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Last Updated: October 12th

There’s nothing better than bingeing some good scary movies on Netflix on a dark, stormy night. From ghosts to vampires and zombies just about every morbid fantasy that your demented mind can conjure has representation. We’ve watched the best horror movies on Netflix streaming right now, and here they are, in their beastly, blood-curdling glory. It’s perfect for that late night movie binge to keep you wide awake all the way through Halloween.

Related: The Best Thrillers On Netflix Right Now

It Comes At Night (2017)

Run Time: 86 min | IMDb: 7.4/10

Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait in 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale that stars Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot as two patriarchs intent on keeping their families safe, no matter the cost.

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The Silence of The Lambs (1991)

Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 8.6/10

Hannibal Lecter is one of horror’s most iconic characters, but it’s a testament to the creepiness of Anthony Hopkins in a leather muzzle that, no matter how many times the film gets quoted, hearing him tell Clarice Starling he’s having an old friend for dinner still sends chills up our spines. Jodie Foster plays the FBI agent tasked with catching another serial killer with Lecter’s same M.O. and she does it by striking up unnerving conversations with the guy, but Hopkins is the real star here, playing Lecter with a restrained insanity that makes his small talk of enjoying human liver with fava beans so much more nightmarish.

As Above So Below (2014)

Run Time: 93 min | IMDb: 6.2/10

Before Ben Feldman played a lovable know-it-all on Superstore, the guy was surviving a terror-filled jaunt through the catacombs of Paris in this horror movie. Feldman plays George, a reluctant sidekick to Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), a young alchemy scholar and his former girlfriend. Scarlett convinces George a few others to venture into the famous Paris underground in order to find the fabled philosopher’s stone (Harry Potter kids should know all about this thing, we’re not explaining it here). What they find instead is basically Dante’s Inferno come to life as they face down cults, demons, ghosts, and all manner of horrific beings. Let this be a warning, children: Nothing good happens this far below street level. Nothing.

The Perfection (2018)

Run Time: 90 min | IMDb: 6.1/10

Allison Williams, who’s become something of a scream queen after her work in Get Out, continues her horror track record with this thriller about a gifted musician who befriends the talented student who replaced her. Strange happenings begin to occur, events that sabotage the young girl, but as terrifying as this story is, there’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to predict its ending.

The Platform (2019)

Run Time: 94 min | IMDb: 7/10

This Spanish-language sci-fi flick is all kinds of f*cked up but in the best way. The film is set in a large, tower-style “Vertical Self-Management Center” where the residents, who are periodically switched at random between floors, are fed by a platform, initially filled with food, that gradually descends through the levels. Conflicts arise when inmates at the top begin eating all the food, leaving the people lower down to fight for survival.

Red Dragon (2002)

Run Time: 124 min | IMDb: 7.4/10

This 2002 prequel to Silence of the Lambs features everyone’s favorite cannibal – Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) – and a copy cat serial killer played by Ralph Fiennes. The film follows a detective named Will Graham (Edward Norton) who gets roped into solving a string of homicides that are committed by a killer known as The Tooth Fairy, a guy who eats his victims in the hopes of transforming himself. Fiennes is chilling in his portrayal of a psychopath whose childhood trauma causes him to target the innocent and Norton is the kind of hero you root for in weird, terrifying stories like these.

The Ritual (2017)

Run Time: 94 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

This Netflix nightmare follows a group of friends who venture into the Scandinavian wilderness in order to honor their recently-murdered brother. The guys, Luke (Rafe Spall), Phil (Arsher Ali), Hutch (Robert James-Collier), and Dom (Sam Troughton) are forced to take a different path from the one planned, a mistake that leads them to cults and sacrificial offerings and an ancient being who prefers to stake its prey. The scenery is gorgeous, the chemistry of the cast is spot on, and the premise — how these men confront their fears and failures thanks to a supernatural being — starts out promising, though it could’ve delivered a better ending.

Dark Skies (2013)

Run Time: 97 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

Keri Russell stars in this Blumhouse sci-fi horror flick about a happy suburban family terrorized by extraterrestrial beings. Russell plays Lacy, a mom to two boys, who begins to worry when strange occurrences start happening at home. The family discovers aliens have been paying them visits in an attempt to select one of the boys to abduct. Things just get weirder from there and while the plot sounds ridiculous on paper, there’s plenty of suspense here to rack up the tension.

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

Run Time: 111 min | IMDb: 6.6/10

Despite a cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and Glenn Close, this unusual, post-apocalyptic film got a bit overlooked during its brief theatrical release. It’s best enjoyed without knowing too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the girl of the title, isn’t quite what she seems, and there’s a reason that she, and others her age, are kept in a secure military facility. But the best trick of the film, thanks in large part to Nanua’s winning performance, is the way its innovations go beyond just putting twists on a familiar genre and, instead, making us question where our sympathies ought to lie.

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Green Room (2015)

Run Time: 95 min | IMDb: 7/10

When a punk rock group accidentally witnesses the aftermath of a murder, they are forced to fight for their lives by the owner of a Nazi bar (Patrick Stewart) and his team. It’s an extremely brutal and violent story, much like the first two features from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin and Murder Party), but this one is made even tenser by its claustrophobic cat-and-cornered-mouse nature. Once the impending danger kicks in, it doesn’t let up until the very end, driven heavily by Stewart playing against type as a harsh, unforgiving, violent character.

Horns (2013)

Run Time: 120 min | IMDb: 6.5/10

This dark fantasy film starring Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple imagines a nightmare scenario. Radcliffe plays Ig, a young man whose girlfriend Merrin (Temple) mysteriously dies. The morning after her death, Ig wakes up with a set of horns that seem to grow as time goes on. It’s a story tinged with horror elements and a surprising twist at the end.

