Horror Owns the Streaming Charts as Halloween Nears: Carrie Is No. 1 on TV, Disclosure Day Tops Movies

Oct 19, 2026

If you want to know what October does to viewing habits, look at the charts. Media Play News reported on October 19, citing the JustWatch weekly charts through October 18, 2026, that horror holds the top of both streaming lists heading into Halloween: Prime Video's Carrie series is the No. 1 television title in the country, and Peacock's Disclosure Day is the No. 1 movie. JustWatch, the chart source behind the rankings, tracks what people actually search for, queue and watch across services, so a sweep like this is not a studio's marketing claim. It is the audience, in aggregate, choosing to be scared on purpose, two weeks before Halloween.

Carrie leads television, in two centuries at once

The Carrie series on Prime Video, with Summer H. Howell in the title role, sits at No. 1 on the TV chart, Media Play News reported, and the classic Carrie film charted at No. 10 on the movie chart in the same week. That double placement is the story inside the story. A new adaptation is not merely borrowing a famous name; it is sending viewers back to the original film as well, with both versions charting simultaneously. Few horror properties can do that, because few sit as deep in the culture as Carrie, the bullied teenager whose story has been retold for decades precisely because each generation recognizes its cruelty and its catharsis.

Howell carrying the title role is central to the new series' appeal, according to the Media Play News report of the JustWatch rankings. A Carrie who does not work ends the conversation before it starts, no matter how strong the supporting cast or how faithful the prom sequence looks. That the series is not just charting but leading the national TV chart in the most competitive horror week of the year suggests the performance is connecting with viewers who came in with a beloved film already in their heads and stayed for a new interpretation.

Crystal Lake and Below fill out a horror podium

Peacock's Crystal Lake is No. 2 on the TV chart and Netflix's Below, starring Josh Hartnett, is No. 3, Media Play News reported from the JustWatch data. Read that podium again: first, second and third on television are all horror or horror-adjacent titles, on three different services. This is not one platform winning a week. It is a genre winning the week everywhere at once. Crystal Lake draws on another storied horror name, the Friday the 13th world, while Below gives Netflix a place on a podium it often dominates with very different genres the rest of the year.

That spread matters for how the industry will read the week. When a single service sweeps, rivals can dismiss it as a fluke of one catalog. When Prime Video, Peacock and Netflix all place horror titles at the top of the same JustWatch chart, the lesson is harder to dodge: in mid-October, horror is not a niche programming block. It is the main event, and services that stock it seriously, with new series and not just a back-catalog row, are the ones viewers reward.

Disclosure Day tops a movie chart full of scares

On the movie side, Peacock's Disclosure Day is No. 1, Hulu's Hokum is No. 2, the summer horror hit Obsession is No. 3 and Backrooms on HBO Max is No. 4, according to Media Play News and the JustWatch chart it reported. Four for four at the top, again across four different services. Obsession is the interesting holdover in that group: a summer hit still charting in late October means its audience did not evaporate when the season turned. Instead, Halloween appears to have given it a second wind, as viewers who missed it in theaters or on its first streaming run catch up while they are already in a horror mood.

Backrooms at No. 4 on HBO Max underlines another shift the chart captures well. Horror fandom increasingly travels online first, built in communities that turn a concept into an event before a traditional campaign could. A title like Backrooms arriving in the national top four, alongside a legacy property like Carrie and a summer theatrical hit like Obsession, shows the Halloween audience is not one audience. It is several, of different ages and habits, all arriving at the same genre in the same week through different doors, and JustWatch's chart is one of the few places that whole picture is visible in a single list.

Why Halloween keeps winning streaming

There is a simple reason horror dominates this stretch of the calendar, and the chart numbers in Media Play News' report make it visible. Horror is social viewing. People watch it together, dare each other through it, and talk about it the next day in a way they rarely do with a mid-budget drama. It is also rewatchable in a way prestige television is not: nobody queues a favorite scare as background comfort in July, but in October the classics and the new contenders sit side by side, which is exactly how Carrie the series and Carrie the film end up charting in the same week, fifty years of the same story sharing one chart.

The test for these titles is what happens on November 1. Some will fall away with the decorations, as seasonal viewing does. But a No. 1 series with a breakout lead, a summer hit proving it has legs into autumn, and legacy titles pulling new viewers backward through a catalog are not just Halloween decoration. They are evidence, recorded by JustWatch and reported by Media Play News, that horror is currently the most reliable engine in streaming, and October is simply the month nobody bothers to pretend otherwise. For more charts and television coverage, see Previously News and Browse.

More coverage: Previously News and Browse Previously.