The October Horror Movie Challenge

As the month comes to a close, it’s time to pick through the bones of another October Horror Movie Challenge. Fundamentally, this is simply an excuse to watch a bunch of horror films. Personally, I watch films I’ve never seen before and post a review every day, but it’s great to chat to people who just watch what they can.

I also took part in 2013, 2014, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. You can find my reviews from these years on this site.

As much fun as watching all these films has been, talking about them is even better. If you fancy joining the conversation, I would love to hear from you. The main hub of discussion is our Discord server, where we have a channel dedicated to the October Horror Movie Challenge. Alternatively, you can contact me on Bluesky, Reddit, or by dropping a note down the old disused mine shaft.

The Good

I’m always conflicted about how to select films for the OHMC. On one hand, I want to experience a wide range of what the genre offers, mixing up age and country of origin, and also quality. It can be great fun to write a grumpy review of some stinker, or, better yet, be pleasantly surprised by a film that looks awful. On the other hand, I want to know that I’m going to enjoy most of what I watch, just so the month doesn’t feel like a complete slog.

So, once again, I’ve ended up picking a lot of films I’ve enjoyed. The downside is it’s hard to pick just three highlights.

There are many near misses to mention here. The Sadness is a savage and clever take on the rage virus subgenre and did much to convince me I’m ready to love zombie films again. Oz Perkins’ The Monkey was a wonderful combination of dark comedy and ludicrous gore that had me laughing and gasping throughout. The grotesqueries of The Ugly Stepsister turned my stomach in all the right ways. Heart Eyes blended the slasher flick and romcom genres in a way I wouldn’t have believed possible. And Infested is the kind of manic entertainment you want from a monster movie.

Hatching

It’s easy for a horror film with deeper themes to forget about actually being horrific. Hatching avoids any such missteps, deftly blending its depiction of a girl’s attempts to appease her overbearing mother with her relationship with the hideous bird monster she’s raising. This is a creepy, grotesque film that packs a huge emotional punch.

Best Wishes to All

With less imagination, Best Wishes to All could just have been a preachy morality tale about how people exploit each other. What we get, happily, is something much weirder that both builds unease and delivers some real shocks when it wants to. Somehow, it manages to make a tender act of intimacy between an elderly couple more upsetting than eye mutilation, coprophagy, and a young child vomiting blood.

Bring Her Back

This is probably the least surprising entry on my list. I picked the Philippou brothers’ last feature, Talk to Me, as one of my films of the month in 2023, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing what they did next. Bring Her Back does not disappoint, presenting a pitch-dark story of just how far a grieving mother will go. While the violence and gore are absolutely stomach-turning, it’s the emotional impact that will really hurt you.

The Bad

While I don’t really subscribe to the idea of “so bad it’s good”, I do hope for a few really terrible films every year for variety, and for the chance to write a bad-tempered review or two.

There were a few disappointments this year that I’d struggle to call bad. Grafted, for example, has plenty of redeeming features, but ultimately felt too safe and derivative. I had similar misgivings about Perewangan, which didn’t offer anything I hadn’t seen in many other, better films. And the only sin Creature From the Black Lagoon really committed was not living up to the best of the Universal monster movies.

Nightmare City

Nightmare City is a mess. This is a very 1950s tale of atomic mutants on the rampage, given the kind of sex and gore makeover that could only have come out of 1980s Italy. Unfortunately, most of the makeup effects look like they came from the bargain bin of the local fancy dress shop. The main problem, however, is that far too little of interest happens, and then the film squanders any remaining goodwill with the kind of ending that makes you want to punch someone.

Winterbeast

I was torn whether to include Winterbeast in the Bad or Weird category. It is certainly the worst film I’ve seen this month, and possibly for years, but it is also indescribably odd. This is clearly a labour of love, and it goes to some very strange places, but the sheer incompetence of the filmmaking renders it completely incoherent. It is the rare kind of bad film I’d actually recommend, if only because watching it is a psychedelic experience.

A Cat in the Brain

I am an unashamed fan of Lucio Fulci, but I won’t pretend for a moment that most of his films are any good. Even the best of them succeed despite themselves, bludgeoning us with weirdness until we stop caring if they make sense. A Cat in the Brain could have done this, but it just descends into a series of gory scenes I suspect Fulci couldn’t build a film around. Far from his best work, and all the more frustrating because a bit more imagination could have made it something special.

The Weird

Weird horror films are usually my favourites. All-out weirdness can be a lot more unsettling than gore or suspense in the right hands, and even the wrong ones can create something memorable. I seek out at least a few oddballs every year to keep things lively.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is certainly strange enough to earn a place in this list, but I was put off by the sexualisation of its teenage star. While I’m not sure how horrific it is, I was very taken with how Enys Men told its story through a fractured visual narrative. Dead Talents Society was stranger in tone than content, but a good blend of comedy and poignancy. And while A Page of Madness was probably the strangest viewing experience of the month, that was more down to my not having enough context when I watched it.

Sister Midnight

The only reason I placed Sister Midnight here instead of my top picks is that it is such a difficult film to pin down. It took around half the runtime for me to understand why it had been marketed as a horror film and not a black comedy. Even then, it is the kind of film that uses horror tropes to amuse and confound rather than to scare. Mostly, however, I included it here because of the goats.

Arrebato

Arrebato is another film that defies simple description. Despite it fitting vaguely into the cursed media subgenre, it doesn’t use many identifiable horror tropes. This is more a story about addiction, both to filmmaking and to heroin. Even so, its tale of obsession and transcendence is genuinely unsettling, and I found myself so tense in the closing scenes that my shoulders hurt.

Pieces

At its heart, Pieces is a sleazy, exploitative slasher. It follows the general formula of a seventies giallo, adding buckets of gore. What makes it weird is all the odd little asides that pad out its slight plot, from the random attack by a professor of kung fu to the close-up of one of the victims peeing herself. I don’t think anyone would call Pieces a comedy, but it is the kind of absurd nonsense that will have you laughing uncomfortably.

2025’s Selections

If you’d like a recap of the full list, it went something like this:

Heretic (USA, 2024)
The Sadness (Taiwan, 2021)
The Uninvited (USA, 1944)
The Lodge (UK/USA, 2019)
WolfCop (Canada, 2014)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970)
The Monkey (USA, 2025)
Sister Midnight (India/UK, 2024)
Roadgames (Australia, 1981)
Nightmare City (Italy, 1985)
Dangerous Animals (Australia, 2025)
Dead Talents Society (Taiwan, 2024)
Winterbeast (USA, 1992)
Byzantium (UK/Ireland, 2013)
The Ugly Stepsister (Norway, 2025)
A Page of Madness (Japan, 1926)
Heart Eyes (USA, 2025)
Grafted (New Zealand, 2024)
Arrebato (Spain, 1979)
Hatching (Finland, 2022)
Abigail (USA, 2024)
Ganja & Hess (USA, 1973)
The Devil’s Bath (Austria, 2025)
Pieces (Spain, 1982)
Infested (France, 2023)
Best Wishes to All (Japan, 2022)
A Cat in the Brain (Italy, 1990)
Enys Men (UK, 2022)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (USA, 1954)
Perewangan (Indonesia, 2024)
Bring Her Back (Australia, 2025)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.