By Eli Auer
With Halloween coming, and horror movies filling the menus of every streaming service, it can be hard to know which are best to watch. However, McNicholas students as well as rating service Rotten Tomatoes definitely have their favorite horror flicks to celebrate the holiday.
Senior Shane Auer said, “My favorite horror movie is The Conjuring. The plot and storyline were really good. I liked how graphic and visual it was as well — it made it feel very realistic.” Auer said The Conjuring is about, “A family who moved into this old house which contained a very dark and demonic spirit. The spirit attacked the mother, and the mother began to get progressively worse until she started attacking the people she called family. She was then exorcised, and they moved away.” The Conjuring was released in 2013, is Rated R, and has a runtime of 1h 52m. It is rated 86% by critics and 83% by the audience according to Rotten Tomatoes. The Conjuring is available on Hulu, Max, Netflix. According to Common Sense Media, it is rated R for violence and language.
Freshman Emmett Folk said, “My favorite horror movie is Scream. It is a funny, comedic movie. I like the acting, it’s well-rounded. It was not a hard movie to watch, no gory scenes in the movie.” In Rotten Tomatoes review of Scream, “Twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.” Scream is rated R for language, gore, and has a 76% rating from critics, and an 82% rating from audiences according to Rotten Tomatoes. The remake was released in 2022 and is streaming on Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+.
Aside from McNicholas student favorites, Rotten Tomatoes listed the Top Horror Movies available on the streaming services of Netflix and Hulu.
Top rated on Netflix: His House (2020)
In Rotten Tomatoes review of His House: “A refugee couple makes a harrowing escape from war-torn South Sudan, but then they struggle to adjust to their new life in an English town that has an evil lurking beneath the surface.” His House is rated PG-13 with a runtime of 1h 33m and was rated 100% by critics and 73% by audiences. His House is streaming on Netflix.
Top rated on Hulu: Poltergeist
A suburban family home is invaded by malevolent spirits. At first, the spirits were friendly and playful, but suddenly the spirits become menacing, in which the family’s youngest daughter goes missing. The family turns to an exorcist for help, and eventually pack up and leave. Poltergeist, released in 1982, is rated PG with a run time of 2h and was rated 88% by critics and 79% by audiences and can be streamed on HBO Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and YouTube.
The McNicholas Milestone 