What to Watch This Halloween Weekend: Scream Is Back in Theaters, Everest Hits IMAX, and a DreamWorks Gem Comes Home

Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, and the studios cleared out of its way. The only new wide release is a Christmas movie: Christmas at the Kringles, an R-rated horror comedy from Briarcliff Entertainment. Boxoffice Pro called the frame very quiet for studio releases.

That leaves room for a 30-year-old slasher on the big screen, the directors of Free Solo in IMAX, a romance about a man made of sticks, and a close fight for No. 1. Here is how to spend October 30 to November 1.

The Halloween pick: Scream, back in theaters

Paramount is bringing Wes Craven's original Scream back to select theaters on Friday for its 30th anniversary. Kevin Williamson's script, Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, and Drew Barrymore answering the phone in one of the most famous cold opens in horror. Rated R, 111 minutes.

It is worth remembering how it became a classic. Scream opened on December 20, 1996, to just $6.4 million, then kept going until it reached $103.0 million in the US, per Box Office Mojo. That is about 16 times its opening weekend.

If you would rather stay in, it already streams on Paramount+, Hulu and Peacock, per JustWatch, and joins HBO Max on Sunday, one day after Halloween. But this is a movie about an audience that knows the rules, and it plays best with one. It sits in S tier on our Scream movies ranked list, which makes the drive home the right time to argue about whether Scream 2 or Scream 4 is the real No. 2.

Make your tier list right here

Five Scream films, head-to-head. Tap the one you prefer and we will build your order, then label it S through D.

Which do you prefer?

Scream 2 1997

VS

Scream 1996

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The big-screen pick: Everest: The Other Side

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi won the documentary Oscar for Free Solo. Their new National Geographic film follows Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, elite ski mountaineers and partners, as they try to climb and then ski the direct North Face of Mount Everest. It opens Friday in select theaters and IMAX, rated PG-13.

It holds 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 15 reviews, with a 65 on Metacritic. Time Out's Phil de Semlyen gave it four stars out of five and has the best advice: "See it on IMAX, don't Google anything beforehand and wear something warm." Variety's Guy Lodge was cooler, finding it spectacular almost to a fault and short on hard questions.

The race for No. 1: Clayface vs. the documentary

Last weekend Clayface opened to $24.0 million and You Can See Everything made $19.5 million, up 25 percent in its second weekend, as we broke down Monday. This weekend could flip it. One forecaster, Todd Thatcher, has Clayface at $13.5 million and the Holmes documentary at $12.9 million.

Choose by mood. Clayface is the first R-rated film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe, an A- CinemaScore monster story playing on the one weekend built for it. You Can See Everything runs 2 hours and 54 minutes and is already the sixth-highest-grossing documentary in US history, per Box Office Mojo. See where Clayface fits on our DC movies ranked list.

The date-night pick: Wicker goes wide

Olivia Colman plays a lonely fisherwoman who commissions a husband from the village basket weaver (Peter Dinklage), and Alexander Skarsgård is the husband. Black Bear opened it to $5.75 million from 1,471 theaters, and it expands nationwide Friday with 95 percent from 134 reviews.

The strangest stat of the week: its one-night 4DX screenings on October 28, in 21 states and Washington, D.C., sold out, so the 4DX run now lasts through November 4, per TheWrap. A romance about a wicker man, in seats that move. Rated R for sexual content, language and brief full nudity.

Also opening

• Christmas at the Kringles (Briarcliff, R): Ron Livingston and Rachel Bilson move in next to a family that keeps Christmas all year (Thomas Lennon and Arden Myrin), with Rob Riggle as a drunk mall Santa. Kevin Lewis (Willy's Wonderland) directs. No Rotten Tomatoes score yet.
• The Mosquito Bowl (Netflix, R): Peter Berg adapts Buzz Bissinger's 2022 book about four college football stars who joined the Marines after Pearl Harbor, with Nicholas Galitzine and Bill Skarsgård. It is a reunion: Berg directed Friday Night Lights from Bissinger's book. Select theaters Friday, Netflix on November 25.
• The Mongoose (Samuel Goldwyn, R): Liam Neeson plays a framed war hero who leads police on a televised cross-country car chase, with Marisa Tomei, Ving Rhames and Michael Chiklis. Mark Vanselow, Neeson's longtime stunt double, makes his feature directing debut.

The couch picks

Forgotten Island (digital rental, out now). One of the best-reviewed movies you probably skipped this fall arrived to rent or buy on Tuesday. DreamWorks' Filipino folklore adventure holds 95 percent from 130 reviews and 94 percent from audiences, yet it has made just $36.8 million in the US after five weekends, per Box Office Mojo. H.E.R. and Liza Soberano voice best friends Jo and Raissa, who find a portal to the island of Nakali and learn that the price of getting home is every memory of their friendship.

Joel Crawford, who directed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, co-directs with Januel P. Mercado, and Lea Salonga voices a manananggal, the winged monster of Philippine folklore, so it even counts as a Halloween movie. Rated PG, and not yet on our DreamWorks movies ranked list, so decide where you would put it.

Nocturne (Apple TV, Friday). Liev Schreiber plays homicide detective Jonah Lynn, Zazie Beetz plays his protégé Saga Bauer, and Stephen Graham plays the serial killer Jurek Walter, in an adaptation of Lars Kepler's novels The Sandman and Lazarus. Tim Van Patten directs the first two episodes, which drop Friday, with new ones weekly through December 25. Reviews had not posted as of Wednesday.

Dexter: Resurrection, season 2 (Paramount+, Friday). Michael C. Hall is back, caught between two new killers: Dan Stevens as Lucas Stark, the Five Borough Killer, and Gabriel Luna as the Sleep-Eyed Strangler. Krysten Ritter returns too. Episodes arrive weekly through December.

The Gilded Age, season 4 (HBO, Sunday). Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon return for eight episodes, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. Then put it on your TV show tier list.

Then keep score. Add each one to Shortlist and rank it head to head against the movies you already love, two at a time, until the list builds itself. Does Scream beat John Carpenter's Halloween? Our Halloween movies ranked list has the whole Michael Myers series to measure it against, and our movie tier list guide shows how to settle it.

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