Back in March of this year, I assembled a list of short films available to watch on YouTube. The four films (with some bonus recommendations!) ranged from melancholy animations to surreal art films, with works from artists I greatly appreciate and admire. I chose to do this because I like short films, I like YouTube, and I like showing people all the weird stuff I'm into.

For Halloween, I decided to make another list of films I enjoy -- but this time, even spookier. Being that I spend most of my time trawling for spooky films and animations, typically those that have escaped the notice of broader audiences, I'm well prepared for the task.

The criteria for this list is a bit more specific than the last. Nasty ghost women and creepy face jumpscares are so ubiquitous in the medium that my YouTube recommended feed is often awash in thumbnails that smack of Jeff the Killer or SmileDog.jpeg. So the vibe I'm generally aiming for is more uneasy or surreal than outright scary. I also really tried to focus on finding films that don't do numbers on English-speaking social media. The less of a chance that anyone but me has even seen this, let alone shared it, the higher it's likely going on the list. Not every work is incredible or profound, or even especially polished, but each work is compelling to me in its own way.

This isn't about curating a list of things that are usually circulating or widely talked about, if you get me. I've tried to avoid the more obvious or popular viral projects unless they impacted me in some way. Otherwise, this would be a very boring list.

Another thing to understand is that all of these films are freely available to watch right now. These are works of art from independent filmmakers, animators, and other creators, often with very few views. If you enjoyed your time with any of these films, I ask that you share them with others. If you enjoyed this little list I've put together, I ask that you share it with others, too. I plan to dedicate more time to round-ups and recommendation lists like this going forward, so I'd genuinely appreciate any support on that front.

So here are some strange things that you should watch for Halloween.

Double Vision by Isabelle Kiser

Doppelgangers and doubles are a very common, one might say overplayed, theme in a lot of contemporary independent horror. I can see why: they instantly convey a sense of strangeness, of helplessness, in a world of cameras and screens. All of us are doubled through digital communication and surveillance, creating and disseminating copies of ourselves that we present to the world. Often, those copies are made without our knowledge, caught by someone else's camera, or created by the chatter of comment sections. The double can reflect back the feeling of something being very wrong in the world and all the maliciousness of that world encroaching on you.

Kiser's five-minute film explores that feeling of surveillance as her character is stalked by someone who looks just like her. Tense, well-shot, and imbued with a point of view often lacking from short conceptual pieces like this, the film opts for restraint rather than shoving scary faces toward the camera. It's a tight little film that enjoys the ambiguity of its premise and left me pleasantly unsettled.

Lifeguard by Elize's Sound-World

I first came across the work of artist and animator Elize Sound-World through the criminally underviewed 2024 short Make a House a Home, and I've been fascinated ever since. Elize draws together 1990s point-and-click PC game aesthetics, crunchy lo-fi digital illustration, and heavily compressed video and images to create oppressive scenes. Their melancholic worlds are bathed in rust and rot, with moody color palettes and uneasy sound design. 2025's Lifeguard is no exception.

At just three minutes and thirty-three seconds, this film is a quiet, intimate little nightmare. The slowly growing tension between a lone figure at the beach and the object of their gaze, the thing that appeared beneath the pier, creates a palpable dread. Mournful prose narration, poetic interludes, and dreamy imagery come together in a story that haunts even after repeat viewings.

Beyond the seasonally appropriate unease of the piece, it's just a beautiful little work that deserves your attention.

Tuck Me In by Ignacio Rodó

A very short bit of bite-sized horror. Clocking in at just one minute and one second, this slice of domestic horror uses the childhood fear of monsters under the bed to do something genuinely unsettling. It's well-acted, well-paced, and concludes with a gutting question. It's also only a minute long. You have no reason not to watch it.

The Dive by Donato Sansone

In my little grab bag of primal phobias and trauma-related fears, drowning is one I often pull out. Donato Sansone's two-minute animation The Dive gets to me on an instinctive level. I previously knew of Sansone's work from the nightmarish 2014 Portrait, a digital assemblage of distorted faces that upset me in a way only Francis Bacon has upset me in the past. But while much of Sansone's work gives me the creeps, The Dive made me audibly gasp.

From the unnerving movements and disorienting sound design to a depiction of falling and drowning that tapped into the deepest recesses of my lizard brain, this hypnotic short is worth two minutes of your time.

