A (Belated) Halloween Sampler for All Souls: 2025 Edition!

Happy almost Thanksgiving, dear friends!

Consistent with our overall energy this year, I didn't get around to writing this year's Halloween Sampler in October.  But honestly? It's fine.  Fall is an overall spooky season even after Halloween, and it's still a fun exercise to catalogue the scary movies I've seen each year.

As a reminder, each of the movies below will be rated with the usual overall 1 - 5 rating scale, as well as a scary/intense rating of 1 - 5 exclamation points, to be interpreted as follows:

! = not at all scary

!!!!! = so scary!

Let's goooooooooooo!

"Nosferatu" (2024)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!

Robert Eggers' remake of the 1922 classic is extraordinarily well-executed.  It is at once an almost shot-for-shot, extremely faithful version of the original, while also enhancing the story through selective additions and embellishments, as well as Eggers' deft auteurial touches.  As a psychologist, I am genuinely curious what happened to this man to make him so preoccupied with dark, brooding, and disturbing period piece horror, but as a viewer I genuinely appreciate his particular, transporting, immersive aesthetic.

While overall this is an excellent movie, hugely benefitted by Lily-Rose Depp's deep, visceral commitment to her role as Ellen, I found the stylistic decisions made for Bill Skarsgård's Count Orlok, including his prosthetics and growling, heavily accented voice, to be heavy-handed and distracting.  I get that the iconic shot of the shadow of Orlok's unnaturally long, pointy-nailed hands reaching out over a sleepy German town essentially demand prosthetic fingers for the part, but they seemed clunky and these choices therefore bumped me out of the otherwise thoroughly engrossing movie.

"Sinners" (2025)

Rating: 4 Scary Rating: !!!!

For our second period vampire movie of the year, I made the probably insensitive decision to see "Sinners" on Easter morning, from the third row of an incongruously packed theater.  And it was so much fun!  The slow build of the plot, ensemble cast, powerful music, and culmination of the tension in a vampire-y recap of "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) all successfully breathe new life into the vampire drama, not to mention the film's use of this motif to examine the legacy of racism in the deep south.  There are fewer moments more chilling than the all-white band of vampires trying to seduce its way into the Black-owned new jazz joint by singing the too-perfect and too-cutesy "Pick Poor Robin Clean" to Hailee Steinfeld's Mary.  We also know I'm a sucker for the gimmick of having the same actor play twins, and Michael B. Jordan does not disappoint.

"28 Years Later" (2025)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!!!

I still feel the residual stress from watching this movie all these months later, and I'm still glad for it.  I am already bracing myself for the next installment in 2026.  For anyone fond of zombie movies or the original "28 Days Later" (2002), this is such an excellent next chapter, true to the gritty realism and heart-pounding, animal terror of its predecessor.

"Presence" (2024)

Rating: 4.5 Scary Rating: !!!

"Presence" is not a perfect movie in its execution, but its conceit is fascinating enough to overcome its shortcomings.  The movie tells a ghost story exclusively from the ghost's point of view within the house in which it's trapped.  We are thereby introduced to the Payne family through vignettes from the moment they first tour the home to subsequent both pivotal and seemingly benign moments after they move in.  While the acting is a bit stiff and stagey at times, Callina Liang as the traumatized and withdrawn daughter Chloe and Chris Sullivan as the protective yet at-wits'-end father Chris nevertheless deliver convincing and compelling performances.  This film is perfect for anyone wanting a perfectly spooky/haunting, not an outright terrifying, watch.

"Weapons" (2025)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!!!

I wanted to see "Weapons" from the first time I saw that trailer.  The premise--that all but one child from one elementary classroom disappear overnight--immediately grabbed me.  That said, I also so anticipated that this movie could ruin my day by being too graphic, too scary, or both, that this is one of those times I performed a thorough Does the Dog Die? review ahead of time and watched it midday on my laptop as mitigation procedures.  (Please note that these measures may have artificially decreased the Scary Rating or this movie.)  And I'm so glad I did, because this is a great movie!  Despite my research, I managed to avoid any true plot spoilers, and that was very much to my benefit.  This is a really interesting, cool, novel kind of horror movie, and I loved it.