Cam (2018)

Run Time: 94 min | IMDb: 5.9/10

The Handmaid’s Tale actress Madeline Brewer stars in this unnerving thriller that questions our collective reliance on technology and imagines the nightmare scenario if that same tech decided to royally f*ck with us. Brewer plays Alice, an ambitious, in-demand cam girl making money with her online hustle until one day she logs on to find her channel has been sabotaged by a woman who looks just like her. It’s a trippy, dark ride through some of the bleakest parts of the internet with just enough horror to make things interesting.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Run Time: 105 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

Strange, spooky sh*t happens when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up and that fact remains true for this re-telling of a particularly haunting legend. Depp plays Ichabod Crane, a detective of sorts who’s sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate three deaths by decapitation. What he ends up encountering instead is a malevolent specter known as The Headless Horseman who’s been terrorizing the town and now has his sights set on him.

Shutter (2004)

Run Time: 97 min | IMDb: 7.1/10

This Thai horror film follows a young man named Tun and his girlfriend, Jane, who accidentally run over a young woman after a party and are haunted by her spirit. Hauntings and horror go hand-in-hand, but this film digs deeper into the supernatural trope by revealing a surprising, gruesome connection between the woman’s ghost and the film’s protagonist. We won’t spoil anything here, but let’s just say there’s a reason this death follows this guy wherever he goes.

Malevolent (2018)

Hush (2016)

Run Time: 81 min | IMDb: 6.6/10

Mike Flanagan, who directed Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, expertly directs this simple tale of a deaf woman being menaced by a masked (and later unmasked) killer in her remote home. This is nothing you haven’t seen before, but Flanagan brings real panache and visual energy to a film that could have easily felt redundant in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.

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The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (2016)

Run Time: 86 min | IMDb: 6.8/10

Succession’s Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch star in this horror mystery about a father-son coroner team attempting to identify a Jane Doe who was harboring all kinds of dark secrets. When a corpse is brought into a small-town coroner’s lab, he and his son begin to experience supernatural phenomena. Tommy (Cox) and Austin (Hirsch) try to escape the lab but quickly realize that they’re dealing with something far more dangerous than a dead body while demonic spirits, old curses, and witches come to life.

Sweetheart (2019)

Run Time: 82 min | IMDb: 5.8/10

This survivalist horror story starring Kiersey Clemmons is more than it appears. Sure, the main story follows Clemmon’s Jennifer, a young woman stranded on a remote island after the boat she was partying on with her white, privileged friends, sinks and it contains monsters — both fantastical and extraordinarily human — but it also trades in allegories about emotional abuse, class warfare, and believing survivors. Basically, it’s a horror flick that packs a savvy metaphorical punch.

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Gerald’s Game (2017)

Run Time: 103 min | IMDb: 6.7/10

Stephen King’s 1992 novel transpires mostly in one isolated lake house’s bedroom where its protagonist, Jessie, lies bound to a bed after her husband dies in the midst of a sex game. That makes it a tough story to film, which may explain why it took 25 years to get turned into a movie. But the wait was worth it: director Mike Flanagan delivers a resourceful, disturbing adaptation anchored by a great Carla Gugino performance (with some fine supporting work from Bruce Greenwood). Forced to find a way out of her situation, while confronting her own past, Gugino’s Jessie is made to go to extremes, which leads to, among other things, one of the squirmiest scenes in recent memory.

Under the Shadow (2016)

Run Time: 84 min | IMDb: 6.9/10

This Iranian horror flick manages to tie in relevant world events with a darker story of demonic possession. The film follows Shideh, a former medical student and mother trapped in her home during the bombings of Tehran with her daughter, Dorsa. The pair are soon haunted by a djinn, a malevolent spirit who can possess a human by taking what’s most important to them. For Dorsa, it’s her doll, for Shideh, it’s a medical textbook her dead mother gave her. The two fight to survive the bombs and this evil spirit, and you’ll be fighting to get to sleep after the nightmares from this one begin

Veronica (2017)

Run Time: 105 min | IMDb: 6.2/10

After losing her father, young Veronica (Sandra Escacena) and two classmates attempt to contact the other side with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse. Something more sinister breaks through, though, as Veronica is haunted by a dark presence everywhere she goes. Veronica excels phenomenally in the cliche horror bits every viewer has seen a thousand times over, such as mishandled Ouija use, frightening entities that only the protagonist is privy to, and twisted dreams. Based on a true story, the film relies on the strong performance of newcomer Escacena, highlighted by her haunting expressions of terror and anguish.

#Alive (2020)

Run Time: 98 min | IMDb: 6.2/10

This South Korean zombie flick imagines a very specific Millennial nightmare — a zombie apocalypse interrupting your video game live stream. The film follows Joon-woo, a kid who’s forced to barricade himself in his parents’ apartment when a zombie outbreak happens after his family goes on a grocery run. He survives hordes of the undead and a self-imposed quarantine by bonding with a neighbor in the building across the street. But both the living and the dead have some pretty gruesome plans for them so we wouldn’t count on a happy ending here.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Run Time: 85 min | IMDb: 7.5/10

This ’80s Sam Raimi creation launched the director’s career and has since become a cult classic. The story follows a group of college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a remote wooded area when they find an audio tape that somehow releases a legion of demons and spirits. Most of the group suffer varying degrees of possession which leads to gory mayhem (hence the film’s NC-17 rating).

Creep (2014)

Run Time: 82 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

One of the better found-footage movies to come down the pike in Paranormal Activity‘s wake is this creepy gem about a videographer (director Patrick Brice) who answers a strange Craigslist ad from a man (Mark Duplass) who requests to be followed around with a camera for 24 hours. There are a few points late in the narrative where suspension of disbelief becomes an issue (a not-atypical problem for the genre), but if you can look past that, you’ll be treated to a very scary turn by Duplass and a supremely-unnerving epilogue.

