#which is a problem in horror and slashers in general but here that just feels like the whole plot

[mimzy6bunny]

i like slashers but i think terrifier is just not my thing. I've watched two movies so far and it's just violence on women/trauma porn. i just can't enjoy the movies when it's always just a hour and a half of 'young attractive woman gets brutalized and then her naked body is shown in a disturbing sexual pose' over and over again honestly it just grosses me out

[atlantis-just-drowned]

Big angry rant about Slashfic's nonsense under the cut. I warned ya.

Honestly kind of disappointed with the new Slashfic episode, but then again not really surprised as I've been increasingly more disappointed with Slashfic in general for a while now. Like, I get wanting to try and put multiple horror tropes in one story, that could have been a good idea, but it wasn't thought through and honestly it makes no sense anymore.

The whole "Dealer" arc????? Literally nothing makes sense with the plot, it's just here to say "hey look! We did a knock-off version of Saw too!!" but otherwise has no relevance. Dealer literally disappeared right after this arc too, and what the fuck was his comment about ordering material online??? It doesn't make sense. And don't get me started on Barnaby, they literally made him die before he could give us any relevant information, and I still don't understand what his role was even supposed to be. I hope his comment about meeting the MC when they were a kid is at least going to be explained at some point, but given how long the authors are taking to give us even a crumb of an answer, I'm starting to lose hope. At this point, we might never get an explanation for anything that has happened simply because their world building sucks and they have no idea how to explain anything either.

I was ready to accept the whole creepy town arc, but seriously why the fuck did they make us get out if it was just to push more arcs? It feels like the authors are trying to find some sort of excuse to keep the game going instead of giving it an actual ending, either out of greed or out of lack of care for the plot and the story they're trying to tell. And honestly, I don't know what's worse.

And then of course, there's the whole Damien problem. Like, I'm a Damien truther, I'm only here for him at this point. But oh boy did they do him dirty. I'm a firm believer that at some point the authors realised the fanbase loved him enough that they could capitalise on him too and that's the only reason they made him an option. But then hey watch out!! You couldn't possibly have a romancable character that hasn't tried to kill you at least once!! So, they improvised a slasher arc for Damien too, and once again, it makes zero sense with the plot and isn't even relevant, developed or otherwise explained. Like seriously, what does Freddie bring to the plot????? Even the authors knew that apparently, because they didn't even bother to give him points even after Freddie arrived!! Which makes it that Damien/Freddie is barely a love interest, if you'll excuse me for this I'll even say: he wasn't meant to be anything else than a fuckable side-character. Bro is literally just the MC's little whore. All of us are going to get so deceived when we'll inevitably end up with a slasher, because the authors never actually wanted Damien to be a romancable character, they only made him a cute little side-piece so they could write some extra-scenes to make us pay for. The love confession we got this week is just one more proof to me.

I am. So mad. I might actually drop the story if it keeps crashing into the depths of eternal disarray and emotional void. It was mildly interesting at first, enough that I chose to push through it, but nowadays it just keeps getting worse and honestly, I'm starting to think it's not worth it. For all I know, if it isn't already the case, soon enough they're going to just feed us AI junk in the hope we'll keep giving them more money.

[finalgirlminamurray]

“meta horror” is another subgenre that’s kind of a hard sell for me. not that i don’t like any films that could be described that way but it’s hard to do well, i think, and if your audience is people with extensive knowledge of horror then it’s going to be especially hard to do it in a way that satisfies them. (it’s me i’m that audience.)

i thought maybe sometime soon i should watch the cabin in the woods again. i’ve only seen it once now, when i was first getting into horror movies, and since then after getting much deeper into the genre and greatly expanding my knowledge of it i probably would like it a lot less. part of that is due to the culture having soured a lot on joss whedon in the years since it came out, for good reason. part of it is due to my realization that a lot of the time when a “meta” horror movie posits certain tropes as universal or at least extremely common in the genre it’s…really not accurate.

a lot of meta horror stories are parodying or referencing slashers because that’s probably the subgenre with the most clearly established tropes and cliches and formulas, but they’ll also expand into “scary movies” in general with classic jokes about characters making “dumb” decisions and the like. the go-to slasher trope is “if you have sex you die” which i’ll agree is largely accurate but it often gets paired with “if you don’t have sex you live” and things like the killer specifically targeting people who have sex, which seems to happen way more often in parodies and meta slashers than in straight examples of the form. but then these parodies sometimes seem to inform people’s wider perception of the genre, even when film series get to the point where they’re parodying themselves. (see: jason goes to hell and jason x both specifically referencing “premarital sex” as something people do at camp crystal lake, and then stuff like that “it’s cool we’re married” meme that are based on a premise of the series following a “rule” it does not have.)

cabin in the woods doesn’t really go too far with the sex = death thing but it does assert that all or at least most popular horror films have a set of archetypes that the main victim characters always fit which is definitely not true in my experience. maybe i don’t watch enough lowbrow dumb slashers but i feel like there just aren’t a lot where you can easily sort the characters into “the scholar” “the athlete” “the fool”. there is usually at least one comic relief jokester guy and you can definitely do something with the way female characters are sorted into the virgin/whore dichotomy but most of the time there’s not really a Jock and a Nerd. it seems more based on teen movie archetypes than horror tropes and you’d have a hard time sorting most slasher movie casts into these (especially if there aren’t exactly 5 main characters, although that is a common number.) might be a consequence of them trying to reference horror movies in general and not a specific subgenre because while horror is a genre, different types of horror have different rules.

(another problem i have is that the film’s subversion of those character archetypes doesn’t really go farther than “the ‘jock’ is actually smart, the ‘nerd’ is actually a jock, the ‘fool’ is actually aware of what’s going on, the ‘whore’ is actually a Good Girl and the ‘virgin’ is actually a Bad Girl.” i do like the conceit that the designated ‘whore’ is just the girl who would have more opportunity to have sex on the trip since she’s going with her boyfriend, while the designated ‘virgin’ is just the one we don’t actually see having sex, but the film doesn’t really have time to explore that further. someone on tvtropes pointed that out. there Is interesting commentary here, it just also goes for broad strokes at other times.)

whedon has said that this film is a “loving hate letter” to the horror genre, or what popular horror films were like at the time, and i can see that - this movie came out at a time when american horror was kind of stagnating, but i also think the remake era was on its last legs at this point and we were just poised on the cusp of a new era of profitable genre trends when the conjuring got big. sources list cabin in the woods’ release date as alternately 2010, 2011, and 2012, which was kind of a transitional period for horror movies. makes sense that you might think horror was just cliches and unoriginal content at that point, but there’s good films in every era if you know where to look.

i definitely get the positioning of the elder gods they’re being sacrificed to as representative of how people just want the same familiar stuff over and over instead of anything new or different, but it makes more sense to have them represent the studios and producers who decide what’s profitable and what isn’t, and therefore what is and isn’t allowed to get made, based on which things have already made money, right? maybe i’m too generous to blame “audiences” for the executives with the real decision-making power who are terrified of “risk” (i.e, the possibility that something might not make them a shitload of money.) and yet everyone seems to talk about the elder gods as representing Us, the Viewers. there is a literal executive committee watching over everything, but they don’t have any control over what happens, and often talk about things they wish they could see but probably won’t because the trends go towards what’s reliable, so that probably makes them the audience…

which is reinforced by the scene of them all watching the designated final girl fighting for her life on a giant screen and cheering and celebrating while she struggles. and that opens a whole other issue with a lot of meta horror in that it tries to “implicate the viewers” and question why they enjoy watching people suffer and die but here’s the thing. there’s a very easy answer to that question and it is “because it’s not real”. again there’s interesting things you can do with the concept of implicating the audience but it is awfully hard to pull off successfully for that reason. if you try to go in on in-universe characters treating the horror as entertainment, then at some point you’re not commenting on horror fiction but true crime and that’s something else entirely. like how the scream sequels have an in-universe series of slasher films based directly on the events of the actual movies, which does stretch the suspension of disbelief a bit when they’re treated just like any other fictional horror movies.

