Just when you thought it was safe to go out and play, along come a selection of horror movies to remind you to stay home, keep everything locked and wait for something to go bump in the middle of the night. Here’s a bunch of horrors to keep you on edge this Halloween, whether you’re wandering through an open field in the pale moonlight or watching and waiting…
A Quiet Place I & II
In the films A Quiet Place I and II, Emily Blunt and John Krasinki play parents in a post-apocalyptic world where their family must live in silence while hiding from monsters with extremely sensitive hearing.
With a 96% rating from critics, A Quiet Place is the 10th best reviewed horror movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes. The 2018 horror classic received numerous awards, including a Critics Choice Award for Best Sci-Fi/Horror, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Blunt, and an Oscar nomination for its eerie sound design.
The Abbott family is compelled to travel into the uncharted outside world in A Quiet Place Part II, where they discover that there are other dangers waiting beyond the sand path in addition to the creatures that hunt by sound.
At the 2022 Critics Choice Super Awards, Part II won Best Horror Film, beating out Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) and Millicent Simmonds, who were nominated for Best Actor and Actress. The movie won Rotten Tomatoes’ Golden Tomato for Best Horror Movie of 2021 with a 91% rating from critics. According to the consensus among critics, “A Quiet Place Part II expands the franchise’s terrifying world without losing track of its heart,” making it “a nerve-wracking continuation of its predecessor.”
Malignant
Madison (Annabelle Wallis from Peaky Blinders) is paralyzed in the movie Malignant by horrifying visions of gruesome murders, which she soon realizes are actual murders that she is witnessing.
At the 2022 Critics Choice Super Awards, Malignant was nominated for Best Horror Film, Best Villain (Marina Mazepa), and Best Villain (Ray Chase as Gabriel). It is directed by James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring, Furious 7), who Collider and Bloody Disgusting both hailed as one of the “most influential horror directors of the 21st Century” and “the most important horror director of the last 20 years.”
Malignant is hailed by Decider as James Wan’s most twisted and visionary horror film yet… horrifying, revolting, insane, and hilarious to hell.
Last Night in Soho
A dazzling want tobe singer (Emmy nominee Anya Taylor-Joy from The Queen’s Gambit) meets an aspiring fashion designer (BAFTA nominee Thomasin McKenzie from Jojo Rabbit) when they both mysteriously travel to the swinging Sixties. However, the glamour is not all that it seems to be, and the past dreams begin to fracture and coalesce into something more sinister.
At this year’s Critics Choice Super Awards, Last Night in Soho was up for Best Horror Movie, and McKenzie and Taylor-Joy were nominated for Best Actress in a Horror Movie. Additionally, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) won Best Director at the 2022 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, while the horror was nominated for Outstanding British Film at the 2022 BAFTAs.
The cast includes Terence Stamp, an Oscar nominee, Rita Tushingham, a BAFTA winner for The Responder, and Matt Smith, an Emmy nominee for House of the Dragon (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). Dame Diana Rigg, a departed Emmy winner, and Margaret Nolan make their final film appearances in Last Night in Soho as Olenna Tyrell from Game of Thrones (Goldfinger).
This is Wright’s “best movie since Shaun of the Dead,” according to The Wrap. One of the top London films of the new millennium.
Scream
Scream revives Wes Craven’s satirical slasher franchise and is currently the #23 biggest box office hit globally of 2022. In order to resurrect secrets from the town’s bloody past, a new killer dons the Ghostface mask and starts targeting a group of teenagers 25 years after a string of brutal murders shocked the sleepy town of Woodsboro, California.
A direct sequel to 2011’s Scream 4, the horror film stars MTV Movie Award winner Neve Campbell, who played Monica on Friends, Teen Choice Award winner David Arquette, and Emmy nominee Courteney Cox. At the 2022 MTV Movie + TV Awards, where the movie was nominated for Best Movie, Jenna Ortega (You) took home the prize for Most Frightened Performance among the newcomers. Watch out for Jack Quaid as well (The Boys), Jasmin Savoy Brown (Yellowjackets), Melissa Barrera (In the Heights, Vida), and Dylan Minnette (13 Reasons Why).
The Conjuring 1-3
Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga and Emmy nominee Patrick Wilson play real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in the highest grossing horror franchise of all time, The Conjuring.
The Warrens investigate a murder that might be connected to a demonic possession in The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, the 21st biggest box office success of 2021, which is based on the 1981 Connecticut murder trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson.
The movie is described as “a wholly different experience that still feels like a warm reunion with horror’s favorite couple” by Bloody Disgusting.