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Creep 2 (2017)

Run Time: 80 min | IMDb: 6.4/10

(Spoilers for Creep🙂 What could have very well been a stand-alone character exploration in 2014’s Creep is heightened in Creep 2, which sees Mark Duplass’ chameleon-like killer seeking a different kind of self-portrait. Burned out on his string of murders, Aaron reaches out to a woman who’s looking for her own kind of story by meeting and filming the lonely people she meets online. Instead of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing path the killer normally follows, he tells the woman what he is off-the-bat and what he wants: An ending to his journey. With all his cards (seemingly) on the table — and her hiding some of her own — it’s an even more fascinating tale than the original.

Eli (2019)

Run Time: 98 min | IMDb: 5.9/10

Netflix is running the market on creepy AF movies lately. This one comes in the form of a young kid suffering from a rare autoimmune disease that forces him to live life inside a bubble. When a new treatment option presents itself, his family sends him to a kind of safe house where specialist can test out the cure, but the boy quickly discovers things aren’t what they seem, that the mansion may in fact be haunted by past patients, and his doctors are probably trying to kill him. Yikes.

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The Invitation (2016)

Run Time: 100 min | IMDb: 6.7/10

After back-to-back big studio bombs, Karyn Kusama returned to her scrappy indie roots with this contained, brilliantly suspenseful study of the darkness that can arise when people don’t allow themselves to feel. The Invitation isn’t a perfect film, but Kusama does a lot with the scant resources she had to play with here, and you have to appreciate her willingness to tackle grief so directly in a genre that tends to have little time for genuine human emotion.

The Bar (2017)

Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 6.4/10

A varied group of people is stuck in a bar after a man is gunned down outside. As the paranoia spreads and they turn on one another, they discover a mysterious sickness could be the culprit. It’s a bottle-type plot that has been done before — locking a bunch of frenzied folks in a cage and let instincts take their course — but this Spanish horror comedy injects its own dark humor and keeps the answers to a minimum, making an entertaining story that unfortunately favors the “dark” over the “comedy” in its final act.

Poltergeist (1984)

Run Time: 114 min | IMDb: 7.4/10

Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper collaborate on this nightmare-inducing horror flick about a suburban family whose young daughter is kidnapped by malevolent spirits. Steven and Diane Freeling live a relatively normal life, taking care of their three children, the youngest of which begins conversing with a static television and issuing ominous warnings about ghosts. Steven and Diane hire a medium to figure out why their house is haunted and discover spirits are using the children’s bedroom closet to kidnap them and bring them to another dimension, forcing both parents to confront their own fears to save their family. It’s the ghost story that all other ghost stories are modeled after, and there’s nothing more terrifying than little blonde-headed girls that are possessed.

Apostle (2018)

Run Time: 130 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

A man (Legion‘s Dan Stevens) travels to an island to infiltrate a brutal cult in the hopes of saving his kidnapped sister. As the group’s leaders close in on discovering his identity, the dark secrets of the island start to present themselves. Written and directed by The Raid: Redemption director Gareth Evans, Apostle is a tense, beautifully shot thriller that doesn’t even seem like a horror film from the get-go. Stevens provides another icy, powerful performance alongside Michael Sheen’s turn as the leader of the harsh cult. It’s certainly a highlight among the Netflix original films.

Recent Changes Through October 2020:
Removed: Sinister, Insidious, Emelie, Devil’s Advocate, Paranormal Activity
Added: Eli, Cam, The Platform, Dark Skies, #Alive

Nicki Minaj’s recent No. 1 song “Say So,” featuring Doja Cat, has helped continue to solidify her status as the Queen of Rap. But her recent output almost never happened at all. It wasn’t long ago that the rapper announced her retirement so she could start a family with longtime boyfriend Kenneth Petty. That retirement didn’t last long, but she did succeed in getting kid of her own. Now that she’s a mom, fans are circulating an old video of her as a young child, in which she shared her dream career — and what she once wanted to be was not a rapper.

In an old clip resurfaced by XXL, a young Nicki reveals to the camera what her dream job is. Explaining the reason for her choice, she says: “I would like to be a nurse when I grow up so that I could help people less fortunate than I am.”

While Minaj didn’t end up being a nurse, she was successful in helping people by making an impact with her music. Among other charitable acts, Minaj began sending fans money to pay their college tuition a few years back, handing over thousands of dollars for classes, books, and loans.

Watch the adorable clip of Nicki above.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been a while (read: a couple weeks) since Donald J. Trump has been allowed to hold a rally, and for good reason: He caught COVID-19. As though written by one of the great, classical tragedians, the president tested positive for the very virus whose severity he’s spent the last nine months playing down. In yet another hairpin twist, he got better. Last week he took a cocktail of experimental drugs that had him making even less sense than usual. Now, allegedly coronavirus-free, he’s back on the trail, telling supporters some new alarming things, like that he wants to “kiss everyone.”

Trump was in Sandford, Florida on Monday — the day the state confirmed 1,533 additional COVID cases, plus another 48 deaths. The rally occurred mere hours after his doctor claimed he’d tested negative on consecutive days. He certainly seemed jubilant, speaking to his usual maskless crowd about how polls show him crushing his opponent Joe Biden (they don’t), threatened to jail him, Obama, and (still) Hillary, and, course, greatly inflated his team’s response to the pandemic that’s once again been seeing another uptick. (This comes a day after he got busted for taking the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most trusted member of his task force, out of context in an ad.)

Speaking of which, he couldn’t help but tell the adoring crowd how great he felt, just a week over he spent a few days at Walter Reed when his condition worsened. Now that he’s had a deadly disease, he feels better than ever, he says. “They say I’m immune. I feel so powerful,” Trump raved. “I’ll watch into that audience, I’ll walk in there, kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women.”