"KPop Demon Hunters" (2025)

Rating: 5 Scary Rating: !!

This year's kid-friendly entry!  I literally just finished watching this movie, somewhat belatedly after all of the buzz around it upon its release in June, and I loved it so much!  The animation style is super engaging, the characters are so appealing, the music is excellent, and the story is interesting and compelling. I'm a bit sad that the violence and portrayal of the titular demons might be a bit too scary for my oldest child to see this movie just yet, especially since they're already familiar and enamored with some of the music.  But I'm confident we'll watch it in a year or two, and I'll be glad for the chance to rewatch this amazing gem of a film.

And with that, I hope you had a wonderful Halloween, that you will have a wonderful Thanksgiving free of any familial nonsense, and that you'll enjoy some spooky movies if you wish!

{Heart}

Back in the Saddle

Hi friends,

I took an unintentional hiatus from writing last month, along with a longer unintentional hiatus from movie-watching.  I'm not happy about this slow-down and of course the perfectionist still lurking within me is very annoyed about breaking my post-per-month writing streak, especially relatively late in the year.  

As always, there are multiple contributing factors.  The first and most obvious is that the weekend coverage I've become so reliant on for quality solo time became less consistent, with our first beloved babysitter graduating from grad school and our second successfully landing a full-time job sooner than expected, followed by a few possibilities for coverage that fell through.  

Another is that my oldest child also started Kindergarten this year, which has been a huge and thankfully very positive transition, yet still huge.  

Then, on the first day I finally regained weekend coverage, it had been long enough since I had time to myself that it took me a little bit to mentally reorganize around how I'd like to use that time then commit to what to do with it.  I considered writing, but didn't have much to say given the unintentional movie break. Ultimately I settled into a really pleasant low-effort creative activity instead.

But today, I'm taking the bull squarely by the horns.  I will shortly disembark to watch:

It's almost three hours long.  It has some not-my-favorite and outright problematic men in it.  I am therefore somewhat ambivalent about this choice, and I recognize I may deeply regret this decision.  But here we go.

Wish me luck, I guess?

{Heart}

Snap Judgment: "Jurassic World Rebirth"

Hey everyone,

This year, I've been feeling particularly nostalgic for the summer blockbusters that helped stoke my love of movies when I was younger, especially "Twister" (1996), "Independence Day" (1996), and of course, "Jurassic Park" (1993).  So theoretically at least, it's terribly convenient that a new entry into the aforementioned dinosaur movie franchise came out this year.

Let's revisit our old Snap Judgment format for another round of dinos, this time with "Jurassic World Rebirth" (2025)!

Snap judgment: my alternate title for this post was: "Jurassic World Rebirth": Equal Parts Dumb and Fun.  And I genuinely stand by that assessment.  

Does this newest chapter in the franchise get anywhere near the majesty of the first movie?  Absolutely tf not.  But after burning my hand multiple times on the hot stoves/steaming piles of the previous few Jurassic Worlds (each of which inspired their own Snap Judgments), I've finally learned to slip on an oven mitt.  And by "slip on an over mitt", I mean lower my expectations and prepare to schadenfreude-ly enjoy the stupidity.  With that mindset, "Jurassic World Rebirth" is honestly not that bad!

So let's get to it!

• This movie has completely miscalibrated the survivability of its world.

We continue the franchise-honored tradition of dinosaurs chompin on kids in vehicles--this time an inflatable raft.  And not only does the kid survive, but so does the inflatable raft.

This is the same franchise that demonstrated a T. rex's power by showing what it could do to a Jeep thusly:

But an inflatable raft... is fine.  I cannot stress this enough: An inflatable raft.  You know, basically a glorified balloon?  Miraculously/improbably withstands T-rex bites.  And also the kid is fine.

Also Mahershala Ali survives the mutant T. rex by ........... ????????

Genuinely, the sequence is as follows:

Mahershala Ali: (heroically luring mutant T. rex away to save his friends)

Mutant T. rex: (is lured)

Mahershala Ali: (having successfully lured mutant T. rex, faces his foe, laughing maniacally in the face of death)

Mahershala Ali's friends, seeing Mahershala Ali's flare go out: (escaping but sad, because obviously)

(.....Unclear events transpire.....)

