The Film Canary's October Horror Movie Challenge 2026 - Raising for Crisis, AKT, and PCRF

Each year I engage in one of the longest lasting things to come from the old IMDb message boards; The October Horror Movie Challenge. The rules are very simple; across October's 31 days, watch at bare minimum 31 horror movies, and at least half of them (so 16 or more) must be ones that you are watching for the first time. Last year was one of my most successful, both in terms of money raised (over £1200 counting Gift Aid!) and films watched, as I hit a total of 61! I doubt I will get that far in terms of movies this year, but we'll see how it goes, and I am more positive that we can do even better in terms of the donations!

As you can tell by this being a GiveWheel page, I'm doing this sponsored, going deeper than I might usually dare into very strange cinematic territory for three good causes; Crisis, helping homelessness in the UK, AKT (The Albert Kennedy Trust), supporting young LGBTQA+ people, and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, bringing much needed help to Gaza. Every penny you can spare will help causes close to my heart, especially with Gift Aid, and if you can't afford it, just sharing this page, spreading word of the challenge will help.

So, what sort of things will I be watching? Well, in UK cinemas there are a few new releases coming out I will be catching such as Other Mommy, Clayface, and re-releases for Hammer's Dracula and Ken Russell's The Devils. I've already booked for some repertory screenings; in fact the very first thing I'll be watching will be one of the oddest Kaiju (Japanese giant monster) films of the 60s (and consider what a high bar that is!) on the big screen at the Barbican. It will also be the London Film Festival, I often dig into their "Cult" strand for some interesting things, sometimes they're titles I might not ever get the chance to see in cinemas again. At home, I'm mostly going to be going through an interesting selection of European horror titles released thanks to those fine folks at Severin Films; I have five boxsets of these (with a sixth on the way) to get through, along with a few more interesting bits and bobs, a selection that should be fascinating, illuminating, and help me to have new perspectives on horror.

And you have the chance to ruin that! As with the last few years, if the fundraising gets to certain levels, I have "Booby Prizes" I will have to face. Our first goal is £700, and we hit that, I will be forced to sit through a randomised pick from eight not-terribly-well-thought-of horror remakes from the 2000s, and after that once we get £100 more (so at £800, then £900, then £1000 etc.) I'll have to sit through another one. And to add to the burden, I have to write at least 1000 words on each! Yeah, ever had a movie that you thought looked so bad you said "I wouldn't watch it if you paid me?" Well, apart from not paying me, rather paying some important causes, let's put that principle to the test.

You'll be able to follow all my progress as the challenge begins on my Letterboxd page, where I'll be posting reviews of everything I watch, including the 1000 word Booby Prize ones if we hit the goals.

https://boxd.it/2dYsf

So to support good people doing great work, to show that the horror genre can be a positive force for change, and/or you just want to hurt me, please give what you can, and/or share this page on, help more people follow me on this ridiculous annual quest. And to anyone who wonders "Just watching a bunch of movies isn't like running a marathon or something", if you sat through some of what I have on previous years (like all six Sharknados in a row last year!), you would think twice about that.