speaking of scream, the reason it works so well is because it’s primarily a good slasher first and foremost. the meta references are part of the appeal but the film would probably work just as well without them. but because it was the first good slasher film we’d gotten in a while it spawned a wave of imitators that often get called “meta slashers” even though they’re really not particularly meta, they just have other things in common with scream like their casts full of popular teen tv actors. and kevin williamson, or a passable imitation of his writing style. (i do love scream 1 and 2 but the first movie gets credited with “revitalizing the horror genre” when really it just made studios realize that horror films could be profitable as long as they were like scream. there were plenty of great 90s horror films pre-scream that just weren’t as commercially successful.)

anyway. this post was just supposed to be about meta horror in general but it turned into me musing about cabin in the woods. i really should revisit it with both a critical eye and the intent to be fair to it instead of basing my criticisms off of my own memory of watching it once. it got a ton of praise when it first came out but now i feel like most people are cooler towards it. some parts definitely hold up (the sequence when they release all the monsters in the facility is a modern classic for a reason, the office workers’ banter is fun, the cast is good all around, and there’s some legit horror in the cosmic sense of being told that your friends were murdered for a “reason” and now you have to either kill yourself or your last surviving friend to “save the world”, what are you going to do? who do you believe in that situation?) ultimately i feel like it’s a reflection of a specific moment in time for horror and movies in general, which isn’t necessarily good or bad.

i’ll see if my assessment of “meta horror for people who don’t watch a lot of horror” is accurate. (as for meta horror for people who Do watch a lot of horror? it’s more slasher-specific but; behind the mask: the rise of leslie vernon. obviously.)

[cellarspider]

7/30 germs.

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We return to a movie that disrespects the archaeological importance of roads, Prometheus.

I am still not over that. I will never be over that.

This time, content warnings for continuing frat boy archaeology, cringeful application of racist terms to lily-white androids, me screeching about site contamination some more, and Apollo’s dodgeball striking this movie with a glancing blow about masking.

So, back in the theater in 2012, I had already lost sympathy for the cast. They were being set up as stock horror movie characters, they were doing their jobs in a way with a certain flair for the incompetent.

And one of them, I suspect, the movie intends to make into a “flawed but you feel for him” kind of guy. Or, I hope they intended to make him “the guy in the slasher movie who you hate and want to see die”. That’s Holloway, one of the two archaeologists. He’s robot racist.

Like, seriously robot racist. The whole crew is, David literally gets referred to as “boy” here, which isn’t so much a dogwhistle as a tornado siren. No wonder David is quietly starting to show his disdain for the human crew.

“They're making you guys pretty close [to human now], huh?” “Not too close, I hope.”

One of the few themes the movie handles halfway competently is the parallel between the humans stumbling all over themselves as they rush to go meet their makers, while David is already experiencing the disappointment of actually meeting his, and finding out they’re a bunch of clueless assholes. Are we supposed to believe the same of the Engineers? I don’t know. They definitely think of humans as lesser, though. More to come on that later.

Because right now, an expedition is barrelling toward the alien structure–again, driving all over the FCKING ALIEN ROAD–and they’re doing it with only six hours of daylight left, because Holloway literally says “It's Christmas [...] and I want to open my presents.”

I cannot communicate how heinous this character felt. The actor did a perfectly fine job playing him, but if Charlie Holloway was real, his name would be said with the same venom as that of the man pictured below: Heinrich Schliemann, the man who found the real, actual city of Troy, and immediately dynamited a trench through the royal palace, destroying who knows how many artifacts from the period the Iliad was based off of. Yes, I picked out the most assholish-looking photo of him I could find on purpose.

Also, Holloway’s an anti-masker, apparently.

I’m going to step back for just one second and list the one practical, movie budget reason why characters might take their helmets off. The costume designers did an admirable job coming up with something that fits the general requirement of a helmet in major studio releases, prior to The Mandalorian: make the actor’s faces completely visible, because without actors with a strong sense of physical presence and voice acting, you’ll lose connection with the audience.

They did a great job with that. Unfortunately, shiny helmets are a bastard to digitally edit film crew out of. 

It’s not impossible to place lights and crew so that the audience won’t notice them. Alien certainly pulled it off. Clear plastic elements in helmets also mean other logistical challenges, though: fogging being the main one. This, and cooking your actors in a fishbowl under studio lights.

Both problems can be simultaneously combated by installing A/C fans within the helmets, but because these helmets are entirely clear, you’re limited to hiding them down near the neck, and anybody who’s done similar for a cosplay or suit will know that it’s potentially noisy and not always effective. You can actually see condensate on the helmets in the movie, though whether that’s from the actor’s breath or a deliberate choice, I don’t know.

All this adds up to increased time resetting actors (i.e. cleaning sweat off of them without disrupting their makeup), more exhaustion from said actors, and the worry that the highest-paid, plot-critical actors may decide they don’t want to do a sequel if the shooting experience is too physically unhealthy.

And then there’s also more time spent carefully arranging crew and lights to hide their reflections, or more time making some poor VFX artist erase a transparent, curved reflection from frame and replace it with something else, or make the actors more comfortable by adding the glass in later with CGI, at the potential loss of some realism. The average modern movie studio would choose one of these VFX-driven options and demand it done in a week, which is why VFX artists need to unionize.

So. I understand at least a few logistical reasons why you don’t tend to make actors wear helmets for too many shooting days. But it has to be balanced with the story. It has to feel believable. It has to fit the story. It has to not make your characters look like mud-witted morons.

As soon as they find liquid water and the oh-so-deadly CO2 levels start to drop, Holloway takes his helmet off.

“Don't be an idiot.” “Don't be a skeptic.”

Flames on the side of my goddamn face.

Now, this is the moment a lot of people lost sympathy for the human characters, even back in 2012. It was a dumbass idea even then, in the pre-’rona years. Sadly, Millburn the biologist isn’t written smart enough to punch Holloway in the nuts over even thinking of doing this, because we have two problems with what Holloway’s doing here: Biology, and biology.

First, biology.

(https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/13-viruses-virus-3d-model/1071200)

Obviously, they don’t know if anything’s in the air. He could find out that humans are deathly allergic to alien dust mites. He could have just caught himself a case of space covid, which he and the lemmings that follow him can then transmit to the entire crew if he’s not kept in quarantine. They can sterilize the sealed suits, but they can’t sterilize the inside of his lungs. Yet.

Second, biology. 

Specifically, Earth biology. Do you know how carefully modern space agencies sterilize anything that’s headed for Mars, or anywhere else that might have a biosphere of its own? A lot! They sterilize everything a lot! Because microbes are hardy little bastards. We’ve never found extraterrestrial life, only precursor molecules that show the capacity for life to develop in other places. How are you going to verify you’ve found alien life, or even those precursors, if you can’t prove that your samples are uncontaminated? What happens if microbes from Earth manage to survive the trip and establish a foothold somewhere? What if they destroy native life?

This movie’s characters treat this with only a fraction of the gravitas that the cinematography does, which is part of why this remains so jarring throughout. The practical sets, the art direction, and the camerawork are all excellent. The editing continues to do its best, though it almost feels like things were cut very tight through this to speed things along and to give more time, unfortunately, to what the characters are doing. 

their crimes against my sanity are not done yet

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As a side note, rounding up some discussion from a previous entry: The most excellent artist @noordzee pointed out that the clashing artistic style of the moon and stars slapped onto the carving of Kʼinich Janaab Pakal I. In the previous post, I focused on the link between that carving and its use in ancient aliens conspiracy theories. But let's dig a bit into actual Maya iconography around celestial bodies instead.