Delivery by James Larson

Tugging at common social anxieties to the point of almost feeling like a comedy, James Larson's five-minute short devolves quickly into a palpable unease. The sound design overpowers the cramped apartment setting with every creaking door, shifting fabric, or heavy breath feeling too large for the space. Convincing performances make the most of the sparse material and mechanically necessary dialogue to deliver on the premise with some genuinely creepy moments.

Delivery isn't the scariest or most visually impressive film on the list, but it's a tight little piece. Larson digs into relatable anxieties about strangers, home invasion, and the unintended consequences of social niceties. I pick up what it's putting down.

HeX by Alessandro Cino Zolfanelli

A haunting and surreal tone piece, HeX combines stop motion, puppetry, and film. The imagery is strange, the sound design is deeply uneasy, and the use of the materials (wood, grass, fur, etc.) provide so much texture. You're not just walking through the woods, you're moving through the dirt and between the leaves, like an animal or an insect traveling the forest floor. It envelops you in a really interesting way. I like it.

HeX is short, unnerving, and a nice entry point for Zolfanelli's other animations, like the award-winning Black Eyed Dog or the lingering beauty of Woodworms. If you enjoyed this piece, I recommend taking a look at the rest of Zolfanelli's body of work.

Dog Park by Kristian Greene

Veering toward absurdist horror and social comedy, Kristian Greene's Dog Park is a nice, weird little film. It plays around with suburban anxieties, surveillance culture, and our expectations of social norms. It also offers a bit of awkward, almost Lynchian comedy to get a chuckle out of you before you remember that you're supposed to feel tense about the images on screen. Or, at least, as tense as the protagonist in trying to make a spectacle of something instead of minding her business.

The naturalism of the night time lighting coupled with some genuinely creepy images and the anxiety-inducing score makes the entire scene murky and strange. You're not sure what you're looking at, why you're looking, or what you're supposed to feel about it. Dog Park is absolutely worth your time.

To The Brink by Spare Flesh

A raucous stop motion horror musical comedy. Think Three Penny Opera with beautifully realized figures, goopy body horror, and absolutely stunning animations. Watch it now if you haven't already.

To Kill A Monster by Brek Kanhalangsy

While one of the entries that's rougher around the edges, To Kill A Monster scratches a particular itch for me. It's an antagonistic cat and mouse story that reminds me of the 2010s indie horror movie scene that blew up online around Slenderman. The soupy digital grain, blown out colors, and fast cuts give it a late 90s/early 2000s music video feel as an unknown observer follows an unknown subject. It's all so intimate, so invasive, that you start to feel gross as you watch, unsure of what you're even looking at.

I wasn't sure if this one should make it to the list, since it's more of a thriller than a straight horror, but I like it. It appeals to me. The premise and execution are interesting, and even if I don't fully love how it all comes together, I can appreciate what it's doing and why we end up there.

Ataraxya by Maxime Hélier, Guilherme Pereira, Marion Chopin, Sophie Loubière, and Carla Gandolfi

A drug trip gone wrong with some of the coolest visuals I've seen in a while from a CG piece. Claustrophobic and disorienting, this piece deploys really effective sound design to communicate character and theme. As with the last film, Ataraxya is not particularly scary, but it's a compelling and unique visual narrative. Just a hypnotic and well-executed piece that's worth sitting with.

Critter by Marianne Hébert-Beaulieu

Critter is an art house horror comedy that references the likes of Ingmar Berman and Jean Cocteau, and is also about weird puppets. I love it. It's one of the reasons I chose to make this list in the first place.

The film follows what happens when a strange (and very annoying) talking creature gets between two sisters, driving one of them to jealous extremes. The camerawork is absolutely stunning, creating the dreamy atmosphere of the sisters’ close relationship as it stands in opposition to the static, grounded nature of their real life conflict. Despite its sparse script and small cast of mostly very young actors, every performer nails the mood and tone.

How it all ends is both grimly funny and legitimately horrible to think about! Critter is a great time, both in terms of craft and silly spooky horror. I can't recommend this enough.

Teaching Jake About The Camcorder, Jan ‘97 by Brian David Gilbert

A part of me feels like it's cheating to put Brian David Gilbert on a list of short horror recommendations. I'm pretty sure most people who have spent time online in the past decade have at least seen Gilbert, even if only as a meme. While most everyone I know appreciates Gilbert for his comedy and music, I only know him for his digital horror work.

