural is seemingly wholly on the side of good. It’s rare that a movie lets us unambiguously root for the mystical power at its center, giving the whole thing the strange, otherworldly feeling of a particularly grotesque fairytale.

All of this makes for a tremendously entertaining and odd mystery movie, and a great way to begin a month full of horror movies. —Austen Goslin