Now, I am not an expert on Classical Maya stuff. Not in the slightest. And there is a lot of information on their art that is linguistically inaccessible to me, as a non-Spanish speaker. But out of the Maya art and writing that survived the book-burning conquistadors, we have some iconography for the moon and stars, and they don’t look like what’s in the movie.

I wasn’t able to find any specific pieces of art that contained stars, but I did find the glyph for star, ek’. 

I was only able to find depictions of a crescent moon in the context of the moon goddess, where she tends to be sitting on the crescent like a chair, or one part of it is shown behind her, almost like a tail (though I can’t be certain whether that’s due to chipped paint).

The moon by itself was somewhat harder to find. I couldn’t find any Maya depictions of it with my limited poking around of the spanish internet, but I did find a (much later) Mixtec depiction of the moon, complete with a lunar rabbit! Much like East Asian cultures, the darker markings on the moon are culturally interpreted as a rabbit shape.

Thanks again to nordzee for pointing out the dissonant art style, because the real mesoamerican art on this subject is phenomenal.

Next time, the movie will hurt me more, so if anybody else has fun facts to share or details to point out. PLEASE. Ease my pain.

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Alt text citations:

None this time. Many ramblings, though.

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 20: Scream V

Limping my way along to the end of the Screams. Thank fuck there's only one more left because... meh.

I had high hopes for 5 and B told me he liked it--but he also hasn't seen 1-4, which is obviously a huge caveat.

...I didn't like it. I didn't. I wish I did. I tried.

There were aspects of it I liked and sequences I liked. I thought having the first victim survive was a good twist. I thought the new-teen cast, though they had sort of a rocky start (being introduced and then sidelined for a huge portion of the movie...) stepped it up in the party scene. Here we started seeing some real twists on the meta-slasher genre that, apparently, doesn't have that many twists: that knowing the rules means knowing that anyone can be the killer, and thus that they should all distrust each other. That was smart, interesting, and new.

I also liked at least some of the Dewey scenes, mostly when there were glimmers of the Real Dewey ("I shouldn't have sent that smiley face"). I also liked the boyfriend. For most of it. Again, carrying the entirety of the "comedy" part of comedy-horror on his back. And at first I did like the sisters, though I... soured on them as time went on.

Also, I appreciate that this movie is like Justice for Stu lol. There! were! two! killers! in! Scream!

Here's the stuff I didn't like:

First off, I don't think there's any difference, functionally, between sequel and requel and this word is stupid. This is a sequel. It follows from the events of the previous films. There's a big gap, enough time to introduce a next generation, but it's all in the same timeline and universe. That's a sequel.

This shouldn't have been a sequel. Everything that made it a sequel and not a reboot dragged it down. Sam being a serial killer's daughter? Who cares. Tired. We don't even know who her mom was, and it just seemed... really shoe-horned in every way. Dewey being a sad, lonely, divorced ex-sheriff? Only acceptable if he comes back strong as the new sheriff and saves the day--and gets back together with Gayle. Gayle, being in the movie at all? That was Courtney Cox, fam, that wasn't anyone with a recognizable Gayle personality. Sydney being in it? A cameo.

None of these people or elements brought anything to the story. All they did was drag it down, drag it out, and take away focus from the new generation, who really were quite promising but never got a chance to shine.

The original characters are also part of the second problem, which is also part of the just-do-a-reboot argument: they've done this too many times. Sydney was hip to the routine in Scream II. It's now her 5th go around. She and Gayle know everything. To bring guns. To catch a fake out from the killer. To shoot in the head. Boring. Snooze fest. They're going through the motions and so is this movie.

These movies are extremely formulaic. I'm not... always against that because I think there's a comfort to watching slasher franchises, a comfort that comes from the formula, and if I'm getting bored, that's sort of my fault for watch 5 in a row over the course of 5 weeks. But it doesn't help when they are formulaic for the characters. They're bored; I'm bored.

My next issue: I've been feeling during this whole marathon that the series really is more horror than comedy, but at least the others had some comedic elements, even if they were deeply rooted in the constant meta analysis. This movie had almost no comedy at all. There were glimmers, again mostly in the form of meta jokes, but they were few and far between. (I had mixed feelings about Mindy. I thought her first monologue was a little too manic, but she grew on me.)

And a related issue: some parts of it were really damn depressing!! The biggest offender here is obviously Dewey's death. Look, not to be That Fan (apparently the knife wielding type but we'll get to that) but this genre is in the service of fan service. So why be so cruel to the characters who have largely held this franchise up for 4 films now? I was ready to shut the damn thing off when Dewey died. That was unnecessary. And to have him die after one scene with Gayle during which they basically admitted they would never work as a couple? Just throw ME off that cliff, this despairing, depressed, empty feeling is the exact opposite of what I'm looking for from these films. Meeting fan expectations IS okay you know??

(Aka did you learn nothing from killing Randy you FREAKS?)

I thought the Wes and Sheriff Hicks deaths were pretty depressing too, to be honest. First, that sequence is too long for characters who ultimately mean too little (a point related to the all the new kids get barely any screen time among them complaint above--I mean I don't really get who Wes was supposed to be, archetype wise?). And second, taunting a mom about her kid's death just to kill them both is, to me, a step of cruelty too far. I recognize this is really subjective and parents and kids lose each other in slashers all the time but it just... it bummed me out.

This is sort of a different point but I'll just stuff it in here: the Carpenter sisters... didn't hold up for me. I didn't understand what was happening there. They had an awful lot of screen time for a story that was pretty one-note and yet also I feel like there could have been more depth there, to justify their screen time. And maybe this is just the Adult in me but I really wanted someone to tell them that no kid is at fault for a parent leaving. Like that sort of pissed me off, that no one was around to correct Sam on that. Anyway, ultimately, I didn't connect to either of them sufficiently as Final Girls.

And finally, the killers.

How to put this?

Scream has a big problem, one that Amber acknowledged actually in this one, which is Ghostface is not the unkillable Michael Myers. Ghostface is very killable, he/she/they always dies, and then if there's another movie, there has to be another Ghostface. And yet on the other hand each of them is functionally the same. They're all utterly deranged. They're Movie Psychopaths (aka stereotypes of violent mental illness). Their brains are all warped, mostly by the meta, and they're all looking for the same thing: fame, and sometimes there's some personal beef wrapped in, like with Billy and Sydney's mom, or Billy's mom in Scream 2, or the brother in Scream 3. But all of them have the same laughing-psycho deranged demeanor. And with each movie I just feel increasingly like... how many more of them can there BE? If it weren't for half the movies not taking place in Woodsboro I'd wonder if it was something in the water.

And these two were lame. First of all, you can't blame "psycho fans radicalized on reddit" in the same movie as you kill off Dewey, that just seems like a personal affront. Second, "how can fandom be toxic"??? That's such a... it's like a line that's meant to be infuriating and I can't tell if I'm actually infuriated or meta-infuriated lol. I think it's... I think it's Stans-with-Reddit-brain-rot combined with Dewey's death and how shitty he and Gayle were treated. It's like, in the middle of this movie, we'll include something we know will make long term fans Big Mad. Then at the end, we'll place all the blame for everything on fans who got Big Mad about a beloved movie franchise and then lost their minds over it. Like, daring you to be mad and align yourself with the villains. It felt... mean, to me. Like spitting at fans for being fans.

And most importantly, ultimately my biggest issues with the Ghostfaces: Richie and Amber just don't have the Verve of the OGs. No one has, and the closest were the Ghostfaces of Scream 4 imo. Just like get Matthew Lillard to come in and teach these young people how to be Seriously Deranged, because they're not anywhere close.

