Criterion announced their full lineup of new titles for October, and considering it's a month made for all things creepy, the releases are truly ghoulish. After August gives a mix of more obscure films from the wider catalog of greats like Sidney Portier and Josh and Bennie Safdie, the six films for the spookiest month will see a collection of horror and horror-adjacent flicks that often go underappreciated, along with one massive giant rising from the grave once more. This wave of releases is as diverse as any, covering a very wide range of eras and backgrounds for a taste of the macabre from all corners of the filmmaking world.
Leading the month is the returning great Night of the Living Dead. George Romero's 1968 classic literally invented the zombie genre that we all know and love today, and still holds up as both an excellent horror film and a gut-wrenching social commentary on the state of America in the 1960s. Although it's not a newcomer to the Criterion Collection, this will make the film's venture into 4K, with a restoration that gives the genre-defining film a new life.
Following Romero are two more acclaimed directors in David Lynch and Frank Capra, with their films Lost Highway and Arsenic and Old Lace respectively. One of Lynch's more underappreciated works, the neo-noir will receive a 4K restoration and comes with a feature-length documentary from Toby Keeler on the acclaimed director. The latter also gets the 4K treatment and also comes with a radio reading of the original stage play starring Boris Karloff. Later in the month, international films will get the spotlight with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's crossover hit Cure coming in 4K, along with a 2K master of Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante's 2019 film La Llorona.
Rounding out the bunch is the starry Eve's Bayou, Kasi Lemmons' feature debut starring Jurnee Smollett and Samuel L. Jackson, which also gets a 4K restoration. Lemmons' first directorial effort, the short film Dr. Hugo, is also included with the film, giving viewers a look at the proof of concept that eventually led to the making of the acclaimed flick. Though not a horror film, it ends the October collection on a haunting note nonetheless.
Criterion's full selection of upcoming films can be viewed on the official site. Check out the synopses, release dates, and special features for all the titles dropping in October below.
Night of the Living Dead (October 4)
Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combining gruesome gore with acute social commentary and quietly breaking ground by casting a Black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero, coscreenwriter John A. Russo, sound engineer Gary R. Streiner, and producer Russell W. Streiner, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Night of Anubis, a work-print edit of the film
- Program featuring filmmakers Frank Darabont, Guillermo del Toro, and Robert Rodriguez
- Sixteen-millimeter dailies reel
- Program featuring Russo on the commercial and industrial-film production company where key Night of the Living Dead participants got their starts
- Two audio commentaries from 1994 featuring Romero, Russo, producer Karl Hardman, actor Judith O’Dea, and others
- Archival interviews with Romero and actors Duane Jones and Judith Ridley
- Programs about the film’s style and score
- Interview program about the direction of the film’s ghouls, featuring members of the cast and crew
- Interviews with Gary Streiner and Russell Streiner
- Newsreels from 1967
- Trailer, radio spots, and TV spots
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Stuart Klawans
Arsenic and Old Lace (October 11)
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, cutting loose in a hilariously harried performance) returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, who both starred in the Broadway production) greet him with love, sweetness... and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother (John Alexander) who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal (Raymond Massey) who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon (Peter Lorre) are among the outré oddballs populating Arsenic and Old Lace, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring Charles Dennis, author of There’s a Body in the Window Seat!: The History of “Arsenic and Old Lace”
- Radio adaptation from 1952 starring Boris Karloff
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic David Cairns
Lost Highway (October 11)
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” A mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity, Lost Highway, David Lynch’s seventh feature film, is one of the filmmaker’s most potent cinematic dreamscapes. Starring Patricia Arquette and Bill Pullman, the film expands the horizons of the medium, taking its audience on a journey through the unknown and the unknowable. As this postmodern noir detours into the realm of science fiction, it becomes apparent that the only certainty is uncertainty.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director David Lynch, with new 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- For the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch, a feature-length 1997 documentary by Toby Keeler featuring Lynch and his collaborators Angelo Badalamenti, Peter Deming, Barry Gifford, Mary Sweeney, and others, along with on-set footage from Lost Highway
- Reading by Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna of excerpts from their 2018 book, Room to Dream
- Archival interviews with Lynch and actors Patricia Arquette, Bill Pullman, and Robert Loggia
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: Excerpts from an interview with Lynch from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book Lynch on Lynch
Cure (October 18)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s arresting international breakthrough established him as one of the leaders of an emerging new wave of Japanese horror while pushing the genre into uncharted realms of philosophical and existential exploration. A string of shocking, seemingly unmotivated murders—each committed by a different person yet all bearing the same grisly hallmarks—leads Detective Takabe (Koji Yakusho) into a labyrinthine investigation to discover what connects them, and into a disturbing game of cat and mouse with an enigmatic amnesiac (Masato Hagiwara) who may be evil incarnate. Awash in hushed, hypnotic dread, Cure is a tour de force of psychological tension and a hallucinatory journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- 4K digital restoration, supervised by cinematographer Tokusho Kikumura, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- New conversation between director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi
- Interviews with actors Masato Hagiwara and Koji Yakusho
- Interview from 2003 with Kurosawa
- Trailers and teaser
- PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara
La Llorona (October 18)
A country’s bloody history stains the present in the Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante’s transfixing fusion of folk horror and searing political commentary, inspired by the real-life indictment of the authoritarian Efraín Ríos Montt for crimes against humanity. A notorious, now aging former military dictator stands trial for atrocities committed against Guatemala’s Mayan communities. While battling legal repercussions and the people’s demands for justice, he and his family are plagued by a series of increasingly strange and disturbing occurrences, seemingly brought on by an enigmatic new housekeeper (María Mercedes Coroy). With a restraint that renders the film’s shocks all the more potent, Bustamante crafts a chilling vision of a nation reckoning with collective harms and the restless ghosts of a past that refuses to die.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- 2K digital master, approved by director Jayro Bustamante, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Bustamante
- Documentary on the making of the film featuring interviews with cast and crew
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by journalist and novelist Francisco Goldman
Eve's Bayou (October 25)
“The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old...” So begins Kasi Lemmons’s spellbinding feature debut, an evocative journey into the maze of memory steeped in fragrant southern-gothic atmosphere. In 1960s Louisiana, a young girl (Jurnee Smollett) sees her well-to-do family unravel in the wake of the infidelities of her charming father (Samuel L. Jackson)—setting in motion a series of deceptions and betrayals that will upend her world and challenge her understanding of reality. Rooted in Creole history, folklore, and mysticism, Eve’s Bayou is a scintillating showcase for a powerhouse ensemble of Black actresses—including Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, and the legendary Diahann Carroll as a voodoo priestess—as well as a profoundly cathartic exploration of trauma, forgiveness, and the elusive nature of truth.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, supervised by director Kasi Lemmons and cinematographer Amy Vincent, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Original 108-minute theatrical-release version
- Audio commentary on the director’s cut featuring Lemmons, Vincent, producer Caldecot Chubb, and editor Terilyn A. Shropshire
- Dr. Hugo (1996), a short film Lemmons made as a proof of concept for Eve’s Bayou, in a new 4K digital transfer
- New interview with Lemmons
- Cast reunion footage
- Interview with composer Terence Blanchard
- New program showcasing black-and-white Polaroids that Vincent took during production
- Cast and crew photographs by William Eggleston
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Kara Keeling