It’s Halloween Time again, which means that movie theatres, cable channels, and streaming services unleash a tide from their respective horror movie libraries. The seasonal phenomenon only has one point of comparison, and that can be found in the avalanche of Christmas movies that pour out on the Hallmark Channel, Great American Family, and so on. Bucking the trend, free streamer Tubi recently decided to make the bulk of their horror catalog available year-round. That prompts the question: Who says a genre belongs only to one month?
Granted, Halloween and all it entails make for a sensible marketing moment to drop a horror film. But some of the most enduring horror classics were released in entirely different seasons. The 1931 one-two punch of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein hit big screens in February and November, respectively. 1991’s Silence of the Lambs won five Oscars after opening (hilariously) on February 14. And the greatest horror movie of all time, The Exorcist, arrived the day after Christmas in 1973.
Blumhouse’s huge 2026 horror hit, Obsession, opened in May (Uploaded to You Tube by Blumhouse)
On the other hand, Christmas movies do tend to get pigeon-holed into late November or December release dates. It’s a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and Elf all fit that bill. But honestly, that makes sense; the narratives all tie directly to Christmas. Outside of Halloween, only a handful of horror classics are explicitly tied to the holiday. Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Sinners . . . they just . . . happen. The events of Dracula and Frankenstein, though highly compressed in the Universal versions, actually take place over several months.
I understand why marketing folks have decided that October is for horror and December is for Christmas. But what about the other genres? What would it look like if we decided films only got released in their category month?
January: January’s cold, you’re in a post-holiday hangover, new semesters are starting . . . this is a perfect time for Drama. Bonus points for European imports, especially heavy Swedish fare, preferably starring Stellan Skarsgård. (Seriously, the man can do anything; he’s made at least five films with Lars Von Trier and gave the best monologue in the history of Star Wars.)
February: Romance, of course. Presently, romantically leaning films come out across the calendar year, featuring works by everyone from Colleen Hoover to, well, Colleen Hoover. But you could put the versatility of the genre on display for 28 days with romantic dramas, romcoms, and, of course, romantic musicals! (Note: Hollywood doesn’t make enough musicals per year to really take up a month, so here’s a coda: Musicals get released in the month that’s closest to the particular musical’s genre. West Side Story would be a February, while Rent would be for whatever month movies about destructive friend groups fall into.)
March: With the promise of spring thaw comes . . . Comedy! After all, what’s funnier than March in the United States, when the seasons have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
April: As a tribute to the original release month of 2001: A Space Odyssey, April gets Science Fiction. Maybe there should be an additional rule that Christopher Nolan only releases his films in April now, as they’re either science fiction classics out of the gate or completely immersed in pushing the science of the medium forward without using CGI.
The biggest super-hero movie of all time, Avengers Endgame, bucked the May trend for an April date in 2019. (Uploaded to YouTube by Marvel Entertainment)
May: Since the release of the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire Spider-Man in 2002, May has belonged to super-hero movies. The comic book industry even inaugurated their annual Free Comic Book Day in conjunction with that release. Just make the month official already.
June: While it’s a form and not a genre, Animation nevertheless deserves its own month. Disney, DreamWorks, other studios that start with D . . . they can all line up. AMC can even condense their recurring Studio Ghibli Fest, celebrating the anime studio of visionary Hayao Miyazaki, into June.
July: As Apu from The Simpsons once said, July is when Americans celebrate the birth of their country by blowing up small parts of it. That’s why Action makes so much sense! Stunts, car chases, and infinite explosions!
August: How about Potpourri? August can be for the genres with fewer releases in modern cinema, like Westerns, Sports, Biopics, etc. I’m sure some might make the argument that there are more Westerns than that, but this is a genre that went from 148 releases in 1935 to 10 in 2025; in fact, 2025 saw the lowest number of Westerns released since 2020, which had its own problems.
September: In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee set out from the Shire on September 23; therefore, September gets Fantasy. Whether you realize it or not, an increasing number of fantasy films are slipping briefly into theaters before heading over to streaming homes; among these are 2025’s A Knight’s War and Red Sonja. The largest number of fantasy films today are actually international co-productions, with a healthy subset of animated fare (maybe they could share with June).
October: Horror. We had that one figured out.
November: It’s Mystery! Days are shorter and shadows fall sooner, but November also marks the month in which the first Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was accepted for publication (A Study in Scarlet in 1886).
December: Of course, it’s Holiday Movies.
Overall, it’s a rather modest proposal. Then again, maybe people should just be able to watch whatever genre they want all the year round, and services should just keep them available. Although Mystery Month does sound like a good time . . .
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