October is finally here, which means horror lovers can rejoice in everything that spooky season will bring. Luckily for them, there’s no shortage of content available to stream. The best horror movies on Hulu, Netflix, and pretty much every other major service will offer more than enough chills to satisfy those well-versed in the intricacies of the genre and those who are only looking to experience it because of the season.

However, while watching more mainstream offerings is perfectly OK, October also offers the chance to watch other, more underappreciated efforts. From genuinely terrifying tales of dread to more psychological series that favor atmosphere and gloom, these underrated horror gems will be perfect to watch in the days leading up to Halloween. So grab your popcorn and put on your witch hat because these movies call for it.

Witchfinder General (1968)

Horror legend Vincent Price stars in the 1968 seminal folk horror film Witchfinder General. Based on the eponymous 1966 novel and set during the English Civil War, the film follows the exploits of infamous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins, who brags about receiving the title of “witchfinder general” despite never receiving an appointment from Parliament. After Hopkins targets the wrong woman, he becomes the subject of a young soldier’s wrath.

Witchfinder General‘s importance to horror is impossible to ignore. Quite possibly the first folk horror film in history, Witchfinder General, which was later retitled to The Conqueror Worm in the U.S., finds terror in the very real danger of fanaticism and weaponized hysteria. The film preys on very real fears to craft a tale of paranoia, power lust, and indoctrination, using the mighty Vincent Price to deliver its message.

Witchfinder General – Vincent Price (1968) – Official Trailer

The actor was seldom better than he’s here as Matthew Hopkins, an utterly despicable and truly chilling figure that ranks among his finest on-screen creations. The ending will surely haunt audiences’ nightmares for days, making Witchfinder General a perfect watch for horror fans.

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Witchfinder General is available to stream on PlutoTV.

The Company of Wolves (1984)

When one thinks of the fantasy genre, chances are that images of knights, dragons, and wizards come to mind. Hardly anyone would expect one of the best fantasy movies to be a dark and dreadful fairy tale, yet that’s exactly what Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves is. This gothic tale, inspired by the classic Little Red Riding Hood, follows young Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson), who dreams of traversing a wolf-infested forest to reunite with her grandmother. When she meets a mysterious hunter in the woods, her life changes for good.

The Company of Wolves is an exquisite and lush Gothic story that shows a new side to horror. Blending disturbing scenes with straight-up body horror and fantasy sensibilities, the film offers a thoughtful and oneiric tale of sexual awakening, self-discovery, and the treacherous, ever-changing human nature that drives our actions.

Equal parts traditional fairy tale and off-putting and occasionally revolting horror story, The Company of Wolves is packed with meaning in every shot, brought to life by an absorbing production design that brings a dark yet alluring forest to unbelievable life.

The Company of Wolves is available to stream on Tubi.

You Won’t Be Alone (2022)

Stories about witches are at the very foundation of the horror genre; luckily, modern cinema keeps delivering new and incredible versions of a well-known tale — for example, 2022’s You Won’t Be Alone. Starring an ensemble cast, including Noomi Rapace and Alice Englert, the film follows Nevena, a mute girl in 19th-century Macedonia who is captured by a witch and transformed into a shapeshifting witch herself. Alone in the world, Nevena adopts new identities on her way to discovering everything life has to offer.

You Won’t Be Alone is light on jump scares, preferring instead to build an atmosphere of mystery, anxiousness, and fear that dominates every scene. Like the best horror movies, it uses traditional horror and supernatural settings to tell a deeply humane story about self-discovery and the complicated, winding, and painful road to maturity, both physical and emotional.

Nevena’s tale is universal yet still profoundly intimate, brought to life by an excellent collection of actors who act as observers of the human condition. Silent but packed with meaning, You Won’t Be Alone is a thoughtful and thought-provoking entry into the so-called elevated horror movement.

You Won’t Be Alone is available to stream on Starz.

Ulefone recently announced the Armor Mini 20 Pro and Armor Mini 20T Pro smartphones, and the company has ran a bunch of performance tests on them. These two handsets are small rugged devices, which makes them rather unique.

The main difference between them comes to thermal imaging tech. The ‘T’ version has thermal imaging tech, while the other phone does not. It tries to compensate for that with an infrared camera, though.

The Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro & Mini 20T Pro go through several performance tests

Ulefone ran AnTuTu, Geekbench 6, 3D Mark, and Speedtest tests on the devices. The two phones have the same performance-related specs and software, so the results should be identical, which is why only one is shown in the video below.

The Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro series managed to reach 434,964 points on the AnTuTu benchmark. Speaking of which, the phone is fueled by the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 SoCo. It also comes with 8GB of RAM; which can be expanded to 16GB via virtual RAM.

In regards to the Geekbench 6 score, the device managed to reach 791 points in the single-core test, and 2,102 in the multi-core test. That’s per course for the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 processor.

In the 3DMark Wild Life test, the phone score 1,379 points. The only test that remained is the 5G Speed Test, that one will depend on the 5G speeds in your area, and with your carrier, of course. Ulefone managed to reach 192Mbps download, and 25.7Mbps upload speeds, though.

These phones use a tiny display, and a large battery

It’s also worth noting that both of these smartphones are IP68/IP69K and MIL-STD-810H certified. They’re rugged phones with a large battery (considering their size). They include a 4.7-inch display and a 6,200mAh battery pack.

Android 14 comes pre-installed, while a 50-megapixel main camera sits on the back. The Ulefone Armor Mini 20T Pro will be priced at $329.99, while the Armor Mini 20 Pro costs $249.99. They’ll go on sale on October 21 via AliExpress. The company is also running a giveaway, in case you’re interested.

Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro (AliExpress)

Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro (AliExpress)

Many of DJI’s drones including its latest consumer products are being held up at the US border, the manufacturer said in a blog post today. It appears to be a customs matter and not related to proposed US legislation to ban DJI products (the Countering CCP Drones Act) currently in US Congress. However, the holdup means that sales of DJI’s latest Air 3S drone will be delayed, the company told The Verge.

“The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has cited the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), as the reason for the current holdups,” the DJI ViewPoints team wrote. “This assertion made against DJI, however, is entirely unfounded and categorically false.”

Calling the situation a “misunderstanding,” DJI said it’s sending documentation proving it complies with the UFLPA. It added that it has no manufacturing facilities in and doesn’t source materials from Xinjiang, the region that’s a red flag for the US in terms of Uyghur forced labor violations. It also noted that it’s not a listed entity under UFLPA and that its supply “undergoes rigorous due diligence by respected US retailers.” US Customs and Border Protection has yet to comment on the matter.

While the US House of Representatives did pass the a bill to block DJI’s drones, the Senate removed that clause from the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. It was later re-introduced as an amendment, though, and could still make it into the final bill. If so, imports of new DJI drones could be blocked, but a ban wouldn’t likely prohibit current owners from using them. DJI has a massive share of the worldwide drone market upwards of 70 percent as of 2021, according to Statista. including as much as 90 percent by public safety officials.

According to half a dozen sources, Accel, the global venture firm, is in advanced discussions to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Truemeds, an Indian online pharmacy that’s focused on providing customers with more affordable generic alternatives to costly branded medications.

The talks are currently centered on a proposed valuation of about $330 million for the six-year-old, Mumbai-headquartered startup, per these same sources, who requested anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and private.

The deal hasn’t finalized, so it may still not materialize or the terms can change, the sources cautioned. Accel and Truemeds didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The potential round for Truemeds comes amid a period of consolidation and upheaval in the online pharmacy industry. Pharmeasy, backed by Prosus Ventures, has seen its valuation plummet from a peak of $5.6 billion to below $600 million after struggling to repay a loan to Goldman Sachs. 

Janus Henderson, the British American global asset firm, implied a valuation of about $458 million for Pharmeasy at the end of June, according to its most recent mutual fund disclosures. In 2021, Tata Digital acquired 1mg, another major player in the space.

Unlike its competitors, Truemeds is taking a slightly different approach. The startup aims to disrupt the supply chain of how medicine reaches customers, eliminating middlemen that inflate the final price. After customers upload their prescriptions, Truemeds doctors recommend generics with the same active ingredients, produced by Indian manufacturers. This service aims to reduce medication costs, particularly for those with chronic conditions requiring ongoing treatment.

The platform operates entirely online, with consultations, ordering, and delivery all handled digitally. This eliminates the need for patients to visit physical pharmacies and allows Truemeds to reach customers in remote areas. 

If the new funding materializes, it would more than double Truemeds’ valuation, which was $132 million in an extended Series B round last year. The startup originally raised the Series B funding from investors including WestBridge Capital and Info Edge Ventures at a valuation of $76.7 million, according to Tracxn, a venture insight platform. 

Monstrous hurricanes Helene and Milton caused so much complex havoc that damages are still being added up, but government and private experts say they will likely join the infamous ranks of Katrina, Sandy and Harvey as super costly $50-billion-plus killers.

