Netflix is bulking up its content library in October by adding a slew of new movies like Animals with Ben Affleck, as well as modern classics like Call Me by Your Name with Timothée Chalamet and the Oscar-winning drama Moonlight.
But the streamer is also adding several underrated movies that are worth your attention this spooky season.
Watch With Us loves a good gothic horror film, and no one makes them better than Guillermo del Toro. His 2015 film, Crimson Peak, features Jessica Chastain at her most unhinged and Tom Hiddleston at his most dashing.
We also recommend traveling into space with Brad Pitt in Ad Astra and diving into the dangerous waters of the 1999 comic horror flick, Lake Placid.
‘Ad Astra’ (2019)
In the near future, space travel is now common, and astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is one of the best to do it. That’s why he’s tasked with a daunting mission: find and stop the source of some mysterious power surges threatening Earth. This isn’t just an ordinary mission for Roy, though, as he discovers they’re linked to The Lima Project, a deep-space mission that Roy’s dad, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones), led 30 years ago before he suddenly vanished without a trace. Roy obviously wants to save his home planet, but he also wants to find out what happened to his father — and if he’s still somehow alive.
A space epic that’s also surprisingly intimate, Ad Astra was greeted with a shrug by audiences and some critics in 2019. It’s easy to understand why: the film isn’t your usual space adventure like Star Wars or even Star Trek. Instead, it’s more like The Martian in its attempt to be as realistic as possible while also telling an emotional story about a grown son who is still looking for approval from his distant — emotionally and literally — father. The acting is stellar, but it’s the VFX that make Ad Astra stand out — and might give you a nasty case of vertigo.
‘Lake Placid’ (1999)
When a scuba diver in Maine’s tranquil Lake Placid is bitten half by an oversized crocodile, Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson) teams up with local wildlife expert Jack Wells (Bill Pullman) and plucky paleontologist Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) to capture the beast. That’s not so easy, especially when they discover it’s being fed by a local granny, Mrs. Bickerman (Betty White). Stronger and far more lethal than your average reptile, this killer croc doesn’t want to be caught — and it will gobble up anyone who tries to catch it.
A minor summer hit in 1999, Lake Placid is a cultish movie that is more comedy than horror. Even though multiple humans and animals are consumed, the film doesn’t really treat its subject matter seriously. That’s alright because the writer, Big Little Lies’ David E. Kelley, is far more focused on dishing out the small-town humor that makes the film so enjoyable to watch. The cast is keyed into the film’s low-stakes, B-movie vibe, with TV veteran White letting loose with several expletives you’d never expect from the sweet-natured Golden Girls star.
‘Crimson Peak’ (2015)
Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is a budding novelist who has hit the jackpot — she’s head over heels in love with Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a handsome English inventor with lots of love to give but very little money to offer. She marries him anyway, even though he has an unusually close relationship with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), who doesn’t like Edith or anyone taking him away from her. As the trio moves into their new English estate, Edith is plagued by spooky hallucinations of ghosts roaming the halls. Is what Edith is seeing all in her imagination, or is she really being haunted by spirits trying to warn her of the real danger that’s close to her?
Crimson Peak is peak Guillermo del Toro, complete with a heroine with an overactive imagination, scary-looking monsters that may or may not be real and outstanding production design, cinematography and musical score. If the story leaves a little to be desired, it more than makes up for it with its stellar filmmaking. Dismissed by many in 2015, it’s now one of del Toro’s most underrated films in his growing filmography, and it’s ripe for rediscovery by future goths and occult enthusiasts.
