Film

Tales of Halloween

A Halloween night anthology where ten directors take turns terrorizing the same suburb with ghosts, monsters, and cosmic dread. It's playful and nasty in equal measure—think horror's greatest hits remixed by people who actually love the genre. For anyone who wants their scares with a knowing grin and doesn't need a single coherent story to have a great time.

TMDb rating2.9

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Trick 'r Treat2007

Four interwoven Halloween stories that prove anthology horror can be smarter than the sum of its parts. Each segment rewards attention and the whole thing builds to genuine dread beneath the fun.

But Some segments are stronger than others, and the self-conscious tone won't work if you want pure scares without irony.

Trick 'r Treat poster

V/H/S2012

Found-footage anthology that somehow lands genuine terror alongside its formal gimmick. Messy and audacious in ways that feel like watching dangerous people make art.

But Aggressively unpolished and the found-footage format is shaky—literally. Some stories drag and the sexist undercurrent will bother you.

V/H/S poster

Creepshow1982

Romero and King's comic-book horror masterpiece. Five stories that understand horror works better when you're allowed to enjoy it, with practical effects that still hold up as craft.

But The tone is deliberately silly and some segments are slow. The racism and sexism of 1982 is present in ways that grate.

Creepshow poster

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The Midnight Hour1985

Both are anthology-adjacent Halloween films that choose fun over coherence, where the genre's trashier elements are the whole point rather than something to overcome.

A 1980s TV movie where four friends accidentally resurrect the dead on Halloween. Pure camp—it's magic, it's goofy, it's got Shecky Greene as a ghost and Barbara Bosson doing her absolute best.

But It's dated in ways that are actively distracting and the special effects are genuinely rough. Made for television in 1985 with all that implies.

The Midnight Hour poster
More like this (8)

Twilight Zone: The Movie1983

Four legendary directors (Spielberg, Dante, Miller, Landis) each tackle a zone episode as a mini-film. The range is genuinely wild—from comedy to tragedy to genuine cosmic wrongness.

But Uneven by design. One segment is brilliant, another's just okay. And Landis's segment is historically burdened by terrible context.

Twilight Zone: The Movie poster

Nightmares1983

Four connected horror tales with a strange, almost fever-dream quality. Each one finds genuine dread in mundane setups—a car breakdown, a video game, a creepy hitchhiker.

But Deeply obscure and the production values are threadbare. Some segments are slow burns that might just feel slow.

Nightmares poster

Campfire Tales1997

Teenagers tell scary stories around a fire. The anthology-within-an-anthology structure works better than it should, and it has a real affection for slasher tropes even as it plays with them.

But A late-90s teen horror film with all the haircuts and attitudes that implies. The framing story is genuinely thin.

Campfire Tales poster

The ABCs of Death2013

Twenty-six directors, each given one letter of the alphabet and a premise. Wildly uneven but when it lands, it's inspired—a showcase of pure creative constraint breeding genuine invention.

But Twenty-six segments means you're basically guaranteed to hate some of them. Genuinely trashy in places and some are just pranks masquerading as films.

The ABCs of Death poster

XX2017

Four horror stories directed entirely by women, each visually stunning in different ways. It's a statement and a showcase—these stories couldn't have been told this way by anyone else.

But The stories themselves are uneven and one is deliberately, aggressively uncomfortable. The artfulness occasionally distances you from any real fear.

XX poster

Southbound2015

Highway horror where five interconnected stories spiral into a universe with its own sick logic. Roads, missing people, and something ancient lurking in the American West.

But The connective tissue is abstract and some viewers find it obscure rather than mysterious. The tone is relentlessly bleak—there's little relief.

Southbound poster

Kwaidan1965

Both present horror as folklore—stories told because they need telling, where the point is the accumulation of dread rather than spectacle or a three-act resolution.

Masaki Kobayashi's masterpiece: four Japanese ghost stories shot in stunning color, where atmosphere is everything. You'll feel genuine ice-water dread from the supernatural melancholy of it all.

But It's 164 minutes, mostly slow, and the scares are mood-based rather than shocking. Requires patience and silence and attention to image over plot.

Kwaidan poster

Mandy2018

Both use genre (horror, the grotesque, the supernatural) as a formal tool rather than a plot mechanism—less interested in scares than in how horror imagery can make us feel something true about pain or dislocation.

Nicholas Cage, a heavy-metal-album-cover aesthetic, psychedelic lighting, and a love story turned into a revenge nightmare. It's not an anthology but it has the same sectioned, fever-dream intensity as Tales of Halloween.

But Willfully difficult and strange—the pacing is glacial, the synth score is overwhelming, and Cage's performance is monumental in ways that might read as unhinged rather than brilliant.

Mandy poster

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