Stream to scream: monster Halloween lineup on Showmax

2020 has been plenty scary enough: I imagine in years to come, kids will dress up in Covid-19 masks just to see the shivers run down their parents’ spines. But horror is about more than just the jump scares: it’s also about the collective release that comes after. So for everyone looking to let out some of that built-up fear and stress from the worst year in recent memory, Showmax has a monster Halloween line-up full of things that go bump in the night…  

The Addams Family 

The 2019 reboot of The Addams Family is currently at #12 on IMDb’s list of the most popular horror movies. The world’s kookiest family is coming to town and this poor little New Jersey suburb has no idea what’s about to hit it. When Wednesday Addams befriends the daughter of reality TV host Margaux Needler, who’s hell-bent on building the perfect planned community, the Addams family find themselves way out of their league when it comes to “assimilation.”

The all-star voice cast is led by our own Oscar winner Charlize Theron as Morticia Addams; Golden Globe winner Oscar Isaac (Star Wars’ Poe Dameron) as Gomez; Teen Choice and Joey Award winner Chloë Grace Moretz (Greta, Kick-Ass) as Wednesday; and People’s Choice and Teen Choice nominee Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) as the death-defying, gene-pool-skimming Pugsley. 

Emmy-nominated comedian Nick Kroll (Big Mouth) voices Uncle Fester, Emmy nominee Snoop Dogg is It, and Oscar nominee Bette Midler plays Grandma. The Needlers are voiced by Oscar winner Allison Janney as Margaux and Golden Globe nominee Elsie Fisher (Despicable Me’s adorable Agnes) as Parker. Also listen out for Emmy-winning comedy legends Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek, Beetlejuice) and Martin Short (SCTV, Three Amigos, Inner Space) as the voices of Grandma and Grandpa Frump.

The Addams Family is rated 10-12 PGVH.

Rage

In Rage, a group of school-leavers descend on a tiny coastal town for a celebration of their freedom. Roxy, Sihle, Kyle, Leon, Tamsyn and Neo party on the beach and drink themselves silly every night. The townsfolk, Hermien and her son Albert, are welcoming – too welcoming. During a psychedelic trip on the beach, the friends witness a disturbing birth ritual, which could be a hallucination, or not. Soon fertility figurines start to appear at random places, and what is supposed to be the best holiday of their lives turns to horror as the teenagers are picked off one by one.

Nicole Fortuin, whose previous film, Flatland, opened the Berlin Panorama, stars as Tamsyn, with The Girl From St Agnes’ breakout stars Jane de Wet (Moffie, Still Breathing) and Tristan de Beer (Alles Malan, Doctor Who) as Roxy and Kyle. The cast also includes two-time Silwerskerm winner Carel Nel (Dwaalster, Hum, Slaaf); two-time Vita winner Lida Botha; Shalima Mkongi (Isithembiso, Nkululeko, Keeping Score); Fiesta, Kanna and Fleur du Cape nominee David Viviers (Kanarie); and Sihle Mnqwazana, who co-wrote and acted in The Fall, a New York Times critic’s choice play. 

Rage is directed by Jaco Bouwer, a multi-award-winning theatre director who was SAFTA-nominated this year for Dwaalster. His short film, this country is lonely, premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2018 and he also directed Die Spreeus, one of the 10 most-watched local series on Showmax in 2019 – and another good local Halloween option.

Rage has been hailed as ‘briljant’ (Son), “hair raising” (Daily Sun), “gripping” (IOL), “scary as hell” (9Lives), “quite stunning and brilliantly filmed” (Channel24), and “genuinely creepy… one of the best attempts at the genre ever made in this country” (Fortress of Solitude), with Daily Maverick saying it will “scare the living daylights out of you.”

Other local horrors on Showmax include Beer Adrianse’s Parable and Darrell Roodt’s Siembamba | The Lullaby, which both picked up international awards, and Jerome Pikwane’s The Tokoloshe, which opened the 2018 Durban International Film Festival. 

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

From the dark imaginations of Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and acclaimed director André Øvredal (Trollhunter) comes Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, based on the iconic book series.

