Halloween is coming up and all the streamers are pushing their scariest flicks at you, but which ones should you vape to? Sure, you want to be scared, but you don’t want to end up catatonic, either. Not surprisingly, comedy horror was a big favorite in Leafly’s X (Twitter) poll, so we’ve definitely included a couple of films that mix laughs with the jump scares. But there are some just-plain scary movies here too that’ll have you hittin’ that indica.
[Editor’s note: Updated 11.6.23 with the three winners of the readers’ poll.]
Army of Darkness (1992)
Listen up, you primitive screw heads! Ash is back and ready to kick undead ass with his twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington boomstick. In this third entry in Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead trilogy, Bruce Campbell attains the full-on swagger that he’s known for today as Ash is teleported from the housewares department at S-Mart to a medieval kingdom beset by Kandarian demons. Hilarity ensues as Ash battles an undead army led by his own demonic duplicate. But Raimi never lets the slapstick get in the way of the scares, so there’s something for everybody. Streaming on Prime. Strain pairing: Strawberry Cough
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Six years before Walking Dead shambled onto TV screens, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg delivered the ultimate zombie apocalypse satire. Like Ash in Army of Darkness, Shaun (Pegg) sells appliances. Only he lives in England, so he has to find a way to kick flesh-eating undead ass without easy access to firearms. Gulp! Where AOD is a broad farce, Shaun gets its laughs through dry British humor and a mountain of pop culture references. Intestines will still be eaten, only this time it’s funny. Streaming on Hulu, Peacock. Strain pairing: Gelato
The Exorcist (1973)
If there was a consensus favorite (at least on Leafly’s socials channels), it would be this original blockbuster demonic possession shocker that gave your grandparents panic attacks in single-screen movie theaters. Linda Blair plays a pre-teen possessed by the Devil himself (or so it claims); Max Von Sydow (Flash Gordon) and Jason Patrick play the priests who brave bursts of curse words and streams of green puke to drive the foul spirit from her body. Trigger warning: mileage may vary on the famous crucifix masturbation scene. Streaming on Max. Pairing strain: Devil Fruit
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
That bastard son-of-a-thousand maniacs Freddy Krueger has appeared in nine films, but this one’s the stoniest. Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) and a band of teenagers take the fight to Freddy in his own dream realm. While this gives the teens super powers via a cranked up special effects budget, Freddy is also at maximum strength in his dark realm. Robert Englund as Freddy is at his most sadistic in this third Nightmare that many feel is the best film in the series. There’s also a title song by Dokken for those viewers experiencing severe hair metal nostalgia. Streaming on Max. Pairing strain: Blue Dream
Jason X (2001)
In the ninth Friday the 13th movie, Jason went to hell, so there was really nowhere to go but up in his tenth film appearance. In the far-flung year of 2455, a team of science students exploring a now-uninhabitable Earth find a cryogenically frozen Jason in the ruins of the Camp Crystal Lake research facility. Of course, they take him on their spaceship and thaw him out so he can start hacking his way through the students and a few space marines like he was back on terra firma. Eventually, unwitting medical bots make him into a cyborg and create the even more unkillable Uber Jason. They never do learn…even after 455 years! Streaming on AMC+. Pairing strain: Donny Burger
The Babadook (2014)
Reading from a book is never a good idea when you’re stuck in a horror movie. This is true for the Necronomicon in the original Evil Dead movies, and it’s even more true when it’s a creepy pop-up book brimming with rhymes about a German expressionist nightmare called the Babadook who looks like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. With its title character, this Australian scare fest directed by Jessica Kent creates the first great movie monster since Freddy and Jason, and helps usher in a new, slow-burn era of horror. Streaming on Hulu. Pairing strain: Mendo Breath
Barbarian (2022)
If you’ve puffed way too much indica, and you need to shake yourself out of it, this AirBnB nightmare is the movie for you. Tess (Georgina Campbell) is a documentary researcher who finds that her short-term rental in a deserted subdivision on the outskirts of Detroit has been double booked. Making things more suspect, her unwanted roomie is played by Pennywise the Clown himself, Bill Skarsgård (It). On top of that, a homeless man yells at Tess to get out. Plus, there are tunnels under the house leading to God-knows-where. We all know that Tess shouldn’t go down there, but of course she does, leading to so many bonkers twists and reveals that describing them further risks those dreaded spoilers. Streaming on Max, Hulu. Pairing strain: Bubba Kush
Phantasm (1979)
If there’s a ground zero for bonkers horror, it’s this movie, with an interdimensional slaver ring run out of a creepy mortuary by the menacing Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Then, there’s flying silver spheres that drill into peoples’ brains and an army of super-strong dwarves who resemble really pissed-off Jawas from Star Wars. It’s also the horror movie where all the protagonists look like they were tokin’ on some serious sinsemilla back in the day; especially Reggie the ice cream man (Reggie Bannister), who battles the Tall Man in four more Phantasm flicks. Streaming on Peacock, FreeVee. Pairing strain: Phantom Cookies
Prince of Darkness (1987)
Many film buffs consider John Carpenter the director most synonymous with horror, and this is his stoniest movie. A frantic priest played by Donald Pleasance (Halloween) and a team of quantum physics students discover that this strange canister found in an abandoned church contains the liquid essence of Satan. They soon find themselves in a race against time to keep the liquid Satan from bringing his dad, the all-powerful Anti-God, to rule our dimensional plane. Several of the postdocs become goo-spewing zombies and shock rocker Alice Cooper shows up to impale a dude with a broken bicycle! Streaming on Peacock. Pairing strain: Granddaddy Purple
Us (2019)
While Get Out turned Jordan Peele from a sketch comedy star to the new master of horror, he really cuts loose with this follow-up shocker. Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and her family go on a vacation to Santa Cruz only to find themselves locked in a battle for survival with grotesque doppelgängers hellbent on replacing them. Peele weaves plenty of references to Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Shining, and many others to keep his batshit conspiracy involving a mysterious government network of underground tunnels and cheesy 1980s charity events from getting too, too dark. Streaming on Netflix. Pairing strain: Ice Cream Cake
Zombieland (2009)
Learn the rules of surviving the zombie apocalypse and take a good old American road trip with the four people left in the world — five if you count the excellent cameo by Bill Murray. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has survived on his own due to his OCD checklist (1: Cardio, 2: Double tap, 3: Beware of bathrooms). He finally learns some zombie-killing style when he teams up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who prefers creative weapons to plain old guns. Con artist sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock round out their pandemic pod but will they ever find the world’s last Twinkies? Streaming on Netflix. Pairing strain: Twinkie OG
Scary Movie (2000)
The Wayans Brothers team up for this classic horror movie hilariously send up all the slasher film tropes you love, and then some. Starring Anna Farris and Marlon Wayans, a group of teenagers is stalked by a masked killer, again. Of course, you’ll be yelling at the screen — don’t answer the phone! — but you’ll also be laughing as the bodies pile up with the jokes, skits, and pop culture references. The first of the series that spawned so many sequels, just like the movies it parodies. Streaming on Netflix. Pairing strain: Scary Cherry OG
Scream (1996)
What’s your favorite scary movie? For a lot of people, it’s Scream, the classic 90’s horror flick that launched a thousand sequels and revived a genre. Starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and a cast of then-young Hollywood stars who face off against Ghostface, his creepy phone taunts, and long knife. Will any of them make it out of Woodsboro alive? Somebody’s gotta be in all those sequels! Streaming on Paramount Plus. Pairing strain: Ghost Train Haze
Thanks for making our high horror film list a baker’s dozen! Here’s the votes for the three more films we added to the list.
