October is supposed to be the best time to watch a scary movie, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always easy to find exactly what you’re looking for. Sometimes, you check out the movies in theaters and then find yourself at a loss when it comes to sorting through your various subscriptions to find something similar.
This year, the big horror movie for Halloween weekend is Five Nights at Freddy’s. And if you’re looking for something similar to check out at home, then you’re in luck. We’ve got a list of three similar PG-13 titles that you can watch from the comfort of your couch.
Happy Death Day (2017)
A mash-up of the slasher genre and movies about a person trapped in the same day, the film follows a self-centered college student who is forced to live the same day over and over again until she can figure out who murdered her. The movie features a number of fairly thrilling chase sequences, but Happy Death Day is definitely on the lighter side of scary.
The movie is filled with jokes, many of them focused on the way that this poor young woman comes to understand every single beat of the day that she is currently living through. Movies about someone living a single day over and over can be tiresome, but Happy Death Day is wonderful from beginning to end.
Happy Death Day is can be rented or purchased on Prime Video and other digital vendors.
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
A movie that takes an almost perverse delight in torturing its central character, Drag Me to Hell tells the story of a loan officer at a bank who is cursed after she denies an old woman a loan. Drag Me to Hell‘s brilliance comes largely from director Sam Raimi, who lets all of his Evil Dead instincts come back out to play here.
Drag Me to Hell is unsettling, but it’s also perversely funny, especially in its final, horrifying twist. Few movies can pull off the careful tone management that Drag Me to Hell manages from beginning to end, but that’s what makes this movie such a joy.
Drag Me to Hell is streaming on Prime Video.
M3GAN (2022)
Telling a story very similar to Freddy’s, at least in terms of its killer doll, M3GAN follows a young girl who becomes friends with an advanced doll that is coded to protect her. As you might expect, the doll eventually begins to kill and maim people to achieve that end, often in particularly gruesome fashion.
Like all of the movies on this list, M3GAN is both scary and pretty funny, and some of the joy of the movie comes from laughing at the moments that are supposed to be scary. It’s a tonal mishmash that works perfectly, which is part of the reason the movie became such a massive hit.
M3GAN is streaming on Prime Video.
