Fright Optional: What Americans Streamed in Halloween Week
Halloween week on US streaming: horror comedy nearly doubled its top-10 share.
Americans do not necessarily stream the scariest titles at Halloween. In Halloween week 2026 the top title in the US ranking was Hubie Halloween, an Adam Sandler comedy, and horror comedies took 32% of the top 10's viewers, nearly double their 17% in 2025.
Even among horror films, the most brutal did not draw the most: Bring Her Back, billed as 2025's most brutal horror film, drew a fifth of It's audience.
What changed was freshness. In 2026, six of the top 10 titles had been added to the library of the platform they were watched on since late September, and they drew 66% of the top 10's viewers, against five titles and 47% a year earlier. HBO Max led both years.
Each ranking lists the ten titles with the most unique viewers on a single platform, across nine US platforms (Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Prime Video and Tubi) in the week that included Halloween: October 27 to November 2, 2025, and October 26 to November 1, 2026. Shares in this article are of each year's top 10 combined.
Two different top 10s
Two films made both lists: Hubie Halloween and Scream VI. The 2026 top 10 was also flatter: no title came close to It's 2.27 million viewers in 2025, and the top three in 2026 were within 44,000 viewers of each other. Added up title by title, the 2026 top 10 drew 21% fewer viewers than the 2025 one.
Not only scares
In 2026, 32% of the top 10’s viewers chose a horror comedy, nearly double the 17% in 2025.
Horror comedy is the clearest sign. Hubie Halloween, Adam Sandler's 2020 Netflix horror comedy, appeared in both top 10s, climbing from third place (1.05 million viewers) to a narrow first (1.09 million, about 3,000 ahead of Backrooms). In 2026 it was joined by The Menu, a dark comedy that satirises fine dining, which Netflix added to its library on October 1 and drew 0.69 million viewers, and by The Cabin in the Woods on HBO Max (0.41 million). In 2025 the other horror comedy was Tremors, the 1990 monster comedy that Prime Video had just added to its library.
Within horror, the most brutal titles were not the biggest. In 2025 It drew 2.27 million viewers, while Bring Her Back, billed as the year's most brutal horror film, drew 0.45 million, a fifth of It's audience. Even It has a lighter side for a horror film: its producers modelled the film on coming-of-age adventures such as Stand by Me and The Goonies.
The horror that drew big audiences in 2026 was event-sized. Backrooms, A24's science-fiction horror about an endless maze of empty rooms and the studio's highest-grossing film, drew 1.09 million viewers. A Story of Derry, a 30-minute Halloween special that HBO Max released on October 31, drew 1.05 million.
New library additions took over
In 2026 the week belonged to titles platforms had just added. Six of the top 10 were added to the library of the platform they were watched on between September 25 and Halloween itself, and together they drew 66% of the top 10's viewers:
In 2025 five titles in the top 10 had been added that close to the holiday: Tremors on Prime Video (October 1), Bring Her Back on HBO Max (October 3), The Substance on HBO Max (October 10), I Know What You Did Last Summer on Netflix (October 16) and Attack 13 on Netflix (October 21). They drew 47% of the top 10's viewers. The rest came from titles already in the catalogue, led by It.
A new addition was not always a new film. Three of the 2026 additions were older titles that had just been added to a new service: The Menu (2022), X (2022) and Late Night with the Devil (2024) drew 29% of the top 10's viewers between them. Old films played a small part: the oldest title each year, Tremors (1990) in 2025 and The Cabin in the Woods (2012) in 2026, drew about 0.4 million viewers.
HBO Max held the week, Tubi rose
HBO Max took the largest share of the top 10's viewers in both years, 43% in 2025 and 37% in 2026. In 2025 its lead came from It, which topped the ranking with 2.27 million viewers, together with The Substance and Bring Her Back. In 2026 Backrooms and A Story of Derry drew more than a million viewers each, A Story of Derry in the two days left in the week after its October 31 release.
Netflix went from four titles to three and from 42% to 31%. Tubi, the free ad-supported service, rose to 19% with two films it added in October, X and Late Night with the Devil. Prime Video reached 13% with Scream 7, which joined its subscription library on October 16, and Dark Nature. Paramount+ dropped out: Scream VI, which it carried in 2025, was watched on Netflix in 2026, and Scream 7 on Prime Video. Apple TV, Disney+, Hulu and Peacock had no title in either top 10.
What it means
Halloween on streaming is not a contest to find the scariest film. In 2026, almost a third of top-10 viewers picked a horror comedy, up from 17% in 2025, and the top title of the week was a comedy. The horror that drew the biggest audiences came with a familiar name or an event behind it: It, A Story of Derry, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Backrooms.
Freshness mattered more in 2026, when six of the ten titles had just been added to the platform's library. The two years point the same way for platforms: Halloween viewers took up library additions timed for October, and many of them chose the holiday without the fright.