Clockwise from top-left: Vicious, V/H/S/Halloween, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, and IT: Welcome to Derry.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Paramount, Shudder/Everett Collection, Netflix, Brooke Palmer/HBO
This article will be updated throughout October as more horror offerings become available on streaming services.
Did the spooky season sneak up on anyone else? It’s hard to believe it’s here, but the streaming services have planned for it even if you haven’t. What original-programming highlights do streamers have for horror fans this year?Interestingly, many monsters of 2025 come from real life. Who needs Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers when you have Ed Gein, Alex Murdaugh, the Monster of Florence, and John Wayne Gacy? For some reason, this year is a little slighter than normal on original streaming offerings, but we found a few worth marking your calendar for and we’ll update this list when anything else interesting drops in.
October 3, Netflix
It wouldn’t be October without something by Ryan Murphy, the king of creepy TV. Oddly enough, this is a rare year without a new installment of American Horror Story (or American Horror Stories), but that could be because the Murphy-verse has been spending its time on a new installment of Monster, the popular series that examined Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers in its first two seasons. For the third chapter, Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam will play legendary late-1950s serial killer Ed Gein, who inspired dozens of fictional ones, including Norman Bates, Buffalo Bill, and Leatherface. In fact, it looks as if writer Ian Brennan will directly address how Gein’s life became the inspiration for Psycho, given the cast includes Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock and Olivia Williams as Hitch’s wife and screenwriter, Alma Reville.
October 3, Shudder
The now-annual anthology series drops its eighth iteration this October, and the good news is it’s got one of the best batting averages in V/H/S history. With a clever wrap-around segment centered on a new diet-soda product with intense side effects, the five short films of this year’s V/H/S all take place on or around Halloween. In Anna Zlokovic’s twisted “Coochie Coochie Coo,” a pair of aging-out trick-or-treaters discovers an urban legend is true; in Paco Plaza’s “Ut Supra Sic Infra,” a survivor of a Halloween massacre takes the cops to the scene of the crime; you’ll never eat candy the same way again after watching Casper Kelly’s “Fun Size”; Her Smell director Alex Ross Perry gets gruesome in the kiddie-kidnapper tale “Kidprint”; and Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman close it out with one of the most fun segments to date, about a haunted house that gets truly possessed in “Home Haunt.”
October 10, Paramount+
Bryan Bertino’s first movie since 2020’s excellent The Dark and the Wicked (check it out on Shudder) stars Dakota Fanning as a lonely woman who may have run out of options in life. One night, a mysterious stranger (Kathryn Hunter) knocks on her door and presents her with a box and some ominous instructions. Fanning has to put three things in the box tonight or she’ll die: something she loves, something she needs, and something she hates. Bertino’s chamber piece unfolds over one torturous night and will be exclusive to Paramount’s streaming platform following its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in September.
October 15, Hulu
The Murdaugh story has arguably been the most overdone saga in true crime over the past five years, but there’s something captivating about how this wealthy southern family turned into a murderous nightmare. Hulu gets the most prestigious crack to date at a fictionalized version of the Murdaughs with Jason Clarke as Alex, Patricia Arquette as Maggie, Johnny Berchtold as Paul, and Brittany Snow as Mandy Matney, a journalist whose Murdaugh Murders Podcast was the basis for this eight-hour miniseries.
October 16, Peacock
Serial killers are everywhere this season. A major example is Peacock’s take on the killer clown himself, John Wayne Gacy. What more could possibly be learned about the vicious crimes of the Illinois native who murdered at least 33 young men in the ’70s, burying most of them in a crawl space under his home? We’ll find out when Severance star Michael Chernus plays Gacy opposite a strong supporting ensemble that includes Gabriel Luna, James Badge Dale, Michael Angarano, and Marin Ireland. According to an interview with showrunner Patrick Macmanus in Vanity Fair, the focus this time will be more on the victims. We’ll see if that’s actually true.
October 22, Hulu
Michelle Garza Cervera (Huesera: The Bone Woman) landed the unexpected assignment of a ’90s-thriller remake for her sophomore feature. If you’re old enough to remember the cheesy 1992 original, you may be wondering what else could be done with the story of a woman who hires a psychopath to take care of her new baby, but we’ll see when this Fox production premieres on Hulu. It Follows star Maika Monroe steps into the Rebecca de Mornay role of the nanny from hell with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Raúl Castillo as the couple she terrorizes.
October 22, Netflix
We could include a new true-crime special or series for basically every day of October 2025, but this one stands out for two reasons. First, the story is not as overreported as, say, the exploits of Gacy or the Son of Sam, and a lot of true-crime junkies may not even know the details. Second, it’s a riveting case, an investigation into one of the most brutal serial killers in world history, a monster who terrorized Italy for years. This title is so respected in the country that it premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. The basics are this: From 1968 to 1985, someone, or more than one person, hunted couples in Florence, killing over a dozen people. This narrative recounting of the crimes and investigation was made by the acclaimed Stefano Sollima, who directed Sicario: Day of the Soldado and ZeroZeroZero.
October 26, HBO Max
This is the big one. You have to wait almost all month to get there, but the momentous horror original of October 2025 will almost certainly be the first TV series (assuming you don’t count the heavily It-inspired Stranger Things) set in the world of Derry, Maine, and Pennywise, the demonic clown. The reports are that this will be a prequel to Stephen King’s novel and the hit 2017 and 2019 adaptations. The director of those films helped develop the series, which stars Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, Taylour Paige, and the cinematic Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgård. The first season promises eight episodes of clown-based terror, and we all know that’s the worst kind.
➼ Happy/Spooky Halloween Playlist (Netflix, October 1) — The streamer will have a function starting October 1 that plays Halloween-themed episodes of your favorite Netflix originals. Or you could just watch Wednesday again, I guess.
➼ True Haunting (Netflix, October 7) — Produced by James Wan (and even featuring an appearance by the Warrens in at least one of the tales), this docuseries tells of two “true” hauntings in multi-episode arcs titled “Eerie Hall” and “This House Murdered Me.”
➼ The Woman in Cabin 10 (Netflix, October 10) — Keira Knightley stars in this adaptation of Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel about a journalist who thinks she sees a passenger being thrown overboard.
➼ Solar Opposites, season six (Hulu, October 13) — This Hulu animated hit loves the holidays and promises some Halloween-themed high jinks as it returns for its sixth season.
➼ Guts & Glory (Shudder, October 14) — The legendary special-effects artist Greg Nicotero produced this unscripted competition show in which contestants are forced to survive an “immersive horror experience.” Yeah, no thanks.
➼ Other (Shudder, October 17) — There are surprisingly few Shudder originals this month, but this one stars Olga Kurylenko as a woman who returns home after her mother’s death to find the place has been rigged for surveillance. That may not be the weirdest thing about it.
➼ Nightmares of Nature (Netflix, October 28) — The first season of this Maya Hawke–narrated Blumhouse production about nature gone malicious dropped on September 30, and the circle closes with the remaining episodes at the end of October.
➼ Hazbin Hotel, season two (Prime Video, October 29) — The people who love this show really adore it and will be happy to learn that the crown princess of hell is finally back for a second season almost two years after the first.
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