I'd be more impressed by them if I hadn't seen Scream 1996. It's just that they're SO pale in comparison and I am SO bored of seeing laughing maniacs over and over.

That Amber lives in Stu's house could have brought like a little glimmer of Halloween-like supernatural horror, like the place itself is evil... but I don't know if Scream could pull that off.

As Sydney herself says, you can't get more derivative than this. I don't think Scream has 5 movies' worth of variations on the formula. I liked Scream 4 a lot and I think it was worth undoing the conclusion of Scream 3 for it but after that they probably should have stopped. Or at the very least gone the full reboot route, something more like Scream the Series, rather than bringing back Sydney and Gale to yawn through their relentless torture at the hands of the same violent dumbass with movie/internet/pop culture brain rot archetype that's always there to bother them, yet again.

I'll watch the sixth one. I'll watch VII when it comes out. I might take a break before VI. I don't know. This franchise is no Halloween.

[toxicanonymity]

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WELCOME ABOARD! You can call me Tox or Toxi (she/her). I usually write smut. Sometimes I write darkfic. I dabble in horror. This blog has amazing readers which makes it a lot of fun.

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A: Night Walks is an AU where Joel is your hot, older, creepy pothead neighbor. Night walks masterlist. Thighs out (another AU) is your boyfriend's hot slutty dad.

Q: What's a HOG? Who/what is GILF?

A: Hot Old Guy, from Silence can never be bought. GILF is grandpa I'd Like to Fuck and may refer to the one from Pawn Shop (Joel in his 60s) @gilfjoel.

Q: Who is Dr. Rock?

A: Hot sex therapist who roleplays my characters. Dr. Rock is also the poster boy for avoiding discourse. He has a blog that has some encouraging reblogs. @drrockmd

Q: Do you still write slashers?

A: Yes. Main/slashers masterlist.

Q: What other fics & blogs do you rec?

A: Please check out @toxicrecs

Q: How can I stay motivated to write without getting a lot of notes?

A: Please see these posts: here and here.

Q: Why did you unfollow me?

A: I could've lost (some or all) interest in your fandom. I may have forgotten why I followed you, especially if what you're posting has changed. Or I might be wanting to reduce the discourse I see.

Q: Why Am I blocked?

A: Why I Block.

Q: Is it true that you (this or that accusation)?

I doubt it. I tend to ignore and block false accusations, rumors, and kink shamers instead of giving them a huge audience by responding or addressing it. Failure to publicly refute something isn't agreement with it!

[cipheramnesia]

I've always wanted to like horror. I always try to get into it? I've had friends all through life that love horror, especially movies. But i end up loving the time i spend watching it with friends more than I've ever enjoyed the content itself. And like i feel like I'm somehow failing to see it the way large parts of the population like yourself do? But i don't know how to enjoy the medium?

The hurtles I've identified so far are that when there's ableism involved i tend to check out fully. That's been a dead end. And when there's painfully illogical choices by the main characters (the ones that the audience are encouraged to connect with). I get it's a useful tool for plot and moving the story along, but any emotional connection that was built there is like nullified? Idk. Not sure how to see what other people see cuz it looks like fun for y'all

Got any advice?

First I'd say - maybe horror just isn't your thing? I love it, I don't expect everyone to love. I barely expect anyone that likes horror to like anything at all similar to what I like. It's a damn slog for me to find new horror I enjoy, even among the horror fandom, because so many of them want it all to be Insidious or Saw or whatever - which is fine but not interesting to me.

Ableism is a deep dive I need to spend time on, but short answer is - I haven't got a good answer here other than maybe steer clear of the "slasher" sub-genre where it seems most rampant.

I think the main item I want to dig into is whether or not horror in general is uniquely poor with ableism, or is it consistent with other media and singled out for other reasons. I have a suspicion that it's the latter, purely on the basis that it's common in generalizations like "horror has an ableism problem" where the reality is "society at large has an ableism problem" that the problem of the former is a reflection of the latter, rather than innate to the former.

But I don't know, Jason is a horror icon and earliest versions ain't too pretty from that perspective. Hard to equate the latter versions with ableism on accounta he is essentially a supernatural entity after a certain point and whatever, you get the idea. It's all complicated and takes time to unravel. However, all that to the side, it may help to consider if those movies in some way reflect something uniquely bad, or if it's instead more upsetting due to horror characters generally existing in upsetting or disturbing situations. Both can be true on a case by case basis - like the infamous "black guy dies first" problem, which STILL HAPPENS somehow even though it's a problem so widely known that it's cliche even as satire. I have some thoughts about that I'll write up sometime as well.

I'm thinking a way to approach it may be via Franklin, the wheelchair using character of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, who I believe is meant to illustrate the poor way disability is treated, confronting the audience with their own biases. That's a whole other long essay that needs a good deal more work. But I notice it, oh boy do I, especially in the beloved "80s movies," yikes. I enjoy much about them, but there was some... stuff.

Now, characters making stupid decisions I mean... that's just movies. That is literally all movies, characters make stupid decisions. I can't say that makes it better, but I can promise you the average bad character decision per horror, science fiction, Disney(tm), drama, romance, etc etc movie is going to average the same. On the other hand, if this happens in almost all the movies your friends watch, they might just have bad taste in horror.

The takeaway here is getting into horror is something you're probably gonna have to work at if you really want to make it happen. Check out reviews, trusted sources, see if you can find some novels or shows or movies that handle those specific issues well. You may find some trusted artists you can go to more consistently but it's probably going to require some screening. And then also - again - if you don't like horror, that's not a failing or bad or anything to stress over. Some people just don't like certain stuff. No big, live and learn, other fish in the sea, different strokes, all that jazz.

[cornsword]

For about 15 years I’ve made it the habit to save up all my horror movies, scary movies, spooky movies, monster movies, slashers, most high concept thrillers and extreme gory flicks, and of course seasonally-appropriate holiday fare, et. al., and watch them all for the September-October season. This kept us from experiencing a common problem (“Want to watch _____?”, “No, we just saw that in June.”), led to a real broadening of horizons, and in general meant seeing MORE movies since by the time August ended I was STARVING for some horror movies.

For the last couple of years, to track what I’ve watched more mindfully, for reference, and just to get these films out there a bit more, I’ve used Tumblr. I don’t have a ton of followers or reblogs but it’s a way to engage with the platform and a good summary of what I’m about.

I’m changing things up this year a bit. There are many reasons but here are some:

1) I started this tradition as something to do with my partner and these last couple of years I feel like it hasn’t been a big help to either of our mental health, and that and our relationship are more important than any one viewing tradition.

2) My horizons are now sufficiently broadened, and horror content has so proliferated over the last 15 years, that I’m never struggling to find something to watch, or even something NEW to watch.

3) There are things I miss by doing it this way, in terms of other horror experiences throughout the year and other seasonal experiences around Halloween, that frustrate me. This varies from blink and you miss it availability of certain films to just trying to reconnect with horror TV and films which never feel seasonally appropriate when I do my big binge.

So the “Halloween Hundreds” are taking on a new shape this year. I’m breaking my protocol and just watching whatever whenever mostly. But:

A) I am spinning off a separate tumblr blog to talk about what I’m watching in a more focused and at times detailed manner

B) I will still be watching around a hundred horrorish films around the usual season - I just know myself - as more of a personal journey, which I will document both here and on the new blog as seasonally appropriate.

This should now have the same effect the original experiment did, where I see more movies overall.

[butmakeitgayblog]

I hope you eventually work up the courage to watch Bly Manor because you really are missing out on a beautiful lesbian love story. Maybe watch it with someone so you don’t get scared (and so they can hold you when you inevitably cry)?

