Shudder is stacking its October under the banner of Season of Screams, and while the month is packed with premieres, the real event lands early: V/H/S/Mixtape arrives Oct. 9.
The ninth entry in the found-footage anthology series builds itself around music and sound as the weapon, with GWAR hosting the wraparound as an MTV-style broadcast from hell. Renee Zhan directs a segment using Jim Henson’s Creature Shop puppets, RZA and Ernest Dickerson each helm one of their own, and Ghost frontman Tobias Forge makes his filmmaking debut with a music video. There’s a track record here, too: last year’s V/H/S/Halloween was Shudder and AMC+’s most-watched exclusive film premiere of 2025. To celebrate, Shudder TV runs a six-film V/H/S marathon the same night.
The month’s seasonal original is Hallowarrior on Oct. 16, starring Milly Shapiro (Hereditary) as Pumpkin, the last girl on Earth scavenging on Halloween eve until Shannyn Sossamon’s raider gang shows up. AJ Bowen co-stars. Writer/director Ben Sottak calls the film “a love letter to horror and Halloween.”
The originals keep coming from there. Infirmary (Oct. 2) is a bodycam found-footage debut about a guard who vanishes on his first night at an old psych hospital, and The Cycle (Oct. 23) stars Deborah Ann Woll as a forensic anthropologist whose father’s body turns up at a crime scene 36 years after he went missing. Closing out the slate, Big Baby (Oct. 30) is Spider One’s meta-slasher about a horror writer stalked by a baby-masked killer who bleeds off the page — with Cher on board as executive producer.
The live nights give the month its rhythm. Joe Bob’s Halloween House Party airs Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. ET, with both feature titles still unannounced, and the 2026 FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards go live Oct. 25 with Devon Sawa hosting. Season 7 of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula arrives Oct. 27 for the show’s tenth anniversary, with guest judges including Doug Jones, David Dastmalchian, and Lauren LaVera.
The library gets its own boost. The big Oct. 1 catalog dump brings Lake Mungo (plus a new Lake Mungo Revisited), Session 9, The Descent, The Endless, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, Alice, Sweet Alice, The Lords of Salem, and the Friday the 13th documentary Crystal Lake Memories. Then, on Halloween night, the Trick or Treat watch party pairs Halloween (1978), Late Night with the Devil, and Deadstream.
