I have three other articles explaining what I do and why I do it every year. Feel free to read them if you’re really in the spirit of the season. 2018. 2019. 2020. The thing I haven’t gotten around to talking about is how different every year feels at the end. I try to watch capital H Horror movies but there are a lot of branches to the horror tree. Thrillers, comedies, and sci-fi monster movies all incoming.
I write this article, most of it, on October 31st. I make notes, try to find gifs, and write some of the blurbs along the way, but the bulk of what you’re about to read over like nine google docs pages, which is longer than anything I wrote for a whole ass college degree in communications, I wrote in one night. That allows me to reflect on the different kinds of movies I saw this year. What did I learn this year?
- I caught eight new releases this year, which is way above last year, but it’s going to be unfair to compare anything to 2020. It was bolstered by 3 Fear Streets alone but also there is a new timetable in the industry for how quick movies can move from theaters to our homes.
- I’m starting to get pretty loose with what I’ll call horror. I’ve always been happy to include thrillers, or Hitchcock, or comedies that happen to include monsters, but they seemed to come up more often this year. I watched more movies with people this year and had to soften up the definition a few times. I promise to get more to my roots in 2022.
- A lot of remakes man. The movie industry as a whole gets grief for not having new ideas, and quality horror is in a sort of renaissance, but my favorite genre can be just as predictable and rebootable as Spider-Man or Batman.
- Speaking of remakes and sequels, I watched two Halloweens. And I liked the old one more. Why did I? Let’s start the real list and find out.
October 1: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
The seventh installment of Halloween. For newcomers to the list, I’ve been rock solid in watching a horror movie every day of October for seven years now. For my money there are two Core Texts when it comes to horror franchises and I’m going through the serieses one by one each year. And I start every year with the reason for the season, Michael Myers. The past three years of Thorn Trilogy have been tough (even though I was rewarded with a little Paul Rudd in Halloween 6, as a treat) but it’s ret-con time! 20 Years Later serves as a not-so-direct sequel to Halloween II. Jamie Lee Curtis is back for closure once and for all against her boogeyman brother. And then she was back again for the embarrassing sequel. And then came back again when it was ret-con time yet again in the recent Blumhouse Timeline.
October 2: What We Do in the Shadows
Sure he’s got an Oscar win and an $800 million dollar Marvel film under his belt now, but Taika Waititi was once just the indie director from New Zealand; with one of the most unique feeling horror comedies in movie history. Fans of Korg, and Hitler, and IG-11 from The Mandalorian know he appears in his own stuff, and here he’s teamed up with Jemaine Clement. Which reminds me, Bo Burnham aside, Albi the Racist Dragon is my favorite comedy song ever.
Wait, did I type “fans of Hitler”?
October 3: Fear Street 1994
There is a new horror franchise in town. Make a turn after The Last House on the Left, down Elm Street for a block and you’ll stumble on Fear Street! The first installment introduces us to a town in crisis with itself. Two sides; Eagleton and Pawnee, sorry Springfield and Shelbyville, okay whatever Sunnyvale and Shadyside WOW that is even more obtuse than the sit-com examples. Anyway, the first movie stands alone the best and sets up enough killers to keep me coming back for more. So I will!
October 4: Fear Street 1978
Netflix could have released this series one per year like normal horror sequels, but just like they didn’t make us wait a week for the new Squid Games episode, we can binge these three movies back-to-back-to-back. 1978 is my favorite of the bunch, but probably because the slashers from this era are my favorite. The middle chapter also toes the line between connecting the universe and telling a full movie on its own the best.
October 5: Fear Street 1666
Very underrated part of this trilogy is how the soundtracks match perfectly the era of horror they are playing with. Overrated part is how Easter Egg-y they try to be. Maybe if it had been a year since I’d seen 1978 I would have needed flashbacks, and the poor director probably didn’t know he was releasing on the Netflix model. Especially because we got those cool trailers at the end of each one. By the time we got to Part 3, it spent half the movie in 1666 while trying to get back to the main storyline for the other half. What began as a strength of the series, boggs it down by the end, and almost gives too climactic of an ending to allow room for sequels.
