Streaming Shapes Halloween Horror Viewing 2025

Cinema’s horror spectrum ranges from mainstream escapist fright to extreme, disturbing films that aim to shock rather than amuse. Streaming and linear viewing remain central to Halloween habits: Nielsen data shows M3GAN 2.0 led early-October 2025 viewership with 115 million minutes, followed by Scream (1996) and a mix of new 2025 releases and older classics. The 1990s are credited with reshaping modern horror — films such as The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, and Dead Alive combined psychological tension, found-footage realism, and gore to lasting effect. Genre crossover persists both in front of and behind the camera: established horror directors like Wes Craven and John Carpenter have made comedies, and performers who began in horror later became comic stars (for example John Candy and Paul Rudd). From endurance-testing extremes to nostalgic rewatchables, streaming has made both the most disturbing and the most familiar horror films more accessible this Halloween season.