Coming this October: Halloween: The Film-of-the-Week Horror Adventure 2026
Do you like horror movies?
Last year, this was called The Film-of-the-Week Horror Odyssey, but I feel like Mr. Nolan now de facto owns the word “Odyssey,” for all practical purposes.
I can’t use it in any titles for the next, oh, nine years?
I have a lineup—not of specific films, but of specific themes. These will be exactly the same as last year. The themes I’ll be embracing for the next four or so weeks are as follows:
Week 1:
Find a movie that will actually scare me.
Week 2:
Watch a classic monster movie.
Week 3:
Find a horror movie that everybody loves.
Week 4:
Find a horror movie I am embarrassed to have never seen.
Week 5:
Find a movie that everyone will watch for Halloween this year.
Week 6:
Find a horror movie I wish I’d seen as a kid.
Week 7:
Find the most notable current sleeper horror hit.
Week 8:
Find a horror classic I have no interest in, just to cross it off my list.
Week 9:
Watch the best-reviewed horror movie I can find that I haven’t seen.
Week 10:
Find a horror movie EVERYONE has seen (except me).
Week 11:
Find a horror movie that is supposed to be great, but I’m afraid I won’t like.
Week 12:
Watch a horror movie I had never heard of until it showed up on streaming trends.
Week 13:
Find the midnight movie du jour.
Week 14:
Watch a foreign-language horror movie I would otherwise skip.
Week 15:
What is the one horror movie I would still like to watch before closing the book on this year’s project?
I know what you’re thinking.
“David, why is this listed as weeks and not days? Last I checked, there weren’t 15 weeks in the month of October.”
That would be fair.
But hear me out.
I love the classic childhood trope of the “horror movie of the week”: a generic formula where the heroes encounter some vaguely identifiable creature that is different from the bad guy they fought last week, although sometimes you might have to squint to tell the difference. An obstacle comes out of nowhere for no real reason, strikes true chaos into the citizens of a small town for a few days—or perhaps an extended weekend—then the creature is killed and everyone is relieved.
What happens next to the main characters?
It never matters.
Horror movies always matter, even if the plots never seem to.
I am also a fan of the philosophy of under-promising and over-delivering. Calling this the Film-of-the-Day Horror Adventure would make readers realize how lazy I actually was, and it would become painfully obvious that I was behind schedule when October 31 arrived and I had only gotten through 11 movies.
This way, no matter how long it takes me to complete the project, it will still subconsciously seem like I am ahead of schedule.
Last year’s biggest revelation: there is a sister movie to Psycho that I would now call my second-favorite horror movie of all time, behind the director’s cut of Little Shop of Horrors (1986).
Meanwhile, the most-watched horror movie I had somehow never seen turned out to be one of the worst movies of all time.
According to me, anyway.
This year, I started to worry.
I’ve already seen Obsession and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and Backrooms might still not be easily streamable by the end of October. I started wondering: Is this year’s project likely to be underwhelming? Have I already seen mostly everything worth seeing?
I went through my resources, dug around a little, and now I have a glimmer of hope.
Should this year’s offerings be better than last year’s?
Probably not.
Does the lineup have the potential to be unpredictable, exciting, occasionally terrible, and possibly deeply regrettable?
Absolutely.
So let me allow the AI Gremlin Assistants to say a little piece about the movies I have procured for this year’s offering.
AGA says:
This year’s lineup begins with an experiment that has already worked once before: if a sad clown knows how to rub salt in old wounds, perhaps things are looking up.
But will it actually be scary?
From there, things get considerably stranger.
There are Universal monsters lurking in black-and-white shadows. There is a Spanish ghost story that nearly everyone seems to adore.
[I don’t know what this is, David.]
There is an embarrassingly large hole in David’s horror education involving a certain masked figure beneath an opera house.
[Les Misérables?, David.]
There are murderous children, a legendary old-Hollywood feud, a movie involving teenagers and monsters that David probably should have seen decades ago, and at least one acclaimed film he strongly suspects he may hate.
Also—because apparently we’re doing this to ourselves—Titane.
AGA predicts that one of the movies David is approaching with the most suspicion will wind up being his favorite, somewhere around a 9 or 9.5.
For the bottom of the pile, AGA is betting on one of the movies he is watching largely out of obligation—the cinematic equivalent of eating your vegetables because they’re historically important.
Prediction: somewhere around a 4.5 or 5.
David returns to the typewriter to say:
The gremlins might have a lot more faith in my appreciation for the charms of Will Smith than is likely warranted.
Mostly, though, I am still able to find movies that I am genuinely surprised I have not seen.
Has my avoidance been for good, measurable reason?
If I hate these movies or find them mediocre, it will be gratifying. I will have vindicated years of perfectly sensible procrastination.
If I discover that I love them and will return to them time and again, well … color me surprised.
An aging werewolf can still play with new bones every once in a while.
I call that a win-win.
