Every year I say it* but this year I am doing it. I am going to try and watch a spooky movie everyday between now and Halloween. Spooky season being abut September 15th to November 1st. I won't do a post per movie but here is a mega thread of the season. Its a long one!
Smile-Its The Ring, which was already a re-hash. It had a neat marketing campaign (what with the cardboard cutouts of smiling people placed in random places like MLB playoff games) but its rather paint by numbers. The one striking scene comes at the very end when the villain shows its true form in a direct full shot of an unusual sort of monster. Mid movie
Signs-Only thing gets under my skin more than aliens are living dolls. I remember being really spooked to see this one back in the day but my son is now all into the unexplained so we gave it a shot. I did not remember much save the one scene (the TV scene from Brazil) that is still excellent even when you know the result. It really drops off in later half once all tension is gone and becomes a sort of one room chase movie.
The Neon Demon-Snoozy movie that thinks it has a lot to say but is quite predictable. Thinner, Black Swan, and Suspira with just better looking people. Lot of neat people in it and wow Jenna Malone is topless in one scene. 2003 version of me would have loved that. Look at that!
Friday the 13th: Part 2-These movies have such a complicated lore that always forget this one is a very clean direct sequel. Same movie as the first. I always think best part is five ten minutes with the apartment scene and several fake out scares. Then the title card the explodes. I literally LOL
The Host-my exposure to Korean media has been this movie, Squid Game, Parasite, Pororo the Penguin, and Tayo the Little Bus. I remember this movie getting a lot of hype back in the day. The monster effects are dated and less of a monster film than a horror of our sick sad world.
Critters-The video store back home had a big cardboard display movie promo thing of this in the back and holy shit was I scared of that section. Watched this with my children who laughed at the monsters which are beyond the wall goofy.
The Cabin in the Woods- A rewatch albeit have not seen it since it came out. I am very glad this movie exists and how it homages and lampoon so many tropes. If you have never seen it then come in with no background, please!
Also, holy smokes, Anna Hutchinson is in this! In a lead role! She was Lily the Yellow Power Rangers in Jungle Fury! Did not realize that until now.
No One Will Save You- It's cottage core Signs. The heroine even wears a flowing frilled night gown as she runs from aliens in the misty moonlight. Sincerely enjoyed this film even with the tacked on B plot. No jump scares instead relying on a clear cut dread. Also it's about an hour and ten minutes before anyone says anything in this movie. It's all grunts, moans and screams (phrasing. It's not that kind of movie) for most of this. Fire in the Sky vibes also which scares me endlessly as a youth.
Goosebumps (Hulu 2023 version) I adored the book series as a youth. Every time that Troll or Scholastic book order form came to our class I scanned to get the newest one. When the original show came on I was hyped. And the material never was solid, even by YA standards, but I you are reading this blog it is because I wrote my own Goosebumps fan fictions and knockoffs on sheets of loose leaf paper.
Anyway, this series (A cheat, I know. Not a movie) is great. Its not ashamed of its source material (like the 2017 Power Rangers movie) but does bring it to modern TV sensibilities. Its an anthology with Elm Street vibes (The sins of earlier generations visit their children) and not too scary. Its also...wholesome but in United Colors of Beneton way instead of Family Circus kitsch.
Note: I did not realize this was a series releasing episodes weekly. So I watched as many as I could be 10/31/23
Five Nights at Freddy's: Ok, so, I only know about this because its some sort of horror game popular with kids and a previous job I had involved being a digital admin for a K-8 school. We had this program that sat on the student's Chromebooks and let us see their viewing and browsing history. A lot of FNAF stuff. Lot of hentai and ASMR as well.
Even my own children knew about it and we had to see it! I truly felt at my most old man watching something I had no clue about save "haunted Chuck E Cheese."
Anyway...this movie is bad. Maybe if I played the games but it can't stand on even hackneyed plot points. The animatronic puppets, which seem like they were done in practical effects, do look good. And Matthew Lillard is in it as a villain!
Skinamarink-This movie made me angry. I had the same feeling I felt after leaving Blair Witch Project and asking my friends Bernie and Germain (Bernie had a car and Germain was the friend who was part of another friend group tangentially connected by Bernie) if we had just been tricked. This movie would have been much better had it been 10 minutes. Instead its an hour of...nothing. It could be something but in theory I could do a standing triple back flip! And just because I can't does not make me somehow an auteur gymnast. I am glad they made this movie and it has its hype but not for me.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre-Never seen the OG one and aside from the Leatherface mask and chainsaws don't know much. Ill be damned it does not lose a beat. It would have been wild to see this in the 70s. It had to have the feeling you were watching something truly beyond comprehension. I was most shocked by how content it was in its wanton weirdness. The dinner scene with just every bonkers prop on the table. Grandpa and how he is both the world's worst and somehow most terrifying vampire.
*To no one who can listen.
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