You wouldn’t know it from the weather in Brooklyn, but the time has come for another Halloween Movie Fest. Or, as my great-great-grandather always used to say, “Thank God, it’s Halloween Movie Fest!” Or, TGIHMF. (How would I trademark that? I feel like it’s definitely going to catch on with a wider public.)
HMF is my favorite annual glorious waste of my own time. I really need it this year, because the world is falling apart and depression is a fucking asshole.
I am so ready for this excursion into the familiar world of Halloween and its related cinema, a tradition that began for me in 2009.
I love Halloween, with its deep reliance on story and myth. For me, it’s like an entire holiday dedicated to telling ghost stories around a fire on a chilly autumn evening. HMF has come to be a means of extending that feeling throughout more of the month.
For previous fests, I would select a specific number of films and watch a movie a day. [That’s always the format for Another Day, Another Movie]. However, this year I’ve chosen 31 films, one for every day of the month, and I’ll get through as many as I can. I hereby promise all four people who read this blog that I will watch no fewer than 21 films. However, I doubt my schedule will allow me to watch a movie a day for the entire month of October. I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try, but odds aren’t great.
The 2017 list includes some straight scary fare, a few horror comedies (because obviously), some lighter Halloween-friendly films, and Room 237, a documentary about interpretations of The Shining and the intense devotion to the film’s many mysteries (I might be stretching my own premise a bit with that last one).
19 of the 31 are films I’ve seen before, so obviously I’m leaning into some favorites I’m in the mood to rewatch. Many are films I loved after seeing them for the first time during previous Halloween Movie Fests.
Here are the films, in no particular order:
- Shaun of the Dead
- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
- The Shining
- Room 237
- Under the Shadow
- Don’t Breathe
- The Void
- XX
- 28 Days Later
- What We Do in the Shadows
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Tetsuo: The Iron Man
- It (2017)
- The Haunting
- House
- Phantasm
- Beetlejuice
- Dead of Night
- Pet Sematary
- Housebound
- Pontypool
- Cabin in the Woods
- The Babadook
- Let the Right One In
- It Follows
- The Evil Dead
- Evil Dead II
- Army of Darkness
- Coraline
- The Devil’s Backbone
- Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some movies to watch.
