Halloween is a wonderfully queer time of year. Witches, final girls and sultry vampires – what’s not to love? Whether you’re finishing off your costume, carving pumpkins or just want to get under a blanket with someone special and be properly scared, we’ve got you.
We’ve rounded up the best lesbian and sapphic horror films, thrillers and lesbian TV series to watch this spooky season, from cult classics to this year’s new releases, plus where to watch each one in the UK.
New for 2026
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
If you watch one new film this Halloween, make it this. Jane Schoenbrun, the director behind I Saw the TV Glow, is back with a horror that’s heavy on sexual tension and still plenty bloody.
Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a young queer filmmaker hired to reboot a cult slasher franchise that meant everything to them growing up. To do it, Kris tracks down Billy, the reclusive original final girl, played by Gillian Anderson. Desire and danger get very tangled from there. Gillian Anderson as a reclusive scream queen? We’re seated.
Where to watch (UK): MUBI
Whistle (2026)
Think early-2000s teen horror – hot teens, terrible decisions, a cursed object with a body count – but with a lesbian love story that actually gets room to breathe. A group of high school outcasts get hold of an ancient whistle that summons their own deaths, and the countdown begins.
Daphne Keene and Sophie Nélisse have gentle, believable chemistry, which makes the scares hit harder. It’s scarier because you care.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
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The Cuckoo Clock (2026)
Out now in the US, and one to watch for when it reaches the UK. A young woman falls for the home care nurse looking after her grandmother, who has dementia. Then the nurse disappears, and Grandma’s cuckoo clock starts talking, warning that Grandma might be responsible.
Where to watch (US): Select US Theatres. No release for US or UK streaming platforms yet.
Don’t Come Out (2026)
This one from Dominican director Victoria Linares Villegas uses horror to get at something very real. A young medical student is struggling with her lesbian identity in the conservative Dominican Republic, and the walls start closing in. Starring Cecile van Welie, Camila Issa and Gabriela Cortés.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story (2026)
Lizzie Borden took an axe… and Ryan Murphy took the lesbian theory and ran with it. The fourth season of Netflix’s Monster anthology, and the first with a woman at its centre, tells the story of the 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the trial that ended in Lizzie’s acquittal.
Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, and the series leans hard into the long-rumoured romance between Lizzie and the family’s live-in maid, Bridget Sullivan (Vicky Krieps), making their affair the motive behind the killings. Jessica Barden turns up as Nance O’Neil, the stage actress Lizzie grew very close to in real life, a friendship that set tongues wagging at the time and drove a wedge between Lizzie and her sister Emma (Billie Lourd). Charlie Hunnam and Rebecca Hall play the doomed parents.
It’s gory, gothic and takes plenty of liberties with history. Historians still debate whether Lizzie was queer, or guilty. But eight episodes of Victorian repression, forbidden longing and Vicky Krieps in a maid’s uniform? Spooky season sorted. For the full picture, pair it with Lizzie (2018), starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart.
Note Contains graphic violence.
Where to watch (UK): Netflix
Films
Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Mis-sold as a lads’ film on release, now a fully reclaimed sapphic classic. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, it follows Needy (Amanda Seyfried), whose glossy best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) becomes a man-eating demon after a ritual gone wrong. Codependent female friendship, a kiss that launched a thousand gay awakenings, and a revenge plot that still bites.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Rose Glass’s sweaty, neon-soaked thriller is pure lesbian noir. Kristen Stewart plays Lou, the reclusive manager of a small-town gym in 1980s New Mexico, who falls hard for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder passing through on her way to a competition. Add steroids, a crime family and some genuinely gnarly body horror. Romantic, violent and very, very hot.
Note Contains graphic violence.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
Fear Street trilogy (2021)
Three films, one curse, and a lesbian love story at the centre of it all. In Fear Street: 1994, Deena (Kiana Madeira) is determined to save her ex-girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) after a string of brutal murders reveals a centuries-old curse on their town. Each film goes further back in time before landing back on Deena and Sam. Built for a Halloween weekend binge.
Where to watch (UK): Netflix
Cuckoo (2024)
Hunter Schafer stars as Gretchen, a grieving 17-year-old dragged to a remote resort in the German Alps with her dad and his new family. She finds a romance with fellow guest Ed, but something strange and violent is happening in the woods, and it’s tied to the resort itself. Weird, unsettling, and Hunter Schafer’s best film role yet.
Where to watch (UK): Netflix, or Amazon Prime
Saint Maud (2019)
Rose Glass’s debut and one of the best British horrors in years. Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a devout young palliative care nurse who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of her patient Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former dancer. The pull between them is intense, unspoken and deeply unsettling. Set in an out-of-season seaside town, it’s short, sharp and very hard to shake.
Note Contains scenes of self-harm, which some viewers may find distressing.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
Attachment (2022)
A U-Haul romance with a horror twist. Danish actor Maja (Josephine Park) falls instantly for Leah (Ellie Kendrick), a British Jewish woman. When Leah starts having seizures, they move into her flat in London, below her very overprotective mother Chana (Sofie Gråbøl). Maja soon suspects something far darker is going on. Tender, funny and creepy, often in the same scene.
