Tom’s Top 10 Spooky Season Movies

Blog Manager Tom unleashes his top 10 spooky season horror movies for us to enjoy, but much like Spinal Tap, the list goes to 11!

My top 10 Spooky Season movies are bit subjective and are based on my personal experiences.  I mean, I can go back to my formative years and pick out the movies that haunted me for decades, and they’re both TV movies, DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (screw you, tooth fairies), TRILOGY OF TERROR (double screw you, Zuni doll!). Television opened the gates to me for so many nightmares, from seeing Vincent Price toss his dead baby into a funeral pyre in THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, or seeing ROSMARIE’S BABY (and Roman Castevet’s bushy eyebrows!) on the same night I saw KISS perform on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special. Or maybe the Salem’s Lot miniseries and Danny Glick tapping at a window and scaring my parents to death?

1 THE ENDLESS – Cosmic Horror appeals to me, and lo-fi horror even more. Blend them together and you get a masterpiece of cinema. Justin Benson and Aron Moorhead cast themselves in what can arguably be called their defining film. Brothers Justin and Aron (played by the writers/directors) escape from a Suicide Cult, only to return a decade later… reminding them time is a prison.

2 SINNERS – I don’t know what else I can say about this film. It’s not only my #1 film of 2025, it’s one of the best films made in this century. So layered and nuanced with a stellar cast and even better soundtrack, SINNERS is as woke as they come and corrects the problematic issues of the material that inspired it.

3 JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING – Critically destroyed on its release and a box office bomb, John Carpenter’s adaptation of WHO GOES THERE/remake of Howard Hawk’s classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD has gone on to be the stuff of legend. Filled with Red scare paranoia, and some of the best practical effects ever put on screen, THE THING now stands out as a triumph of American film making.

4 AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON – Speaking of practical effects… John Landis’s take on the venerable Werewolf trope infuses sarcastic, real life humor with jaw dropping special effects and enough scares to keep you up at night. Starring a man who made his big break in Dr. Pepper commercial and a short lived TV show, David Naughton, the character’s everyman appeal worked. But the question remains, even though we saw him change, even though we saw a werewolf, was David ever really a werewolf? Or was it all just in his head? 

5 THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT – The granddaddy of the found footage trope is often maligned by new viewers. You see, in order to truly appreciate THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, you would have had to have lived in the era of its release. The viral marketing, using television and the fledgling internet as part of its campaign, made you believe these actors disappeared while filming a documentary, and when you finally got to see it, you knew immediately whom, amongst those in attendance, had seen the internet hype (which led you to believe this was all real!). People who didn’t know laughed and heckled the film, while those of us who were in the know, so to say, sat there chilled and terrified.

6 THE DESCENT – From it’s cold open to the shocking end, THE DESCENT is a scare factory, toying with everything from the grief of losing your family in a car accident to the claustrophobia of being in a cave… to predatory cave troglodytes. Neil Marshall’s defining horror film (and this is no dig at DOG SOLDIERS!) is likely the scariest movie I have ever seen, and that says a great deal.

7 PROPHECY – No, this isn’t the Christopher Walken fallen angels movie. This, my friends, is John Frankenheimer’s cult classic, written by David Seltzer (the guy who wrote THE OMEN), and a film (and novelization by the screenwriter!) that is near and dear to my heart. The movie trailer alone scared a generation to death, as we witnessed a child in a yellow sleeping bag turned to blood and feathers when something attacks out of the darkness of the woods. For as much as I love JAWS, PROPHECY hit harder because I didn’t live near an ocean. The plot—revolving around animals mutated into killing beasts, a result of mercury poisoning—has always been relevant to me, as live near a mercury poisoned lake (Lake Onondaga). Is it campy? Sometimes, hell, even South Park mocked it decades ago (Man-Bear-Pig!). Do I care? Nope.

8 THE EXORCIST – What can I say about William Peter Blatty’s and William Friedkin’s masterpiece that already hasn’t been said? THE EXORCIST is the perfect amalgamation of a buddy cop movie and supernatural thriller, with aspects of medical and sports dramas thrown in to make even more relatable to the general American public. THE EXORCIST came out during the height of the Satanic Panic of the 1970s, and may have actually exasperated it the cultural phenomenon. Today, however, the film’s influence can be seen all over pop culture.

9 NEAR DARK – This was the greatest vampire movie, at least to me, until SINNERS graced the screens back in April. In fact, NEAR DARK might very well still be that film, that is if it had a better soundtrack, and this is no dig at Tangerine Dream’s moody synthwaves. NEAR DARK was Kathryn Bigelow’s first movie and, and still her best, in my opinion, in spite of its flaws. The cast is what makes the film work, from Lance Hendrickson to Bill Paxton, all of them gave iconic takes on the characters they played. Eric Red’s screenplay is violent, it’s splatterpunk, and it’s awesome, with the right amount of gallows humor.

10 JACOB’S LADDER – There have been  many reinterpretations of Ambrose Bierce’s AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, but none of them are as much of a mind-fuck as Adrian Lynne’s JACOB’S LADDER. Most people have a flashback while dying, but the eponymous protagonist of JACOB’S LADDER has the flash forward so prevalent in Bierce’s classic short story. It’s a druggy acid trip of a movie, with practical effects and the biggest scare you can ever give me, people shaking in preternatural manners. Tim Robbins and Danny Aiello standout in the cast.

11 THE BELIEVERS – Let’s just say I don’t allow coffee makers to be set up near a sink to this day since first seeing THE BELIEVERS in the theater. That cold open wasn’t the only thing that stuck with me. An adaptation of Nicholas Conde’s THE RELIGION, it focuses on Santeria and voodoo and child sacrifices and is filled with surreal imagery and fucked-up shit that will keep you awake at night for years. Martin Sheen really hams it up in this one, too.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.