It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind but the small town of Mill Valley seems far removed from the unrest in the cities. For generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large there. In their mansion on the edge of town, Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time – stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying home…

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark won Best Horror/Thriller Film at the National Film and Television Awards in the USA in 2019, as well as Best Creature FX at the 2020 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. 

Child’s Play

Chucky’s back. Even better, he’s now a smart home assistant, and voiced by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker in Star Wars). 

From the producers of It, Child’s Play cleverly updates the 80’s horror icon for the Internet of Things era – and as RogertEbert.com says, the result is “nastier, more playful, and just as good if not better than the original film.”

Nominated for a 2020 Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Creature Effects, Child’s Play also stars Gabriel Bateman (Outcast, Lights Out) as Max and MTV Movie and TV Awards nominee Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Legion) as his single mom, Karen.

Ma

Octavia Spencer (The Help, The Shape of Water, Hidden Figures) kicks her Oscar-winning actress mould to the curb and stomps on it in this bonkers horror flick, with a little help from her best friend and former housemate, BAFTA-nominated writer/director Tate Taylor (The Help, The Girl on the Train), who hand-picked the stereotype-smashing role at her request.

Ma centres on a group of teens who luck out when middle-aged single Sue Ann (aka Ma) offers them her basement to hang out and party in. But just as it seems things couldn’t get sweeter, they begin to suspect there’s something a little off about Ma…

Produced by Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning producer Jason Blum (Get Out, Us, BlacKkKlansman), Ma was nominated at both the Teen Choice and Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film awards last year.

The cast includes Oscar winner Allison Janney, Oscar nominee Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear, Natural Born Killers), Teen Choice winner Luke Evans (Shaw in Fast & Furious 6, 7 and 8, and Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston) and Diana Silvers (Space Force). 

“Audiences will walk out with that good chiropractor feeling,” says San Francisco Chronicle, “the one that says, ‘Yes, I have been manipulated. I have been nothing but manipulated and pounded on for the last 90 minutes. And it was a very satisfying thing.’”

Crawl

If the storm doesn’t get you, the alligators will… 

Following a Category 5 hurricane, competitive swimmer Haley and her estranged father, Dave, find themselves trapped in the flooded basement of their run-down house, where every shadow conceals the waiting jaws of a brutal apex predator.     

Four-time Teen Choice nominee Kaya Scodelario (Maze Runner and Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge) and Golden Globe nominee and Emmy winner Barry Pepper (Maze Runner, The Green Mile) co-star as Haley and Dave. 

This excellent schlock creature-feature horror is a 2020 nominee for both Best Horror Film at the Hollywood Critics Association Awards and Best Wide Release Film at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. It’s directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) and produced by the legendary Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, 30 Days of Night and Spider-Man).

The 71st biggest box office hit of 2019, Crawl has an 83% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics consensus describes it as “an action-packed creature feature that’s fast, terrifying, and benefits greatly from a completely game Kaya Scodelario.” Vulture called it “a perfect horror film for the summer, as much an ode to the cataclysmic, humbling aspects of Mother Nature as it is a love letter to father-daughter relationships.”

Hellboy

It takes a brave director to take over a dearly loved franchise over from Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth). 

Enter Emmy nominee Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones, The Descent), who inherits the Hellboy franchise from the two-time Oscar winner. He’s brought in an all-star cast as backup, including Golden Globe nominee David Harbour (Stranger Things) in the title role; Teen Choice nominee Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, Resident Evil) as Nimue, The Blood Queen; and the likes of Golden Globe winner Ian McShane (Deadwood, Pirates of the Caribbean, John Wick) and Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church (Sideways, Easy A, Spider-Man 3). 

Anything based on Mike Mignola’s graphic novels will always be worth watching for us, but just be warned: this one got more love from the Razzie Awards than critics… 

The House With a Clock in its Walls

Ten-year-old orphan Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) goes to live with his strange uncle in a creaky old house whose walls contain a mysterious tick-tocking magic. When Lewis accidentally disturbs the dead, the sleepy town comes alive with dark witchery.

Based on John Bellairs’ children’s book, The House With A Clock In Its Walls stars Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and Golden Globe nominee Jack Black, as well as Golden Globe winner Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks). 

