Backrooms to The Monkey: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in a heart-poundingly original horror, while Theo James plays twins cursed by a killer wind-up monkey. Happy Halloween week!

Director Kane Parsons was just 20 when he shot this genre-redefining horror, based on the “creepypasta” YouTube series he’d been developing since his mid-teens. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a failed architect who discovers an apparently endless liminal space behind the strip mall store where he works and, depressingly, also lives. Renate Reinsve is Clark’s therapist, Mary, a woman working through her own traumas around enclosed spaces, who nonetheless follows him into these backrooms to attempt a rescue. The wallpaper may be monotonously yellow, but there are scares of every shade here and, underlying it all, the heart-pounding thrill of pure originality. EEJ Monday 26 October, HBO Max

The scene where the knight (Max von Sydow) plays chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot) is among the most recognisable in the history of cinema, and endlessly parodied by the less cultured likes of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and The Muppets. But that shouldn’t eclipse the rest of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 classic, worth seeing in full for its allegorical depiction of plague-ravaged medieval Europe, the austere black and white cinematography of Gunnar Fischer, and a climatic rendering of the Danse Macabre, performed before slowly dissolving dark clouds. EEJ Saturday 24 October, 9.30pm, BBC Four

Is Cat Person a romantic comedy? Or is it a psychological horror? The erratic tone shifts of this 2023 film, adapted from Kristen Roupenian’s viral short story of the same name, are entirely in keeping with its subject matter: what it means to be a single, straight woman and, in the internet parlance, “date your only natural predator”. Emilia Jones stars as Margot, a 20-year-old college student who begins an ambivalent relationship with Robert (Nicholas Braun, AKA Greg from Succession), a harmless if slightly pompous nice-guy lunk. Or is he? EEJ Saturday 24 October, 11.40pm, BBC One

Tony Curtis turns up halfway through, playing against type as the now DNA-linked killer, Albert DeSalvo. The real stars, though, are the dogged detectives of Boston PD, featuring a host of reassuringly craggy-faced character actors such as George Kennedy and Murray Hamilton, and headed up by John S Bottomly (Henry Fonda). They run down seemingly every creep and kook in eastern Massachusetts before eventually landing on their man. Director Richard Fleischer’s use of split-screen adds to both the pacing and the period feel. EEJ Sunday 25 October, 10.10pm, Talking Pictures TV

Andrew Haigh’s film is an emotionally complex, fable-like story of regret and redemption. Andrew Scott, never better, plays Adam, an introverted, gay screenwriter who lives alone in a tower block. In search of inspiration, he revisits his childhood home, only to come upon the ghosts of his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), who died in a car crash when he was 12. He also meets Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other person in his building, and starts a tentative romance. These two encounters draw Adam out of himself, giving him the chance to reassess his childhood, his sexuality and his present. A heart-rending but hopeful tale. SW Wednesday 28 October, 9pm, Film4

Osgood Perkins made 2024’s scariest movie in Longlegs, but his 2025 follow-up, based on a Stephen King short story, is a raucous comedy horror with more laughs and more life wisdom. Theo James plays twins whose traumatic family inheritance continually resurfaces in the form of a cursed wind-up monkey. Whenever someone is foolish enough to turn its key, a spectacularly gruesome death ensues. This leaves the twins with a dilemma: how to go on living when death is all around? EEJ Wednesday 28 October, 10.40pm, BBC One

The Spanish-language zombie flick Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End was a huge international hit for Prime Video in 2024. In this sequel, also directed by Carles Torrens, much of the population has taken refuge in the Canary Islands, following the outbreak of the blood-borne TSJ virus. Roberto (Carlos Alcaide) joins a special return mission to the mainland, which soon becomes a scramble for survival as the infected hordes march on. Perhaps returning fan favourite Lúculo the cat (still played by Pedrito the cat) can come to the rescue? EEJ Friday 30 October, Prime Video