What’s on at the cinema in October 2023

Spooky season sees some hair-raising new horrors, but you can also catch heart-warming adventures, family favourites and plenty of Oscar winners on the silver screen this month.

We’re well into October now, which means it’s officially spooky season.

As is nearly always the case with my movie recommendations, we have a mixed bag of new movies that are perfect for a cosy night out at the cinema.

Screen legends Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson team up in The Great Escaper, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese reunite once again for Killers of the Flower Moon, and with Halloween just around the corner, how about a couple of new horror movies for good measure?

(And if you’re all about those dares and scares, keep your eyes peeled for my ultimate Halloween horrors round up coming soon…)

The Great Escaper

Out now 

In the summer of 2014, Bernard Jordan (Michael Caine) made global headlines. He had staged a “great escape” from his care home to join fellow war veterans on a beach in Normandy, commemorating their fallen comrades at the D-Day Landings 70^th anniversary.

It was a story that captured the imagination of the world, as Bernie embodied the defiant “can-do” spirit of a generation that was fast disappearing. But, of course, it wasn’t the whole story.

It was an inspirational but sanitised retelling of one man’s need to come to terms with the lasting trauma of war.

Bernie’s adventure, spanning a mere 48 hours, also marked the culmination of his 60-year marriage to Rene, played by screen icon Glenda Jackson. This would be the first time these two double-Oscar winners have appeared on screen together in 47 years, and also marks Jackson’s final performance following her passing earlier this year.

The Great Escaper is a film that celebrates their enduring love, but always with an eye to the lessons we might learn from the Greatest Generation.

The Exorcist – Believer

Out now

Halloween Ends massively divided fans, though it can’t be argued that that particular horror trilogy was, overall, a resounding success.

Now the latest film to receive a hotly anticipated sequel is one of the most iconic and scariest horror movies of all time: The Exorcist.

When the parents of demonically possessed girls who are desperate for help.

When Angela and her friend Katherine vanish in the woods, they return three days later with no memory of what happened to them. This soon unleashes a deadly chain of events which forces their parents to go in search of someone who has had similar experiences: Chris MacNeil.

Returning for the first time since the 1973 movie, Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn reprises her role. But this time, Chris has been altered by the events surrounding her daughter Regan five decades before…

The Miracle Club

Out now

Set in 1967, The Miracle Club is a heart-warming film that follows the story of three generations of close friends.

Lily (played by the legend that is Maggie Smith), Eileen (the brilliant Kathy Bates), and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) of Ballygar, a hard-knocks community in Dublin, all share one tantalizing dream: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French town of Lourdes: the place of miracles that draws millions of visitors each year.

When the chance to win presents itself, the women seize it. However, just before their trip, their old friend Chrissie (Laura Linney) arrives in Ballygar for her mother’s funeral, dampening their good mood and well-laid plans.

The women secure tickets and set out on the journey that they hope will change their lives, with Chrissie joining in place of her mother. The glamour and sophistication of Chrissie, who has just returned from a 40-year exile in the United States, are not her only difficult traits. Old wounds are reopened along the way, forcing the women to confront their pasts even as they travel in search of a miracle.

Killers of the Flower Moon

20^th October

Academy Award-winning Martin Scorsese – the director responsible for many of cinema’s greatest movies, including Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Departed and, more recently, The Irishman – finally makes his long-awaited return to the silver screen with Killers of the Flower Moon, an epic western crime saga.

Based on the book of the same name by David Grann, in the film we follow Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lilly Gladsone), who embark on an improbable romance.

The film is set at the turn of the 20^th century, when oil brought a fortune to the people of the Osage Nation and they became some of the richest Native Americans in the world. Of course, this immediately attracted white interlopers, who extorted and stole as much money as they could, even resorting to murder to do so.

Robert De Niro, Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow also star (and we, personally, can’t wait to watch it).

Trolls Band Together

20^th October

It’s time to get ready for an action-packed, all-star, rainbow-coloured family reunion as Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake return for a grand, brand spanking new chapter in the DreamWorks Animation blockbuster franchise.

After spending the last two movies relentlessly flirting, Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) are finally a couple. But as they grow closer, Poppy soon discovers that Branch has a secret past.

It turns out that he was once a part of her favourite boyband, BroZone, along with his four brothers: Floyd (Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eric Anfrie), Spruce (Grammy winner Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame) and Clay (Kid Cudi).

When his brother Floyd is kidnapped by a pair of pop star villains (voiced by Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells), Branch and Poppy set out on an emotional journey to reunite the brothers and rescue Floyd from a fate worse than pop culture obscurity.

Five Nights at Freddy’s

27^th October

This supernatural horror comes just in time for the 31^st – making it the ultimate Halloween night out scare-fest.

The terrifying horror game phenomenon becomes a blood-chilling cinematic event, in what will hopefully become one of the new generation of horror movie classics – along with The Invisible Man, The Black Phone and this year’s surprise hit, M3GAN.

Starring The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson, Five Nights at Freddy’s follows a troubled security guard as he begins his new job working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza: a once successful but now abandoned family entertainment centre.

While he spends his first night on the job, he soon realises that the centre’s four animatronic mascots – Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy – move and kill anyone that is still there after midnight – and that the late shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through as he first thought…

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