Anyway I voted Lexa because she is the blueprint lmao sorry Dani bby

No no, sweet angel, here's the thing. The problem isn't being scared in the moment, I don't mind that about horror movies in general and love like slasher flicks and all that. I do like horror. The problem with ghosty horror stuff specifically is that it's like a gd ticking timebomb which my brain will then use to torture me for days, weeks, sometimes years to come. I will start inventing creepy shit in my head to go along with whatever I saw, but not in a cool fun storytelling kind of way. No, it'll be in the "pst hey Andi 👀... wouldn't it be super fucked up and terrifying if xyz happened right now?"

For example, I'll be brushing my teeth and then just think "hah how scary would it be if you bent down to spit and then stood up and there was someone's reflection standing behind you?" Or if I'm going into a dark room, "what if there was figure standing in the dark corner?" What if I know I'm alone and randomly hear a voice? What if I walk past something and see a flash of something that disappears? What if I look in a tight space and see eyes looking back? These are tame but believe me I come up with some wild shit in the moment

I know it doesn't sound scary in writing but in my head my brain is actually visually playing out the scenarios in real time and that then kicks in my adrenaline and fight or flight response because oh great now I'm paranoid and like ah fUck did I just see a shadow out of the corner if my eye AND THEN I START FEELING CRAZY BECAUSE THAT IS CRAZY

So 😌

I have just learned that I am not made to fuck with ghosty stuff 😌

[promof1976]

actually while i’m thinking abt mbv (1981), here are some of my Thoughts and Opinions bc while it is one of my favorite movies, i Do have like two (2) major problems with it and one (1) Hot Take that theoretically addresses them both

(weird rambling under the cut, sorry this got longer than i expected)

okay so first off: the ending twist just…doesn’t work. it just Does Not work.

like axel only makes sense as the killer bc of his backstory, and the problem with that is that we only learn his backstory—and therefore, any reason we might have to suspect him as the killer bc horror movies Love to do the whole “trauma is a direct pipeline to becoming a serial killer” bullshit—AFTER we learn he’s the killer so it just feels tacked-on. and sure, you could argue that the love triangle was a factor as well, but the problem with THAT is that the movie doesn’t really touch on it after the Reveal, outside of like two (2) lines at the end, which would imply that, of the two, axel’s backstory was more relevant to his motive than the love triangle was.

and speaking of the love triangle, that brings me to my Second problem: the main character t.j. is like Actually the fucking worst. like the guy acts soooo creepily towards his ex-gf—says multiple times out-loud in public that he's gonna try and steal her back from her new bf, drags her away from her workplace (presumably during her shift) while refusing to listen to her as she says she doesn’t wanna go, just automatically assumes she wants to come back to him w/o letting her speak for herself, literally just will Not leave her the hell alone, acts guilt-trippy towards her as if HE wasn’t the one who fucked up their relationship, and generally just acts like he’s entitled to her as if she were his property.

the movie does at least (halfheartedly imo) call it out for the shitty behavior it is, which is better than most early 80s movies...but that only makes it all the more infuriating when t.j. ends up with sarah in the end. it’s justifying and romanticizing the notion of aggressively pursuing ppl who’ve already told you no (multiple times, at that). bc sometimes no actually means yes! /s

like yeah axel fuckin sucks too (see how he acts towards sarah during the party) but he at least seems ashamed abt it (see the scene shortly after where he bursts into tears) AND he also isn’t rewarded for his behavior at the end like t.j. is

so here’s my Official MBV Hot Take™️: t.j. would’ve worked better as the killer, whilst Still being the main protagonist.

for one thing, it would be an Actual twist (at least compared to your average slasher movie at the time and even now tbh) bc he’s been set up as the main character, but also wouldn’t be too out of nowhere bc 1.) this movie is structured in such a way that it focuses on t.j. enough to consider him the main character, but it doesn’t follow his every move, 2.) his uh. lowkey concerning tendency to react overly aggressively or even violently when things don’t go his way (dude started a fistfight IN A MINE), and 3.) his creepy ass stalker behavior towards sarah.

hell, there’s your motive right there: he wants sarah back, so he commits this harry warden-esque murder spree—making the valentine’s day party itself a red herring—in order to kill off axel and get away with it, allowing him to win sarah back by comforting her after the fact, which would play into the love aspect of valentine’s day.

(okay, it’s more entitlement than love, but you get what i mean)

it would Also be kind of an interesting contrast to harry’s spree imo? bc harry’s Whole Thing is that he killed these two ppl who not only genuinely wronged him/ruined his life, not only Also got most of his coworkers (who were probably also his friends) killed, but seemingly got away with it both legally and socially to the point where they felt comfortable enough to go to the valentine’s dance the very next year. but he also confined it to Only those two ppl, and that’s it (which is a part of why i hate the remake so much but that’s a whole different discussion). he didn’t go after anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the cave-in. so there’s this morally gray aspect to it all where the murders still aren’t justified, but harry’s a victim as well and it’s very understandable where he’s coming from.

but with t.j., it would be him being fully willing to kill most of his friend group—people he’s probably known his entire life, people who have done nothing to him that would warrant this—and intentionally ripping open this old wound in valentine bluffs that was finally beginning to heal, all bc his ex won’t leave her boyfriend and get back together with him.

well, it’s not the Only reason—he’s been angry towards this whole town for a While now, he’s pissed abt having to come back with nothing to show for it, he’s pissed to be back in that fucking mine again, he’s pissed at his dad, and he’s especially pissed that everyone and everything seemed to move on just fine without him—but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back, just one more reminder of how much of a failure he feels like he is.

and since he doesn’t wanna accept that other ppl (especially sarah) have lives outside of him and can’t just put everything on hold for him, nor does he want to actually work on these feelings of failure (bc that would mean having to admit that a lot of his problems are his own fault and he’s not the victim here), he decides to “fix” things by removing axel from the equation and let out some of the anger he holds towards valentine bluffs in the process.

it’s deciding to take matters into your own hands but for two very different reasons: trauma and a need to correct an injustice driving someone to do something drastic vs. entitlement, an unwillingness to accept fault, and a deep-seated rage towards Everyone And Everything in valentine bluffs finally coming to a head. a victim vs. a victim complex.

also.....there’s something abt the dramatic irony of the mayor’s son of all ppl taking harry warden’s place as valentine bluffs’ town boogeyman, all while being 10x worse than harry warden ever was, that just Feels Right in a narrative sense.

but maybe that’s just me.

[pokelec]

A Dead By Daylight Novice Reviews All the Killers' Trailers (and makes suggestions for what they'd change)

Reveal trailers are paramount for an audience's first look at new characters. First impressions are everything, so your trailer for your shiny new character needs to be perfect for what's in store for the video game! I started playing DBD a month-ish ago but watched all the trailers for the killers before I started playing, and watching some of them got me to thinking about how I would have changes some of the trailers. Some require no changes, while others I think need an overhaul.

Disclaimer: This is in my personal opinion, is not objective at all, and I'm only doing this because this is something I've been thinking about for a month and need some sort of release or else my brain will implode.

Under a read more bc this gets long.

The Trapper - The first trailer! For a first trailer, I think this one is pretty spot on. It follows a lot of beats of slasher movies, in terms of following a survivor that's gonna be killed, her encountering dead bodies, and the suspense of the killer looking for her. Considering Dead by Daylight is effectively a playable horror movie, I think this is a perfect intro to the game. As for what this means for the Trapper, aka our Jason substitute, I think it showed him off alright! We saw his bear traps and got a good look at him doing this thing. Pretty good, all things considered!

The Wraith - The Wraith, Hillbilly, and Nurse all features gameplay as the means of showing off what the killers can do. The Wraith's isn't too bad, since it does show off his Wailing Bell power enough for people to understand "This is a killer that can turn invisible, and you may not know he's right next to you until it's too late". I wish it has a more cinematic style, but I'll be forgiving here because DBD was still young when this was made. I also thing it showed the new map, Autohaven, pretty well. I'm not too big of a fan of ending the trailer with his mori, but that could be because I don't find his mori exciting.

