31 Days Of Streaming Horror: 'The Witch In The Window' Showcases The Perils Of House Flipping

Welcome to 31 Days of Streaming Horror. Every day this October we'll be highlighting a different streaming horror movie to help you get into the Halloween spirit. Today's entry: The Witch in the Window (2018).

Sub-Genre: Haunted House Flipping MovieBest Setting to Watch It In: Nowhere near a window that happens to have a witch in itHow Scary Is It?: It's spooktacular!

It's very difficult to pull-off horror set in daylight settings. Horror is a genre synonymous with darkness, so whenever a scary movie that features frightful scenes set in the sun comes along, it seems jarring. But it can also result in something special – provided the film in question sticks the landing. Andy Mitton's supremely spooky The Witch in the Window does this, and then some.

The story involves Simon (Alex Draper), a divorced father who has brought his young son Finn (Charlie Tacker) along with him to a recently purchased house in Vermont. Simon plans to restore and flip the house, and he wants Finn to help – assuming the activity will be a bonding experience for the two of them, especially since Finn has recently gotten in serious trouble with his mother due to watching a video online that he shouldn't have seen.

When father and son arrive at the house the atmosphere is immediately steeped in dread, and only gets worse from there. They learn the story about the house's former occupant, an old woman said to be a witch who died all alone in the house – her corpse sitting in a chair in front of a window for days. Simon shrugs the story off, but he can't do that for very long, because soon he and Finn see the ghost of the witch herself, back in the armchair she died in. The witch's reveal is done in daylight, which makes the whole experience extra creepy. Like Simon and Finn, we expect daytime to be safe. But it's not. And the more Simon repairs the house, the stronger the ghostly witch grows.

The Witch in the Window grows considerably weirder as the narrative progresses. But writer-director Mitton also brings some hefty emotional elements to the story as well, resulting in a movie that's both altogether spooky and oddly touching.