Another month has come and gone, and that means there are quite a few movies that are vanishing from streaming platforms. To make sure you don’t miss any of the excellent movies leaving streaming services this month, we’ve selected a few of our favorites, including some horror movies in honor of Halloween.
This month’s selections include a horror classic, an underrated murder mystery movie, a thriller that turns into a horror film about pots and pans that’s scarier than you might think, and a movie that might make sure you never go in your basement again.
Here are the best movies leaving streaming at the end of October.
Editor’s pick: The Last of Sheila
Director: Herbert Ross
Stars: Richard Benjamin, James Coburn, James Mason
Leaving Criterion Channel: Oct. 31
Serving as the inspiration for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, The Last of Sheila is an excellent whodunit, with laughs, twists, danger, and death at every turn. The movie follows a group of friends who have been invited on a scavenger hunt yacht party by their wealthy friend, whose wife Sheila died in a car accident a year earlier. Of course, it turns out there’s more to the invite than they could have expected, as things quickly start to turn deadly.
Even if The Last of Sheila wasn’t one of the best whodunit movies ever (which it is), it would still be worth a watch thanks to its absolutely singular screenwriting duo. The film was co-written by Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Psycho and is the father of Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, and famed composer Stephen Sondheim. It was the only movie Sondheim ever wrote. —Austen Goslin
Photo: Mary Cybulski/Focus Features
Director: Todd Haynes
Stars: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins
Leaving Netflix: Oct. 31
Todd Haynes’ 2019 legal thriller is a real-life horror story. Mark Ruffallo stars in Dark Waters as Robert Bilott, a corporate defense lawyer who — after being solicited by a farmer living in Parkersburg, West Virginia — begins to suspect that something terrible is happening to the town’s water supply.
Upon further investigation, Bilott unearths the shocking truth: The DuPont corporation, known for its production of Teflon appliances, has secretly been dumping toxic “forever chemicals” from its processing plants in landfills throughout the town. Haynes’ film renders the consequences of corporate malfeasance and greed in grotesque, unflinching detail: children with blackened teeth and gums and the desiccated corpses of poisoned livestock. Dark Waters is an enthralling thriller that will disquiet and shake you to the core. —Toussaint Egan
Movies leaving Prime Video
Photo: 20th Century Studios
Director: Zach Cregger
Stars: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long
Leaving Prime Video: Oct. 31
Barbarian was one of the best breakthrough horror movies of 2022 and, more than two years since its release, it remains one of the most shocking and memorable films I’ve seen in recent memory. The biggest strength of Zach Cregger’s film is in how it takes an otherwise mundane experience (renting an Airbnb in an unfamiliar town) and twists it on its head into a harrowing descent into the depths of unrepentant depravity and evil.
That it does all this while remaining as surprising, incisive, and wickedly funny as it is, right up to its shocking conclusion, is evidence of a savvy filmmaker with an instinctual grasp of their audience’s expectations and, more importantly, how to subvert them. That said, the trouble with praising Barbarian is that its best parts are better left experienced in the moment, rather than discussed and dissected prematurely. If you’re looking for a surprising, haunting, and thoroughly entertaining horror experience to cap off the month of Halloween, you owe it to yourself to give this one a shot. —TE
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Richard Donner
Stars: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens
Leaving Hulu: Oct. 31
An absolute horror classic, and with good reason, The Omen tells the story of a family in Washington, D.C., who adopt a child named Damien. At first it seems like Damien’s odd behavior is just a result of him struggling to adapt to his new surroundings, but it quickly becomes clear that the child isn’t what he seems, and that there might be some much darker force at work behind his strange actions.
The Omen doesn’t quite hold the same power to terrify that it did when it was released in 1976, but for horror fans it’s still a must-watch, with some absolutely incredible sequences and scares. As for everyone else, it just so happens to be an incredible family drama, led by a terrific performance from Gregory Peck. —AG
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