Copyright Us Weekly
Friday is Halloween, and if you don’t have kids to take trick-or-treating or a party to attend, it’s the perfect excuse to marathon some horror movies. Amazon Prime Video has a particularly great selection of films on its platform to get you in the perfect spooky spirit. Whether it’s found footage thrillers, demons, subterranean beasts or haunted houses, there’s something for all horror fans on the platform. Watch With Us wants to highlight a handful of actually scary horror films for Halloween viewing. Our picks include the cave-diving chiller The Descent and the ’90s classic Candyman. Read the rest of the list below. ‘The Descent’ (2005) Following the tragic death of her husband and daughter, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and her thrill-seeking friends finally reunite one year later. The group travels to North Carolina to get back into the adventuring spirit by spelunking in some nearby cave systems. Despite insistence that they’re heading into charted territory, the group becomes lost in an unknown cave system. With no way for authorities to find their whereabouts, the women soon discover they’re being hunted by someone — or something — that resides deep within the cave. Relying on a stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere, the utter helplessness of its lead characters and horrific creatures that spend most of the film swathed in utter darkness, The Descent practically traps you down in the caverns alongside its doomed protagonists. Often considered one of the best horror films of the 2000s, you will never want to set foot in a cave after you see The Descent. ‘Hell House LLC’ (2016) On October 8th, 2009, fifteen people were killed in a haunted house attraction in upstate New York. Fifteen years later, a documentary crew tries to piece together exactly what happened in the weeks leading up to the horrific tragedy. The “Hell House” haunted house had crew sets up shop in the rumored-to-be-haunted Hotel Abaddon, and they soon begin to experience strange, supernatural occurrences that intensify the closer they get to opening night. “What if a haunted house attraction could actually kill you?” is probably a fear at least a few people hold when visiting such attractions for Halloween, and Hell House LLC plays up those fears masterfully. The film is an exceedingly effective found footage mockumentary film, doing a great job of progressively ramping up suspense while providing realistic scares and sowing paranoia and distrust amongst its characters. ‘The First Omen’ (2024) Predating the events of The Omen by five years, The First Omen takes place at the Vizzardeli Orphanage in Italy, following a young novice nun named Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) who comes to the convent from America to finish the formal process of becoming a nun. When she begins having strange experiences and hallucinations, she eventually discovers a terrifying plot within the church to bring about the birth of the Antichrist — and Margaret is directly involved. With numerous films within The Omen franchise of decidedly varying quality (even the first film has its detractors), a prequel to the first film was met with some suspicion from horror fans. However, The First Omen is not just a worthy extension of The Omen universe, it arguably matches the quality of the original. The film’s success is in no small part in behalf of its director, Arkasha Stevenson, who suffuses throwback stylistic cues with a modern flair. ‘Candyman’ (1992) Chicago-based graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) begins investigating local urban legends and decides to do her thesis on a superstition involving the local Cabrini-Green public housing project. A spirit known as Candyman (Tony Todd) is said to haunt the area, a 19th-century Black painter and son of a slave who was killed by lynching after falling in love with a white woman. When locals believe Candyman is responsible for a recent murder, Helen finds herself stalked by a figure fitting his very description. Candyman has plenty of scary imagery and some genuinely upsetting gore (plus social commentary that works), but it’s the creepy story at the center and a nightmarish performance from Tony Todd that makes Candyman really tick. Director Bernard Rose crafts an overwhelmingly foreboding atmosphere, and you can’t help but feel like you’re being followed just like the film’s protagonist. ‘Gonjiam Haunted Asylum’ (2018) This South Korean found-footage horror film follows the crew of a popular web series as they travel to an abandoned mental asylum that’s said to be haunted. The local legend is that the hospital’s director killed all his patients and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. Thinking they’ll get a popular livestream, the video crew instead gets more than they bargained for when superstitions become real, and the hospital wants them to stay. Similar to the American found footage film Grave Encounters (which bears a strikingly similar premise), Gonjiam Haunted Asylum is a fantastically scary supernatural horror that puts you right in the action with its terrified cast. The film makes clever use of its livestream format and doles out its horror set-pieces masterfully, building suspense and stifling atmosphere in equal amounts.
