Shudder is coming in hot this October. We are getting The Boulet Brothers Dragula Season 6, Nightbreed, and WNUF Halloween Special this month. The streamer will also give Flanastans a reason to scream by adding Hush. They also know it’s not really Halloween without Jason Voorhees and are dropping the first eight movies on October 1st. A lot is going on, so I carved out a path to the titles that are my top priorities in this long list of horror titles hitting the app so fast and furious. Grab some snacks and check out which movies I think are the best bets below. 

The Best Movies to Stream on Shudder This Month

V/H/S/Beyond (Shudder Original Film)

Shudder’s found footage anthology film series returns with six new stories. This movie is coming fresh from Fantastic Fest, so fans will not have to see what this crop of filmmakers has conjured. Directors this time include Jordan Downey, Christian Long, Justin Long, Justin Martinez, Virat Pal, Kate Siegel, and Jay Cheel. So, I expect some sick stories and cannot wait to have my peace disturbed.

You can watch V/H/S/Beyond on October 4th.

Read our review of V/H/S/Beyond here.

Chucky Season 3

Chucky is still embroiled in a grudge match with Jake and the crew, but this time, he has taken the fight to the White House. This season was magnificent and extra in all the right ways. I am upset the show was not automatically renewed. Hopefully, with its arrival on Shudder, more people will be reminded to tweet #RenewChucky  #SaveChucky and show Syfy and USA that we need more time with our favorite killer doll.

You can watch Chucky Season 3 on October 4th.

Tenebrae (1982)

An American author is stalked by a murderous fan while trying to promote his new book in Rome. Sure. This premise seems cool. This movie is also one of the many Giallo films I still need to see. However, it’s Dario Argento and John Saxon collaborating on the same film that makes me think this movie is about to be a moment. I cannot wait for Tenebrae to hit Shudder so I can hit play immediately. 

You can watch Tenebrae on October 7th.

Daddy’s Head (Shudder Original Film)

After his father’s death, a boy is left on a sprawling estate with his widowed stepmother. While they figure out how to adjust to their new life, a grotesque creature bearing a resemblance to his dead dad begins to haunt the child. I don’t think we need another meditation on grief, but I am curious about this Daddy’s Head business. I love that this movie is heading to Shudder straight out of Fantastic Fest. So, everyone who misses it can catch it at home next month. 

You can watch Daddy’s Head on October 11th.

Noroi: The Curse (2005)

A paranormal expert investigating an ancient demon disappears while filming a documentary. I have been playing catch up with all of the found footage movies I missed out on before I started paying attention to the subgenre. So, Shudder is adding this Japanese horror movie right on time for my shenanigans this Halloween season. Yet another reason this streamer remains that girl.

You can watch Noroi: The Curse on October 15th.

We should call out of work and hang out with Shudder this October. At least, that is what I plan on doing because these five titles are just the tip of the horrific iceberg for this streamer. I will need the whole month to inhale all the nightmare fuel, but luckily, I love a challenge.

There were many big premieres at Fantastic Fest this year, which continues to solidify the ‘Fantastic’ in their name. Of all the premieres, one stuck out to me more than any: Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Emire. Grave Encounters and Extraterrestrial are two exceptional pieces of horror, and when I learned that one-half of the Vicious Brothers was debuting his solo directorial debut, I was sold.

I was speechless as the credits rolled. Strange Harvest is one of the most frightening, bone-chilling, and all-around fascinating mockumentaries I’ve ever seen. Ortiz’s commitment to authenticity makes Strange Harvest stand out as the best mockumentary this side of Lake Mungo. I was granted the opportunity to sit down and talk with the writer/director about his astounding solo debut and a possible connection it has to one of his earlier films!

An Interview with Strange Harvest Director Stuart Ortiz

Brendan Jesus: I cannot tell you how excited I am to be talking with you right now! Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire absolutely blew my mind. It was everything I wanted it to be. When people think of alien-related horror movies, they think Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Whitley Strieber’s Communion. To me, Extraterrestrial is one of the greatest alien-related horror films of all time. The scene in the cop car gave me nightmares; it paralyzed me.

Stuart Ortiz: Nice, nice!

BJ: Toward the end of Extraterrestrial, we see Kyle (Freddie Stroma) get a symbol laser etched into his chest. It’s a very triangular-like symbol. Is there any connection between that and Mr. Shiny’s symbol? Mr. Shiny’s symbol is a more minimalistic version of it, but is there a connection between them?

Stuart Ortiz: That is a fascinating question, and my answer would be there is a connection, actually. Albeit a weird one, but yes there is.

BJ: In any of your later works, will that become apparent? Or will that be more of a context clue, like the more you dig, the more you find?

