It’s October. Of course this month’s listings include a few scares. But the fear object doesn’t have to be just a mysterious sea monster or a witch said to haunt a honeymoon suite. Scares could come from real estate party boys who turn out to be sex traffickers, or alleged killer clowns, or even a president willing to plunge the United States into war to satisfy their covetousness. No, this last person is not the pudding-brained man currently in the White House. But it could be. 

Non-frightening delights are also available this month. How about hanging out at a certain underfunded Philadelphia elementary school? Or what about following a scruffy truthstorian on a new case? Whatever you choose, remember to pass on scarfing candy corn.

Abbott Elementary Season 6 (Hulu)--Things are about to get bigger and noisier at the titular underfunded Philadelphia elementary school. The influx of new students is the result of the school district shutting down a few other schools. Vice-principal Gregory faces a power struggle with his boss Principal Ava. Will Gregory finally propose to lead character Janine?  

Below (Netflix)--Newfoundland fisherman Calvin Penney (Josh Hartnett) learns that a mysterious sea creature is in the waters near his seaside town. Its presence threatens his livelihood, the other inhabitants of the town, and even his family. What is this creature, and how can it be stopped?

East Of Eden (Netflix)--Zoe Kazan’s mini-series adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel re-tells the stories of Adam and Eve as well as Cain and Abel as a multi-generational saga set in California’s Salinas Valley region. At the story’s center are the Trask and Hamilton families, whose destinies become intertwined, and Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh), the antiheroic seeker of personal freedom willing to trample the rules of a society which restricts women’s lives. 

Kisapmata (Criterion Channel)--Mike De Leon’s Filipino psychological horror classic is based on a true crime. When retired policeman Tatang Dadong Carandang greenlights his pregnant daughter Mila’s request to marry her co-worker Noel, the domineering parent winds up extracting a huge dowry and forcing the newlyweds to live with him.  Life under Dadong’s roof soon becomes unbearable for the young couple, but Dadong has a secret hold on Mila that blocks her leaving him.

The Last First: Winter K2 (Apple TV+)--Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary recounts the 2021 efforts of a group of 60 mountaineers to summit K2 (the world’s second-tallest mountain) in winter time.  Not only do they have to deal with steep drops, but they also face shorter days, higher winds, and chunks of ice and rock suddenly coming at them like cannonballs. And then there are the clashing goals of the members of the climbing party…. 

Shot Reverse Shot (Ovid)--From 1985 to 1987, American journalist Edward Serotta traveled around Romania to visit and photograph Romanian cities to capture images of daily life of the citizens living under Ceausescu’s reign. He wasn’t under any illusions that he’d be tailed by government agents. But as Radu Jude’s documentary shows, the Romanian Securitate also took pictures of everything Serotta was doing and photographing.  This film contrasts both photographers’ work.

Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma (MUBI)--Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw The TV Glow”) pays homage to and satirizes the slasher film genre in this acclaimed feature. Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is an up-and-coming queer filmmaker entrusted with rebooting the Little Death slasher film franchise. Her genius idea is to enlist Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the final girl in the first Little Death movie, to sign on for her film. But first Kris might need to understand what makes Billy tick and why she’s obsessed with her. 

Terror In Resonance (Criterion Channel)--Shinichiro Watanabe (“Cowboy Bebop”) created this anime series about two teenage boys named Nine and Twelve, who form an apparent terrorist group called Sphinx. They threaten to blow up Tokyo with the prototype atomic bomb they’ve stolen unless their riddle is solved.  Disgraced police detective Kenjiro Shibzaki has been tasked with stopping Sphinx. The key to understanding what’s going on involves a secret experiment using orphaned children with savant syndrome.

Batang West Side (Ovid)--Filipino director Lav Diaz’ 5-hour epic turns out to be the only film he shot in the United States. When young Hanzel is shot to death one winter’s night on the Jersey City street known as West Side Avenue, police detective Juan Mijares’ investigation will lead him in two directions. One will go to the New Jersey city’s Filipino youth gangs and their illicit trade in shabu aka crystal meth. The other direction will be to the dark history that leads Filipinos to try making a new home in this cold chilly land.

Dead-End Job (Netflix)--Debt-burdened Hyuk-jun thinks he’s found the answer to his money woes when he signs up with the Spyder Human Resource Center.  The part-time job he lands through them pays a wage that’s 50 times the normal hourly rate.  But when strange and terrifying things start happening around him, he slowly realizes that these incidents can’t all be the result of exhaustion or bad luck.

Rumours (Netflix)--Directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson (“The Forbidden Room”)’s newest film takes viewers to the G7 Summit, a get-together of the leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies.  Their aim is to draft a provisional statement about some unspecified global crisis.  But thoughts of generating anodyne rhetorical garbage soon gets supplanted by high-level canoodling, reanimated bog bodies, and a game-changing giant brain.