October 6: Zodiac
Zodiac was maybe the first movie I saw that I could recognize was a great movie. And then I didn’t watch it again for years, but today I was inspired by the Zodiac making his way into newspapers (albeit online now-a-days) once again, and I watched it the way Fincher would want it to be watched in 2021. In about three installments during the course of my day. What I would tell people for years after seeing it the first time was, it’s long but good. But the House of Cards and Mindhunter guy made a three-part series for screen in 2007 with three main characters. There’s the All the President’s Men journalism chapter starring Downey Jr., the Columbo cat-and-mouse chase starring Ruffalo, and finally the Serial true crime obsessed civilian solver starring crazed Jake Gyllenhaal. So I was right all those years ago. Zodiac is a great movie. But an even better limited series.
October 7: Scream
The world needs a new Scream. Today’s franchises are so muddied with internet reactions and digging up old actors to reprise their roles that we need a good meta-commentary to rip them to shreds. Or Stab them. Like the fake movie in Scream 2 that Omar Epps was watching. Anyway we’ve been living in a jokey movie world for so long, that it’s impossible to give the original Scream the credit it deserves. Top 5 most important Horror Movie of all time.
October 8: Cabin Fever (2002)
Eli Roth and Jon Rothstein pay their bills for the year in one month of work. Sure it’s kind of a sloppy movie, but it’s a directorial debut from a guy you can feel loves what he is doing. As much as 90’s horror like Scream shaped my childhood, this is the era where I was old enough to be watching horror movies. Thank you Eli for being passionate about what you do. And thanks for what you do being so damn disgusting.
October 9: Malignant
When it comes to 2021 releases I will either write too much or too little (or an entire review, click on the links!). For Malignant, I don’t want to spoil a single thing. The end was worth the watch for me, especially just picking it on some random night on HBO Max. Would it be worth a $10 theater ticket and popcorn? Maybe not. Is it worth a couple bucks at Redbox in a month when it leaves the streaming service? Sure. Will I be canceling HBO Max after I watch Dune? Definitely.
October 10: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S
Every so often in October I make the mistake of having a girlfriend. I can wrap my brain around carving time out for a movie every day, but for some reason I can’t comprehend spending time with someone that I really dig every day. So how do I kill two birds with one stone with a squeamish girl? DCOM’s.
October 11: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2
More than one DCOM apparently. There is a surprising amount of inspiration from actual zombie movies in these dumb musicals. I mean I love both High School Musical and Night of the Living Dead, but I can’t imagine the Venn Diagram where they cross includes many more people.
October 12: Blood Simple
I didn’t think the Coen’s really made a horror movie, but this is in Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments and the AFI’s 100 Years…100 Thrills, so I gave it a whirl. P.S., Speed, Star Wars, and The Godfather are on that thrillers list from the American Film Institute, so that’s the last time I use them as a guide for what to watch in October. But today was an exercise in how one comes up with 31 different movies to watch every single day. It was a miss from a scary perspective but a big hit for my overall movie literacy. This was a first film for the Coens, Frances McDormand…eh hem, Three Time Academy Award Winning Actress Frances McDormand, and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld. And it takes inspiration from other grittier independent exploitation films that usually make up this list. All in all, not mad I chose it.
October 13: Last Night in Soho
New release: longer blurb time.
The more I get to know the process that goes behind movie making, the more I start to appreciate what movies are instead of complaining about what they aren’t. Edgar Wright is obviously a visionary and smarter than me about movies. He came into this one wanting to tell a modern ghost story close to home and he did that. But the ghosts that are haunting this apartment in a small London district aren’t the old gothic sad ghosts or the vengeful stupid American ghosts. These are the real horrors of the good old days so many blind modern outcasts pine for.
But once you get the obvious irony of a girl who loves the 1960’s being exposed to the real horrors our society has at least tried to improve upon, there isn’t much left to the movie. Wright had one cool concept, a soundtrack, and some sick visuals on his vision board and just went for it. I also breathed a sigh of relief with about 15 minutes left because then it finally delivered on the spooky vibes it was sold on. I got to see Soho early because I’m going to write about it (and here I am writing, and for the record it was good. 3.5 stars on Letterboxd.) but for most of the movie I was worried I’d have to drive an hour home and stick an actual horror movie in the ole VCR to count for this list. Beyond the given horror of the situation of being a vulnerable woman in the 60’s, the movie does end with some spooks and scares. And a killer twist.
An original story about how nostalgia and propping up the media of the past isn’t without its moral dilemmas.
Oh and ghosts.
October 14: Deliverance
I didn’t plan it, but this won’t be the last time a John Boorman flick shows up this month. This is one of those core horror texts that once you’ve seen it, you start noticing its influence in a lot of other movies. As gritty as advertised and one I should work into my rotation more often. It’s just not one I’m hog wild for.
