Not even YouTube is immune to the onslaught of horror movies that arrive on every streamer in October.
But at least YouTube lets fans watch a handful of movies for free. And there are so many good ones this month, we were tempted to load up on horror flicks.
Instead, the Watch With Us team’s roundup of must-watch free YouTube movies has only added one horror film and one that’s horror-adjacent.
As a change of pace from scary storylines, our other pick of the month is a period romantic comedy that was first released as a Hulu original movie.
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‘Scream’ (1996)
Director Wes Craven masterfully mined the horror of Scream with some brilliantly realized dark humor and ignited a franchise. Unsurprisingly, the first film remains the best out of the six released to date. Drew Barrymore makes a memorable cameo at the beginning of the film, but this movie belongs to Neve Campbell.
Sidney Prescott (Campbell) is a teenager who is haunted by the murder of her mother, and she’s also unnerved by a serial killer dressed in a Ghostface mask. If that wasn’t enough, Sidney is hounded by reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who wants to make this the defining story of her career. As Sidney’s friends fall one by one to the killer, she’s forced to wonder if the man behind the Ghostface mask is someone she knows.
Scream is streaming on YouTube.
‘Rosaline’ (2022)
Rosaline was only mentioned in William Shakespeare‘s Romeo and Juliet, but she’s got big main character energy in this adaptation of Rebecca Serle‘s young adult novel When You Were Mine. The Last of Us‘ Kaitlyn Dever stars as the title character in Rosaline, and she was the beloved of Romeo (Kyle Allen), at least until he met her cousin, Juliet (Isabela Merced).
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Cousin or not, Rosaline isn’t going to let go of Romeo without a fight. However, Rosaline has underestimated the desire that Romeo and Juliet have for each other, and just how far their families will go to keep this union from ever happening.
Rosaline is streaming on YouTube.
‘The X-Files: Fight the Future’ (1998)
You don’t necessarily have to know The X-Files TV series chapter and verse before watching the movie, but it definitely helps. Regardless, The X-Files film largely stands alone in the middle of the show’s run, with Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) forced to investigate mere terrorist threats after their paranormal division is shut down by the FBI.
However, a very public act of terror opens the door for Mulder to reopen his investigation into a conspiracy surrounding the possible alien colonization of Earth. Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau) claims to have the answers that Mulder is looking for, but neither he nor Scully prepared for just how far he’ll have to go to get them.
The X-Files is streaming on YouTube.
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‘Sleepy Hollow’ (1999)
Tim Burton‘s take on Sleepy Hollow re-envisioned Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) as a constable whose scientific police work is decades ahead of the late 18th century. That may have been enough for common criminals, but the Headless Horseman is real and terrifying. So much so that proof of the Horseman’s supernatural abilities briefly turns Ichabod into a quivering mess.
Regardless of his lapse in courage, Ichabod attempts to discover why the Horseman is targeting specific people in Sleepy Hollow. The evidence seems to point towards the Horseman being controlled by Katrina Anne Van Tassel (Christina Ricci), a young woman with whom Ichabod is very infatuated. But if it’s not Katrina, then who is the real power behind the Horseman’s rampage?
Sleepy Hollow is streaming on YouTube.
‘Catch Me If You Can’ (2002)
Leonardo DiCaprio has rarely been more charming than he was in Steven Spielberg‘s Catch Me If You Can. This film was loosely based on the real life of Frank Abagnale Jr. (DiCaprio), a young con artist who has a gift for forging checks. That’s what attracts the attention of FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), who spends years trying to bring Frank to justice.
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To stay one step ahead of the law, Frank assumes a number of false professions, including an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer. He even falls hard for a woman named Brenda Strong (Amy Adams), but the consequences of Frank’s life of crime are always closing in on him whenever he gets too comfortable with his assumed personas.
Catch Me If You Can is streaming on YouTube.
‘Unforgiven’ (1992)
The only major Oscar that Clint Eastwood didn’t get for Unforgiven was Best Actor. So he just had to be satisfied with winning the Best Director and Best Picture Academy Awards. This was Eastwood’s final film in the Western genre that had made him a star three decades earlier, and it serves as a spiritual sequel to some of his films. Eastwood plays former outlaw Will Munny, a man who can barely provide for his children.
Will’s friend, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and an upstart gunslinger, the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), convince Munny to come out of retirement for one last bounty. A cowboy named Quick Mike (David Mucci) scarred a prostitute who laughed at him, and the other women in the brothel are outraged by his lack of punishment. However, Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett (Gene Hackman) stands in the way of their revenge, and he’ll take extreme measures to make sure Will and his friends can’t collect the bounty.
Unforgiven is streaming on YouTube.
