All programming is not created equal, and that’s especially evident in the four new Halloween-themed streaming releases that came out this weekend. From Marvel’s stylish black-and-white monster thriller Werewolf By Night to Hulu’s demonic reimagining of Hellraiser, there was a lot of new content for connoisseurs of horror.

The best thing to come out this week, in my opinion, was Werewolf By Night on Disney+, clearly an homage to the classic 1930s and 40s Universal monster pictures while also telling a uniquely Marvel property. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal and directed by Michael Giacchino, Werewolf By Night is the story of a group of monster hunters vying for control of the Bloodstone, which belongs to the leader of a guild of hunters. Bernal plays Jack Russell, who is not exactly what he seems to be, but who is in a fight to the death with other hunters, including Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), the long-estranged daughter of Ulysses Bloodstone who has returned to fight for what she believes is rightfully hers. 

Werewolf By Night is a one-off special, and one of Marvel’s first steps into the darker corners of its cinematic universe (with the recent Dr. Strange movie being another.) There are references to other Marvel characters, as well as one particular appearance that should have comics fans cheering. But more than that, it’s an engaging, fun, well-acted and though it’s more funny than scary, the show still has a few chills. Donnelly and Bernal are a kickass team and any future project involving the two of them would be very welcome indeed.

The next best newest show to stream is The Midnight Club on Netflix. This is a limited series from one of the most reliable auteurs of scary thriller series, Mike Flanagan. Flanagan, who created the chilling and enthralling Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass for Netflix, here has made a series for younger horror fans (but not children) by adapting a Christopher Pike novel about a group of terminally ill teenagers who meet in secret at midnight to tell horror stories. Together the group forms a pact, that whoever dies first would make the effort to contact the rest of the Midnight Club members from beyond the grave. It goes without saying that the show has numerous content warnings, and not just because of the spooky stuff.

The group members try to one up each other to tell the scariest stories possible (often based on their own harrowing life stories) and each as each tale is told, we see it acted out by the members of the club, including Iman Benson as Ilonka, Igby Rigney as Kevin, and Ruth Codd as Anya. In addition to the stories, the club is being terrified by the spooks, demons, or witches that haunt the hospice/dormitory where they all are staying, and of course, finding out what is really going on is the unsettling yet engaging part of every Flanagan Netflix series.

The Midnight Club may be for younger viewers, but there are visceral scares (a creepy secret basement/cult altar room is one of the eerier settings) and genuine tear-jerker moments that you’d expect to find in a Flanagan series. Nightmare on Elm Street‘s original final girl Heather Langenkamp plays the head of the hospice, and figures into the teens’ stories, and is a welcome addition to the cast. (Most of Flanagan’s usual players are not in this series, unfortunately, but the cast is pretty amazing.) While not as watchable as Hill House, Midnight Club is still a must-see.

Showtime has created a series based on one of the best vampire films of this century. Let the Right One In is a fairly faithful adaptation of the 2008 Swedish cult classic movie. Here, Eleanor (Madison Taylor Baez) is the mysterious new kid on the apartment block who meets Isaiah (Ian Foreman) when she moves in next door with her father Mark (Demián Bichir). Isaiah befriends “Eli” not knowing that she’s a vampire who has been on the run for a long time. Mark, who must help Eli to feed her blood addiction, thinks he’s found her a cure for Eli and is about to enlist her godfather Zeke (Kevin Carroll) to help them. In addition, Anika Noni Rose plays Isaiah’s mother (and NYPD homicide detective investigating the horrible murders in her precinct) Naomi.

It would be hard to top the nuanced study in right and wrong that the original movie presented, and the series does not seem like it will do that. (Only one episode has been released so far.) In addition, the movie was under two hours and Showtime is expanding the story into eight episodes, which will necessitate adding in additional characters and storylines, not all of which are that promising. Still, the chills are there, and unlike Eli, you will feel them when you watch.

Finally, and somewhat disappointingly, we have the reboot of Clive Barker’s BDSM-adjacent Hellraiser. 1987’s Hellraiser introduced viewers to the Cenobites, led by the (then-unnamed) Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley. The Hulu update has Jamie Clayton bringing a feminine energy to the role of the leader of the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.

Here, Riley (Odessa A’zion), a former (and current) addict, runs into the Cenobites when she unlocks a puzzle box her ne’er-do-well boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) gave her. Soon after, her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) goes missing and the puzzle box is the key to bringing him back. Riley follows the box to its previous owner, the elusive rich guy bohemian Mr. Voight (Goran Visnjic) who wants the box to give him an audience with God…or a god.

There’s plenty of gore, and the Cenobites are very stylish and scary, even though their motivations seem to be murky – the franchise wants to emphasize the blurred lines between pleasure and pain, fear and excitement, but does a poor job of illustrating that in the text of the film. It exists as subtext only – the pleasure part does, anyway. It doesn’t help that the characters, and the acting, outside of A’zion as Riley, aren’t terribly compelling. With a lengthy run time, the movie is made for Hellraiser completists, though it probably is better than most sequels to the original.