We’ve Picked the Top 7 Spooky Season Movies to Stream on Peacock
Between modern thrillers, horror comedies, and Universal monster movies, Peacock is a perfect streamer for Spooky Season
With Halloween right around the corner, Peacock’s library this month is fuller than ever, jam-packed with excellent seasonal classics like “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” “Jennifer’s Body,” “Halloween,” and many others. Complete with Peacock Originals and other films from Universal Pictures and Focus Features, there’s no shortage of great movies to spoil you on the streamer at the moment.
If you’re looking to add to your watch list and the best of what Peacock has to offer, here are my picks for the best seven movies currently available to stream!
Top 7 Movies Streaming on Peacock Right Now:
No. 7: Death Becomes Her (1992) | Black Comedy, Fantasy
Not to speak ill of any of Robert Zemickis’ dramatic works (especially since that includes “Forrest Gump,” “Cast Away,” “Flight,” etc.), but the pre-Gump Zemickis of the 1980s and early ‘90s was just a weird guy who seemed happy being weird. In rapid succession, we got “Used Cars,” three “Back to the Future” films, “Romancing the Stone,” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”
And then, in 1992, he looked camp dead in the face and directed “Death Becomes Her.” It took far too long for the Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn-led surrealist black comedy to find its people, but with age comes wisdom. Now, it’s got a Broadway musical on the way, and it fits perfectly in with films like the “The Substance” (ideal double-header) that show the agonies of growing older as women when you are surrounded by people who don’t realize women are always in their prime.
Death Becomes Her
Madeline is married to Ernest, who was once arch-rival Helen’s fiance. After recovering from a mental breakdown, Helen vows to kill Madeline and steal back Ernest. Unfortunately for everyone, the introduction of a magic potion causes things to be a great deal more complicated than a mere murder plot.
No. 6: It Follows (2014) | Horror
After a long streak of ghostly found tapes, evil spirits in large family homes, and torture porn, horror desperately needed a reset. What fears really dominate people’s minds? Enter 2014’s “It Follows,” proving monster horror doesn’t always need a terrifying face. Maika Monroe stars as Jay, a carefree teen who has sex with her new boyfriend and learns she is the latest victim of a fatal curse passed from victim to victim, with Death creeping closer while disguising itself as friend or stranger. The David Robert Mitchell film is a modern classic, helping usher in a new age of psychological horror and redefining what it means to have a fear of intimacy.
It Follows
When carefree teenager Jay sleeps with her older boyfriend for the first time, she learns that she is the latest recipient of a fatal curse that is passed from victim to victim via sexual intercourse. Death, Jay learns, will creep inexorably toward her as either a friend or a stranger. Jay’s friends don’t believe her seemingly paranoid ravings, until they too begin to see the phantom assassins and band together to help her defend herself.
No. 5: Dìdi (2024) | Comedy-Drama
While I still grew up terminally online, I’m relieved most of that was spent in the faceless corners of chat rooms and blogs, compared to the relentless beast that is social media today. Thankfully, the 2008-set “Dìdi” exists to help me relive all that embarrassment and ennui. Not since Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” has a filmmaker captured the weird, angsty silly heaven and hell of being a teenager.
Sean Wang takes all the reins as writer, producer, and director in his debut with this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story that is nostalgic without being sentimental. Izaac Wang leads the cast opposite Shirley Chen, Chang Lia Hua, Joan Chen, Stephanie Hsu, and more.
Dìdi (弟弟)
In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.
No. 4: Let the Right One In (2008) | Romance, Horror
John Ajvide Lindqvist’s vampire novel has been adapted several times for the stage and screen so far, including SHOWTIME’s short-lived 2022 series, but the best is Lindqvist’s first, his 2008 adaptation in its original Swedish. Beyond the big hitters like “Nosferatu” (or the infamously batty “Vampire’s Kiss”), vampires have never been my favorite horror subgenre, but credit where credit is due for this slow burn that’s deadly serious about vampires. Kåre Hedebrant leads the cast as Oskar, a sensitive and bullied boy who forms a close bond with the mysterious Eli (Lina Leandersson), who is connected to a string of bloody local murders.
Let the Right One In
Set in 1982 in the suburb of Blackeberg, Stockholm, 12-year-old Oskar is a lonely outsider, bullied at school by his classmates; at home, Oskar dreams of revenge against a trio of bullies. He befriends his 12-year-old, next-door neighbor Eli, who only appears at night in the snow-covered playground outside their building.
This film was later remade in English as “Let Me In.”
No. 3: A Thousand and One (2023) | Drama
A. V. Rockwell’s feature debut won the Grand Jury Prize at 2023’s Sundance, but beyond the festival circuit and indie best-of lists, the moving drama has not yet gotten its flowers. Teyana Taylor stars as Inez, a convicted thief and single mother recently released from Rikers who decides to kidnap her son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, and Josiah Cross at different ages) out of the foster care system to raise him herself in the constantly changing and brutal New York City of the 1990s and 2000s.
“A Thousand and One” will make you angry at pretty much every systemic inequity and failing if you’re not already there, but as devastating as the ride is, Taylor’s performance, one of the best on film of the year, is the stability in Inez and Terry’s unstable world. You will need tissues, and it will make you want to call your mom if you can.
A Thousand and One
Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
No. 2: Get Out (2017) | Horror
There was a lot of skepticism in the air in 2015 when Jordan Peele, best known at that point for his comedy work on “MADtv” and “Key & Peele,” announced he’d be pivoting to horror for his feature directorial debut, “Get Out.” Now, it’s hard to find a horror film in the past decade that’s been more influential, and Peele, who has since made “Us,” “Nope,” and the upcoming “Him” (plus developed and hosted “The Twilight Zone” revival, produced HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” and co-wrote 2021’s “Candyman”), has become the face of modern horror.
The film, which stars Daniel Kaluuya as a young Black man who uncovers shocking secrets when he meets the family of his white girlfriend, earned Peele the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (and many of those voters probably would’ve voted twice if they could’ve).
Get Out
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
No. 1: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) | Sci-Fi, Horror
From “The Munsters” to “Young Frankenstein,” James Whale’s pre-Code “Frankenstein” flipped the switch for modern monster horror. But its sequel, 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein” is to the franchise what “The Godfather II” is to Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy, and nearly 90 years since its release, it remains the greatest “Frankenstein” creation. Colin Clive and Boris Karloff return for the sequel, and Elsa Lanchester, with her magnificent lightning bolt-streaked, sky-high hair, plays the Monster’s Bride in her breakthrough role. No Halloween marathon is complete without it—- and chances are 100% anything other horror and/or sci-fi film you watch that was released after it was influenced by it.
Go back to the basics and keep going: you can also currently watch 1931’s “Frankenstein,” 1939’s “Son of Frankenstein,” and 1945’s “ Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” on Peacock.
Bride of Frankenstein
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive, not killed as previously believed. Dr. Frankenstein wants to get out of the evil experiment business, but when a mad scientist, Dr. Pretorius, kidnaps his wife, Dr. Frankenstein agrees to help him create a new creature.