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:
Let's goooooooooooo!
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.
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.
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" 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.
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.
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}
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