The Spookiest Things Coming To Netflix In October 2020

As America continues to hack and gnaw its way through the year-long monster mash that is 2020, we look with hope-filled hearts toward the month of October and its customary seasonal graveyard smash. It is a time, traditionally speaking, when we put aside our social mores and cast off our puritanical norms by offering candy to strange children, keeping decorative produce on our porches, and wearing hideous masks that often celebrate demonic or occult entities. Good times for all involved.

Sure, the world is crazy, and communicable disease has somehow made bobbing for apples the scariest possible way to celebrate Halloween, but at least we can look forward to that most sacred of spooky observances: slowly melting into our couches to binge watch a marathon of horror schlock. Netflix is doing its part and bringing the goods this year, serving up a smorgasbord of ghoulish cinematic delights. Let's take a look at a few of the most tantalizing offerings coming to the screaming service in October of 2020.

Just in time for sweater weather and pumpkin-flavored nouns comes another staple of middle-brow, suburban culture: true crime documentaries. Specifically, Netflix is set to bring new episodes of its smash-hit revival of Unsolved Mysteries back to television screens on October 19.

Cosgrove/Meurer Productions, and 21 Laps Entertainment return to bring you six new episodes of the critically acclaimed docuseries exploring real-life tales of the creepy and macabre. While the subjects of the show's forthcoming investigations have been kept under wraps — which makes sense, really, since giving viewers a heads up is basically begging them to solve the mystery ahead of time, thus undermining the name of the show — a few hints have been dropped along the way. In July, a Variety interview with showrunner Terry Dunn Meurer raised the question, "In the next six episodes, will there be a ghost episode?" To which Meurer replied, "Yes. But I'll qualify that and say it's an unusual ghost episode. That's all I'll say. It's different. A bit different."

Based on Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name and directed by Ben Whetley of The ABCs of Death, Rebecca stars Lily James (Baby Driver) as the fresh-faced, optimistic new bride of a wealthy widower played by one-time Lone Ranger, Armie Hammer. After arriving at her husband's luxurious mansion, Rebecca is greeted by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (played by Academy Award nominee Kristin Scott Thomas), who makes the newly married young lady very much aware that she doesn't have the goods necessary to take the place of her previous boss.

This won't be the first time that Rebecca has been adapted for the screen. In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock directed an ever-so-slightly toned-down version of the story, which was met with critical acclaim and even won the Oscar for Best Picture. While remakes of Hitchcock movies have had a rough track record (see: 1998's Psycho, 2007's Disturbia, and 1997's Rebecca) this one looks to be a humdinger.

Considering that roughly 90% of Norwegian culture is based around eating gelatinous fish and pretending that your neighbors aren't all Vikings, it's a little peculiar that we don't turn to the laplands for more of our horror needs. Maybe the folks at Netflix pieced that together, as their first original Norwegian motion picture, Cadaver, is coming to the streaming service on October 22.

Starring Gitte Witt of The Impossible, Thorbjørn Harr from Vikings, and The 12th Man's Thomas Gullestad, Cadaver tells the story of a family trying to survive in the wake of a nuclear disaster. When they're invited to a local hotel and promised a free meal in exchange for being part of a theatrical production, things take a decidedly upsetting turn. Masks are worn, folks start to disappear, the line between "performance" and "reality" begins to blur, and the buttress of rationality splinters as a result. The film represents director Jarand Herdal's first feature-length movie after making a name for himself with short films like Clowne, Everywhen, and a little-known Harry Potter fan film from 2011.

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight, more easily remembered by its original Polish name "W lesie dzis nie zasnie nikt," follows the time-honored tradition of sticking teenagers in the woods and punishing them for their youthful indiscretions. Slasher flicks have been chopping, slicing, and impaling kids for decades on the basis of premarital sex, an appreciation for the demon weed, oafish thickheadedness, and so on. This time around, they'll be bumped off for that most heinous and contemporary of crimes: being on their dang phones all the dang time.

The movie, produced in Poland and acquired for international distribution by Netflix, tells the tale of a group of teenagers, sent into the forest to unplug from their devices. Not long after arriving for their technological detox, however, they begin to suspect that there may be something sinister lurking in the forest's shadows.

Featuring a bevy of Polish actors with names brought to you by the letter W, Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight stars Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz, Wiktoria Gasiewska and Stanislaw Cywka.