Happy spooky month, everyone! I know our unofficial and fairly inconsistent catchphrase around here is, “It’s always time for scary movies!” But we are finally at the time when it is actually becoming that time for the general populace. It took until the strike of midnight on August 31st for the home decorations to come out. I am now surrounded by pumpkin blankets, horror film wall decorations, and fall-flavored candles. It is officially that time of year, guys, gals, and non-binary pals! So, with extreme excitement and enthusiasm, I bring you this month’s five underseen horror films to check out for the beginning of the season!
Touch Me (2026)
There has been so much to watch this year, including huge mainstream releases like The Odyssey, Project Hail Mary, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. There’s even been a massive horror splash this year, with movies like Obsession and Backrooms, and new entries in the Evil Dead, Scream, and 28 Days/Weeks/Years franchises. That is why I can kind of understand why this movie thoroughly fell under the radar. It probably doesn’t help that its subject matter is incredibly niche. The film starts with a nearly 9-minute unbroken take where you learn of our main character, Joey, and her previous relationship with Brian…a tempestuous and passionate relationship that ended painfully and traumatically. You learn a few things from this opening: Olivia Taylor Dudley as Joey is a force to be reckoned with, this story is not going to be anything close to normal, there are some real bold ways they’re going to decide to tell it, and, oh, that Brian is an alien sent to Earth to solve climate change…but also, he fucks, and he fucks a lot (with tentacles). Soon after Joey and Brian’s split, she holes up with her friend Craig, and they both very quickly become unhealthily codependent on one another. As you might guess, the film eventually brings them back to Brian, his weird house, and his vague machinations start to really take shape. For as weird and wacky as this film is, it does end up being an earnest tackling of abusive relationship dynamics, codependency taking away agency, addictive personality types, and the power of friendship being mixed in there for good measure. Brian the alien is played by underrated character actor Lou Taylor Pucci, and the film ends up being just as delightfully off-kilter and hard to predict as he and his character are. It’s truly one of the most unique first watches I’ve had all year, and I hope its fate isn’t already sealed in the backlog of streaming to only be discovered by a select few.
Watch it on Philo, AMC+, Shudder
Tales from the Hood (1995)
I genuinely can’t believe I’ve only ever covered a single other anthology horror film in the history of my Monthly Horror Recs. I stand by that you should check out Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, but it is far from the only good or underrated anthologies out there. A perfect example is one of my favorite most recent watches, Tales from the Hood. It largely consists of four stories all told within a brilliantly kooky frame narrative, in which three drug dealers hear that a local mortician found a large amount of product on a body that he’s willing to sell to them. After they arrive, they meet said mortician, Mr. Simms, played brilliantly by Clarence Williams III, who tells them that before they are shown what they came here for, they must listen to his stories about many of the bodies at the funeral parlor. Each story is how one of the four he goes through passed away, and then we’re off to the races. The tones of these stories can vary wildly, but they all have a foundation in something real, giving the movie power, no matter what current note it’s playing emotionally. The first story centers around targeted police brutality, an up-and-coming black politician who advocates for positive social change, and the rookie cop caught in the middle of it all. This story is honestly my least favorite of the four, but it still has a raw emotional core, and even though its eventual silliness doesn’t fully land for me, its story on a holistic level absolutely does. The second story focuses on a sensitive young boy who transfers to a new school. His well-meaning teacher notices that he comes in nearly every day with either a new bruise or mark of some kind, and that when asked, he blames “the monster.” This story touches on domestic violence and our flawed system’s near inability to effectively help children in need. This story builds empathy and tension beautifully, which all leads to a phenomenal climax, and it’s even got a bit of surprise Stephen King inspiration in there too. The third story is the one I want to say the least about, but it is a shockingly relevant and supremely satisfying tale of long-awaited comeuppance. The fourth and final story is the one that most makes me want to tell people to tread cautiously walking into this. It has an abstract frame, and its story is told with the most removed-from-our-real-world feel to it, but the places it goes are genuinely traumatic. I’d be surprised if anyone watching this could come out of the final parts of this segment feeling emotionally unscathed. It’s brutal and unflinching to its core, and I’d recommend preparing yourself for it before you hit play. By the end, this movie really felt like something special to me. It’s proof of all the anthology form can be, and I’m super excited to eventually check out the two sequels.
