Criterion Channel’s October 2026 Lineup Features Highway Horror, Made-for-TV Terror, Dario Argento & More
Last year, someone was kind enough to gift me a free month of streaming last year for the Criterion Channel platform, and it looks like October is going to be the month I finally get to use it, because the assortment of collections and films that Criterion will be offering digitally for the Halloween season is not to be missed by horror fans.
There's no doubt that October is always a big month for horror on the Criterion Channel, but this year's lineup is particularly packed, offering an impressive mix of genre favorites, international cinema, cult discoveries, filmmaker retrospectives, and plenty of genuinely unsettling ways to spend Halloween season. Beginning October 1, Criterion is taking viewers on some very dangerous road trips, inviting a host of unwelcome guests into our homes, exploring the many meanings of possession, and turning the spotlight on filmmakers ranging from Dario Argento and Kiyoshi Kurosawa to Mike De Leon and Bruce LaBruce.
For horror fans, the centerpiece is undoubtedly Highway Horror, a collection that turns the open road into one of cinema’s most consistently terrifying environments (and one of my favorite subgenres, for sure). The lineup brings together movies in which ordinary road trips become nightmares through encounters with killers, supernatural forces, hostile landscapes, and simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Steven Spielberg’s Duel, Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher, Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, George Sluizer’s The Vanishing, Richard Franklin’s Road Games, Jack Starrett’s Race with the Devil, Mike Marvin’s The Wraith, John Dahl’s Joy Ride, Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil, and John Hyams’ Alone are among the films included, alongside lesser-known gems such as Lindsay C. Vickers’ The Appointment and Ate de Jong’s Highway to Hell.
Criterion is also digging into the golden age of television horror with Made-for-TV Terror, featuring four films that demonstrate just how adventurous American television movies could be. Alongside Spielberg’s Duel are John Carpenter’s Someone’s Watching Me!, Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot, and Dark Night of the Scarecrow. For anyone interested in the history of genre filmmaking, it is a particularly fun little collection because these productions existed at a fascinating intersection between television and theatrical cinema, giving some of our favorite filmmakers an opportunity to experiment with horror while bringing feature-length genre stories directly into viewers’ homes.
Home is not necessarily any safer than anywhere else in Criterion's lineup. Unwelcome Guests brings together a wide-ranging group of films built around the terrifying idea that our supposedly safe domestic spaces can be invaded at any moment. The Night of the Hunter, Rosemary’s Baby, Play Misty for Me, Homebodies, The Plumber, Pacific Heights, When a Stranger Calls Back, La cérémonie, Funny Games, You’re Next, and The Gift all approach that basic anxiety from very different directions. The result is a collection that stretches from psychological horror and home invasion thrillers to domestic nightmares that are much harder to categorize.
And then there is Possessions, which takes the idea of losing control of yourself—or having something else take control of you—in a wonderfully broad direction. The collection includes Itim, The Omen, Demon Seed, Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, The Entity, Lifeforce, The Faculty, Jennifer’s Body, and The Wailing. Demonic forces, artificial intelligence, alien entities, supernatural manifestations, and even the complicated anxieties of adolescence all find their way into a lineup united by the idea of the body and mind becoming battlegrounds.
October also brings several major filmmaker spotlights, beginning with Dario Argento. Criterion’s five-film selection traces an important portion of the Italian master’s career, from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o’ Nine Tails through Inferno, Tenebrae, and Two Evil Eyes. For viewers who know Argento primarily through Suspiria, this is a particularly useful opportunity to explore the filmmaker’s giallo roots and his increasingly abstract approach to horror, while longtime fans get a compact excuse to revisit some of his most visually distinctive work.
Even more expansive is Criterion’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa spotlight, which is one of the month’s real treasures. The retrospective encompasses Door III, Cure, Serpent’s Path, Eyes of the Spider, Charisma, Pulse, Bright Future, Penance, Creepy, To the Ends of the Earth, Cloud, and Kurosawa’s 2024 version of Serpent’s Path. It is an excellent representation of a filmmaker whose work has never been confined to conventional genre boundaries. His horror films can be terrifying, but his larger body of work is equally interested in alienation, technology, social disconnection, uncertainty, and the strange psychological spaces occupied by people who feel increasingly detached from the world around them.
The month also offers a welcome spotlight on Mike De Leon, one of the defining figures of Philippine cinema. His four-film selection includes Itim, Will Your Heart Beat Faster?, Kisapmata, and Batch ’81, providing an introduction to a filmmaker whose work encompasses horror, political allegory, psychological drama, and social commentary. The collection is particularly valuable for viewers looking to expand their knowledge of international genre cinema, with De Leon’s films offering a fascinating window into Philippine history and the political and social tensions surrounding the Marcos era.
Criterion is also giving Bruce LaBruce his own spotlight with Reluctant Pornographer, featuring Hustler White, Otto; or, Up with Dead People, and Gerontophilia. The selection showcases LaBruce’s provocative fusion of punk, queer cinema, pornography, horror, camp, and underground filmmaking, and provides another example of the Channel’s willingness to embrace filmmakers whose work exists well outside traditional ideas of cinematic respectability.
For something a little different, the latest installment of Adventures in Moviegoing puts comedian and cultural commentator Marc Maron in the spotlight. In conversation with The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, Maron discusses his relationship with cinema and the films that shaped his perspective, while his selections include François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, Wim Wenders’ The American Friend, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss.
October also coincides with the release of Criterion’s massive The Complete Kubrick box set, and the Channel is celebrating with three selections: Lolita, Barry Lyndon, and Eyes Wide Shut. While it would obviously be possible to spend an entire month immersed in Stanley Kubrick, these three films offer an intriguing cross-section of his career, from the darkly comic adaptation of Nabokov’s Lolita to the painterly grandeur of Barry Lyndon and the enigmatic final film Eyes Wide Shut.
The Channel is also bringing several existing Criterion Collection editions to streaming, including Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Ken Russell’s Altered States, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, and David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. Importantly for Criterion fans, these aren't simply films appearing on the service; the associated editions also bring along supplemental material, including commentaries, interviews, documentaries, and making-of features.
There is plenty to enjoy beyond the major collections, too. The Channel’s American Independents selections include Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Parker Posey favorite Party Girl, and the wonderfully strange 1974 horror-comedy Homebodies. Hollywood Hits adds David Fincher’s The Social Network and Michael Mann’s cult curiosity The Keep, while the Short Films section features The Last Jiangshi. Music fans can also check out Magazine, a full-album video from experimental rock outfit YHWH Nailgun, and Yann Gonzalez’s queer horror fantasia Hideous, featuring music from the xx’s Oliver Sim.
The month’s Episodic Series offering is particularly intriguing as well. Shinichiro Watanabe’s Terror in Resonance arrives on the Channel, bringing together the Cowboy Bebop creator’s distinctive visual style, Yoko Kanno’s score, and a story centered on two teenage boys whose acts of terrorism conceal a much larger mystery involving trauma, institutional violence, and abuse of power.
And for those looking for something brand new, the Channel’s exclusive premiere for October is Francesco Sossai’s The Last One for the Road. The 2025 Italian film follows two aging small-time criminals and a young architecture student on a drunken journey through the Venetian countryside.
As a whole, October 2026 feels like one of those Criterion Channel months where the horror programming is strong enough to provide an entire viewing schedule by itself, but all of the deeper programming choices here make it difficult to just focus on the seasonal horrors. The Criterion Channel’s October 2026 lineup begins streaming October 1. As always, titles marked as U.S.-only are subject to regional availability.