It didn’t take long for Trump to walk that back a bit, albeit without admitting he spoke incorrectly. “They say you’re immune. I don’t know for how long,” he said. “Some people say for life, some people say for four months.”

There was more to come. For one thing, Trump went back to talking about how the border wall is near completion (it isn’t), and still repeating, years later, that Mexico will pay for it (more unlikely now than even then). But the “kiss everyone” line seemed to be the stand-out line of the night, especially considering he could still be contagious.

Some pointed out that this is the same man who, four years earlier, nearly lost his first election after a tape surfaced of him bragging about sexual assault.

(Via New York Daily News)

It’s not every day that you see an NFL player sporting a jersey of a professional female athlete. In fact, if most of us wrack our brains, we probably can’t think of any day that we’ve seen that.

So when Russell Wilson, quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, walked out of the locker room after last night’s last-minute win against the Minnesota Vikings, people took notice of his shirt—a yellow and green jersey with the name and number of Sue Bird, the Seattle Storm WNBA superstar player. The Storm just took home their fourth WNBA National Championship title.

But that wasn’t all he did.

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In the post-game press conference, a reporter asked him how he felt on the last drive in which he led the team on a 94-yard drive in the final two minutes of the game, ultimately completing a pass to the end zone on 4th and 10 to win the game. “What’s going through your head?” the reporter asked.

Wilson smiled, chuckled, and said, “I feel like Sue Bird in the clutch, you know?”

It was a simple sentence, but a meaningful one.

Paola Boivin, who was a sports writer for the Arizona Republic for 20 years and the first female journalist ever inducted into the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame, shared what the moment meant to her on Twitter.

“Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson just said, ‘I feel like Sue Bird in the clutch.’ In my era following sports growing up, I never remember a male athlete saying something like this. It seems simplistic, but this is powerful.”

In many fields, including professional sports, girls and women had to have male role models prior to doors being opened for women to excel on the public stage. Then, once women went through those doors and made a name for themselves, women had female role models to look up to. But it’s been rare to see it go the other way—to see boys or men express personal admiration for a female excelling in her field. And especially in a professional sport like football, which is pretty much entirely male, to have a star like Russell Wilson point to a female athlete as an example of the excellence he aspired to is, indeed, noteworthy at this stage of the game.

Someday, it won’t be. Excellence knows no gender, and it’s only outdated thinking and outdated ideas of manhood and masculinity that keep people locked in boxes of who our role models can be and how our fandom can be expressed. Russell Wilson is clearly a fan of Sue Bird, as is any Seattle resident who pays any attention to sports whatsoever. But he also clearly sees her as an athletic role model, and it’s just awesome to see him express that so openly.

Wilson’s sister plays basketball at Stanford, and he has been an outspoken supporter of women’s sports in general. Here’s a video of him from February sharing his and his wife Ciara’s support on National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

Love to see it. The more we all support one another, the better the chances that all of us will excel. Thanks for setting the example, Russell Wilson.

Food scenes in movies are kind of like sports documentaries. Sure, there are other types of media that focus more on the “event,” but for whatever reason food always tastes better when there’s a story behind it. Drinks are the same way. The best are conversation pieces as much as they are feasts for the senses. They say we “eat with our eyes” first, but do we not also eat with our desire for an ordered universe? Discuss.

I think I’ve cooked almost as many meals based on movie scenes as I have recipes from actual food shows. Here, I’ve ranked some of our favorite cinematic food porn scenes, both in terms of the effectiveness of the food porn itself — which is to say, how turned on about the food the scene gets you — and in terms of instructional value. Or, how much one could actually put the food depicted into practice. Trust me, it’s all very scientific.

13. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (Formerly, Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) – The Bod-egg-a Sandwich

The Scene: Birds of Prey was an odd movie that I suspect not that many people saw (it actually came out during that tiny sliver of 2020 when movie theaters were still open), but it’s relevant here because basically the entire inciting event of the plot was built around Harley Quinn’s love affair with an egg sandwich.

Food Porn Rating: B

This feels like a gimme, because who doesn’t love an egg sandwich? That being said, those eggs look slightly undercooked and I feel like the yolks are going to run down my arm. Points for buttering the bread, but I have to dock this one slightly, both because it feels like a direct appeal to New Yorkers and their weird bodega fetish, and because it seems like it’s trying a little too hard.

Instructional Value: D

No disrespect, but you probably didn’t need a movie to tell you how to make an egg sandwich. Plus, I don’t have a plancha at home (yet…).

12. Spanglish: The Egg Panino

The Scene: As long as we’re talking cinematic egg sandwich-interrupted scenes, we couldn’t leave out Spanglish. I have to give this one the edge over Birds of Prey on account of plating, the eggs look better cooked, and the fact that he whipped it up in his home kitchen.

Food Porn: B+

I still worry about the drippy yolk but this one looks tasty enough that I probably wouldn’t mind. Also, points for no “American cheese.” American cheese’s melting ability is never worth the lack of flavor, in my opinion. Cheddar melts just fine.

Instructional Value: C+

This one is more inspirational than instructional, I would say. Hopefully, you have a toaster oven.

11. In The Realm Of The Senses

The Scene: Uh, basically like half the movie? The controversial French-Japanese film by Nagisa Oshim from 1976 is about a prostitute-turned-maid who has an affair with her new boss. In the end, she cuts off his dong and walks around with it inside her. This was based on a real thing that happened in Japan and there are multiple films about it. The seventies were lit, man! Anyway, at one point, Abe puts an egg in Ishida’s hoo-ha and then eats it. She also voraciously eats an apple after strangling him. Lots of food scenes to choose from! It’s about “the senses” after all.

Food Porn: B

The film, which famously featured unsimulated sex scenes (complete with a money shot at one point) is probably more porn-porn than food-porn, but hey, those other ones got me thinking about eggs.

Instructional Value: Pass

I know I’m the one who brought it up but I’m deflecting this question.

