10 films to keep you up at night this Halloween

It’s spooky season 🎃 and Madman has your back with a list of the best in high class thrills and chills to usher in the Halloween weekend. Whether you want to marvel at body horror weirdness, peek through your fingers at vengeful ghosts, bust a gut laughing, or gasp at real life frights, we’ve got you covered. 

For J-horror junkies: RINGU

The original and the best. After watching a mysterious videotape, a group of teenagers are dead, their bodies found gruesomely contorted. The video then becomes an urban myth as an unseen force points its deadly finger at those poor souls unable to resist their curiosity. There really is no substitute for straight-up terror and this film. Is. Terrifying. 

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For body horror fiends: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

In a not-so-distant future, humans alter their biological makeup – some naturally, some surgically – as the body itself becomes art. Yep there’s no mistaking it, it’s a David Cronenberg movie. The undisputed master of body horror returns to his genre roots after more than twenty years, taking Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart along for the ride. 

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For doco buffs: THE IMPOSTER

In 1994 a 13-year-old boy disappears without a trace from San Antonio, Texas. Three and a half years later he is found alive, thousands of miles away with a story of kidnap and torture. His family is overjoyed to bring him home, but all is not quite as it seems… Truth is stranger than fiction, and it turns out it’s often scarier too. Watch this jaw-dropping real-life chiller, and then talk about it obsessively for weeks afterwards. 

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For feminist frighteners: A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire. This moody masterpiece from debut writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour electrified critics and audiences in 2014, with its bold spaghetti western flourishes and a mysterious anti-heroine with a taste for bad men…

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For scaredy cats: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS

The perfect option for a stress-free Halloween from the creators of Boy and Flight of the Conchords. Flatmates Viago (Taika Waititi), Deacon (Jonny Brugh), and Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) are three vampires trying to get by in modern society; from sticking to the housework roster to trying to get invited into nightclubs, they’re just like anyone else – except they’re immortal and must feast on human blood.

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For overachievers: LOCKE

If vampires and ghosts aren’t your jam, here’s one of the scariest and yet most relatable thrillers of the decade. Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) has worked hard to craft a good life for himself, until he receives a phone call that will unravel his family, job, and soul. Taking place over the course of one riveting car ride, LOCKE stars Tom Hardy in a tour-de-force performance. If you’re not a nail biter, you will be by the end of this film. 

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For book lovers: SHIRLEY

Any good horror fan knows to worship at the altar of Shirley Jackson, the eccentric writer whose tortured but brilliant mind gave us The Haunting Of Hill House. In Josephine Decker’s brilliant character study, Elisabeth Moss shines as Shirley, taking us inside the heightened tensions of her private life in a dark surreal tale that’s less biopic and more psychodrama, as befits a horror legend. 

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For retro stars: SHALLOW GRAVE

Cast your mind back to a simpler time, when Ewan McGregor was but an apple in Hollywood’s eye, and Danny Boyle was slumming it at the BBC. Their hugely entertaining first film together is a diabolical thriller about three Edinburgh roommates, a suitcase full of money, and some very bad decisions. Macabre but with a streak of offbeat humour, this is a full-throttle whack of Hitchcockian nastiness.

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For animal lovers: LAMB

When Icelandic couple María (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own, but they soon face the consequences of defying the will of nature. Word to the wise, avoid reading up on this one. Don’t even watch the trailer. Heck, don’t even read this blog. Get outta here and watch LAMB now!

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For tech heads: UPGRADE

Local boy Leigh Whannell hits it out of the park with this firing-all-cylinders genre fest (shot in Melbourne!) that sits in the sweet spot between horror, action, thriller and sci-fi. When a technophobe is paralysed in a freak mugging that leaves his wife dead, he’s offered an experimental cure – an implanted computer chip called STEM. But Grey finds that the chip has a voice and a mind of its own… 

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