31 Movies in 31 Days 2025

Posted byNicholas RadfordPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , ,

Watching 31 spooky movies during October has become an integral part of my life. I’ve been doing it so long that I genuinely can’t imagine the fall season without it. Like, I don’t think I’d be able to stay up-to-date on all the amazing horror movies (or play catch-up on some that I’d missed) without this ritual. That said, it often feels like a massive undertaking, and I’m always quite drained when it’s all over. 

Funny enough, there are some horror movies from last year that I specifically noted in my 2024 blog and ended up watching before October rolled around this year. So, even though they aren’t on this list, I want to give a special shout-out to Cuckoo and Longlegs, especially Longlegs, which is in contention for my favorite movie of the year. That said, there are some other top contenders among this list, too.

But, before we get into all that, let me provide the list of movies I watched for 31 Movies in 31 Days 2025.

Let’s start from the bottom of the tier list and work our way up. Fortunately, there weren’t many stinkers this year, but there were a few. FearDotCom should come as no surprise here. It’s notoriously bad. Like, I watched it because the Dead Meat podcast did an episode on it when they felt like covering some schlock. There are a couple of fun ideas in there, but it’s really like a scrapped episode of The X-Files inspired by The Ring, without any of the charm. Ash was a disappointment because I’d heard some decent buzz about it, while it being fun to look at and did a couple cool body horror things, this Shudder original simply couldn’t hold my attention, a shortcoming that is only made worse by the fact that it’s a clear riff on one of the greatest horror flicks of all time–The Thing.

Speaking of disappointing Shudder originals, Hell House LLC has become almost as much of a Halloween tradition as the V/H/S series, with seemingly a new entry dropping every year (since I started paying attention to the series). Unfortunately, unlike V/H/S, Hell House LLC: Lineage seems to have forgotten what brought them to the game and made the other movies in the series so effective–the found footage format. Maybe I’m biased, because found footage is my favorite genre of horror, but switching to a traditional format loses most of the appeal for this series, in my opinion. The de facto mascot of the series–The Clown (yes, that is apparently his name)–stops being as scary when we’re not seeing him from the POV of a main character. The terror of seeing a supposedly inanimate clown is that you’re not sure if he actually moved or not–we’ve all had that experience–but that’s lost from a third-person perspective. This movie seemed to set up for another in the series, so maybe they can course-correct in the next one. To wrap up this portion of the list, we have the 2025 remake of Wolf Man (no “The,” like Gorillaz), another movie that I’d heard some decent things about, but just left me disappointed. To be fair, my biggest gripe with this movie is that I couldn’t see a thing for most of it. Granted, I watched it during the day, but that should not prevent me from following the story. My “old man yells at cloud” is that movies are far too dark (visually) nowadays.

Obligatory Poutine

Moving on from the dregs to more middle-of-the-road horror, which I will spend a little less time on. A couple of movies here were disappointments, especially Bring Her Back. It wasn’t bad, even pretty good, but it had been built up to be the movie of the year to me, and it simply did not reach those highs for me. Come at me in the comments, I guess. In direct contrast, we have Until Dawn, which I had heard was very bad, but I thought it was pretty fine. This is really going to upset people, but I scored it the same as Bring Her Back. It’s a fine movie, as long as you can separate it from the source material–a game that I love–and the 2000s horror schlock vibes had me super nostalgic for stuff like Friday the 13th (2009). This is also part of the list that has a lot of classics that I’d missed, like House on Haunted Hill (1959), Triangle, and The Craft, all of which were fine movies that I enjoyed; they just didn’t blow me away. I want to bring up Final Destination Bloodline separately, because–again–it’s a decent movie, but I really want to acknowledge how well they handled what was one of Tony Todd’s final roles. They deftfully gave his character backstory and found a way to write him out of the series while giving the man himself a chance to say goodbye. Beautiful stuff from a movie that also featured a cock ring getting yanked out by a giant magnet.

Next, there are the great movies. I found these movies very enjoyable. They’re not true all-timers–which are still to come–but they are very fun. Weirdly, most of these movies are incredibly funny, in vastly different ways. The Monkey, Y2K, M3GAN 2.0, Cemetery Man, and It’s What’s Inside are all intentionally quite hilarious. While I think the original M3GAN was meant as an earnest horror movie, they leaned hard into the camp of the people who latched onto it for the sequel, which I’m sure a lot of people cringed at, but I really enjoyed it. Y2K was specifically crafted for me, as it includes big, weird monsters, Tim Heidecker, and some other notable cameos, and nostalgia bait. It’s like Member Berries: The Movie, and is clearly pandering, but I enjoy being pandered to. Cemetery Man and It’s What’s Inside were both delightful surprises, because I knew absolutely nothing about either one before watching them, and had a wonderful time just enjoying the vastly different rides they took me on. Saw X and Smile 2 are incredible examples of a sequel surpassing what came before. I didn’t like the original Smile very much, aside from the cool practical effects at the very end, but Smile 2 truly stepped things up and, though it overstayed its welcome a tad, it blew me away.

Finally, I want to highlight the best movies from this year’s marathon. These movies are all arguably five stars (though, for Letterboxd, I rated some 4.5 stars). Nosferatu (2024), Companion, 28 Years Later, Predator: Killer of Killers, Battle Royale, Your Monster, and Weapons all truly left me thoroughly entertained and satisfied in their own way. The only reason Predator didn’t get a five-star rating is that it started slowly. A friend told me he turned it off after like 15 minutes, and I can see why. As an anthology, the different vignettes vary in quality and engagement, and the first one is the weakest, in my opinion. But, boy howdy, if you stick it out, you will be rewarded with some truly kick-ass action and fun. 28 Years Later and Nosferatu were both slow, too, but I just loved the vibes and the world they presented. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch Nosferatu again, but I ADORED the dark weirdness it exuded. I enjoyed every piece of 28 Years Later, right up until the weird setup for the sequel–I hate when movies are beholden to that stuff. Companion presents an excellent argument for going into a movie completely blind, and as such, I will keep my review very vague. That said, even though I knew the basic premise, there were still a few jaw-dropping reveals that left me shook. It’s also one of the most satisfying scripts I’ve seen in a long time. Not a single element that is introduced goes without some sort of callback or payoff. I’ve actually referenced this movie when discussing how to structure a wrestling match, because it pays everything off so well.

Costume? This is me now!

Your Monster, Battle Royale, and Weapons are far and away my favorites this year. It’s wild that it took me so long to finally watch Battle Royale, even though I’ve known about it since high school. It’s obviously a classic for a reason, plus it has the actor who plays live-action Light Yagami in the Death Note movies! Your Monster is the perfect companion piece to Lisa Frankenstein, which was one of my favorites last year. A whole vibe about a girl and her monster. Also, Melissa Barrera deserves everything good in the world. Finally, Weapons is one that I’ve been looking forward to since it was announced. I’m an old Whitest Kids You Know fan, and Barbarian was so memorable, especially the little mini movie at the beginning. Zach Cregger is the latest in the long line of comedians-turned-horror players, and I am so here for it. So much of this movie is off-kilter and presents more questions than answers, that when things start falling into place, Tarantino timeline-style, it’s so satisfying. Also, the ending sequence is the hardest I’ve laughed all year.

There we have it! Another year of horror down! Thank you all for coming on this journey with me. Have you seen any of this year’s movies? Do your thoughts differ from mine? Let me know!

THE WORLD IS YOUR BURRITO!

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