Horror Movies for the Fall, Pt. III
Sorry this one's a little late y'all. I ended up getting sick for a couple weeks in September, which put me out of commission for a little bit.
But, as promised, here's a follow-up to my last batch of horror movies for the fall. Some I saw earlier this year, but the majority are new for me. Some of the older classics may surprise you, even though they've been on my "to watch" list for a good long while. It's been difficult to watch a lot of long-form content the last few years, so this has been a fun endeavor. Hopefully you're finding some good stuff amongst these selections.
My aim is to do this weekly for as long as I'm able to watch enough content leading up to, and including, the week of Halloween. I'm open to recommendations if you've got'em!
* * *
Late Night with the Devil (2024)
3/5
[Shudder]
The pacing, set design, and cinematography on this one were top-notch. The story gets marks for being interesting, as does the accurate vibe/portrayal of the era. There are some great moments, but the ending ended up being something of a disappointment for me due to its predictability. I'm sure other people will enjoy this more, but it just wasn't for me.
Great concept, mostly well-executed.
Nosferatu (1922)
4/5
[Amazon Prime]
An absolute classic of a silent film and lives in the same high stature as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari released two years prior. The silent movies aren't always a winner for a lot of people, but both really hold up. This one is inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula and contains one of the most famous scenes in horror cinema.
Some really great simple effects push this one over the edge for me. They were so early into the format that so much of this feels experimental in great ways. Playful, even. And even though it's only 90 minutes long, it will be incredibly slow for a lot of recent generations.
"Does this word not sound like the deathbird calling your name at midnight?"
Possum (2018)
3/5
[Amazon Prime]
Low on budget, but the weird factor is turned up super high on this one. It's almost better for you to go in completely blind and knowing absolutely nothing about this one before watching. Profoundly strange and tense throughout the entire movie. Sean Harris delivers an unsettling performance about generational trauma that metastasizes into something that haunts his return home to an uncle and a home that seems to be...uninhabitable, at the bare minimum.
Put on the subtitles for this one, just to be safe. Sometimes the dialect can make it hard to understand some of the dialogue. This one seemed more weird for weird's sake than anything substantial. The ending felt...forced.
Stopmotion (2024)
3/5
[Shudder]
Man...this one was something else. A real slow burn blending grief, madness, frustration, and animation together into a fun pastiche of pain. A stopmotion animator helps her stopmotion animator mother complete a final film, but then the mother ends up in the hospital. The daughter tries to continue the mother's film, but ends up moving to a new location, meets a young girl in the building, and then abandons the mother's film to work on her own new story.
I'll be honest; I started to get annoyed with certain aspects of the story until key points started becoming real clear, but it took a minute for some of them to get there. There is some impressive brutality toward the end of the film, which makes the journey worth it, but there's a pretty massive plot hole that would make so much of this nonsensical if you're not willing to suspend your disbelief.
A fine watch, but not one I'll return to.
Barbarian (2022)
4/5
[Amazon Prime]
I thought this was going to be one thing and it became something else entirely...much to my satisfaction. I really dislike predicting how things are going to go in a narrative as it tends to take all my enjoyment out of a thing. But 40 minutes into the movie had me going "oh. OH. OH SHIT. OKAY." And then it completely changed again.
This one is a fun mindfuck in three separate acts that culminates into one final combination of devastating choices, ending the movie in a solid way.
House on Haunted Hill (1999)
4/5
[Screenland Armour Theater]
I have mixed emotions about this one for two reasons: some of the CGI that shows up later in the film and the last five minutes of the movie.
A remake of the old Vincent Price flick from 1959, this is perfectly enjoyable (which is why it gets a high rating), but it loses steam a bit toward the end. I won't spoil the reveal, but careful viewers will pick up on narrative strings pretty quickly. Some great scares and some wonderful death scenes with a few great plot twists and turns to keep viewers guessing as to what's going on. Thankfully the acting is better than expected and the story is worth returning to every so often. This was my first time seeing it in a theater, which made some of the scenes so much more impactful and enjoyable.
5/5
[Amazon Prime]
Imagine, if you will, that a demon-worshipping cult of chaos gremlins came to your home and perpetrated some of the worst violence against you and your partner and then left you to die.
Then imagine you wake up, eat a 10-strip of LSD, make a magical weapon to kill these cultists (and their demons) in retribution. That's pretty much what you get with Mandy.
This was an absolutely surreal watch and I love it every time I return to it. It's Nicolas Cage at his most unhinged and in a color-grading that sticks with you long after the movie is finished. This is like if David Lynch decided to make a Noe Gaspar movie and then let the actual film saturate in blood and magic before showing anyone. Just a whole galaxy of "what the fuck is going on?" that's delicious.
5/5
[Amazon Prime]
Another Nicolas Cage-starring, color-saturated flick full of weird from the same people that brought you Mandy.
A family in the country has a substance fall from the heavens and land on their property, where it spreads physically and drastically changes everything it comes into contact with. This movie can feel like a slog until things begin happening and then it's just a wonderful rollercoaster car all the way down into the depths.
I enjoy coming back to this one for the pacing, but there is also a scene involving both the mother and the son that is....haunting...is the only word for it. It's so unbelievably haunting that it evokes a physical reaction from me every time I see it. Absolute perfection.
(14,693)
The great thing about silent films is that you can you run your own soundtrack! Did you ever catch AC mixing over Star Wars? YOU should do a mix for Nosferatu, Mr Bucho! With your catalog, I am sure that you could come up with something to keep folks engage for 90 minutes.
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