The streamers are fighting over Halloween

The streamers are fighting over Halloween

Crystal Lake, Carrie, Below, and Yaga are all competing in a very busy October.

Crystal Lake, Carrie, Below, and Yaga are all competing in a very busy October.

by

Andrew Webster

Sep 17, 2026, 3:00 AM UTC

Image: Peacock

Andrew Webster

is an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

The Toronto International Film Festival is a place to goto see the future of film, but this year it also provided a glimpse at what is coming very soon in the realm of streaming. Four different streamers — Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, and AMC — all premiered early looks at upcoming horror-adjacent series that are dropping very soon. And by doing it at TIFF, they showed just how important the month of October has become in the realm of streaming.

Perhaps the most high-profile isCarrie, which is coming to Prime Video. An adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel, which has already been turned into no fewer than three feature films, this version ofCarrieis notable in particular because of who is helming it. Mike Flanagan has done a handful of King adaptations in the past — includingDoctor SleepandThe Life of Chuck— but the director is perhaps best-known for his work on limited series for Netflix. That includes the likes ofThe Haunting of Hill House,Midnight Mass, andThe Fall of the House of Usher. Those series came out on a near-annual basis between 2018 and 2023, making Flanagan’s particular blend of dramatic horror a staple of Netflix in October.

Then, in 2022,Amazon poached Flanagan to work on projects for Prime Video. The first of these isCarrie, which starts streaming on October 7th. It still tells largely the same story as its predecessors — a young girl’s destructive psychic powers awaken after getting bullied in high school — but it updates it in a few ways. For starters, the story has been thoroughly modernized, with much of the bullying happening in cyberspace. But since it’s a series instead of a movie,Carriealso stretches out the story, which gives it the space to explore the teen drama a little, and also adds plenty of opportunities for Flanagan’s trademark lengthy monologues. I’ve only seen the premiere episode so far, but early on it’s a combination of flavors that work really well together.

Netflix, meanwhile, has filled in the gap with a new series calledBelow, which premieres on October 8th, just a day afterCarriestarts streaming.I saw the first two episodes earlier this week— there will be six in total — and while it’s a different kind of story compared to the likes ofHill House, it has a similarly dark and mysterious energy.Belowis about what seems to be an ancient sea creature that begins terrorizing a small fishing village in Newfoundland, on the east coast of Canada. From what I’ve seen, the show does a great job of steadily building the terror of the creature’s reveal, while also mixing the scares with a healthy dose of family drama, led by Josh Hartnett as a struggling fisher who is struggling to keep his family together.

Then there’s Peacock, which is joining the fray with a prequel series. Fans ofFriday the 13thwill know that Jason’s mom plays a pivotal role in the very first film, and the new showCrystal Lakeexplores how she got to that point. It stars Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, a single mother who is thrown into a pit of despair and disbelief when her young son drowns to death.

I went into the show thinking that I didn’t really need to know much more about the backstory of Jason’s mother, but the first two episodes that premiered at TIFF — and Cardellini’s performance in particular — have me second-guessing that.Crystal Lakeis surprisingly tense and dramatic, but, given its connection toFriday the 13th, it also has slasher-movie levels of gore and gross-out deaths, ones that are so brutal they approach comedy. If nothing else, it gets off to a very strong start. All episodes ofCrystal Lakehit Peacock on October 15th.

Rounding out the list isYaga, a supernatural detective series that’s coming to AMC Plus on October 23rd. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to catch the premiere screening for the show, but it does seem promising, with a cast that includes Carrie-Anne Moss andHeated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams, and a very intriguing trailer:

What has become abundantly clear in 2026 is thathorror is big business. The likes ofBackroomsandObsessionhave exploded at the box office, whileWidow’s Bayhada dominating night at the Emmys. So it only makes sense that streamers are continuing to capitalize on the trend, and using TIFF as a showcase event. October is going to be a very busy month for horror fans.

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• Andrew Webster

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