The Hillbilly - Next is our Leatherface expy! This one feels shorter, still using gameplay to introduce our new killer but at least shows off his chainsaw wielding and hints at the map associated with him. I like the shot of him revving his chainsaw underneath the tree with the animal carcasses! I don't mind the ending with his mori here because even if it's off screen, getting cut with a chainsaw is brutal enough to leave a lasting impression. Again, I wish it had the cinematic style, but it's fine.

The Nurse - I think the Nurse's trailer is the weakest of the three gameplay-focused trailers. The text intro is... fine, but I honestly think it fits the Doctor more. It does an okay job of showing us her Blinking mechanics, but it also doesn't? Like we see her teleporting to Nea, but it feels lackluster. I do like the ending shot of dead Nea as the Nurse just blinks away. I'm not quite sure how to change this trailer to be more effective in my opinion, if I'm being honest.

The Shape/Michael Myers - Our first franchise killer, and a perfect trailer. The first second in, we hear John Carpenter's legendary Halloween score. Even non-horror fans will quickly pick up which killer this is. The suspense of Laurie see Michael, Michael coming up the stairs, and especially the shot of Laurie and Michael being on opposite sides of a door is *chef's kiss*. We see enough of the Shape to be satisfied and eager for his release. It's the perfect trailer for him AND Laurie imo.

The Huntress - Ah, the Huntress. She is my favorite killer to play as, and I probably have the majority of my playtime on her. Unfortunately, I think her trailer leaves a lot to be desired. It's the start of the 'let's look at the killer from different angles, have them turn around to the camera, and then attack the viewer' trend of DBD trailers. I call for a complete rewrite! Here's what I would have done:

The map is Mother's Dwelling. Two survivors (David aaaand idk Dwight?) are running and hides behind some trees. We hear the Huntress's lullaby get louder, and we see the bottom half of her and her axe as she walks past the survivors. The lullaby gets quieter, and the survivors take a sigh of relief. Then, a hatchet is thrown and lodged into Dwight's head! David screams and runs. We then see our full look at the Huntress as she picks up the body. Her signature lullaby continues as the trailer ends.

The Hag - The Hag's trailer also follows a similar formula to the Huntress' trailer. There is an animation bump, so we get to see the Hag's emaciated appearance in full detail. I'm not too mad about that, since the Hag's appearance is unsettling enough to cause viewer distress and curiosity more than the Huntress' would. However, because this is a DBD original killer, we need to see what her deal is with her trailer. Thus, I propose this:

On the swamp, Ace is repairing a generator but hears another survivor (Dwight?) get hooked. Ace goes to rescue him, but we see as he steps on a rune in front of the poor survivor. The illusion of the Hag pops up, jumpscaring poor Ace (and the audience) but disappears. Ace then rescues Dwight for real, but Dwight quickly runs away. Why? Because the real Hag is behind Ace and lunges at him, biting his neck. Trailer ends.

The Doctor - I now realize that my taste in writing DBD trailers is 'have the survivor do a thing, they think the killer is near, they then relax, and only then are they attacked by the killer'. It's a bit stereotypical, but again, we're dealing with a game centered on the horror genre, so that's why I'm okay with it.

I mention this because that's effectively the story beats the the Doctor's trailer follows. Instead of attacking Feng, however, the Doctor just looks at her run and stares menacingly. Even though we don't see the Doctor's shock therapy powers here, I think the long look at the killer is still effective because of his design. A first reaction I (and other reactors) experienced went from the initial "OMG the killer is here, run girl!" to "Why tf are his own eyes and mouth held open like that A Clockwork Orange scene?!". We also don't linger for too long on him either, so I think this trailer works well enough.

The Cannibal/Leatherface - Another franchise killer, this time good ol Leatherface! This trailer is a little different, using text to draw up suspense. I do like the reveal of "What is his mask made of? YOU.", but I would've loved to have seen some actual Cannibal action, or at least his in-game model doing his Texas chainsaw massacring thing.

The Nightmare/Freddy Kruger - Oh, c'mon, we got one of the most well known characters in horror in this little video game, and all we get for his trailer is some scratch marks and a 'killer does nothing but stand there menacingly and attack the camera' trailer?! I do like the detail that when we see him, it's DBD's version of the dream world, but we could've at least featured a survivor falling asleep and then seeing him for themselves.

(Also kinda sad it's the reboot version of Freddy instead of the Wes Craven version and the survivor is Quentin instead of Nancy Freaking Thompson, but I guess we should be happy he's in the game at all)

The Pig - Largely, I think this trailer is pretty good. I'm not too big of a fan of Amanda just standing there menacingly near Dwight, but I do like everything else. I especially love the security camera shot of the famous Saw bathroom and the cutaway when Dwight's reverse bear trap activates (but we still see a good bit of gore!). It feels very Saw-like.

The Clown - This trailer is pretty good! Even though we don't see the Clown in much action, we get a lot of visual storytelling with the bottles, the circus, and the ring of fingers, all leading up to the reveal of his face. The diagetic music from Kate is a nice touch, too.

The Spirit - This one is alright. There is a lot of focus on Adam, but it does build up tension to when the Spirit reveals herself. My biggest problem with it is the ending card that is used for her. Yes, I know that's traditional for the end of these trailers, but her pose and expression is kinda meh after the face she makes when she's about to attack Adam. Seriously, that couple of seconds haunts me (sorry) otherwise.

The Legion - My other favorite killer to play! It's so funny how I didn't like Legion when I first heard of them but now they're my favorites. I love how the trailer emphasizes that the new killer(s) looks similar to survivors and the brutality of when Frank reveals himself and stabs Jeff. However, the trailer does a disservice to the other members of the Legion. C'mon, that's their whole shtick!

My recommendation would be to end with a shot of Julie, Joey, and Suzie joining Frank (and obviously getting a good look at them) and surrounding Jeff right before they all stab him. This is a little disingenuous since you can't play as all four of them at once (unless you count that one Blighted skin...), but you also can't disguise yourself as a survivor, so... Yeah. They are The Legion! They act as one! Treat them as such in their trailer, dammit!

The Plague - The Plague's trailer is interesting. Even though we don't see her in action, I think it's fine because seeing her puke on people during her trailer might be a bit off-putting. Just a bit. We still get some storytelling with her whispered prayers, the candles and incense thingy, and, of course, her face. I think because the Plague's design is inherently unique among all the killers so far, she can get away with the 'let's just tease the audience by looking at the killer and nothing else' trend.

The Ghost Face - Not too much I can complain about with this one. I do like the wtf factor of 'wait, why is a DBD trailer at a modern day warehouse???', especially if you're watching a trailer playlist like I first did. It all makes sense when you learn it's Ghost Face, though! Also, justice for that poor cashier.

The Demogorgon - RIP Stranger Things DLC. I don't watch this series, but I really like the Hawkins Lab map and I'm going to be sad when it's gone. :(

I love this trailer! When I hear the Stranger Things music, it actually gives me chills. I'm legitimately so sad the DLC will be gone from the stores, but I do own them myself. I need to actually sit down and play Demo, Steve, and Nancy one of these days. Why am I crying? No, I'm not kidding, why is this trailer making me cry? Renew the contract, Netflix, please! I don't want this stuff to disappear forever!

(Is it weird that I've been nagged on for years to watch Stranger Things but it's Dead By Daylight that's actually convincing me to watch it?)

The Oni - This is an interesting case. The "main" theme of this trailer is the contrast of modern day Japan's Yui and her motorcycle vs the literal ancient samurai Oni. I think it works out, and again, I think the presentation makes up for us not seeing too much of the new killer.

