For Halloween, Find The Horror In Non-Horror Films

Think about it: everyone in Paddington and its sequels sees a bear talking to them – and almost none of them think that’s strange. The only thing that makes sense is some kind of alien mind control or mass hallucination, caused by some mysterious airborne toxin. Arthur Christmas too has a gigantic ship hovering over human population centres, from which tiny creatures drop down to invade people’s homes. This is the stuff of nightmares, not warm cozy Christmas movies! 

Slightly more seriously, you really can shred your nerves without any horror at all. The restaurant drama Boiling Point packs more anxiety into its 92-minute span than some entire horror franchises. Director Phillip Barantini then turned to crime drama and did the same thing with Adolescence; episode one, in particular, is a slow-burning scary movie in all but name. The non-stop efforts of two soldiers to deliver an important message in 1917, by director Sam Mendes (Skyfall) similarly puts its heroes through hell: there, it’s World War I’s No Man’s Land. Or you could subject yourself to the unbearable tension of 2073, the imagined future documentary of climate disaster and political collapse from director Asif Kapadia (Amy).  

For everyday moments of terror, About A Boy, starring Hugh Grant (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Wonka) and Nicholas Hoult (Skins, The Current War), subjects its heroes to the absolute horror of public performance – at a school assembly no less, in front of an auditorium packed with mean teens. Public speaking is the third most common phobia in the UK, so many of us will be watching that through our fingers. Starter For 10 has the same fear of public humiliation, this time on a quiz show, with a young James McAvoy (Atonement, Filth) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, The Hollow Crown) starring.  

Viewed through a certain lens, Slow Horses is not a spy drama but a workplace horror: Jack Lowden (Dunkirk, Tornado) makes one tiny mistake and is sent to work for a bully (Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour) on endless, thankless tasks. Viewed through the same lens, Conclave could be seen similarly: Ralph Fiennes’ (In Bruges, The Return) cardinal must cope flawlessly with a leadership crisis at his place of work. The only difference is that his office is the Vatican. 

Families, naturally, provide ample fodder for scares, but you don’t have to join the cannibals of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to find them. Imagine being Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice. You’re marrying the love of your life, great. Now you have to spend eternity managing her family’s dramas as well as your own. Of course, that family is a picnic compared to the ordeals of Princess Diana in Spencer, played by Kristen Stewart (Love Lies Bleeding), or the child protagonist of totalitarian drama The Childhood of a Leader. The Getty family don’t come off well in All the Money in the World by Ridley Scott (Gladiator, The Martian), when young John Paul Getty III is kidnapped and his grandfather refuses to pay the ransom.  

Those might leave you thinking the problem is money, but Joaquin Phoenix’s (Napoleon) less extravagantly well-off hero of Beau Is Afraid is also trapped in a relationship with his mother every bit as unhealthy as the one in Friday The 13th. Family can also terrify us when we love and cherish them. The fear of losing a loved one is horrific and relatable, and there’s something of that in the gorgeous melancholy of Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, with Paul Mescal (Foe, Normal People) and in a mother’s (Saoirse Ronan, Ammonite, The Outrun) desperate search for her missing son in Blitz.

Horror doesn’t have a monopoly on painful or gory deaths either. Season one of the long-running BBC drama Spooks had a shocking death every bit as impactful – and by several degrees more horrible – than the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho. There’s lots of murder in The Gentlemen or MobLand or Peaky Blinders, and truly stomach-turning injury and illness in the period drama Savage House, with Richard E. Grant (The Iron Lady, Withnail & I) and Claire Foy (The Crown). Grant is also in Saltburn, which has a really devastating series of murders carried out by a sort of home intruder. The same fear of outsiders is shared by the characters in The Incomer, who think they’re in a folk horror even if the reality is something different. 

Some of the most horrifying stories of all come from real life, in the devastating likes of 12 Years A Slave, Chernobyl, Dreams of a Life and The Act of Killing – but those are, by definition, scary but not at all fun. We’re talking here about scares you can embrace. At least the true-life stalker drama of Baby Reindeer has comedic elements; the death threats of Calvary also come with a side-order of dark comedy, and the murders and possibly ghostly goings-on of A Haunting in Venice are accompanied by a genius detective to put things right. 

If some of these films sound too much, there are always horror-tinged children’s films to consider. Chicken Run and its sequel, Dawn of the Nugget, basically confront the death and consumption of intelligent beings (albeit, in this case, poultry), and even Barbie has characters trapped in an existential spiral of questioning their own nature and lot in life. The new Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is specifically Hammer Horror-influenced – just at a level that toddlers can enjoy. 

With a little (too much) imagination, you’ll soon be jumping at any number of well-made stories. The abrupt tonal shifts from comedy to tragedy in Fleabag will unsettle you; the social horror of Emma and I Swear or bad marriage of Colette will chill you; the heights of The Aeronauts or Fall will worry you. Spooky season can live inside your heart all year round: you just really, really need to get invested in the great entertainment you’re watching.