Where to watch (UK): Shudder or Amazon Prime
Thelma (2017)
Girl meets girl, girl has feelings she doesn’t know what to do with, girl has a supernatural break from reality that forces her to face a buried family secret. Sound familiar?
In Joachim Trier’s beautiful Norwegian thriller, shy Thelma (Eili Harboe) leaves her religious parents for university in Oslo, where she’s drawn to classmate Anja. As her feelings grow, she starts having seizures, and it becomes clear something more paranormal is going on. This is the film-buff pick for Halloween: slow, stylish and well worth it. A cautionary tale about repressed lesbian desire – best to just give in to it.
Note Contains flashing lights.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
A satirical Gen Z slasher. A group of rich twenty-somethings throw a hurricane party at a mansion and play a murder game called, you guessed it, Bodies Bodies Bodies. Then a real body turns up.
At the centre is couple Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova), affectionate and loved-up, though like everyone else at the party, their relationship might not be all it seems. Sharp, funny and very online.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
Black Swan (2010)
Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller set in the world of Swan Lake brought Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis into our little lesbian world as rival dancers locked in obsession. It was nominated for five Oscars, with Portman winning Best Actress. Why’s it on our Halloween list? It’s dark, it’s paranoid, and, well, it’s hot.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
The Craft (1996)
The cult classic beloved by lesbians, gays and feminists everywhere. New girl Sarah (Robin Tunney) struggles to fit in at her Catholic high school in Los Angeles until three outsiders (Neve Campbell, Fairuza Balk and Rachel True) decide she’s the witch they need to complete their coven.
It’s teenage rebellion, female power and sisterhood, until the friendship tips into full-on toxicity. We’ve all been there. Sort of. There’s a 2020 follow-up, The Craft: Legacy, but there’s no improving on 90s perfection.
Note Contains references to suicide and self-harm, which some viewers may find distressing.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
The Carmilla Movie (2017)
For a lesbian vampire watch with a light-hearted tone, this one could satisfy your thirst. Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, one of the earliest vampire novels, it follows on from the 2014 web series and was crowdfunded by its fans.
Five years on, Laura (Elise Bauman) and her vampire girlfriend Carmilla (Natasha Negovanlis) have settled into domestic bliss, until Carmilla starts losing her newly human soul and the gang head to a spooky Austrian mansion to find out why. It’s a lovefest for fans, but if you want a couple of hours of a happy, charming lesbian romance, look no further. Bonus: the villain is played by Dominique Provost-Chalkley from Wynonna Earp.
Want more fangs? Read our round-up of the best vampire films and TV shows with lesbian representation.
Where to watch (UK): Amazon Prime
TV shows
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
The trailer won’t tell you this, but Mike Flanagan’s follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House has one of TV’s most tender lesbian love stories at its heart. Dani (Victoria Pedretti, swoon) takes a job as an au pair at Bly (bi) Manor, carrying a dark secret and an annoying ex. Cue misty lakes, creepy dolls, music boxes, eerie attics and all the jump scares you’d want from a haunted gothic mansion.
Then she meets Jamie (Amelia Eve), the gardener, and their love story is so tender it hurts. That montage! It’s nine episodes, so if gothic ghosts aren’t your thing, you can skip to the Dani and Jamie scenes on YouTube (spoilers).
Where to watch (UK): Netflix
Yellowjackets (2021)
A girls’ high school football team crash-lands in the Canadian wilderness in 1996, and what happens out there follows them for the next 25 years. It’s survival horror, psychological thriller and very dark comedy all at once, with sapphic storylines including Taissa and Van, whose romance runs across both timelines. Bonus: the adult cast includes Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and Lauren Ambrose.
Where to watch (UK): ITVX
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
For the uninitiated, Buffy is the seminal series about a teenage former cheerleader turned vampire slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. It broke new ground for queer representation on TV.
In season four, Buffy’s best friend Willow (Alyson Hannigan), a practising witch, meets and falls in love with fellow witch Tara (Amber Benson). It became one of the first long-running lesbian relationships on mainstream American TV, and it was written with real care.
For Halloween, watch season four, episode ten, “Hush”. It’s one of the show’s highest-rated episodes, and genuinely terrifying, as the whole town loses its voice and a group of monsters go door to door stealing hearts (not in the good way). It’s also where Willow and Tara meet and join their magic for the first time. Come for the scares, stay for the burgeoning lesbian romance.
In case you missed it, the planned revival, Buffy: New Sunnydale, was dropped by Hulu in March 2026. So the original it is.
Where to watch (UK): Disney+
First Kill (2022)
Romeo and Juliet, but make it vampires and monster hunters. Teenage vampire Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) has to make her first kill to take her place in her powerful family. Her target? New girl Calliope (Imani Lewis), who happens to come from a family of monster hunters. Naturally, they fall for each other. It’s campy, fun and only one season long – Netflix cancelled it after its first run – but it’s a perfect Halloween weekend watch.
Where to watch (UK): Netflix
Got a favourite sapphic scare we’ve missed? DM us on Instagram @nonchalant.mag.
Happy haunting,
Nonchalant x
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Jess is a digital marketer and writer, based in London. Obsessed with all things lesbian TV/film/culture. Passionate about photography and film, Jess is working on her first screenplay. Watch this space!
