Guys… it’s October!!?! Like, October of the year 2015. I can’t really wrap my brain around where the time goes. I don’t like how fast the months fly by. However, there are a few very big reasons why the arrival of October is good news for me.
1. It’s autumn!
2. Seriously, though, fall is here.
3. It’s time for another installment of Halloween Movie Fest.
I love Halloween so much. Most years I’m working on Halloween night so I don’t go to any Halloween parties or even have a costume, but I still look forward to the season with much excitement. It’s a holiday where my love of dark, magical, haunted stories finds its proper home. Not to mention, it’s a holiday properly celebrated at night, which is where I do the majority of my living and feel most at home.
My affection for Halloween is evidenced by all the previous installments of HMF (links to previous installments can be found here).
Now it’s back for its sixth year!
As always, the list is made up of films I’ve never seen before along with a few favorites I’m revisiting.
Not all of these movies will fit with everyone’s definition of horror, but that’s mostly because lots of people have incorrect ideas of how you define horror. Being included in the horror genre simply means that a story is drawing from a broad and diverse group of myths, tropes, and archetypes to induce horror and terror. That doesn’t mean they require jump scares or gore (although they often include them). Said horror and terror doesn’t have to be about dismembered bodies or monsters or ghosts and whatnot, and even when there are those elements the best examples of horror often use dismembered bodies and monsters and ghosts and whatnot as metaphors to engage more terrifying things like grief, loneliness, violence, and our own inevitable deaths. Also, as with all genres, the tent is large and the boundaries are flexible, so now things appropriately fall under the horror umbrella even when they aren’t trying to scare us at all, but are simply using the tropes and concepts of the genre. Countless times I hear people say something “isn’t horror” because it didn’t scare them personally. That’s not how it works. What scares us is wildly subjective, and also changes across times and cultures.
These are all horror films, end of story. As such, the common bond of the films I watch here is that these are all stories that fit into the Halloween ethos in one way or another.
Here are the films, not necessarily in the order they will be watched:
- The Babadook
- It Follows
- A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
- Dawn of the Dead [1978]
- Day of the Dead
- The House of the Devil
- The Haunting [1963]
- Witching and Bitching
- Frenzy
- Byzantium
- The Wicker Man [1973]
- Kairo
- The Blair Witch Project
- Dead Snow 2
- The Devil’s Backbone
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- Crimson Peak
I tried to make the list varied, as usual. We have ghosts, vampires, zombies, monsters, cults, and run of the mill murderers. It’s a little weighted toward newer films, but I tried to at least include films from several decades. Also, I’m revisiting some Guillermo del Toro films in preparation for the release of Crimson Peak on the 16th.
I wanted to include more of my favorite films from previous years but this list is already probably a little foolhardy in terms of how much movie viewing time I’ll actually have. Maybe I’ll somehow find some bonus movie time for stuff like Pontypool, Let The Right One In, Shaun of the Dead, etc..
Brian
YES.