10. First Cow: Oilycakes

The Scene: Platonic pioneer dude-bros Cookie and King-Lu becoming entrepreneurs selling “oilycakes” to their fellow trappers in the Oregon territory. Their secret? They’ve been surreptitiously weezing the juice from a rich guy’s cow. The “first cow” in the territory, hence their success at cornering the market. Nice work if you can avoid getting shot for it.

Food Porn Rating: A+

Those oily cakes looked so damn good. Anything frying in oil tends to look really good on film. And in life, frankly.

Instructional Value: B-

Admittedly I haven’t attempted to recreate this one just yet, but I doubt milk is going to be the magic bullet in my home donuts/funnel cakes. Hard to beat a doughnut though. Fried dough doesn’t get enough credit, if you ask me. In fact, anyone who likes cupcakes more than doughnuts is a simp.

9. Pulp Fiction: Big Kahuna Burger

The Scene: It’s the ultimate power move to extort half of some guys’ fast food before you kill them.

Food Porn Rating: B+

The amazing thing about this scene is that it makes me hungry as hell even while barely showing the food. Samuel L. Jackson’s reactions are all we need. “Mmm-MMM, that IS a tasty BURGER!” (this is in the top five of scenes I can recite by heart). “That’s that Hah-waiian burger joint, right?

It’s essentially the Spielberg Face of food porn. It’s also the only event in human history that has ever made me crave a Sprite.

Instructional Value: D

With all due respect to Babish, I’ve never felt the compulsion to make my own Big Kahuna Burger. To go buy one, absolutely, but not to whip one up at home. My most controversial food opinion is that almost all burgers are good. As long as it’s fully constructed — if you bring me an open-faced unbuilt burger with no sauce on it I’m never ordering that again. The best thing about a great burger is that it be a fully-constructed one hander with all the flavors.

8. Ratatouille: The ratatouille

The Scene: Remy serves the snooty film critic some ratatouille that reminds him of being a petit French boy.

Food Porn: C+

I love Ratatouille as a movie, but even though the entire thing is about food, it’s never really had that mouth-watering effect for me. Great film, I think it’s just a little hard to get excited about CGI squash. I actually slightly prefer the food porn in Bao, but that was just a short, so I can’t include it. Also, the character design of the people in it gives me nightmares.

Instructional Value: A-

I’ve never attempted it, mostly on account of my mixed feelings about squash, but it certainly seems like something worth attempting at some point. Maybe one day when I have too much squash.

7. Phantom Thread: The Mushroom Omelette

The Scene: In retaliation against her belittling, capricious, persnickety lover, the exacting dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, his lover Alma poisons him with a mushroom omelette.

Food Porn: A

The look of those mushrooms sizzling in pan with lots of butter (Reynolds Woodcock famously only likes a little butter) sticks in my head better than anything else in the whole movie. The great thing about this scene is that it actually makes me jealous of the man being poisoned. Incidentally, Woodcock had it coming. He spent the movie’s first scene throwing a fit over “snodgy” pastries. I still have no idea what a snodgy pastry is.

Instructional Value: B+

While it doesn’t exactly teach me any new tricks, it does make me want to sautee some chanterelles. Don’t skimp on the butter. Also, a handful of chives always elevates an egg dish.

6. Like Water For Chocolate: Quail with Rose Sauce

The Scene: Tita’s sensual food makes everyone want to f*ck

Food Porn: A-

I mean I just said it made everyone want to f*ck.

Instructional Value: B

Quail sounds kind of good but I think I’ll pass on the rose sauce. I need more movies about Mexican stews.

5. Parasite: Ram-don

The Scene: The high-strung Mrs. Park tells her new housekeeper, the striving, grifting Mrs. Kim to prepare her special boy some ram-don. Mrs. Kim doesn’t know what the hell “ram-don” is and has to improvise. She ends up cooking some nice steak with instant noodles. A little more on ram-don:

The term “ram-don” was invented for the film by subtitle translator Darcy Paquet, as the actual Korean name for the dish, jjapaguri—a combination of two types of instant noodles—was too difficult to translate for an English-speaking audience. Paquet figured audience members would, however, likely be familiar with “ramen” and “udon,” and so he mashed up the two.

Food Porn: A-

Steaming noodles with seared steak? Yes.

Instructional Value: A-

Pimping out your instant noodles with fancy ingredients is a time-honored and useful trick. Top Ramen even announced that they’d be sponsoring a contest to do just that for their 50th anniversary this past week. You don’t have to have grown up poor or been to prison to appreciate the smell of instant noodles cooking. It has universal appeal.

4. The Godfather: The Sauce

The Scene: Clemenza tries to distract Michael Corleone from being a shitty boyfriend by teaching him how to make some tomato sauce. “You see, you start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic. Then you throw in some tomatoes, tomato paste, you fry it. Make sure it doesn’t stick. You get it to a boil. You shove in all your sausage and your meatballs. And a little bit of wine. And a little bit of sugar, and that’s my trick.”

Food Porn: B

It would’ve been nice to see him actually fry the garlic. The sound of sausages and meatballs plopping into the sauce is pretty nice.

Instructional Value: A-

Clemenza basically gives the entire recipe, you have to give him that. And he describes basically the way every Italian-American child learned to make the meat-forward tomato sauce, aka “Sunday Gravy,” we all grew up on. I still enjoy a nice Sunday gravy from time to time, but I do quibble somewhat with his technique. First off, how long are we frying that garlic? Hopefully not more than a minute. You don’t want that garlic to get brown. Second, no onions? Maddon’. Why no onions? We use two or three onions per 28 ounce can of tomatoes in the Mancini family. You use more onions, you won’t need that sugar to sweeten it (admittedly the Clemenza version makes nice quick pizza sauce). Granted it takes a little more work, but you’re simmering the damn sauce all day anyway so what’s 10 more minutes?

