In honor of Halloween approaching, at the 2026 TIME100 Next Gala on Oct. 29 in New York City, TIME asked attendees about their deepest fears and favorite spooky films to set the mood for the season\u2019s haunts.<\/p>\n
Paapa Essiedu<\/a>, an actor set to star in the upcoming HBO adaptation of Harry Potter, went with a modern horror pick: Obsession. \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying, it\u2019s entertaining, it\u2019s a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant movie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Curry Barker<\/a>, Obsession\u2019s breakout filmmaker, showed off his encyclopedic horror knowledge, with picks across generations including A Nightmare on Elm Street, the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Invisible Man, Weapons, Hereditary, and Midsommar. Barker is now working on a new film project, Anything But Ghosts, coming out next May.<\/p>\n Chloe Fineman, comedian and former SNL cast member, had a more existential take. For her, the scariest thing to watch is the news, the world, and social media: \u201cInstagram kind of is my horror movie,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Musician Conan Gray<\/a> went with a more wholesome approach, naming the more cozy than outright scary Practical Magic as his must-watch movie. TIME followed up with Joey King<\/a>, who appeared in sequel Practical Magic 2, to ask if she\u2019s tapped into any witchy senses since her experience with the iconic story. \u201cI do feel like there\u2019s a bit of a thin veil with the afterlife. I\u2019ve had some scary stuff happen, I\u2019ve had some sweet stuff happen, but the scary stuff scared the s*** out of me when I was younger so I muted that part of myself, but I feel like I embrace it more,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to see a medium but I\u2019m too scared. I don\u2019t want to know what\u2019s going to happen to me. I don\u2019t want to know what my future holds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In honor of Halloween approaching, at the 2026 TIME100 Next Gala on Oct. 29 in New York City,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,377005,452,453],"class_list":["post-899675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-time100-next-2026","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}