October 15: The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
The Joel Schumacher one. Look, I know it’s not scary, but The Phantom is a classic universal monster. Lon Chaney Sr. donned the white mask a mere 15 years after the original novel was published. But some of that horror was lost in the next 80 years. There is a shell of gothic scenery, but nothing more. I’m also not above suggesting other, better analyses of movies in my list, and Lindsay Ellis knows her Phantom.
October 16: The Thing (2011)
A rough back to back days of not-as-good-remakes easily available to stream. This is…fine and I’m not even one that holds the original up as Horror Canon. It’s my fourth favorite Carpenter being generous. By the dawn of the 2010’s decade, every horror property was ripe for a remake. At least this one came in with a big idea. Twist, it’s actually a prequel GASP!
October 17: The Curse of Frankenstein
Maybe it’s because Night of the Living Dead came out in the late 60’s in black and white and maybe it’s because horror as a genre has wildly different budgets and production quality across movies. Heck maybe it’s because I am young and just didn’t see this age of movies for myself. Whatever it is, I am blown away that the Hammer Horror era began in 1957 with this version of Frankenstein. The special effects, the gore, the Christopher Lee. It all looks so dang good.
October 18: The Fog
I’ve worked in local radio, and any radio owner would kill for the ratings that KAB has. It’s the only thing anyone is ever listening to in this movie. A year before Halloween 2 released, the star and director/composer who said they didn’t want to do any sequels, got together for a new unique horror project. A classic scary coastal story where the fog brings in the ghosts of seamen lost to the rocky shore. Before franchises consumed horror, the great directors were just making stuff. I liked this stuff. But 41 years later there have been 11 more Michael Myers flicks and just one meddling remake of The Fog.
October 19: Halloween Kills
Here’s a very Pretentious Movie Critic thing for me to say, but I liked the concept of this movie better than its execution.
What if I told you that part two of the trilogy would focus on the villain. Make his backstory and motivations clearer to the audience. Have him kick ass and take names for an hour and a half and at the end of the day, he wins. There is in-fighting in our group of good guys and the hero is at her lowest point. It would be text book screenwriting. Good job Halloween franchise you’re finally thinking more than one movie ahead at a time.
The problem is, it just wasn’t a good movie. Like laughably bad at times.
And yet it was made with *intention*. They threw in the Season of the Witch masks, called him “The Shape” and “The Boogeyman”, and oh boy those opening credits. They knew which nostalgia buttons to press and those parts were fun. Yet they totally overplayed Michael’s head tilt, how much anyone would care about Tommy Doyle (quick poll Paul Stephen Rudd or Anthony Michael Hall? Choose!), and the body count. They really really overplayed the kills. Halloween (1978) is scary with four or five on screen deaths tops. Halloween Kills sure lives up to its title with a lot of…kills. Like two of them were creative and none of them were actually scary. By the mid-point, I was watching an action comedy with an invulnerable hero. Not even close to a horror movie.
October 20: The Exorcist II: The Heritic
The Exorcist franchise got insanely lucky that their child actor from the first one grew up into a good actress and hot. In the late 70’s you only needed one of those things to headline a horror movie. But this movie was such a disappointment at the time that it deprived us from Linda Blair: Scream Queen. I mean yeah, she was in some stuff, but it could have been more. Also this movie is not actually terrible. Sure it gets boring while we’re chasing James Earl Jones through the jungle and gets a little much when we head back to the bedroom of the original for the climax; but it holds up on its own. (Especially when you don’t hold the first one as one of the great movies of all time *ducks*)
October 21: Antlers
Here’s another 2021 release, but this one was so good I had to write a whole article about it. Click Here for my thoughts on this feature length adaptation of a Lore podcast episode. It was just what I needed in the middle of a lot of Halloween schlock.
October 22: Scream 2
Here’s the thing, these are the most watchable horror movies ever made. When I sit down with a group during this marathon month, I *know* I can pop these in and rail through the Scream franchise. Nerds and casuals, horror buffs and wimps all can unite under this series’ umbrella. And the series keeps growing. Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette are all coming back for part 5 next year. (sorry, spoilers that Dewey DOESN’T die. Yet.)
