If you’re a Halloween junkie looking for your trick-or-treat fix, get a load of these scary movies streaming now in Australia.
Halloween movie night – quick links
Halloween
Jamie Lee Curtis will forever be the scream queen for her furiously good performance as babysitter Laurie Strode, battling the menacing presence of Michael Myers. A seemingly unstoppable boogeyman in his blue boiler suit and freaky mask, this force of evil hasn’t reckoned with her might in this all-time slasher from 1978 by scream king John Carpenter, who also brings the spooky synth score.
Talk to Me
Streaming: SBS On Demand, Netflix, Prime Video, Paramount+, Disney+, Beamafilm
One of Australia’s biggest hits in recent years, the wild-at-heart Philippou brothers’ Sundance champion stars Sophie Wilde as grieving teen Mia. She finds solace in buddying up with her bestie’s lil bro, Riley (Leviticus star Joe Bird), but their burgeoning bond is broken when they go to a house party with a creepy ceramic hand that connects you to the dead when you clutch it. Letting go ain’t so easy.
Raw
Streaming: Foxtel
Palme d’Or-winning French filmmaker Julia Ducournau served up a slab of slathering gore with this veterinary uni-set chiller. Garance Marillier delivers a powerhouse performance as Justine, a vegetarian who suddenly hungers for human flesh after she’s forced to eat chicken in a hazing ritual. With a hint of Claire Denis’ cannibalistic triumph Trouble Every Day, it’s one to sink your teeth into.
Get Out
Streaming: Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV
White privilege and attendant racism are the monster in Jordan Peele’s razor-sharp satire, which also brings in cultish aspects and a stab of body horror. Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris, a Black photographer who’s dating the too-good-to-be-true Rose, played by Girls star Allison Williams. A weekend away at her parents’ upstate mansion takes a turn as mind control and brain-swap shenanigans leave Chris fighting for his life.
Dark Age
Streaming: ABC iview, Kanopy, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV
There’s no Halloween without creature features. Luckily, Australian cinema is absolutely teeming with great big beasties who will swallow you whole, whether it’s the hog father of Razorback or the killer koala of Carnifex. Arch Nicholson’s 1987 schlocker Dark Age goes all out on the teeth count, pitting Wolf Creek baddy John Jarratt as Nikki Coghill, as well as Burnam Burnam and David Gulpilil, against a giant chomping croc.
Possession
Streaming: Kanopy, Prime TV, Paramount+, Foxtel, Disney+, Mubi
Demonic forces are surely behind Smile director Parker Finn blasphemously remaking Andrzej Żuławski’s unbeatable classic with Margaret Qualley and Callum Turner. Raise a crucifix to that. There’s no supplanting the late, great Sam Neil as a West Berlin-based spy and an astonishing Isabelle Adjani as his estranged wife – with a tentacled monstrosity as the world’s worst third wheel.
Late Night with the Devil
Streaming: SBS On Demand, Prime Video, Disney+, Shudder, Beamafilm, Apple TV
Satan is a work smarter, not harder kinda guy, so ofc he’d latch onto television’s reach, much like the unquiet dead in Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist and the new flesh in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. Shot in Melbourne, US star David Dastmalchian plays a chat show host who signs a Faustian pact for ratings, unleashing mayhem in this found-footage frightener from Australian directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes.
Sinners
Streaming: Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV
Michael B Jordan convincingly plays twin brothers who get more than they bargained for when they open a jumpin’ juke joint in Mississippi. Irish jigging Remmick (Jack O’Connell) crashes the party with a phalanx of fellow bloodthirsty vamps in tow in Ryan Coogler’s Oscar-winning masterpiece about the pull of the music of the night that will set your teeth chattering and your toes tapping.
The Shining
Streaming: Stan, HBO Max, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV
Horror author Stephen King infamously hates Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. But then, he loves Mike Flanagan’s abominable take on Carrie, so he’s wrong on both counts. Jack Nicholson is an author with writer’s block who’s influenced by the evil spirits haunting the winter-shut Overlook Hotel, terrorising his distraught wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and telepathic son Danny (Danny Lloyd).
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Streaming: Kanopy, Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, Apple TV
Taking up the baton from Danny Boyle, Candyman rebooter Nia DaCosta picks up the Alex Garland-penned plot of a Rage virus-infected UK that has fallen foul of swarms of fast-acting zombies. The good Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) has formed an unlikely friendship with Chi Lewis-Parry’s donkey-hung Samson, while Jack O’Connell plays torture-forward gang leader Sir Jimmy Crystal.
The Blair Witch Project
Streaming: Stan, Prime Video, Apple TV
It’s genius to so disconcert audiences with grainy handheld footage of a person standing in a corner with their back to us and imbue piles of sticks with cursed dark magic. Early proponents of viral marketing, directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick built a staggering backstory for this largely improvised, macabre mockumentary as hapless documentary filmmakers get lost in wiccan woods.
The Moogai
Streaming: SBS On Demand, Kanopy, Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV
The profoundly deep wound of the Stolen Generations is ripped open in Bundjalung/Wiradjuri filmmaker Jon Bell’s scary First Nations story. Hot-shot lawyer Sarah (Sharri Sebbens) is estranged from her biological mother (Tessa Rose) and was raised by white adoptive parents. But when her newborn babe is taken by a beast manifested from colonial violence, they must join forces to win her back.
The First Omen
Streaming: Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV
Horror prequels can be a shocker, over-explaining their dread-filled originals and replacing practical magic with terrible CGI. But Arkasha Stevenson’s genuinely unsettling debut feature truly honours Richard Donner’s The Omen. Nell Tiger Free is spot-on as Margaret, a novice sent to Rome to take the veil who gets pulled into the void, dragged down into the summoning of the antichrist. She even manages to pull off a sick-making nod to Possession. Beat that, Qualley!