Mahershala Ali: Jk I'm fine lol.  Also I have extra flares.  Come get me this island sucks.

Look, I'm genuinely glad this movie at least didn't lapse into the trope of killing off all its Black characters, as the first movie did with Samuel L. Jackson.

RIP Mr. Arnold :'(

But also, all it takes to blow up what is surely a billion-dollar scientific endeavor is... a Snickers wrapper?

• This science is.... hilarious.

So the premise of this movie is that our ragtag group of pals must journey to the island where only the most janky of the dinosaurs exist because samples from those dinosaurs could be the missing link in revolutionary medication for heart disease.  

The logic is as follows: You need samples from the three biggest dinosaurs because (gestures randomly) their hearts are the biggest (jazz hands!!).  And also they have to be alive when you get the samples (chef's kiss).

• The heroic plot twist is.... nonsensical.

For unclear reasons, responsibility for deciding whether to dramatically enrich one evil pharmaceutical company or ensuring the samples lives have been lost collecting are used to benefit all humankind is left not to the paleontologist who might at least have a sense of the science behind how these samples might be helpful, but instead to the mercenary-for-hire.  

Her response? "Give it to everyone."

And that's great, and unsurprising given the general moral compass of this franchise.  But also, literally what does that mean??  Like... what?  Like give what, exactly?  Like, everyone gets a lil drop of dinosaur blood/egg sac contents?  You know this isn't code you can make open source, right??

• The same tired- and lazy-ass character development.

In "Jurassic World Rebirth", we get to witness a repeat of the Bryce Dallas Howard cold-blooded (lol) money-hungry business lady turned totally unconvincing environmentalist character arc, but this time instead she's Scarlett Johansson's cold-blooded mercenary lady who does illegal stuff for bad corporations turned totally unconvincing humanitarian.

Again:

At least Scarlett Johansson is dressed semi-appropriately for the task.

And then we have the Delgado family, which includes a father who has taken his two daughters on a trans-oceanic voyage on a sailboat he built.  And also his daughter's boyfriend.  

I have a message for Mr. Delgado: 

I'm so sorry.  You're in the middle of the *ocean*, presently in the middle of the most isolated part of the planet for a human being, and you're only just now hammering out the shifts for steering your boat and your youngest child is just now learning how to tie knots?  And you've done this kind of trip before?  Sir.  Sir.  What in God's name are you doing.

• Stop trying to tell me people don't know dinosaurs are cool.

I will never get past the compulsive premise in these past few Jurassic Worlds (Jurassics World?) that dinosaurs have become boring.  Anyone who has ever been to the Museum of Natural History can attest that the dinosaur section isn't exactly under-attended--and that's just to see their *bones*.  

The idea that people don't care about dinosaurs is both so unacceptably stupid and unbelievable on its face, and it also undermines the magic and awe that made the first film so unforgettable.  "Jurassic Park" gave us all a chance to imagine the overwhelming thrill of actually getting to see real, live dinosaurs--animals that have fascinated human beings for centuries.  It is simply inconceivable that people could get to a point where they tire of seeing the real, breathing thing.

Relatedly: I don't need a mutant T. rex (and I refuse to call it a D. rex).  No one needs that.  I will die on the hill that regular degular Tyrannosaurus Rexes and intelligent raptors are more than scary enough.

All this said, I am honestly happy I saw this movie in theaters.  It was so ridiculous and poorly conceived, but it was still a fun little adventure with ultimately kind of low stakes because you know these movies kind of pull their punches and in any event the characters barely exist as embodied, believable people.  If you're having some of that dinostalgia that I do, I think this one is worth seeing.  I gave it a 3.

{Heart}

Still Terrified of Zombies Almost "28 Years Later"

Hey team,

Younger-me is thrilled to share that I got to see "28 Years Later", the much-awaited next chapter in the "28 Days Later" (2002) universe, in theaters this month.  Younger-me is even more thrilled to share that the movie was SO GOOD.

Let's talk about it!

Given that "28 Days Later" is one of my favorite movies, I've rewatched it and thought about it so much that I unfortunately forgot how genuinely scary the movie was the first time I saw it... until I was in the theater watching "28 Years Later". 