Watch it on Philo, Starz
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Rarely has a horror film felt like it was so directly speaking to me and my tastes as this one. I’ve already written about Jane Schoenbrun’s debut film, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, a descent into creepypasta-inspired madness. I Saw the TV Glow was the introduction of many, including me, to Jane’s work. It was such a singular and deeply felt film that played in both the lens of a David Lynch nightmare and of eventual self-realization through unconventional means. That last point is one of the most important threads that informs their latest film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. It follows a young filmmaker, Kris, as she’s tasked with directing a reboot of a long-running and now-tired slasher franchise that meant a lot to her as a child. Her first endeavor is to meet with the final girl of the original film, Billy Presley, a famously reclusive and odd actress who’s never been in anything since the original Camp Miasma. What follows is a far more joyous and stylishly diverse film than I ever could’ve expected. Billy fully begins to break down Kris’s walls in a way that is both honest, complicated, and ultimately liberating. Each character is given room to find themselves in ways that are uncomfortable, unexpected, and deeply satisfying. I love how it looks at the LGBTQIA+ experience through the lens of watching these old and often problematic slasher classics. It’s never perfect, but you can really begin to understand the world and yourself through the art you consume. In many ways, this film’s willingness to embrace multiple things being true at the same time gives it a sense of honesty and heart. It deeply moved me in all the ways I’ve now come to expect through this new auteur’s fantastic films. This is admittedly not nearly as unknown as many movies I cover here, but I still strongly feel that this needs a grander form of recognition. It’s one of my absolute favorite films of the year.
Santa Sangre (1989)
My first ever Jodorowsky film did not disappoint. I feel like I’ve been hearing horror stories about his films, and, to be honest, him as a person, since I’ve become a film fan. So, while I’m about to sing this film’s praises, this is very much an “enter if you dare” type situation. Santa Sangre loosely follows an escaped mental patient as he begins to commit acts of heinous violence for his mother. Surrealism is an accurate descriptor for this movie in content, but also in logic and structure. You really have to hone in on the vibes and emotional throughlines of what’s being shown to you for this to mean anything to you at all. It begins, primarily, in the childhood of our main character, Fenix. It sets the stage in a country of political turmoil in which Fenix is a child in a traveling circus that also doubles as a cult of sorts. After severe trauma of basically every kind, it cuts to him as an adult, in which he is confined like an animal in a mental health facility. He quickly escapes and begins trying to piece together his own life and place in the world while also being haunted by events and people from his past. The movie as a whole feels like a processing of real religious and maternal trauma, and a genuine attempt to piece together pieces of your life that had previously felt scattered, indecipherable, and insurmountable. The climax ends up offering an emotionally complex and thought-provoking ending that ties together all the emotional endings in a very satisfying way. This movie really needs to be seen to be believed, so give this one a try. I guarantee it will be one of the most unique movie experiences.
Watch it on Prime Video, Philo, Tubi, Kanopy, Night Flight, Fandor, Fawesome
The Phantasm Franchise (1979 – 2016)
I fully intended to do a full franchise rewatch before writing about it, but with the recent passing of Reggie Bannister, I felt it was imperative to get this franchise to as many people as my small platform would allow. Calling Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm franchise something special feels like an understatement to me. It comes out of the gate fully formed and, to this day, stylistically distinct, a genuine classic in 1979. Not only is it utterly dreamlike and visually entrancing, but it’s also a one-of-a-kind point of view in how death is processed through different stages of childhood. It’s unpredictable, wildly entertaining, and utterly iconic. The sequels begin to evolve as much as the people who were in it do. You get to creatively see them evolve, their outlooks on the world shift, and physically see them grow older. It’s almost a Boyhood effect in that way. The second film takes the uncertainties presented by the first in its dreadful atmosphere and gives them newfound agency with a more direct move into action-horror ideas. The third continues the power and agency of the second but reintroduces the surrealistic style and dread the first gave them for a powerful mix. The fourth aims for a higher sense of desperation, and even better, a greater sense of emotional clarity…which leads to the final film, which, as an ending, is imperfect, but still a wild movie that gives more answers than expected. Everything about these movies is charming to me. You see the young and hungry burgeoning actors and filmmakers dealing with heavy themes, but also giving all they have into a fun and weird premise. You see them refine their technical abilities, get more creative ideas, and fully express themselves in different ways across their lives. I’ve still never seen anything like these movies or anything that even comes close to recapturing their magic. They are artful, entertaining, and deeply human.
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