Teaching Jake About The Camcorder is a deceptively unnerving piece. Yes, I think it's a little on the nose sometimes, and has a few of those spooky internet-isms peppered in to get the theory videos and explainer channels working. But despite my cynicism, Gilbert's performance in this one-man piece disarms me. He covers a wide emotional range within the tight constraints of a single shot in a single room, from proud to mournful to absolutely terrified. It's earnest, and upsettingly so, subverting the tropes of grief and trauma in horror to leave the viewer without the resolution we expect.

Mr. Static by Mike Williamson

Let me be very clear: Mr. Static is cool as hell. It's a nasty piece of slasher killer horror that uses technology in a truly fun and inventive way. I also find the way it uses themes of voyeurism and violence on screens to be compelling, and I say this as someone who usually comes across the cheapest version of that discussion.

Tense, bloody, and viscerally upsetting, Mr. Static is the horror you deserve. Mr. Static forever, baby. Call me the president of the Mr. Static fan club.

Pulsion by Pedro Casavecchia*

This film has some pretty upsetting moments involving child abuse and animal cruelty. Just putting that out there.

Pulsion is kind of a breakthrough for me, I have to be honest. I was utterly entranced by this piece the first time I watched it. More thriller than horror, this surreal animation follows one young man's downward spiral into violence through a lifetime of abuse, trauma, and neglect.

It's horrifying in its unwillingness to flinch at what it represents to the viewer, even as its form and style lull you into a sense of complacency through those abstractions. You expect to get a safe distance from the subject, but Casavecchia drags you right into the man's world and makes you look at it. I love the film for that commitment to both the ugliness and the empathetic core that holds it all together.

Harrowing and tragic from start to finish, Pulsion is a triumph of disturbing animation.

My Little Goat by Tomoki Misato*

This film also has a very upsetting moment of child abuse, just a head's up.

In trying to discuss My Little Goat, I find that my words fall short. This is a beautifully animated and performed piece of fairytale horror. It's brutal and heartbreaking, and yet life-affirming in a way that only horror can be through exposing suffering and ambiguity to the light. A truly stunning piece.

Thingamajig by Andrew Alan K.

This film is a testament to the power of doing so much with very little. The premise is simple: a man wakes up in a parking lot at night, and there's something waiting for him in the dark. It's two performers, one setting, and no dialogue. Thingamajig is the longest of all the films on this list at 28 minutes, and I do think the length lessens some of its impact for me, but it's an inventive creature feature that gets everything right.

Small Voices with Giant Teeth by Gregore Horror

I struggled a little bit in ending this list. I wanted to end on a high note, but I also wanted to share creators and works that I really think deserve more attention. There is a little bit of tension in that. Do I pick a filmmaker with a little more polish? Do I include something I really love that I've probably hyped up in the past in different places online? It's kind of tough!

But when my late-night scrolling brought me to the work of Gregore Horror, I knew I had to close this list out with him. Crafting hundreds of short films through painting, stop motion animation, digital techniques, and traditional puppetry, Gregore Horror has created a surreal and horrifying little world. Horror is also a queer trans filmmaker in Oklahoma. As stated in many online posts, his work explores his experiences with dysphoria, trauma, and living in tension with a body he wants to love fully through transition. A body that the government wants to destroy.

The Tallulah Galactic

These films are surreal. They're abstract and unpredictable, and in many ways inscrutable. There are thumbprints in the materials and rough edges to their craftsmanship. The films lack the kind of polished visuals and professional editing that we are trained to want in our horror. But they are so profoundly beautiful to me for all the love put into them. The imagery is powerful and strange with a wholly unique point of view. Horror has such a sweet, gentle online presence, and the deep love he has for these little monsters shines in every piece. It's an infectious kind of love, and it fills me with so much hope.

Dysphoria Dreams, Chapter One

If we want to celebrate horror, especially horror from those marginalized by society, this includes the rough, weird stuff. It must include outsider artists and trans dads in Oklahoma who make their own puppets, sets, and music. Most of Horror's films have just a few dozen views, if that. Rarely do they make it to the thousands that the shitty AI slop clogging up the platform receive. I think that's terrible, and I want to do something about that.

Do yourself a favor and sit with some of Gregore Horror's films. If you enjoy them, like them, leave a comment. Share with someone else. Let yourself engage with something heartfelt and strange and just see what happens.

And if you want to, tell me about some strange stuff I should watch in the comments below. I'd love to hear about it.