3. Goodfellas: Prison Steaks And Red Sauce

The Scene: Henry Hill narrates what a big event dinner was for the wise guys in the joint. To me, “Medium Rare, an aristocrat,” shares top-billing with “That IS a tasty BURGER” or “That’s that Hah-waiian burger joint right?” as cinema’s most memorable food line.

“Dinner was always a big thing in the joint. We had a pasta course and then meat or fish. Paulie did the prep work. He was doing a year for contempt and he had a system for doing garlic. He used a razor and he sliced it so thin it used to liquify in the pan with a little oil. Vinnie was in charge of the tomato sauce. I felt he put in too many onions, but it was a good sauce anyway. Johnny Dio did the meat. He didn’t have a broiler, so Johnny did everything in pans. He smelled up the joint something awful and the hacks used to die.”

Food Porn: A

In my mind, Scorsese is the king of food porn in movies that aren’t strictly about food. This is just one of many scenes we could’ve included here (The Irishman has a few low-key great ones). Scorsese shot this so well that Henry Hill came out of witness protection to sell his own pasta sauce.

Instructional Value: B+

It’s basically the same Sunday gravy as The Godfather, and I’m with Vinnie — onions are your friend. Just make sure to cook them all the way. I’ve never had a Sunday gravy and thought “too many onions.” As for the garlic, it’s brilliant as food porn but probably less so as an instructional tool. It sounds like a lot of work for a sauce that would probably taste the same as if you just smashed the garlic. The razor blade method would probably give you something to do if you were doing a year for contempt though.

2. Chef: Pasta Aglio e Olio

The Scene: Though he would spend the rest of the movie making Cuban sandwiches, the most food porny scene in Chef is, to me, one of the openers, in which Jon Favreau woos Scarlett Johansson (lol) by cooking her some pasta with olive oil and TONS of garlic.

Food Porn: A+

For my money, it’s hard to beat the sight of garlic cooking in olive oil. And extra points for the sheer volume of garlic. Dats a lotta garlic!

Instructional Value: A+

Monkey see, monkey do — I’ve definitely made this exact pasta solely because of this movie. As a kid who grew up on Sunday Gravy, the idea that you could basically do a tomato sauce without the tomatoes was kind of a head-slapping revelation for me.

My suggestion: cook tons of garlic in some olive oil (don’t burn the damn garlic!) add a pinch of black pepper and crushed red pepper (don’t go crazy, a little goes a long way) to the pan (you always want that crushed red pepper to bloom in the pan a little), then toss in your par-cooked pasta to finish in the pan. Then add as much parmigiano as you want (like onions in a gravy, I’ve never had pasta and thought “this has too much parmesan”), and finish it off with some fresh parsley (my other controversial food opinion is that I like curly better than flat for superior mouthfeel). It feels a lot lighter than a Sunday gravy. Perfect if you’re a big fat guy trying to woo someone far too attractive for you.

1. Big Night: The Timpano

The Scene: Some chefs spend an entire movie making a timpano, and then in the climactic scene, serve a timpano. I imagine that the first question a reader would ask when presented with a list of movie foods is, “Is Big Night number one?” That’s why Big Night is number one.

Food Porn: A+

Again, basically the entire movie is about making a timpano, a giant layer cake of eggs, salami, meatballs, cheese, ziti, and ragu sauce baked inside a giant pizza dough.

Instructional Value: A-

Once again I’d say this one is more inspirational than it is strictly instructional. Have I tried this recipe? No. Have I always wanted to? Absolutely. Looking at it now, none of the ingredients looks especially complicated on its own, but the construction seems a little daunting. It’s possible the movie may have oversold the difficulty of the timpano. On account of it being an entire movie about a timpano and all.

All that Genoa salami in the New York Times version sounds aggressively salty to me, but that’s a personal preference. I’d probably use Italian sausages or a little Mortadella instead if I was doing it myself. I mix a little sweet Italian sausage into my meatballs when I make them. It’s good!

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

It was recently revealed that Normani‘s mom has been once again diagnosed with cancer. On Sunday, the singer — who in 2018 told Paper Magazine that her mom’s previous cancer diagnosis, from two decades ago, was the “scariest point in all of our lives” — shared a message in support of her mom.

The news was shared by Normani’s mom herself, who posted about her relapse on her Instagram page. “I did it once and I’ll do it again!” her mom wrote, referring to when she was first diagnosed with cancer nearly 20 years ago.” Not long after, Normani showed her support on Twitter, posting a simple message: “F*ck cancer.”

Back in 2018, Normani teamed up with the American Cancer Society to raise awareness about breast cancer, which affects one in eight American women, and the importance of testing. “That’s important for any woman that’s going through the same experience, to have a support system of people around you who are reminding you that you’re still beautiful,” she said at the time.

On the music front, Normani has remained relatively quiet since releasing her hit track “Motivation,” which was co-written by Ariana Grande. In late February, Normani sat down with Rolling Stone for their cover story, in which the singer gave updates on the status of her new music. While she said her record was “about halfway” to completion, she said she hoped to have a single out by this summer. The summer came and went with no new Normani music, but it’s possible that she had to postpone her releases due to the pandemic.

During the interview, Normani added that she’s attempting to offer a more honest view of herself on her debut solo album. “I want to be able to feel like I was represented in the most authentic way possible because I know what it feels like coming from a girl group and being told who to be,” she said.

The Los Angeles Lakers toppled the Miami Heat to win the 2020 NBA championship and, given the lopsided nature of Game 6, there was plenty of time for both celebration and debate surrounding LeBron James. James, who was named NBA Finals MVP by a unanimous margin, was dominant during the team’s run to glory, setting up heightened discourse with already established comparisons to Michael Jordan.