Basically, this was me like 14 minutes into the movie:

...But like, the best kind of huge mistake?

It's particularly humbling to be a) fully an adult and b) a specialist in treating anxiety disorders and actually experience the physiological sensations that accompany intense anxiety because of a movie about the undead, but there I was in that theater, being humbled in precisely that manner.

All that to say, true to its originating story, "28 Years Later" is STRESSFUL.  But in a manner that felt perfectly titrated to its audience's wishful nostalgia for the adrenaline of the first movie, while also imagining the continuation of the original story almost 3 decades into the future.

My personal psychology has always LOVED a dystopian story.  Something deep in my brain takes an odd kind of comfort in playing through end-of-society-as-we-know it scenarios, trying to imagine not only how to survival, but also what kinds of new world could be realized, perhaps worlds where humanity and interconnectedness are possible.  At their best, these narratives affirm that humanity and interconnectedness can endure even under the direst of circumstances.  So in that strange and unnerving yet beautiful way, they're comforting.

"28 Years Later" does a great job of imagining a believable dystopian future, and of portraying how people might still be able to co-create a sense of adapted normalcy in the midst of incomprehensible horrors.  There are moments, like when we see a handwritten sign imploring people not to be wasteful of critical supplies whose quantities are dwindling, that prods at still-triggering memories of the pandemic, making the film's morbid fantasy all the more nevertheless believable.

The performances are excellent, successfully getting the audience emotionally invested in the characters despite the intense precarity of their lives.  The soundtrack also harkens back to "28 Days Later" in that it is extremely well-suited to amping up the emotion and tension of the movie by at turns complementing and unsettlingly contrasting with the action.  The effects are not excessively gory, while still being a zombie movie--so let's be real, it's definitely quite gory.  But given that there were only one or two scenes during which I preemptively covered my eyes, it's honestly probably somewhat tame as this particular subgenre goes.

All that to say, I absolutely loved "28 Years Later", and I highly recommend it to anyone who loved the original movies or loves this genre of film.  I gave it a 5.

{Heart}

Join Us in the "Street Gang"

Hi friends,

I'm tired and I have a sore throat and my house is messy, but I have some spare time today and I want to write SOMEthing at least.

Last month we went on a family trip to the beach, trying to fit in some ocean time before vacation high season ramps up.  We've been staying in the same rented apartment the past several times we've gone, and it's become very much a home-away-from-home.  It's such an unexpected joy to create that kind of comfort for myself and my family--to genuinely look forward simply to being in that space, let alone all the other nice things we get to do while we're in it--and such a gift to hear my oldest child become old enough to not only remember the place and the things we've done there on past visits, but also to talk fondly about our most recent trip for weeks afterward.

One of the many little treats we get to enjoy while we're on this kind of vacation is that Husband and I can watch more movies together once the kids go to bed than we would during a normal week.  One of the movies we watched on this last trip was the absolutely lovely and inspiring documentary "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street" (2021), which tells the history of the development and early days of Sesame Street.

We were especially well-positioned to appreciate this movie because we've been watching the original Sesame Street episodes with our children for the past several months.  The combination of the lofi '70s muted palette film quality, the era-consistent outfits and styling, the shoestring budget non-flashy animation and effects, and the child-friendly portrayal of a sweet, gentle, and silly New York City neighborhood lends these early-days episodes a very cosy, pleasant, and safe feeling, and thankfully our kids have been enjoying them along with us.

"Street Gang" tells the story of the surprisingly ambitious and purposefully revolutionary founding ideas of Sesame Street, whose goal from its inception was to empower children by providing them free, racially inclusive, accessible televised education to children.  It also profiles several of the major contributors to the project of Sesame Street, including visionary producer Joan Ganz Cooney, dedicated director Jon Stone, beloved on-screen actors Sonia Manzano, Emilio Delgado, Roscoe Orman, Will Lee, and Bob McGrath, and behind-the-scenes geniuses like songwriter Joe Raposo and, of course, Jim Henson.

This is such an engaging, informative, and at times perhaps surprisingly poignant film.  I highly recommend it!  I gave it a 5.

{Heart}