While Halloween has already arrived, it’s not too late to get into the spooky spirit going with some scary movies. While everyone is enjoying their yearly journeys with the Myers-es, Voorhees-es, Ghostfaces, Kruegers, Sandersons, and Frank-N-Fruters, it’s fun to get some fresh faces in the mix. 

So here are 5 underseen horror movies to watch this weekend!

Anna and the Apocalypse

For many people, horror movies seem primarily aimed at teenagers looking for a dumb scare, but Sophomore Xaver Alexander argues that they can be much more: “[Horror movies] can be fun, interesting, and thrilling, all at once, which other films lack.”

This is demonstrated in Anna and the Apocalypse, which is perhaps the best high school zombie rom-com musical set during Christmas.  It’s a boisterous genre-bender that’s splitting at the seams with catchy songs, cathartic dance numbers, and gruesome zombie fights.  Even Alexander, who says he’s not usually a fan of comedies, agrees, “[the] dancing fight scenes are really cool.”

Anna and the Apocalypse is greater than the sum of its parts in every regard, and is a bloody good time for musically inclined horror fans. 

Butterfly Kisses

The late Erik Kristopher Myers’s Butterfly Kisses follows two students who discover a box of mysterious tapes that explores the local legend of the “Peeping Tom”. Eventually, the mystery creeps into the lives of the investigators and their documentary crew, blurring the line between fiction and reality.

A film critic by trade, Myers fundamentally understands the functions and strengths of the found footage genre, and pulls the layers back in a meta-filmmaking biopsy. It’s smart, it’s scary, and it pays many tributes to The Blair Witch Project.

Sophomore Noah Day is also a big supporter of Butterfly Kisses: “I would especially recommend it for those who live in Maryland, as the movie was filmed in Ellicott City.” 

He also adds, “This movie doesn’t provide any cheap jump scares, it [offers] real horror that might just give you a fright.”

The Invisible Man (2020)

Being one of the last films to receive a pre-pandemic theatrical release, The Invisible Man got lost in the shuffle. Which is a shame because it’s a lean, simplistic rendition of a classic story that is built off of real life fears and a terrified performance from Elizebeth Moss. It’s filled with subversive twists, and jump scares that hold the audience in tight grip from the opening. It’s a great film that deserves to be resurrected from its pre-pandemic lock-up. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies follows a group of rich, self-obsessed, twenty-somethings as they are locked inside during a hurricane. After one of the “friends” is murdered, pure chaos ensues. 

What follows is one of the funniest, most twisted films this year; what Alexander described as “just a series of unfortunate events.” It perfectly captures the affront of self-centered culture without dumbing down its characters, and, in turn, its audience. It’s claustrophobic satire turned up to 11, and is a great watch for a rainy night. 

Crimes of the Future

Featuring the year’s strangest performance from Kristen Stewart, Crimes of the Future is a fiercely political, but wholly discomforting affair. Commenting on the right to control one’s own body, veteran horror director David Cronenberg places himself squarely on the side of the people. 

It follows a surgery performance artist, played by The Lord of the Rings’s Viggo Mortenson, as a mysterious group of rebels who attempt to use his notoriety to bring light to the new frontier of human evolution. The film, for the sake of due warning, is very weird, Alexander explains why he wasn’t a fan: “It was really weird. It did a good job establishing atmosphere but was just too gray and wasn’t for me. [It was also] confusing. It’s definitely for a certain type of person.”

The script was written over 20 years ago, only now seeing the light of day, but it’s still a poignant, essential, and timely film… if you’re not queasy.

But that isn’t to say that horror, as a genre, is exclusively for the steel-stomached among us. Horror guru Guillermo del Toro argues: “In horror, you use elements that are fanciful or poetic, [it’s]  almost fairytale like.” 

Horror can be a genre of fear, of expression, and of every other emotion on the human spectrum, and when is there a better time to dive headfirst into it then during the spookiest time of the year: Halloween.