By this point, we’re all familiar with the prevailing conventional wisdom that looking at screens before bed is bad for us; it is one of the great sources of societal guilt, since we nevertheless all use our devices before bed. However, on further exploration of that notion, we’ve learned that things aren’t so cut and dried — there are a variety of perspectives on devices before bed, including the straightforward idea that if using a screen before bed relaxes you, that will certainly helps with the quality of your sleep.
With that in mind, we’ve created a set of entertainment recommendations that align with what we’ve learned from sleep scientists. Anything you watch before bed should be “low-challenge showsâ€: nothing too dynamic, too scary, or too engrossing, lest you become invested and delay your bedtime. You want to avoid “agitation,†so no social media, or porn, or anything that would otherwise contribute to “performance anxiety,†in the words of sleep doctor Dr. Janet Kennedy, and nothing with lots of characters or intricate plots to follow. Media that doesn’t contain a clean end point (anything highly serialized, plus basically all social media) is bad. We made three lists (for TV shows, movies, and documentaries) that meet that criteria. Horror, meanwhile, runs counter to every single scientific recommendation — and yet we still can’t stop watching it at bedtime. Since we’re all broken people, here’s a list of scary stuff that may or may not help you get a good night’s sleep.
HBO Max
Doctor Sleep
If you fall asleep at precisely the right time, Doctor Sleep is just about how Ewan McGregor is a very sad man with a beard and how hot Rebecca Ferguson is in a little hat. — Carrie Wittmer
Ex Machina
If you watch Ex Machina with the volume low and doze off in the first 20 minutes, it is a movie about Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac hanging out in a really cool house. — C.W.
The Happening
Not much happens! — C.W.
The Night House
The scariest movie I’ve seen in years, with a strong focus on the inherent horror of waking up in the middle of the night and not recognizing quite where you are — or who you are. If you’re into that, sweet dreams! — Roxana Hadadi
The Witch
Before things really start to take a turn in Robert Eggers’s feature-film debut, The Witch is just about some boring Puritans building a farm. What could possibly go wrong? I hope there’s not a crazy goat named Black Phillip or anything. — C.W.
Amazon
Annihilation
Annihilation is a visual wonder, and you’re in for a good night’s rest as long as you turn your brain completely off before you start processing the film’s challenging themes. — C.W.
Firestarter
If it is possible to get so angry that you fall asleep, the remake of Stephen King’s Firestarter starring Zac Efron will do the trick. The acting is so stiff that you will develop absolutely no emotional investment into the characters and sleep instead. — C.W.
Life
Life is a good movie when you pay attention, but let Ryan Reynolds bore you to sleep before things get too interesting. — C.W.
Open Water
Some people like to drift off to the sounds of the ocean. Open Water is the horror equivalent. — C.W.
Suspiria (2018)
Is there anything more relaxing than horror, ballet, Dakota Johnson, and Tilda Swinton as an old man? If horror is your go-to, you might not need any coffee tomorrow. — C.W.
The X-FilesÂ
The spookiest procedural of all time also happens to be the sexiest, an excellent combo to get your busy little brain to rest. — C.W.
Hulu
Blade II
Kudos to Guillermo del Toro for his commitment to vampire nightclubs, which are central locations in the fantastic, infamous opening of the first Blade film and in a major action sequence in Blade II, del Toro’s portrait of vampirism caught between ancient ways and evolved brutality. Everyone is either fighting or fucking in that pivotal fight scene in Blade II, and if you need an alternative to sheep, you could try tallying Blade’s body count instead. — R. Hadadi
Hannibal
Hannibal is part procedural, part horror at its horniest and gayest, the perfect recipe for a good night’s sleep. — C.W.
Peacock
They/Them
Kevin Bacon and Anna Chlumsky are in this. That is all you need to know, and hopefully that is all you’ll ever know because you will be so bored and so annoyed that you lose yourself in slumber immediately. — C.W.
Tubi
The NightmareÂ
Rodney Ascher’s The Nightmare is a fantastically horrifying 2015 documentary about a bunch of people who suffer from sleep paralysis, i.e., the sensation that they are being stalked by malevolent figures who sit on their chests, torment and paralyze them, and destroy their every unconscious moment. In the film, one of the subjects talks about how a friend “caught†the malady of sleep paralysis via the power of suggestion alone; in other words, watching this documentary carries significant risk of ruining your entire life. I recently watched it before bed and had one of the best nights of sleep of my 30s. Does this make me a serial killer? Yes. — Rachel Handler