100 Days Of Deception (Netflix)--In 1932 Gyeongseong, Korea was under the thumb of the Japanese colonial government. Lee Ga-kyung is the city’s most skilled pickpocket and con artist. She wants to build up a big enough nest egg so she can up stakes and head to the United States. Opportunity arrives in the form of a spying job for the anti-Japanese rebel group the Gugukdan. Lee will pretend to be an interpreter trainee for the Government-General of Chosen. But her real job gets complicated by the presence of interpreter Kim Tae-woong.

Hokum (Hulu)--Writer Ohm Bauman is creatively blocked in his attempts to complete his popular book series “The Conquistador Trilogy.” So he decides to take a trip to Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes, as they honeymooned there a long time ago.  But this jerk of a writer soon gets roped into the mystery of a missing woman as well as the local legend of a witch who haunts his hotel’s honeymoon suite. Bauman will soon pay a price for being an ugly American.

Rooster Fighter (Netflix)--In this action comedy anime, mutant demons created from human emotional trauma have been wreaking havoc throughout Japan. Humanity’s only hope is the migratory rooster Keiji. His lethal demon-killing skills include a powerful Cock-a-doodle-do and great throwing skills with his beak. Will they be enough for him to exact revenge against the White Demon, who killed his sister Sara?

Clown Panic (Hulu)--In 2016, social media erupted in a firestorm over killer clowns. People in Grenville County, South Carolina allegedly saw rampaging clowns making eerie guttural sounds and terrorizing motorists. The panic would spread across the country and even overseas, with ad hoc clown hunting posses being formed. This documentary recounts what became known as the Great Clown Panic of 2016.

Free Leonard Peltier (Netflix)--Jesse Short Bull and David France’s documentary recounts the saga of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier. Controversially convicted in 1975 for the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Peltier has spent 49 years in prison, making him America’s longest imprisoned political prisoner. Previous activists had failed to secure Peltier’s release. Now a new generation attempts to do so before it’s too late.

Senora Acero The Complete Series (Netflix)--Ready for some wonderfully trashy telenovela fun? When Sara Aguilar Bermudez finally decides to tie the knot with Vicente Acero after having son Salvador out of wedlock, she discovers a different side to Vicente when he gets murdered by hitmen on their wedding day. To get revenge and to protect her son and her friends, Sara will eventually become the most powerful drug trafficker in all of Mexico. 

Krakatit (Ovid)--In this adaptation of Karel Capek’s novel, Prokop is a chemist who’s created a powerful explosive called Krakatit. However, an explosion in the lab leaves him delirious and with amnesia. By the time Prokop recovers, Krakatit has fallen into the hands of the foreign weapons manufacturer Balttin Works.  A series of strange adventures leads to a secret society which worships war, a hill made out of magnetite, and lots of things exploding.

The Lowdown Season 2 (Hulu)--Public defender Ginger (Betty Gilpin) enlists scruffy truthstorian Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke)’s help after one of her clients goes missing from prison. How much slack will The Heartland Press’ new editor give Lee when the reporter discovers corruption and elite malfeasance?  On the homefront, the truthstorian’s efforts to co-parent his daughter Francis get complicated by the arrival of his grifter father Lee Raybon Senior (Tommy Lee Jones).

Crystal Lake (Peacock)--In this prequel to the “Friday The 13th” movies, single mother Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) still hasn’t moved past her grief of losing her special needs son Jason in a drowning accident. Now two strangers have come to her small town with questions about Pamela’s past, and their inquiries bring up stuff that the grieving mother would prefer to remain buried.

The Diplomat Season 4 (Netflix)--In the new season of this popular political thriller, it’s red alert time on both the domestic and the international political fronts. Kate Wyler’s (Keri Russell) marriage to VP Hal Wyler is falling apart. A fragile peace Kate brokered between the U.S. and the U.K. is on life support. And now Hal’s conspiracy with President Grace Penn (Alison Janney) to steal Russia’s most powerful weapon threatens to unleash war.

The Disciple (Netflix)--Joanna Natasegara’s documentary centers on Dutch-Moroccan rapper-producer Tarik Azzougarh aka Cilvaringz. When he gets discovered by the Wu Tang Clan’s members, he sets about ingratiating himself with the group’s core member the RZA. It would be Cilvaringz who would produce the notorious Wu Tang album “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin.”

Norm: The Tale Of Norm Macdonald (Netflix)--Judd Apatow’s documentary on the life of the late “Saturday Night Live” comedian doesn’t rely on talking heads to tell Macdonald’s story. Instead, this film uses personal photos, home movies, and archival footage to allow Macdonald to talk about his life.