Stuart Ortiz: It’s more for future things. The whole thing with Strange Harvest that I would love to do is, well, I have a lot more ideas for these kinds of stories that can be told in a similar manner. I kind of have a notion for a cinematic universe where I’d love to bring in some of the other things I’ve worked on in the past. All could maybe have a place.

BJ: Strange Harvest is your, unless you count Far West, which is 60 minutes so I don’t know if you consider that a feature–

Stuart Ortiz: No, no, I do not.

BJ: Okay, so then Strange Harvest is your singular feature directorial debut. After you made one of the greatest found footage movies of all time, you guys (Vicious Brothers) took a step back and did more “traditional” filmmaking with Extraterrestrial and It Stains the Sand Red. What made you want to go back to found footage/mockumentary for Strange Harvest?

Stuart Ortiz: I just always thought it was a cool way to approach a story, in particular a horror story. Grave Encounters is a found footage movie but we have this quasi-documentary element about it with interviews in the beginning. I love that stuff and had fun writing it. The experience of working on that always stuck with me and was always in the back of my head. It was a cool approach that no one had done justice to in that way. It lived in my mind for the decade-plus since we made that movie. I knew I would like to do something but didn’t know quite what it was. I’d always been a true crime nerd but felt like I was the only weirdo who liked these weird stories about horror, mayhem, and murder and whatnot. During COVID, Tiger King came out, and it was a big phenomenon. It was basically a true crime story at its core. That’s when it occurred to me that true crime was huge and had gone mainstream. It seemed like maybe the timing was right, and that this could be something people would get. We were at a point where there was enough of this stuff in the culture that people had the media literacy to get. If I played it totally straight, like that was the whole thing. I didn’t want to play this as a farce or a parody, I wanted to play it totally straight. That was the part that worried me. I just felt that the timing was right and there would be an appetite for it.

BJ: You’ve crafted this killer from the ground up. You created his motives and crimes, then thrust him into this world. The majority of evidence we see from Mr. Shiny comes from crime scene photos and it’s incredibly effective. How did you go about crafting these crime scene photos?

Stuart Ortiz: It was such a weird, unconventional approach to a movie. Usually, when you shoot a movie, you spend all this time beforehand setting up the scene, doing art direction, props, get the actors and cameras, move lights around. It takes a lot of time to set up the scenes and shots. Then you go into the second part where you’re shooting and that takes up a lot of time as well. It takes hours and hours. For us, we just had to do one part of that and it was the first part. We spent all of our time, budget, and resources on creating these sets basically. We spent a lot of time focusing on attention to detail. We were able to work with this makeup artist Josh Russell who’s a genius. He’s worked on stuff like The Ritual, the new Hellraiser, he’s incredibly talented. I don’t know how we got him, we got lucky! He was able to craft amazing makeup effects and some dummies for us. What you see is what you get. He did amazing work and it wasn’t hard to make them look creepy.

BJ: With the exception of a few mockumentaries, most don’t do a good job of continuing throughout their air of authenticity. Strange Harvest is one of the most authentic feeling mockumentaries I’ve seen. If you just uploaded this to YouTube, I think you’d dupe a lot of people into thinking this was legitimate. Was there anything you did specifically to create and keep this level of authenticity?

Stuart Ortiz: That’s a good question. Attention to detail, across the board, on all the aspects–something like the news. We have archival news footage, little snippets of news programs, you know a lot of that blows my mind to this day. I’ll watch a hundred-million-dollar superhero movie and they’ll cut to the jankiest, shittiest news footage you’ve ever seen. It’s like you have all that money and it’s annoying. Everyone knows what news footage looks like. Everyone has seen it. You see it every day! Everyone has an understanding, so it never makes sense to me why that kind of stuff is missed. Sometimes it’s just because it’s an afterthought. With our shoot, those things weren’t an afterthought. Some days we would go shoot something somewhere, and then the other half of the day would be six or seven hours in a studio shooting newscasters. By most movie scheduling standards it was bonkers and ridiculous, but that’s just how we had to do it. I knew that’s what was necessary to get it right. It’s all in the details.

BJ: The mask design. It gave me nightmares for two nights. Could you talk about the design of the mask?

Stuart Ortiz: I like to hear that. That mask was designed by Jessee Clarkson, who was our production designer on the film. Brilliant guy. He also plays Mr. Shiny. He wanted to do that. He’s played killers before, like in The Vault. He had a real vision for it and was inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Really, the mask is very simple. It’s a creepy-looking face, but it’s the symbol. The sigil motif of these three dots–which is a thing that plays throughout the film.

I’m super thankful to Stuart for taking the time to talk with me, as well as KWPR for setting it all up. If you missed Strange Harvest at Fantastic Fest, you need to keep your eyes peeled for the next showing of this film.

Whether you’re a fan of true crime or not, Strange Harvest is a diamond in the rough–a terrifying true crime tour de force.

Make sure to keep your doors locked, lest you find yourself the next victim of Mr. Shiny.