Once the initial wave of celebration died down a bit, James and Anthony Davis sat down with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols and, still in the glow of it all, the conversation went in a few interesting directions.

First, both James and Davis weighed in on the difficulty of the bubble setting, with James calling it “survival of the fittest.” Both also spoke about the challenge of being away from family, with Davis saying it was tough “every night” and James admitting that he asked himself whether the journey was worth it at times.

Later, James was prompted on where we sees himself when compared to Michael Jordan and the greatest of all time debate that has been raging for years.

“That’s not for me to question, or wonder, or debate. I think that’s what you guys will do,” James said. “For me personally, I just have a way that I play the game. I have a way that I lead. I have a way that I challenge my guys and challenge myself. But more importantly, at the end of my career, I just hope I made a lot of people proud, for the way I approach the game. That’s all that matters to me. There’s going to be debates. That’s what it’s all about. We call it barbershop talk. People are going to do it.”

Seconds later, Nichols followed up by asking James about his “I want my damn respect” comment delivered after winning the title.

“At the end of the day, there’s always going to be disrespect,” said James. “There are people that still doubt me, even at this point in my career, and they’re going to continue to do that as long as I put on a uniform, which I’ve realized. But being with (Davis), and being with those other 13 guys on the floor, it doesn’t matter. It drives me, so I appreciate it. But at the end of the day, if I’m making Anthony and my other 13 teammates proud, nothing else matters.”

“You guys know how much I love Michael Jordan,” he continued. “I wear No. 23 because of Michael Jordan. When I first got my first pair of Jordans, you couldn’t tell me nothing. So, y’all can do the debates. Y’all can figure that out.”

Much ink has already been spilled in the hours after the final buzzer, with personalities retreating to their corners in an instant. James is still playing, though, and he has the benefit of additional extra time in adding to a career that is already legendary, from the standpoint of both his peak and the longevity he has enjoyed.

“I don’t know what my future holds,” said James. “The only thing I can do is control the present. I can control what’s going on right now, and I’m happy to be a Laker. I’m happy to be a champion, and that’s all I can say.”

Sometimes a politician says or does something so brazenly gross that you have to do a double take to make sure it really happened. Take, for instance, this tweet from Lauren Witzke, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate from Delaware. Witzke defeated the party’s endorsed candidate to win the primary, has been photographed in a QAnon t-shirt, supports the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was a U.S. government inside operation, and has called herself a flat earther.

So that’s neat.

Witzke has also proposed a 10-year total halt on immigration to the U.S., which is absurd on its face, but makes sense when you see what she believes about immigrants. In a tweet this week, Witzke wrote, “Most third-world migrants can not assimilate into civil societies. Prove me wrong.”

First, let’s talk about how “civil societies” and developing nations are not different things, and to imply that they are is racist, xenophobic, and wrong. Not to mention, it has never been a thing to refer people using terms like “third-world.” That’s a somewhat outdated term for developing nations, and it was never an adjective to describe people from those nations even when it was in use.

Next, let’s see how Twitter thwapped Lauren Witzke straight into the 21st century by proving her wrong in the most delicious way. Not only did people share how they or their relatives and friends have successfully “assimilated,” but many showed that they went way, way beyond that.

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Some shared their academic credentials, which is not the only sign of assimilating well, but is certainly a well-respected one. Here’s a sampling:

One of people’s favorite responses came from Viet Thanh Nguyen, who arrived in the U.S. as a baby with his refugee parents. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel “The Sympathizer” in 2016.

One person pointed out that the iPhone Witzke used to send her tweet was created by the son of a Syrian immigrant. (The father of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was a political refugee from Syria.)

Another shared a report that immigrants outperform American-born citizens in key measures of financial success.

Others flipped the assertion around on Witzke, pointing out that her tweet proves she herself isn’t functioning well in civil society. And she’s not alone.

Others flipped the idea of a “third world” country altogether, pointing out that the U.S. is not exactly a bastion of civil society these days. (Fact check: Gun violence here is not worse than *any* developing nation, but it is worse than many of them.

But perhaps the most comprehensive response, which also happens to be one of the shortest, is this one:

This country does prove her wrong. The U.S. has long been a nation that welcomes immigrants from all over the world, and many of us see that fact as one of our greatest strengths. Immigrants have started some of our most successful businesses, enriched our communities with restaurants and shops that give us a taste of another part of the world, and helped fuel some of our most innovative ideas and products. The primary thing that makes “assimilation” difficult for immigrants, no matter where they come from, is hostile attitudes toward them. All Ms. Witzke’s tweet does is make it harder for migrants to do what she’s saying they can’t do. You can’t make it make sense.

The bottom line is there’s no place for this kind of racist, classist, xenophobic rhetoric in civil society. Bigotry needs to be rejected at every turn, including—perhaps especially—at the ballot box.

Last Updated: October 12th

There are horror movies, and then there are campy horror movies. Both bring the frights, and both leave you with nightmares, but these B-list horror flicks on this list have a little something extra: they’re just fun as hell to watch. Hauntings, slashers, and evil babysitters — these movies have unlimited imaginations and zero regard for the rules of reality. They’re quirky, funny, and plain ridiculous, which is how they lure you in before scaring the ever-loving sh*t out of you.

Here are the best Halloween movies on Netflix right now, filled with campy fun, B-list horror, and slashers galore.

Related: The Scariest Shows On Netflix Right Now

The Addams Family (1991)

Run Time: 99 min | IMDb: 6.9/10

More spooky than downright terrifying, this Halloween favorite has a theme-song that always slaps and a cast of colorful characters that people almost always borrow costume ideas from come October. The first installment in the franchise introduces us to Morticia (Anjelica Huston) and Gomez (Raul Julia) Adams, a feverishly-in-love couple who live in a gothic mansion with their two children, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), and a handful of other bizarre family members. When Gomez’s long-lost brother shows up, it’s up to Morticia and the children to uncover whether he’s really blood, or just a con-artist hoping to swindle them out of their fortune.