Super Scam Me (Hulu)--How have online romance scammers stolen more than $1 billion from American victims? Award-winning investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller decided to find out by setting herself up as bait using a fake online persona. Her eventual target turns out to be someone claiming to be a four-star general. She plans to work with a cyber hacker to uncover the scammer’s true identity and then confront him face-to-face.

Companion (Hulu)--A vacation at an isolated lake house goes awry after Iris, the girlfriend of guest Josh Beeman, kills Sergey (the owner of the house) in self defense after he attempts to rape her. It turns out Iris is actually a companion robot, and her programming was altered by Josh to allow her to harm humans  Why Josh altered Iris’ programming is part of a plan which soon goes off the rails. The result: some additional corpses and a surprise or two.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 (Netflix)--Return to the futuristic California megalopolis known as Night City in this animated series based on the “Cyberpunk 2077” video game. This time around, meet such folk as veteran edgerunner Weak Kingsley, a former top edgerunner who’s now a shadow of his younger self; cinephile Roman Carax, who shadows others’ lives with the hope of documenting truth; and D, the Snake Nation netrunner seeking revenge against the killer who wiped out his clan.

Emily (Netflix)-What if Emily Bronte’s classic (and only) novel Wuthering Heights came out of lived personal experience? Frances O’Connor’s directorial debut imagines Emily Bronte (Emma Mackey) having a romantic and sexual relationship with new curate William Weightman, taking opium, and even pretending to be possessed by the spirit of her dead mother. Needless to say, some Bronte scholars gnash their teeth over this film

Did Someone Happen To Mention Me? (Netflix)--Legendary Japanese actor Gen Takasegawa (Koji Yakusho) returns home to Japan after playing King Lear in London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. But instead of a triumphal welcome, he receives only indifference as nobody (not even friends or family) remembers who he is. Now that Takasegawa has to start again from rock bottom, can he ever return to the spotlight?

Treewashing: The Planting Illusion (Ovid)--Could planting trees not be the simple common-sense solution to Earth’s ecological crises that governments and industries claim it is?  Francois-Xavier Drouet’s continent hopping documentary shows how industrial reforestation campaigns as currently practiced fall short of their restoration goals. For example, Portugal’s fast-growing water-hungry trees have harmed rural communities. The carbon-offset market relies on dodgy accounting methods and over-inflated claims.   

Lupin Part 4 (Netflix)--Omar Sy returns as Assane Diop aka gentleman thief Lupin. It’s been four years since the end of Part 3, and Diop’s only desires are to serve out his prison sentence and visit his family in Senegal. But a copycat thief manages to both pull off simultaneous museum heists (despite heightened security) and frame Diop for the crimes. Now our Arsene Lupin-inspired hero must find a way to both escape prison and clear his name.

Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story (Netflix)--Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley direct this documentary portrait of the titular stand-up comedian and actress. Bamford’s comedy has been built on a combination of personal eccentricities and confessions about her battles with mental illness (depression and bipolar disorder play big roles here). This film traces Bamford’s path from a “dark kid” in Duluth to the boundary-pushing comic known for “Lady Dynamite.”

The Wolves Of Real Estate: The Alexander Brothers (Peacock)--Oren, Tal, and Alon Alexander achieved success in the worlds of luxury real estate and private security.  But beneath their party boy facades, these brothers drugged and raped women from the Hamptons to Aspen for more than a decade. It took dozens of women coming forward before the Alexander brothers would eventually be convicted as sex traffickers. This docuseries recounts the sordid story.

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (Ovid)--The legendary Arkady and Boris Strugatsky wrote the script for this Estonian adaptation of their novel. Police Inspector Glebsky gets called to the Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel, an establishment located in a mountainous region. The hotel’s strange guests turn out to include humanoid aliens and robots. After heavy snowfall cuts the hotel off from the outside world, a crime occurs…or does it? Can the Inspector stop acting like a cop long enough to do the right thing?

Alraune (Ovid)--Brigitte Helm (“Metropolis”) is the title character, an artificial woman born from a prostitute and a hanged convict. The mad scientist created this woman with neither empathy nor conscience for a twisted experiment to determine whether evil is born from nature or nurture.  He winds up alternately obsessed by and repulsed by her, while she patiently plans revenge. A silent horror classic, newly restored.

A Couple Of Lies (Netflix)--Helene and Carl swap their holiday home in Stockholm’s archipelago for a sun-drenched villa in Sicily owned by Scarlett and Adam. What’s supposed to be a weeks-long vacation for these two couples who’ve never met turns into something more dangerous. What sort of game of manipulation and surveillance is being played here? Can the members of each couple still trust each other?