Hallooo0o0o0o0ooo!!
Happy Halloween, everyone! It's time for this year's medley of macabre movies!
Due to a variety of factors (including the constantly stressful state of the world) I haven't been in a mood to tolerate a lot of scary content this year, but I nevertheless have a decent array of films to offer you, dear friends, in case you're in the mood to watch something spooky to celebrate this delightful holiday.
As usual, each of the films to follow will be accompanied by the usual 1 - 5 rating scale for overall quality, as well as a scary/intense rating of 1 - 5 exclamation points, to be interpreted as follows:
This year's films are:
This year's classic horror movie, care of director Jordan Peele. As I've already shared, I wasn't as blown away by this movie as I was by his astonishing debut, "Get Out" (2017). That said, "Nope" definitely presents a fun twist on the alien/monster-y genre, showcases great performances, and offers some good tense moments with one or two jump scares for good measure. It may not blow you away in the way we know that Peele is capable of, but it's still reasonably fun and scary for Halloween.
Having watched this last night I'm admittedly coming in a bit hot but I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO TALKS ANY MORE TRASH ABOUT THIS MOVIE.
For those of you who have managed to remain blissfully unaware, there has been an over-abundance of gossip-y nonsense around this movie, which has bizarrely and more importantly inaccurately led people to conclude that they know enough about the film to conclude that it won't be good (??). It's almost like sexism is prompting people to assume that a lady director can't direct competently if there's any extra stuff happening while she's doing her job. And while this is only Olivia Wilde's second turn at directing, anyone who bothered to watch "Booksmart" (2019) (or who is aware of my feelings about "Booksmart") might be reasonably curious to see for themselves how such a promising directorial voice fares in her sophomore offering, and they might have at least a little faith that she would deliver despite all the background noise.
That preamble aside: I'm hoping to write more extensively on this movie to further and more stridently defend it because IT IS SO GOOD, both simply as a movie but also as riveting tale of feminist horror in the current societal era. It is consistently tense and increasingly scary, all while providing a commentary on the present-moment conditions of women in society and the forces seeking to entrap and destroy them. It is extremely well-acted in an immersive, beautifully-constructed artificial world, with little Easter eggs and tells nestled throughout to reward the attentive viewer. I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone seeking a headier yet still viscerally scary horror movie this Halloween season.
This year's documentary offering! While any of the films I commented on when I wrote about "Meru" could to some extent fit the bill for anyone wanting to watch a non-fiction scary movie, this one is probably the most similar to a conventional horror movie structure. Three friends set out on an adventure for which they are arguably way out of their depth, with extremely high stakes (and altitudes) in a battle against an indifferent and unforgiving landscape. What could go wrong?
While not scary in the conventional horror movie sense of the term, this movie is nevertheless very stressful and induces some real anxiety on behalf of the climbers risking their lives in pursuit of the summit of a once-in-a-lifetime (if they're lucky) summit.
I have also already shared my feelings about "Don't Look Up". In short--and as evidenced by my rating--I hated it. But it is precisely the premise I hated so deeply that makes this movie so deeply disturbing. While theoretically it was supposed to be a societal commentary--actually, a darkly comic social commentary--instead it read to me as simply a deeply upsetting screed against a seemingly unredeemable and intrinsically self-destructive human race. So if that's your target vibe for a Halloween horror movie, look no further than "Don't Look Up".
Finally, as I've shared with all of you, "Spencer" is a film I suspect was somewhat under-appreciated when it was released and that I did not anticipate to be scary. Surprisingly, "Spencer" delivers a really satisfying homage to an early 1980s horror classic and uses that foundation to build atop it an unsettling and psychologically unsound haunted royal manor with our heroine trapped inside. It's moody, atmospheric, and drenched in beautiful foreboding. If you're wanting a haunted house-feeling movie imbued with royal intrigue, this is for you.
Happy Halloween movie watching! I hope this holiday provides precisely as much creepy thrill as you wish!
{Heart}
