Trick Or Treat Around the World With These 13 New International Horror Films 

This ain’t your average sitcom. Dutch writer-directors Steffen Haars and Flip Van der Kuil make their English-language debut this month with Krazy House, an uber-violent, genre-bending horror-comedy starring the always delightful Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead). 

Frost plays Bernie, a religious homemaker whose sitcom life is turned upside down when his house is invaded by Russian criminals posing as handymen. This one slipped completely under my radar until now, but once I saw the bonkers trailer, I knew I had to seek it out. If you feel the same, you can find Krazy House on VOD as of October 4.

Enjoy your horror with an action chaser? Then director Louis Mandylor’s World War II-set Operation Blood Hunt will likely go down smooth. Shot in Bangkok, the film sees a prolific whiskey and occult expert teaming up with a ragtag gang of military rejects to investigate the disappearance of Marine units stationed on a remote island in the South Pacific. Could the Japanese Imperial Army be involved, or is the island infested with savage werewolves? (Spoiler: it’s the werewolf thing.)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers (2013’s Dracula) and former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (The A-Team) star in Operation Blood Hunt. You don’t need to wait for a full moon to watch it, because it dropped on VOD platforms on October 4.

Ready to fight for your supper? You better be, because Netflix dropped a follow-up to its 2019 horror hit The Platform on October 4.

Director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia returns for the sequel, which is once again set in a dystopian world where prisoners stacked in vertical cells must salvage whatever scraps they can from the descending platform that delivers their food. The Platform 2 adds a mysterious new leader ruling with an iron fist and a plucky inmate leading a rebellion. Chaos is served. 

They say that blood is thicker than water. The titular family in The Radleys knows a thing or two about that. They’ve been hiding a bloody big secret for years: they’re all vampires. 

Based on Matt Haig’s novel of the same name, The Radleys was directed by Euros Lyn and stars Damian Lewis (Dreamcatcher) and Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting) as vampire parents abstaining from drinking blood in the hopes of leading a normal life. But as their children’s bloodlust starts to bubble to the surface, the family’s quiet country life is turned upside down. A dark horror-comedy, The Radleys took a bite out of VOD platforms on October 4.

Described as a love letter to the horror-fantasy genre, The Wait is ready to transport you to Spain’s magical, forgotten Andalusian countryside — and maybe scare the hell out of you while you’re there. 

From Rings director F. Javier Gutiérrez, The Wait centers around Eladio (Víctor Clavijo), the groundskeeper for a large hunting estate owned by a powerful man. Nudged into it by his wife, Eladio accepts a bribe to add additional stands to the carefully planned property… a decision that has fatal consequences. 

The Wait arrived on digital and cable VOD on October 4, and you can check out a haunting exclusive clip below: 

No Halloween is complete for me without a Ghostwatch rewatch. This year, I’ll be pairing that with Haunted Ulster Live, a new horror mockumentary debuting on SCREAMBOX on October 8.

Set in Belfast, writer-director Dominic O’Neill’s Haunted Ulster Live follows a veteran of Northern Irish telly who teams up with a popular new children’s presenter to investigate poltergeist activity in a family home. Naturally, the Halloween night broadcast goes horribly awry… 

Featuring one of the creepiest creature designs of 2024 (trust me on this), Daddy’s Head strands a grieving widow with a stepson who doesn’t much like her after her husband’s untimely death. As the pair struggle to reconcile in the family’s sprawling and isolated country estate, the boy is visited by a grotesque creature that seems to have… well, daddy’s head.

Benjamin Barfoot wrote and directed Daddy’s Head, so you can thank him for your nightmares when the film scuttles onto Shudder on October 11 as part of the streamer’s Season of Screams. 

If we learned one thing from the 2013 Evil Dead remake, it’s that isolating yourself deep in the woods to detox might be a bad idea. Sadly, the protagonist of writer-director Jack Dignan’s Puzzle Box didn’t get that memo — and she’s going to suffer for it. 

That protagonist is Kait (Kaitlyn Boyé), whose little sister Olivia (Laneikka Denne) decides to document the self-rehabilitation process. But the house they’re holed up in harbors a dark, labyrinthian secret, and as its very walls begin to shift and twist around them, the sisters find themselves facing an evil far worse than their own demons. 

Can they escape the puzzle box? Find out when the Aussie found footage nightmare drops on digital platforms on October 11.

Zombies are invading every corner of the earth — and we love to see it! Next to welcome the walking dead is the Philippines, with the country’s first-ever zombie movie, Outside, set to debut on Netflix on October 17.

Directed by Carlo Ledesma (The Tunnel), Outside takes place in a remote province, where a family is trying to outrun a zombie outbreak by retreating to the father’s secluded childhood farmhouse. They might be able to fortify the ancestral home against “The Dead Ones,” but doing so will force them to confront the generational trauma that those walls stir up.

Shudder’s Season of Screams continues on October 18 with the release of MadS, a frenetic single-shot horror movie from French director David Moreau (Them). 

The film follows recent grad Romain (Milton Riche) as he picks up a new drug from his dealer and heads to a party. Along the way, he encounters an injured woman on the side of the road and tries to help — but when she starts smashing her head against the dashboard, the evening takes a wild turn. 

Two words for you: zombie kangaroo. Need I say more? Director Ryan Coonan delivers the goods in Rippy (previously titled The Red), which hops onto VOD platforms and into limited theaters on October 18.

Tess Haubrich (Alien: Covenant) stars as Maddy, a young sheriff trying to live up to her late father’s legacy. She gets her chance when an unknown creature starts ripping the locals to shreds, leading Maddy to team up with her uncle Schmitty (Aliens’ Michael Biehn) and aunt Donna (Angie Milliken) to track the ravenous roo down.

What’s scarier than geopolitics? I’d argue nothing, which is why the G7 Summit-set horror film Rumours sounds like a terrifyingly amusing idea. 

Directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson are behind the apocalyptic satire, which boasts a star-studded cast including Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, and Nikki Amuka-Bird. They play the leaders of Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom respectively who, along with four other world leaders, find themselves lost in the woods after attempting to draft a statement on a global crisis. 

Based on the trailer, they won’t be alone out there for long. See what happens when slimy politicians meet slimier bog zombies when Rumours hits theaters on October 18.

Halloween is for everyone, so let’s end this list on a more family-friendly note. If you’re looking for something spooky to show the young’uns this October (especially if you want them to practice their French), consider hitting play on director François Uzan’s Family Pack, debuting on Netflix on October 23, 

Family Pack is adapted from the card game The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, which features as a plot device in the film. After discovering the mysterious game, a family is thrust back in time faster than you can say “Jumanji.” Now stuck in a medieval village, they must identify and kill the dangerous werewolves in their midst before the beasts kill them. 

Those are our picks for the best new international horror films that October has to offer. Looking for even more horror to help you pre-game for Halloween? Check out our bumper list of 80 scary movies that you can stream for free this month.