The Deathslinger - Oh boy, do I love my cowboys! This trailer is nearly perfect. We establish the western setting quickly over the sounds of some poor bastard in pain. The reeling in of the chains and the closeup of The Redeemer is so great. My biggest complaint with this trailer is that we linger a bit too long on the Deathslinger's face at the end. Yeah, he's creepy with his eyes and his disjointed jaw, but you can only look at a horror for so long before you want to move on.

The Executioner/Pyramid Head - I like this trailer! I haven't played Silent Hills, but I'm at least somewhat familiar with the premise and Pyramid Head. I love the shot of him passing the classroom door window and the sword cutting a rift through the ground. Yeah, my lack of SH knowledge makes me unable to recommend any changes here.

The Blight - I have no changes to suggest. The Blight's transformation is super horrific, reminding me of the typical depiction of Jekyll and Hyde. Honestly, he is so much more terrifying in his trailer and in lore than in gameplay.

The Twins - No changes needed. BHVR is really starting to hit their stride with these trailers! Seeing Victor come out of Charlotte's body is amazing.

The Trickster - We depart from all of the other trailers by using an K-POP music video style. It does a good job at referencing some of his story beats (namely torturing/killing people, recording their screams, and using them in his music), but it doesn't really make me afraid of the Trickster. Sure, it fits with his theme, but I would have preferred seeing more of him, y'know, instead of just looking pretty and making faces? I still wouldn't change the art style of the trailer, though. It's fitting enough for him and a breath of fresh air from the doom and gloom.

The Nemesis - No change needed, mostly because I'm not too familiar with the Resident Evil series, but seeing Jill, the twink Leon, and Nemesis on-screen is a very cool moment. Also can we get an F in chat for Meg?

The Cenobite/Pinhead - This is a perfect trailer. We got the Lament Configuration, we got the chains pinning up Dwight, we got Pinhead himself! What more can I ask for?

If you actually made it this far, thank for reading? I don't think I really contribute anything to the fandom with this analysis, but DBD has been living rent free in my brain for the past month, so I may as well write something, eh?

[devilsskettle]

i forget whose tags these were but i’m borrowing them because i’ve been thinking about this exact thing basically since i first watched the movie lol and yeah i feel the same way, i am so like. compelled by the main group of characters, especially maxine, and the overall vibe or whatever, i think it has great atmosphere/setting and a lot of gore and like slasher shit that i enjoyed, but i don’t like basically the premise of the movie. like half of the plot. because i hate the antagonists, i’m just never gonna be onboard with the “creepy old people” thing, i think they went way over the top with trying to make them look “gross” which i actually think made it less effective and it would’ve been a better movie if they’d gone with older-but-not-quite-elderly normal looking people tbh, the script would have minimal to no changes with that decision anyway, though i have some editing ideas for more thematic clarity and cohesiveness lol, but yeah i think that trope is super ineffective in general and also i think there’s a lot of implications with how they handled like aging etc that i don’t like and somehow it was also super aimless, like “yeah. uh, scary old people. don’t think about it too much” even though it’s actively raising a lot of questions about filmmaking and exploitation and sex appeal and the fleeting nature of youth/“the x factor” as they say. i am so conflicted about whether or not it’s actually successful in making any point in particular and i don’t think it is lol, it just leaves a lot of questions floating around, even if they’re pretty good questions. i a don’t need everything wrapped up neatly, sometimes it’s good for a movie to make you question things instead of like preaching at you, but i also think the movie acts like it was trying to make a specific point? and the first half of the movie does have that specificity but then. yeah. it got aimless. and then it tries to shoehorn in some religious shit in at the last minute? it’s sort of peppered in once or twice but not effectively and it’s like, pick one or two things to focus on and do them well. but the overall experience of watching the movie for me kind of outweighs the bad, there are so many scenes i do like, basically all the scenes that are character-focused wrt the main group, and a lot of the horror scenes are really fun and well done imo and gory, and re: horror: it’s very clearly in conversation around 70s slasher movies especially tcm in a way that i found very thought provoking, it’s possible that i’m reading too much into it but it’s both a celebration and a criticism of the genre without meta about the genre (though it’s self reflexive about itself) which i think is unique in a post-slasher, post-scream landscape of cinema, and it’s like this is the closest thing i’ve seen in modern horror to be a genuine slasher. and like you get the sense that that’s what they set out to do and when the camera guy says it’s possible to make a good dirty movie, we know what they mean is we’re gonna make a good slasher movie and here it is, which is pretentious lol and i have some problems with what that implies about all those other trashy thoughtless bad slasher movies, like they’re different. ha. but it’s also clever and the audience is in on the joke and i don’t think it shies away from any slasher shit like they let it be gory and sometimes absurd and that’s a risk horror movies tend not to take nowadays because they don’t want it to be seen as trashy mindless stupid etc. anyway, also it has a great ending for the most part so when it leaves you with that, that’s the energy and experience you walk away with and idk it worked on me lol. it makes no damn sense, compels me though or whatever. oh damn i just thought of a bunch of other new things but this is already getting to be a sizable tangent so i’ll stop here. in conclusion: mia goth

[lucifers-horror-harem]

Kind of in a weird headspace today regarding my writing. Nothing bad or anything involving my writing on this blog, don't worry about that. In all honesty to anyone who is reading this and who reads my fics and sends me asks you're a blessing. You helped me feel better about my writing again. Read more cause it gets long and rambling and I just need to get this off my chest.

I wrote a long fic on my main blog that people who have followed me from that blog will remember. I feel massive guilt over this long fic because it probably will never be finished because of a combination of not being as interested in the fandom/series anymore as well as the comments I got that were always kind of for lack of a better term, "backhanded." Like, telling me how much they loved this fic but also either telling me they didn't like something I was doing with it and how THEY would do it, or telling me they hoped the character and the oc would live happily ever after even though not only was the character a villain, but I made it pretty clear in my fic that the relationship was pretty toxic considering the oc was kidnapped against her will and there was some Stockholm syndrome going on. To this day I get incredibly anxious every time I get an email from AO3 telling me someone commented on the fic because I don't know of it will be a genuine nice comment or a negging one or even a combo of the both. For a long time and even currently it still makes me upset and anxious that I wrote a fic that I worked so damn hard to make sure couldn't be misinterpreted as being anything but a darker fic but it still gets to me sometimes. As someone who has a shit time speaking and socializing irl the thing I rely on the most is my writing. It's how I KNOW I can make my thoughts get across. So when people just wildly misinterpreted the theme of my fic it made me so upset and worried that I was the problem and that I wasn't being clear enough.

I dont talk about this fic simply because I don't want to seem ungrateful. The people I met through this fic that were genuinely supportive, even drawing FAN ART of my OCS (that might i include at least one person outright told me they hated those same OCs people loved because they got in the way of the main pairing even though I made it clear it was a harem/the ocs were never mean or rude to the main character or engaged in any catty behavior), i can never thank the people that loved my work enough. I always feel horrible that if I were to say the reasons why I wanted to step away from the fic it would feel like I was punishing the people that did enjoy it. I could cope with general hate as the character I wrote for got PLENTY of it from the main fandom and I couldn't care about that. But I had a worse time coping with people who told me they liked the fic but not certain aspects of it. I had way more comments of "when is the next chapter" as soon as I posted a fic than people telling me how much they enjoyed it, what their fave moments were, or even hopefully talking about scenes that I was happy and excited about and worked really fucking hard to craft the interpersonal relationships between characters.

Part of the reason I created this blog was to keep my slasher content focused on one place. Another reason was I wanted to escape some of the inevitable "so you dropped this fic huh" (which yes I've gotten a ton of those too). But I'm ultimately glad I created this blog, that I've been a part of the slasher/horror fandom, and that I've met so many good friends here. Genuinely and completely, I thank every one of you. I have had many ruts as a writer, and following that long fic was one of them. I never thought I would get out of that rut till I came to be a part of this fandom. I'm still genuinely shocked that people enjoy my work to the degree they do. That they're willing to scream with me about stinky slashers and thirst over them with me without judgment.