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House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Run Time: 89 min | IMDb: 6.1/10

Rob Zombie’s cult classic still manages to scare the ever-living sh*t out of us, even if its main villains are a group of backwater clowns. The film follows two young couples with a murder kink who go on a trip to try to uncover some true crime legends. That whole “be careful what you wish for” saying comes into play when they’re taken hostage and terrorized by a family of inbred circus people who find increasingly inventive, gruesome ways to hurt them. You know, because it’s fun.

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Little Evil (2017)

Run Time: 94 min | IMDb: 5.7/10

Evangeline Lilly and Adam Scott star in this ridiculous horror-comedy flick that satirizes some old genre tropes. Scott plays Gary, a guy who falls in love with a woman with a young son who might just be the Antichrist. He goes to a stepdad support group, tries to take the kid to waterparks, and even visits the lone surviving ex of his new girlfriend in hopes of bonding with the evil gremlin, but it’s a no go. Not until the boy’s in danger and Gary has an epiphany, does he truly understand just what this child is — and why everyone around him keeps dying.

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Creep (2014)

Run Time: 82 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

One of the better found-footage movies to come down the pike in Paranormal Activity‘s wake is this creepy gem about a videographer (director Patrick Brice) who answers a strange Craigslist ad from a man (Mark Duplass) that requests to be followed around with a camera for 24 hours. There are a few points late in the narrative where suspension of disbelief becomes an issue (a not-atypical problem for the genre), but if you can look past that, you’ll be treated to a very scary turn by Duplass and a supremely-unnerving epilogue.

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Shutter (2004)

Run Time: 97 min | IMDb: 7.1/10

This Thai horror film follows a young man named Tun and his girlfriend, Jane, who accidentally run over a young woman after a party and are haunted by her spirit. Hauntings and horror go hand-in-hand, but this film digs deeper into the supernatural trope by revealing a surprising, gruesome connection between the woman’s ghost and the film’s protagonist. We won’t spoil anything here, but let’s just say there’s a reason this death follows this guy wherever he goes.

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The Bar (2017)

Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 6.4/10

A varied group of people is stuck in a bar after a man is gunned down outside. As the paranoia spreads and they turn on one another, they discover a mysterious sickness could be the culprit. It’s a bottle-type plot that has been done before — locking a bunch of frenzied folks in a cage and let instincts take their course — but this Spanish horror comedy injects its own dark humor and keeps the answers to a minimum, making an entertaining story that unfortunately favors the “dark” over the “comedy” in its final act.

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The Evil Dead (1981)

Run Time: 85 min | IMDb: 7.5/10

This ’80s Sam Raimi creation launched the director’s career and has since become a cult classic. The story follows a group of college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a remote wooded area when they find an audio tape that somehow releases a legion of demons and spirits. Most of the group suffer varying degrees of possession which leads to gory mayhem (hence the film’s NC-17 rating).

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The Babysitter (2017)

Run Time: 85 min | IMDb: 6.3/10

Samara Weaving (who has another fantastic horror film out called Ready Or Not) stars in this comedy scare about a serial-killer babysitter and the young boy she looks after. Weaving plays Bee, a babysitter who befriends a boy named Cole. While she’s watching him one night, Cole witnesses Bee and a group of her friends kill a man and perform a demonic ritual, which sets off a string of events that end in blood, death, and talk of cults.

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Secrets in The Hot Springs (2018)

Run Time: 120 min | IMDb: 6.1/10

This Taiwanese horror flick follows three youngsters, who meet by accident at a mysterious hot springs hotel. When strange occurrences begin to take place, the group must band together to save each other and the family that lives there. This thing starts off scary, but it won’t give you the kind of nightmares that the rest of the films on this list might.

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Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Run Time: 105 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

Strange, spooky sh*t happens when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp team up and that fact remains true for this re-telling of a particularly haunting legend. Depp plays Ichabod Crane, a detective of sorts who’s sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate three deaths by decapitation. What he ends up encountering instead is a malevolent specter known as The Headless Horseman, who’s been terrorizing the town and now has his sights set on him.

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Hubie Halloween (2020)

Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 5.3/10

Adam Sandler is back with that signature lisp for this more family-friendly-esque Halloween treat. Sandler plays Hubie Dubois, a small-town screw-up who’s constantly bullied by the locals. Despite this, he loves Salem and its annual Halloween bash, so when a malevolent force tries to crash the party and, ya know, kill everyone, it’s up to him to save the holiday. We doubt this will give you nightmares, but sometimes a good scary movie isn’t just about being scared — you know what we mean?

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Last week, Griselda’s Benny The Butcher officially announced his upcoming Hit Boy-produced record Burden Of Proof, which will feature the highly anticipated track “Timeless,” featuring Lil Wayne and Big Sean. Benny previously shared the album’s tracklist, revealing appearances from the likes of Rick Ross, Freddie Gibbs, Queen Najia, Dom Kennedy, Conway The Machine, and Westside Gunn. The record is just a few days from its official release and Benny has now revealed the album’s cover art.

In a statement announcing the album Benny wrote that it’s his form of “celebration” for the ones who have been with him from the beginning: “I made my presence felt in this rap sh*t to do tht I had to make the moves they didn’t want me to make and learn the sh*t they didn’t want me to know. This one feel like a celebration for street n****s… Buffalo I got us we goin up a level.”

Benny The Butcher isn’t the only Griselda member to have an album drop lately. Recently Conway The Machine shared his From King To A God project, Armani Caesar released her record The Liz, and Westside Gunn set the tempo with his anticipated album Who Made The Sunshine.

Check out Benny The Butcher’s Burden Of Proof cover art above.

Burden Of Proof is out 10/16 via Empire. Pre-order it here.