October 23: Lake Placid
I couldn’t pass up a great Betty White gif, but I should have used the scene where we first see the croc. Every natural creature feature owes something to Jaws and none of them are going to be Jaws, so you have to do something new. For their angle Lake Placid chose a misogynistic crocodile lover Oliver Platt comic relief. Oh but also they had a better looking monster. The first scene where you see The Shark in Jaws has to be disappointing because it was built up so much, and there’s the famous behind the scenes story of the shark not being good enough and forcing them to show less, adding to the horror blah blah blah. But The Croc here is used sparingly and built up in the first half pretty well too and instead of a Disneyland animatronic looking bitch leaning on a boat, we get an impressive jump scare tearing into a roaring grizzly bear! In 1999!
Also I forgot about the Deliverance reference. It’s always a little weird when movies awkowldege that movies exist (okay except for in Scream) but hey I watched that this year!
October 24: Ghoulies
A few years ago I watched Gremlins and now I’m cursed to watch a not-as-good Gremlins every year. On a scale from Hobgoblins to Critters, this is like a 6. The creatures get going in this knock-off because when a group of 80’s teens have to pick between charades, strip poker, and performing a dark ritual from the necronomicon, you know they’re about to summon up some ghoulies! It’s movies like this that just oooooze the 80’s that make you wonder what stereotypical teens from 2021 even look like. It’s TikTok right? Yeah, probably tiktok. Do the youths capitalize it like that? Am I old?
October 25: Willy’s Wonderland
When YouTube videos of other people playing Five Nights at Freddy’s blew up like five years ago Hollywood did what Hollywood does and green lit a movie without understanding the hype at all. And Blumhouse even got involved. Then as years went by, creator Scott Cawthon built books, and sequels, and mini-games, and Lore to go with these simple indie games. How did a jump scare game with three total buttons and a silent protagonist blow up to a whole corner of the internet?
Anyway this isn’t that movie. It was rushed into production to take advantage of the hype. But hey, it was still pretty good.
October 26: Rope
– A totally normal interaction between two totally straight bros.
This is the feature length version of Hitchcock’s quote about suspense coming from showing the audience a bomb under the table. Only this is a dead body in a hope chest. And only the audience knows about it, until Jimmy Stewart shows up and starts Columbo-ing our heroes. Villains? Rope is all about long takes of long conversations where people can talk about morality and philosophy; whether it is so bad for the superior man to kill and if he should get those urges out. These white boys in a Hitchcock movie based on a stage play from the 20’s really invented The Purge didn’t they.
October 27: Sleepaway Camp
There has never in horror history been a wider gap between the quality of special effects/directing and the quality of acting. There are well built scares around great looking horror all surrounded by some of the peak of comically bad 80’s horror acting. Add in a shock value ending and you’ve got the perfect formula for a cult classic that will last the decades. This is solidly in that B-Tier that is a must watch for people getting into horror. You know, right after they watch all the actually good movies like The Shining, or Halloween, or modern classics like You’re Next. What’s Next?
October 28: You’re Next
Scream was formative and I’ve watched two of them this month, but every horror doesn’t need a cold open before we launch into it. And by the way, the title, which is great, *only* refers to the first kill. Especially after the home invasion sensation of The Strangers, You’re Next tried to market as these cool killers with cool masks just going from home to home. In true When a Stranger Calls fashion, the movie stops being scary when we find out that the killer is…just a guy. With motivation. Which is the OPPOSITE of what made The Strangers scary.
October 29: Friday the 13th Part 7
Lol at the “previously on Friday the 13th” ass opening. Kane Hodder IS Jason, and yet his first one is the 7th in the series and maybe the worst one. Also those girls insulted the Carrie stand-in by calling her Marilyn Munster. Marilyn was the normal one in the family. And gorgeous. That is not a diss.
October 30: Hocus Pocus
When Saturday night lines up with the day before Halloween there will be a few Halloween parties to go to. For a certain generation, my generation, Hocus Pocus will always be the ultimate October party movie. Throw it on in the background, take a break from whatever food or games you’ve got going on when Bette Midler gets on stage for I’ll Put a Spell on You, and then just enjoy the holiday ambiance. Everyone between the ages of 25-40 has seen this 10 times. Perfect party accompaniment, especially for a holiday not known for its carols like that show stealer in December.
October 31: Psycho
After four years writing the same article, what more is there to say about the greatest horror/thriller of all time. Every year I worry it will get old and every year it doesn’t disappoint. Oh and every year this article goes longer than I intend when I sit down to start. Thanks for sticking with me all month long.
Happy Halloween!