The best movies leaving streaming at the end of October 2023

October is coming to a detailed, and with it, Halloween season ends. Fret not, although — there are nonetheless a couple of days left, and fall continues round the nook. And there are lots of nice movies leaving streaming providers to meet up with earlier than you say goodbye to spooky season.

To suit the season, we’ve picked out some horror movies leaving streaming platforms — a stellar found-footage film, an all-time basic franchise starter, and a TV reboot that improves on a vampire basic. However when you’re not a horror buff, don’t fear — we’ve received you lined, too. Darkish Metropolis is the good vibe for this time of 12 months, and it stays a criminally underseen cult basic. Be the change, and so forth., and so forth.

Right here’s what you must watch this weekend earlier than these titles depart their streaming providers.

Editor’s decide

Darkish Metropolis

Director: Alex Proyas
Forged: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly
Leaving: Oct. 31 on Criterion Channel

The late ’90s was a peak period for cerebral science fiction movies that probed at the idea of simulation concept, a speculation that speculated that every thing that people know and expertise, from the physicality of our personal our bodies to the validity of our beliefs and the safety of our establishments, is all only one massive synthetic simulation working inside a pc that homes the universe. Alex Proyas beat the Wachowskis to the punch together with his neo-noir sci-fi movie Darkish Metropolis, which got here out a 12 months earlier than The Matrix. And whereas it could not command the identical stage of fervent fandom (not to mention sequels) as that movie, Proyas’ film continues to be an interesting and totally entertaining expertise in its personal proper.

The movie opens with John Murdoch, a troubled amnesiac, awakening in a bath with no reminiscence of how he received there. Stumbling onto the scene of a homicide, he escapes simply in the nick of time earlier than the authorities arrive to arrest him. Wandering via a mysterious metropolis solid underneath a perpetual pall of darkness, John embarks on a mission in seek for clues and solutions to his forgotten life, a search that places him in the crosshairs of a shadowy sect of psychics who appear to carry unquestioned energy over this metropolis and all of its inhabitants.

Darkish Metropolis is totally a must-see for anybody who counts themselves a fan of grungy noir aesthetics and cerebral sci-fi weirdness. Kiefer Sutherland delivers a implausible left-field efficiency as a nervous, put-upon scientist who is aware of an excessive amount of, and Jennifer Connelly is totally gorgeous in her function as John’s spouse, a jazz membership singer whose personal life is turned the other way up by this unusual collection of occasions. Should you’re in search of a fantastically shot work of mind-bending fiction, give Darkish Metropolis a shot. —TE

Watch on Netflix

Collateral

Picture: DreamWorks Footage

Director: Michael Mann
Forged: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith
Leaving: Oct. 31

Tom Cruise delivers one of the most unusual (and terrifying) performances of his profession as the steely-eyed contract killer in Collateral. Employed to commit a collection of murders round LA in a single evening, he pays an unwitting cabbie named Max (Jamie Foxx) to chauffeur him round the metropolis.

Collateral’s nocturnal lighting and good cinematography courtesy of Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron mix to make for one of the most hypnotic and memorable portraits of LA’s metropolitan sprawl ever dedicated to movie. It’s laborious to decide on a favourite Michael Mann film, however for all these causes and extra, Collateral sits firmly in my private high 5 rating of the director’s best. —TE

Watch on Max

Interview with the Vampire

Picture: AMC

Creator: Rolin Jones
Forged: Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, Eric Bogosian
Leaving: Oct. 31

I’m dishonest somewhat bit, as a result of it is a present. But it surely’s our record and we make the guidelines, and right here’s a brand new rule: The Interview with the Vampire present is leagues higher than the film, and you must watch it whereas it’s on Max.

Interview with the Vampire is one of a bunch of AMC reveals which have had a quick keep on Max, and with all respect to the nice Gangs of London and Darkish Winds, it is likely to be the best of the bunch.

Should you’re a fan of Hannibal, you’ll like this. A really queer, very bloody adaptation, the present takes the queer subtext of the ebook and makes it textual content. That’s not the solely vital departure from the supply materials, transferring the time interval ahead and reworking the character of Louis from a white plantation proprietor right into a mixed-race pimp. It encompasses a trio of terrific efficiency in Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, and Eric Bogosian, and sharp writing from playwright Rolin Jones, the present’s creator. It’s one of the best reveals of latest years — watch it in preparation for the eventual launch of season 2. —PV

Watch on Hulu

Evil Lifeless (2013)

Picture: Sony Footage House Leisure

Director: Fede Álvarez
Forged: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci
Leaving: Oct. 31

With solely a handful of movies underneath his title, Fede Álvarez has already asserted himself as one of the most enjoyable new voices in horror. If you wish to know why the director was tapped to direct the subsequent entry of the Alien franchise, look no additional than his 2013 remake of Sam Raimi’s Evil Lifeless collection — a gory and twisted take that eschews the tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy of the unique in favor of a scene of a possessed girl splitting her tongue down the center with a knife.

Álvarez’s Evil Lifeless is an intensely violent and gory film full of genuinely bone-chilling kills and bracing imagery. I actually can’t stress this sufficient: Should you can’t abdomen the sight of such horrors as an individual getting stabbed with hypodermic needles, don’t watch this film. For anybody else, have at it. —TE

Watch on Prime

[REC]

Picture: Sony Footage House Leisure

Administrators: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
Forged: Manuela Velasco, Ferrán Terraza, Jorge-Yamam Serrano
Leaving: Oct. 31

An absolute must-watch in the found-footage style, [REC] is brief and terrifying film stuffed to the brim with pressure and scares. It follows a small TV information crew in Barcelona embedded with a neighborhood hearth division and who will get despatched to an condo advanced present process a mysterious catastrophe.

[REC] got here out proper in the center of a run of zombie movies in the mid-2000s, and it is likely to be the best of the bunch from that period, proper together with George A. Romero’s Land of the Lifeless (laborious to beat the grasp). It’s additionally one of the smartest makes use of of the found-footage gadget, bringing out all the pressure and dread you would ever need from a film like this earlier than ramping up into pure chaos as the monsters are actually unleashed. —PV