Making that even more painful is that most of the damage – 95% or more in Helene’s case – was not insured, putting victims in a deeper financial hole.

Storm deaths have been dropping over time, although Helene was an exception. But even adjusted for inflation, damages from intense storms are skyrocketing because people are building in harm’s way, rebuilding costs are rising faster than inflation and human-caused climate change are making storms stronger and wetter, experts in different fields said.

“Today’s storms, today’s events are simply vastly different from yesterday’s events. One of the things that we’re seeing is the energy content that these systems can retain is significantly greater than it used to be,” said John Dickson, president of Aon Edge Insurance Agency, which specializes in flood coverage. “The weather seems to be, in many cases, moving faster than we as a society are able to keep pace with it.”

In the last 45 years, and adjusted for inflation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has counted 396 weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage. Sixty-three of those were hurricanes or tropical storms.

The $50 billion mark for direct losses is a threshold that differentiates “truly historic events,” said Adam Smith, the economist and meteorologist who runs the list out of NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information in Helene-hit Asheville, North Carolina.

Only eight hurricanes reached that threshold. Smith said he thought Milton and Helene have “a very good shot” of joining that list.

The first $50 billion hurricane was Andrew in 1992. The U.S. went 13 more years before Katrina topped the damages chart, then seven years until the third costly whopper, Sandy. Helene and Milton would make seven in the last seven years.

Calculating damages is far from an exact science. The more complex and nastier storms are – like Milton and Helene – the longer it takes, Smith said. Damage is spread over different places and often a much larger area, with wind damage in some places and flood damage elsewhere. Helene, in particular, caused widespread flooding and in places not used to it. Estimates for those storms from private firms in recent days vary and are incomplete.

There’s three categories of damage: insured damage, uninsured damage and total economic cost. Many risk and insurance firms only estimate insured losses.

Homeowner insurance usually covers wind damage, but not flood. Special insurance has to be bought for that. Flood insurance coverage rates vary by region and storms differ on whether they cause more wind or water damage. Helene was mostly water damage, which is less likely to be covered, while Milton had a good chunk of wind damage.

Of the top 10 costliest hurricanes as compiled by insurance giant Swiss Re – not including Helene or Milton yet – insured damage is about 44% of total costs.

But with Helene, Aon’s Dickson estimated that only 5% of victims had insurance coverage for the type of damage they got. He estimated $10 billion in insured damage so doing the math would put total damage in the $100 billion to $200 billion range, which he called a bit high but in the ballpark. Insured losses for Milton are in the $50 billion to $60 billion range, he said.

With Helene, Swiss Re said less than 2% of Georgia households have federal flood insurance, with North Carolina and South Carolina at 3% and 9%. In North Carolina’s Buncombe County, where more than 57 people died from Helene’s flooding, less than 1% of the homes are covered by federal flood insurance, the agency said.

Risk modeling by Moody’s, the financial services conglomerate, put a combined two-storm total damage estimate of $20 billion to $34 billion.

Karen Clark and Company, a disaster modeling firm that uses computer simulations superimposed on storm and insurance data, wouldn’t give total damage estimates for the storms. But the company figured insured losses alone were $36 billion for Milton and $6.4 billion for Helene.

“The economic losses are going up because we’re putting more infrastructure and housing in harm’s way,” said University of South Carolina’s Susan Cutter, co-director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute, who added that climate change also plays a role. “Human losses and deaths are going down because people are being a little bit more vigilant about paying attention to preparedness and getting out of harm’s way.”

Much of the damage is because of flooding. Studies show that hurricanes are getting wetter because of the buildup of heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Basic physics dictates that clouds hold 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit, and that falls as rain.

“There is scientific agreement that floods and flooding from these hurricanes is becoming more frequent and more severe. So it is likely that we’re going to be seeing a higher frequency of storms like Helene in the future,” said Karen Clark, who founded her namesake firm. “It’s not really an insurance issue because it’s not privately insured. This is really a societal issue and political question. How do we want to deal with this?”

Clark and several of the experts said it’s time for society to think about where it builds, where it lives and if it should just leave dangerous areas and not rebuild, a concept called “managed retreat.”

“At what point do you as an individual continue to build, rebuild, rebuild and rebuild versus saying ‘OK, I’ve had enough’,” Cutter said.

And when it comes to flood insurance, many homeowners in risky areas find it’s too expensive, so they don’t buy it, Clark said. But when a storm hits them, she said “all of us as taxpayers, we’re going to pay it because we know there are going to be federal dollars coming into those areas to help people rebuild. So all taxpayers, we’re actually paying for people to live in risky areas.”