31 4 31

Let the ritual commence. October is here, and in this house we're watching one horror movie per night until Halloween. This isn't a huge disruption to our standard evening entertainment, since it's perpetually spooky here, but I'm excited to settle into our peaceful, blood-smeared autumn routine.

Meg, there's a spot on the couch for you, as always.

We'll do it as a living list this year, and I'll add the movies and ratings as we watch them. My partner's rating is ♡ and mine is ♡♡. We decide our ratings independently, so any overlap is just an obnoxious and slightly sweet coincidence.

some notes, I guess

1: I picked our first watch, and I had an acute craving for The Hills Have Eyes, specifically the version I saw as a teenager. There's a distinct edge to horror films of the early 2000s, the age of Hostel and Saw and Rob Zombie in the director's chair, and I just needed it. Vignettes of primal fear and torture, crafted with practical effects and buckets of corn syrup blood, unburdened by heavy subplots of generational trauma, I find horror movies of this era to be deeply soothing. The Hills Have Eyes still delivers.

2: Yessss. Tactile, waxlike gore and alt-timeline cyberpunk horror with fabulous acting / set design. Makes me wonder what else I missed during the pandemic era.

3: What a delight. I appreciate its blend of found footage and classic cinematography, its effective simplicity, and its creature design. The final two main actors were asked to carry much of the climactic tension and were, unfortunately, the weakest of the bunch.

4: Not bad, with some memorable ideas and moments. My main issues were in pacing and narrative clarity, but I enjoyed the main actors. Worth a watch if you're lost on Netflix.

5: Another pandemic-era film we both missed; easy popcorn horror. It absolutely feels like a short story, which isn't a bad thing, and I thought the kids' acting was fantastic all around. I'm interested to see how the sequel plays out.

6: OK, so this one was actually a mistake. It was my turn to pick and instead of watching Thir13en Ghosts again, I wanted something new to us in the escape room horror genre. Mentally I chose No Escape, the 2020 film starring Toby from Pretty Little Liars. But when my partner asked what to put on, I said, "It's called Escape Room or something like that?" and we kind of just rolled with the first movie that looked right. It was not right, but it was enjoyable. Instead of Toby from PLL, Escape Room had Lawrence from Insecure and Jessica from True Blood, which was a delicious surprise. Action horror with a Final Destination vibe and a fun cast, I had a good time. Oops? (Also, Deborah Ann Woll is a full-time DM now? Sick.)

7: Ahh, that's more like it. After spending a few nights stumbling through the Modern Horror aisle of our mental Blockbuster, we wanted something classic and just good. An American Werewolf in London hit the spot — silly, gory, campy, sexy, with awesome practical effects (obviously a favorite feature of mine). And it has some fabulous lines; we wrote down three:

• beware the moon

• I find you very attractive and a little bit sad

• carnivorous lunar activities

8: Eggers is a treasure. We discussed it for a bit afterward and decided The Lighthouse is definitely horror, but it's mostly comedy, drama and weird fiction — though I'm not really concerned with labels here. I loved it. A simultaneously unsurprising and shocking glimpse into the mental anguishes of straight white men, I've attained a new layer of repulsion for masculinity, and also a new appreciation for fart jokes. Wonderful stuff.

9: Fun! The sequel is superior.

10: The vvitch (always said with two Vs) remains fantastic. And now we've watched all of Eggers' horror films together, and are ready to see Werwulf in December.

11: It's been a rough few... days? weeks? life? for my body, so we took it easy with a classic children's horror film I'd never seen. I adored it. Anjelica Huston is a legend.

12: Found footage ecological horror starring a young reporter covering her first big story — of course I liked it.

13: Fuck. Yes. My first 5 of the season, Martyrs was exactly what I needed as waves of endo pain burned through my abdomen. It's like three movies in one, raggedly stitched together, and the brutality of the third act hit just right. Full-body gore that you can feel in your bones and a satisfying conclusion. Spectacular.

14: This is what happens when you give a shitload of money to expert horror filmmakers and let them have fun. The effects, the commitment to gore, the contained setting packed with a million moments of comedic terror — AAA horror. That said, my partner and I both prefer Evil Dead Rise just a smidge more. I also really, really enjoyed Lee Cronin's The Mummy this year, so I might just be a big ol' Croninhead? A theory worth exploring.

and our waiting list, comprising movies we've seen and haven't seen, in no particular order, cobbled together from disparate notepads and screenshots, subject to fresh additions always:

• 1BR

• 30 Days of Night

• A Nightmare on Elm Street '84

• audition (1999)

• Battle royale (for boze)

• bone tomahawk

• bramayugam

• buffet infinity

• Carnival of Souls '62

• Cloud

• Cure (1997)

• dashcam

• Dawn of the Dead '04

• delivery: the beast within

• Exhibit A

• exit 8

• Final Prayer (The Borderlands) (2013)

• Forbidden Fruits

• Freaks '32

• Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse

• Halloween 3

• Hellbender (2021)

• home movie (2008)

• House of 1000 Corpses

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers '56

• It Follows '14

• Lurker '25

• Mother of Flies

• no escape (follow me)

• Picnic at Hanging Rock

• Porno (2019)

• Practical Magic '98

• primate

• profile

• project eerie

• Psycho '60

• pulse (kairo) (2001)

• Pyewacket

• savageland

• Shock '77

• Sister Death '23

• sleep (2025)

• Smile

• Smile 2

• Suspiria '77

• Terrifier '16

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre '22

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre '74

• the atticus institute

• The Autopsy of Jane Doe

• the bay (2012)

• The Beguiled

• The Chaser

• the collingswood story

• The Craft '96

• the crazies (2010)

• The Faculty '98

• the fear footage (trilogy)

• The Fly '86

• The Gate '87

• The hills have eyes ‘06

• The Host '06

• the innocents (1961)

• the last broadcast

• The Lighthouse '19

• the living and the dead (2006)

• the man with the black umbrella

• the medium

• The Sixth Sense '99

• The Thing '82

• the tunnel (2011)

• they're watching

• Thirteen Ghosts '01

• Tucker and Dale vs Evil '10

• vvitch

• we bury the dead

• What lies beneath '00

• You Won’t Be Alone