It’s the first younger-audience film from gore maestro Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever), who’s called it a “starter horror movie.”  Slate calls it “a bullseye… perfectly balanced between funny and scary.” 

Rated 10-12PGVH, The House With A Clock In Its Walls was the 54^th biggest box office hit of 2018, grossing over $130m globally. 

Lovecraft Country S1

In the 1950s, Atticus, a young African-American, sets out on a road trip with his friend and uncle to find his missing father. This catapults the three into a struggle for survival against the dual terrors of Jim Crow-era America and terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a paperback written by pulpy horror author HP Lovecraft.

Based on the cult novel by Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country is a collaboration between Misha Green (creator of Underground, named Best New Cable/New Media Show of 2016 by the African-American Film Critics Association) and Oscar winner Jordan Peele (Us, Get Out), executive produced by JJ Abrams (Star Wars, Star Trek, Lost, Super 8, Westworld). 

The fantastic cast includes Black Reel nominee Jonathan Majors (The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Da 5 Bloods), Teen Choice nominee Jurnee Smollett-Bell (Birds of Prey, Friday Night Lights), four-time Emmy nominee Michael Kenneth Williams (When They See Us, The Night Of), Golden Globe nominee Courtney B Vance (The People Vs OJ Simpson, Law & Order), Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Neon Demon), and Nigerian BAFTA winner Wunmi Mosaku (Luther, The End of the F*ing World, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). 

Lovecraft Country is currently the sixth most popular horror series on IMDb and has a 90% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As Newsday put it, “To call Lovecraft Country ‘wildly original’ seems almost a quaint understatement. But it is wild. And original. Little doubt about that.”

American Horror Story

Currently the ninth most popular horror series on IMDb, American Horror Story has the eighth season available on Showmax. The horror anthology moves each season, from a house with a murderous past to an insane asylum, from a witch coven to a freak show circus, from a haunted hotel to a possessed farmhouse, and from a cult to the apocalypse. 

Co-created by TV heavyweights Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (Pose, American Crime Story, Glee), American Horror Story has won over 100 awards, including a Golden Globe and two Emmys for Jessica Lange, a Golden Globe for Lady Gaga, and an Emmy each for Kathy Bates and James Cromwell. It’s also been nominated as Outstanding Limited Series at both the Golden Globes and the Emmys.   

With an 8/10 rating on IMDb, American Horror Story was renewed for another three seasons in January 2020. 

What We Do in the Shadows

From multiple Emmy nominee Jemaine Clement (Flight Of The Conchords) and 2020 Oscar winner Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, Thor: Ragnarok), the hit mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows is a look into the daily (or rather, nightly) lives of three vampires who’ve lived together in New York for over 100 years – plenty of time to get on each other’s nerves. 

This year the magnificently silly mock-doc series showed its teeth with eight Emmy nominations for Season 2, including one for Best Comedy Series and three for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. It’s at #11 on Rotten Tomatoes’ Best TV of 2020 (So Far) list, with a 100% critics rating, and has been hailed as “TV’s best comedy” by The Hollywood Reporter, among others.  It’s at #10 on IMDb’s list of the top-rated horror series of all time, with an 8.5/10 rating. 

What We Do In The Shadows stars BAFTA winners Kayvan Novak (Four Lions) and Matt Berry (The IT Crowd, Toast of London) as Nandor the Relentless and Laszlo respectively. Sketch comedian Natasia Demetriou is Laszlo’s sultry sire, Nadja, while Mark Proksch (The Office, Better Call Saul) plays energy vampire Colin Robinson. But while the vamps flap and fuss in the foreground, it’s downtrodden little Guillermo, Nandor’s familiar, played by Harvey Guillén (The Magicians), who swoops into the spotlight this season, having discovered he’s descended from the famed vampire slayer van Helsing. 

Frights for all tastes 

Showmax has something for everyone this Halloween. 

• Want a quirky Latin American series about a group of friends who turn their love for horror into a peculiar business? Try HBO’s critically-acclaimed Los Espookys.
• Want a classic Halloween love story? Try Teen Choice winner Warm Bodies or Golden Globe winner True Blood.

Check out even more Halloween options in the Hallo-scream Collection.