Arts Ahead: What's On In London 27 October - 2 November

In a week dominated by hasty Halloween costume-buying, we're pleased to bring you other options for filling your free time. So you can head out, instead of hiding behind the sofa on Saturday night with all the lights off, in case some pesky kids knock on the door demanding some sweets...

Be There First: London Shows Opening

If you're desperate for that Halloween horror fix, you'll find it at the Hammer Horror Festival which kicks off today: ghost buses, free exhibitions, readings, and the all-important screenings at the Curzon Soho, Shaftesbury Avenue and Lexi Cinema, Kensal Rise.

In other exhibition news, the "official" Michael Jackson exhibition opens tomorrow at The O2 (will this be scarier than the Hammer stuff?); Points of View opens at the British Library on Friday (cool 19th century photos) and you can celebrate the Day of the Dead at the British Museum on Sunday: it's free.

Theatre openings include new jazz musical, Little Fish at the Finborough Theatre tonight: it's about a woman learning to survive in NYC. Tomorrow sees an erotically charged new version of Bruckner's Pains of Youth (director, Katie Mitchell; writer Martin Crimp) opening at the National.

From Thursday, you can catch the Michael Clark Company paying homage to rock's holy trinity, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, at the Barbican. It's a dance piece combining classical with a "twisted contemporary sensibility that embraces embarrassment, doubt and fear, as well as grace, virtue and control", we're told. Or you could see Mrs Klein, Nicholas Wright's play about a relationship between a psychoanalyst's and her daughter, being revived at the Almeida.

And on Friday, the Suspense Puppetry Festival for adults we warned you about opens at the Little Angel Theatre. Finally, Origin of the Species opens at the ever-brilliant Arcola Theatre on Friday too: prehistoric skeletons causing comedy capers when they come back to life...

Last Chance to See: London Shows Closing

It's all over for another year at the BFI London Film Festival this Thursday. We think it's all been rather foxy and exciting. Hope you had fun? Let us know if you have any particular highlights...

Cirkus Cirkor: Inside Out closes at the Peacock Theatre on Saturday; Mark Morris' Dance Group jetés out of Sadler's Wells on Sunday.

And Lucy Prebble's sell-out success Enron closes at the Royal Court on Saturday - but it'll be back in the West End soon enough, so you can book now if you'd like to see it at the Noel Coward Theatre next year... Enjoy.