31 days of horror films – October 2026

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is Francis Ford Coppola at his most extravagant: a fever dream of Gothic romance, elaborate costumes and old-fashioned camera tricks. Gary Oldman’s Count is both a monster and a tragic lover, pursuing Mina across centuries while leaving a trail of blood and ruined lives. The film is unapologetically theatrical, and that is much of its appeal.

What keeps me coming back is the imagery. Shadows seem to have minds of their own, the castle feels impossibly ancient, and nearly every frame looks like something from a lavish nightmare. There is plenty of sensuality, but Coppola never lets us forget the horror beneath Dracula’s longing. Even when the accents and melodrama threaten to overwhelm the story, the film’s commitment to its strange, operatic vision wins me over.

It is a wonderfully excessive way to begin October: beautiful, grotesque and steeped in the kind of supernatural atmosphere that modern horror too often trades for a quick jump scare.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser still feels like a film that arrived from somewhere it shouldn’t have. Frank Cotton’s search for pleasures beyond ordinary human experience opens a doorway to the Cenobites, but the real nightmare begins inside a family home, where desire, betrayal and violence turn domestic life into something monstrous.

Pinhead may be the face everyone remembers, yet the film works because the human characters are every bit as disturbing as the creatures. Julia’s increasingly terrible choices give the story a cold, intimate cruelty, while the practical makeup effects make Frank’s return to flesh genuinely revolting. Barker’s direction favours shadow, texture and suggestion, allowing the grotesque imagery to linger rather than rushing past it.

Hellraiser is not a conventional slasher. It is a dark fairy tale about obsession and the price of getting exactly what you think you want. The puzzle box remains one of horror cinema’s great invitations to make a very bad decision.

Hellbound picks up the nightmare almost where Hellraiser leaves it, taking Kirsty from one kind of prison into another. The sequel opens up Barker’s mythology, giving us more of the Cenobites, the Lament Configuration and the labyrinthine world that lies beyond the box. Where the first film is an intimate chamber piece, this one is a full descent into hell.

The production design is the main attraction for me. Endless corridors, impossible chambers and grotesque practical effects create a place that feels both monumental and sickeningly physical. The story is messier than its predecessor, and some of the mystery inevitably disappears once we are shown more of the other side. Still, the film has an imagination and a willingness to be unpleasant that I admire.

Hellbound is a worthy companion to the original, especially when watched back to back. It pushes the body horror further while reminding us that curiosity can be a dangerous thing when a certain little box is involved.

Long before the modern zombie boom, The Last Man on Earth gave us Vincent Price wandering through an emptied city, searching for supplies by day and barricading himself against infected visitors by night. Adapted from Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, it turns the end of civilization into something surprisingly lonely and personal.

Price brings a weary sadness to Robert Morgan. The quiet routines of his survival are as memorable as the nightly attacks, and the stark black-and-white photography gives the deserted streets an eerie, documentary-like quality. Its limited budget occasionally shows, but that roughness suits a world that has already fallen apart.

What makes the film endure is the idea lurking beneath the familiar monster-movie premise: who gets to decide what is normal after the world changes? It is an important ancestor of later apocalyptic horror, but it also stands on its own as a melancholy and unsettling late-night watch.