The month of October is usually reserved for horror and terror as everyone gets ready for Halloween. You probably have many spooky and scary movies on your list to watch this month leading up to October 3. There’s plenty to choose from when it comes to blood, gore, ghouls, monsters, and downright creepy stories on all the top streaming services.
When you get tired of watching Halloween or The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the umpteenth time and you’re looking for more, however, there are three underrated horror movies on Amazon Freevee you should watch in October. The best part? They’re available for free with ads. These movies are all from the 2010s and present horror in unique ways, from a dystopian action horror film to a found footage movie and a horror fantasy.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
The First Purge (2018)
In this dystopian action horror, you’re taken into what happened before the events unfold in The Purge franchise. How did the first Purge, a 12-hour period when all crime in America is decriminalized, begin? The First Purge sets out to tell this story in all its terrifying glory. See the event in Staten Island unfold as an experiment to help ease the pressures of rising unemployment, inflation, and a housing crisis.
Although it became the highest-grossing film in The Purge franchise, The First Purge didn’t quite get universal love from critics. But The First Purge takes you into a creepy, yet realistic version of the world where tracking devices keep tabs on participants and cameras monitor their activities 24/7. Most importantly, as Cultural Conversation’s Tony Black points out, the prequel film “presents a deep, existential question which, by the day, seems to grow in power.” Hilariously, Richard Propes of TheIndependentCritic.com writes, “I liked it. I hated that I liked it. Then, I liked it some more.”
Stream The First Purge on Amazon Freevee.
Grave Encounters (2011)
Found-footage movies are always great for a scare that will keep you up at night, and this Canadian one adds a supernatural twist. The cast in Grave Encounters play paranormal investigators who are filming for their reality TV show. They lock themselves in a psychiatric hospital that is apparently haunted, then wait to see what happens. But this turns out to be their final episode.
After generating a viral trailer before the movie even premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2011, Grave Encounters only had a limited run in theaters before it went to video-on-demand, which means many people missed checking it out. With a sequel coming out a year later, Grave Encounters has developed a cult following, despite its mixed reviews. If you’re looking for something under the radar to watch this month, it’s a good choice that serves up sufficient scares.
Stream Grave Encounters on Amazon Freevee.
Winchester (2018)
Another horror movie in the supernatural space, Winchester is set in 1906 and stars Dame Helen Mirren as heiress Sarah Winchester, widow to gun manufacturer William Wirt Winchester. After losing both her husband and her child, the grief-stricken Sarah believes she is being haunted by the spirits of those who died as a result of the use of the firearms her husband made and sold. While mysterious things start happening in the massive mansion where her niece, Marion (future Succession star Sarah Snook), and her son Henry (Finn Scicluna-O’Prey) live, Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) is called in to evaluate Sarah. The company wants to determine if she’s still mentally fit to be in charge.
Even though it was panned by critics, Winchester was a box office success. Some top critics, however, do appreciate the movie, with RogerEbert.com’s Simon Abrams calling it “cheesy, but fun” and saying that what the film lacks in originality, its creators “amply make up for in execution.”
Stream Winchester on Amazon Freevee.
