Nielsen: Millennials stream the most Halloween horror
October 22, 2026



In 2025, Nielsen tracked horror’s slice of October movie watching across four Octobers and found a small but real bump, nearly a full point between 2023 and 2024. Now October 2025 has officially wrapped, the US audience measurement specialist added the newest data point to reveal that horror made up 14.7 per cent of October movie minutes, down from 15.8 per cent in 2024 and right back in the 14.6 per cent to 14.9 per cent range of 2021 through 2023.

One reason Nielsen suggests that horror may not have gotten as much screen time in October 2025 is that KPop Demon Hunters was in the midst of a significant run. In October 2025 alone, the Netflix movie tallied over 2 billion minutes, and inspired many a Halloween costume. True crime documentary The Perfect Neighbor (also on Netflix) was not far behind with just under 2 billion minutes, and those real-life horrors may have been another distraction from fictional content.


2025 revisited

Here’s some highlights on how October 2025 horror viewing shook out across the US:

Weapons: 640 million minutes and also the month’s biggest streaming film, with 565 million streaming minutes (88 per cent of its total) and another 76 million on HBO. Few films are this high on the list after arriving the same year, noted Nielsen.

It: 396 million minutes with linear contributing 183 million minutes (46 per cent) and streaming 213 million, with AMC’s FearFest and IFC TV carrying the 2017 film on cable. Pennywise’s annual October return stayed on schedule.

Bring Her Back: 281 million minutes. The 2025 release closed out the list with 94 per cent of its minutes coming from streaming. It was one of four 2025 releases in the top 10, along with Weapons, I Know What You Did Last Summer and M3GAN 2.0.

Poltergeist: 278 million minutes, finishing roughly 2.4 million minutes behind Bring Her Back. Linear carried 59 per cent of its viewing (163 million minutes) and streaming supplied 115 million. AMC’s FearFest alone accounted for 94 million of the linear minutes, with BBC America, FX Movie Channel, IFC TV, FX and FXX adding the rest.

Sleepy Hollow: 276 million minutes, following closely behind Poltergeist by 1.8 million minutes. Linear supplied 129 million (47 per cent). Freeform alone accounted for 88 million of the linear minutes with FX and FXM adding to the rest. The headless horseman may have lost his head, but he did not lose out on a top 10 spot.


Streaming accounted for 72 per cent of top 10 minutes overall, and the split differed by type of title. The four 2025 releases in the top 10 (Weapons, I Know What You Did Last Summer, M3GAN 2.0 and Bring Her Back) drew most if not all of their minutes from streaming. Weapons led all titles on streaming with 565 million minutes. Longer-established franchises were more evenly split or weighted toward linear: as mentioned, Poltergeist drew 59 per cent of its minutes from linear, and It drew 46 per cent. Scream was the exception among established franchises, with 86 per cent of its minutes on streaming.

Nielsen noted that the Sinners movie looks likely to be a a big winner in October 2026 viewing.

Different generations, different favourites

Across these ten movies, Millennials are the horror enthusiasts. They make up about 31 per cent of minutes, the biggest slice of any generation (Gen X is next at 27 per cent, then Gen Z at 20 per cent, boomers at 14 per cent and Gen Alpha at 7 per cent). Millennials are also at the top audience for six of the ten titles. They go hardest for The Bone Temple, where they’re 35.4 per cent of viewing, the highest Millennial share on the list, and they are obsessed with Obsession (35.1 per cent).

A few titles break the pattern:

Gen Z: The Black Phone is the only title where they’re the biggest audience (29.4 per cent of minutes).

Gen X: They’re the top audience for Primate (31.8 per cent), World War Z (30.1 per cent) and Sinners (29.4 per cent).

Boomers: They’re Sinners people, at 19 per cent of its minutes against a 14 per cent average.

Gen Alpha: The Black Phone is their favorite at 13.3 per cent, roughly double their average share. M3GAN 2.0 is also the one title where both kids and boomers over-index, which looks “suspiciously like multigenerational movie night”, said Nielsen.

“While not necessarily as scary as the other fare we’ve covered, we want to give an honourable mention to some more family-friendly fare that always gets a spooky season boost. Haunted Mansion is an obvious one, taking second place on the list in October 2025. But there are others, like Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas that don’t quite earn the horror classification, but still provide those Halloween vibes. Last year we called horror an audience unifier. We’re keeping that, with one edit: horror unifies, but every generation still has its own pick,” Nielsen concluded.