I really want to write another long fic someday. I have a ton of ideas that I'm afraid to commit to just because due to that last long fic I worry if I don't have everything outlined to the most extreme degree that I either a) won't finish or b) people won't like it. I know I will probably get over it but yeah, idk its a thing that makes me so anxious especially as someone who wants to publish original novels at some point when I can get my shit together.

Either way, I know I will probs be fine on this blog. Everyone has been so kind and supportive, and I really appreciate being in a fandom that FINALLY feels accepting and welcoming and doesn't have cliques or cattiness or anything of that sort. It makes me so fucking happy.

[revchainsaw]

You're Next (2011)

Greetings Flock! Reverend Chainsaw here with another film review to feed your souls. Parishioners of the Cult of Cult should be familiar with todays offering, and that is good news for you shall find your hearts strangely warmed. Please join me as we dive into the Book of You're Next and renew our devotion to the Trinity that is The Tiger, the Lamb, and the Holy Wolf.

The Message

You're Next is definitely a tough film to review. For a movie as young as it is to have had such a strong and committed following speaks volumes and I believe you would be hard pressed to find a review by anyone who loves horror that is down on the film. While it can sometimes bring me great joy to review the awful films of the world, occasionally it is a pleasure to give honor to those films which deserve it.

You're Next is a film which fits neatly into both the Slasher and Home Invasion genres. The story centers around a vicious assault on a wealthy family by 3 masked men, all on the evening when our heroin, Erin, is meeting them for the first time. Avoiding the Slasher genre trope of generic murder lambs we are yet again faced with an excellent cast where not even the early victims are forgettable.

The movie opens with the grizzly murder of the Davison's nearest neighbors by our animal masked assassins, insuring that should anyone attempt to flee they will not be finding help any time soon. Then we get one hell of a title card before we find Paul and Aubrey Davison preparing to have their children and their respective partners over to their home to celebrate their anniversary. Aubrey is played by Re-Animators own Barbara Crampton. Foremost among the children visiting are their son Crispian, a college professor, and his Australian girlfriend Erin, who was once his T.A. This is a source of contention for Crispian when his siblings judge the professional nature of this relationship.

Two by Two the Children arrive. It is off handedly mentioned that the Davisons money comes from defense contracts, and that the family dynamic is particularly strained. An arrow from a cross bow pierces the window during a particularly tense dinner, and then the film enters full force into unyielding action. There are characters murdered by arrows, a gruesome slice to the jugular by some sinisterly placed piano wire (during what was ramping up to be a daring escape from the home), and of course axe murders.

Crispian manages to escape into the night abandoning Erin and his remaining family. At this point, Erin, who is revealed to have been raised on a survivalist compound begins to fight back. Erin goes full Home Alone on the invaders, and the hunters soon become the hunted. After Erin kills one of the villains It is revealed through the course of the night that the murder of the Davison family is an inside job. These men are paid assassins and they were hired by Felix and his gothy girlfriend Zee, whose macabre tastes include being sexually aroused by dead bodies. Once Erin discovers this fact she dispatches the rest of the animal masked crew as well as Felix and Zee with some very creative uses of kitchenware.

Just as we are about to declare Erin the final girl of this film Felix's phone rings, it's Crispian. When Erin answers Crispian reveals that he was the ringleader, but his weak constitution had caused him to flee the scene. Impatient when he doesn't here Felix on the other end Felix reenters the home to find a bloody Erin. He begs and makes excuses, promising Erin that she was intended to be a witness to the slaughter and was safe the whole time. Erin is having none of it, and ends the relationship once and for all with a stab to the neck.

The film ends with the arrival of the police who upon discovering Erin murdering Crispian set off one of her Home Alone traps and she is set up to be held responsible for the whole affair. Here's hoping we get the court room drama sequel that this movie deserves.

The Benediction

Best Kill: Erin, In the Kitchen, With the Vitamix It's not often in a horror flick that the best kill can be said not to have come from the hands of the monster, but from the heroin. Toward the climax of the film Erin has had enough and she expresses her self in glorious gory satisfaction with a blender to the skull of her lovers brother Felix.

Best Character : T.A. Taking Action Suprise! It's Erin. The best character is Erin. I really wanted to try and say that it was some more obscure character like snarky big bro Drake, but No. It's Erin, it was always Erin. She is the stand out feature of the film. The Lamb, the Tiger, and the Wolf masks were instantly iconic and sold in Hot Topic from the minute the movie made a wide release, but no one comes out of You're Next thinking about the mercenary assassins. We come out thinking about how the lass from the land down under turned the tide against the terribe trio. The audience wants more Erin.

Best Actor: We Came, We Got You, Barbara!

It's just so good to see Barbara Crampton whenever we can. It says something for a person to still be doing the Scream Queen thing for this long. She is not the most likeable character in You're Next but she is selling the fear, the tension and the goals of her character. I think it would be safe to say that the first act would not be nearly as effective without Barbara Cramptons performance.

Best Villain: Zee Nation

Zee was just something else. The Masked Trio of Home Invaders were sort of plug and play. The masks and tactical gear definitely sold the menace, but they were not really characters. They are given some slivers of back story and I don't think that it's really a problem that way. I've been happy with less before. It just sort of means that no one killer stands out in particular. Though the Lamb Mask is my personal favorite. For all the brutish merciless killing these three dole out to the Davison family it's really Zee who makes a splash in my memory. She's absolutely as gleeful as a deadite about all this bloodshed going on around her. She isn't just dark and edgy cuz it's a look, it seems like she really took that aesthetic to heart. The fact that you couldn't tell she'd happily tear your throat out by looking at her certainly makes her a bigger threat than she gets credit for.

Worst Character: Poor Little Rich Kid

All of the characters in You're Next work. Some move from grating to sympathetic, others from charming to pitiful, but at some point every character has a presence and a personality that the viewer can recognize. No Character in this film will receive worst character because they are poorly written, unneccessary, or just obnoxious. However, one character is consistently self-indulgent, cocky, sniveling, and has all the undeserved sense of superiority of a Kevin Smith protagonist, and that's Crispian. Fuck Crispian. He's a bad boyfriend, a bad brother, a bad son, and a bad teacher. He has so much that he doesn't deserve, and earnestly feels he's entitled to more.

Most WTF Moment: Crossing the Line

Was it Crispian's heel turn? Was it Felix stabbing drake? The realization that the family extermination was an inside job? Was it the twist that Erin was a bad ass? What single moment made everyone who's seen this movie go "WHOAH!!!" all at once? When Crispian was attempting to make his exit the first time he proposed he go and get help claiming he's the fastest, to which his overestimation of himself is comedically undercut by the fact that he is in fact out of shape and his sister Aimee used to run track. The family unanimously agrees they would put their lives in the hands of poor Aimee and her athletic past, but they also propose she back up and bolt out the front door the minute they open it up. The music swells, and Aimee makes a run for it. She is stopped short by a piano wire trap set by the mercenaries, as her momentum allows the wire to cut deep and clean into the meat of her neck. She is not decapitated but bleeds out on the floor of the house. It really catches the viewer off guard and is a very impressive effect. Not only is Aimee's kill the most WTF moment, but it is runner up for best kill.

Summary You're Next is hands down my favorite home invasion movie. It's wide appeal is undeniable. As of 2015, You're Next was predicted to be considered the best horror movie of the 2010s. Unfortunately for You're Next but how wonderful for us, the later half of the decade really ramped up the great horror films releases. I wouldn't call You're Next the best horror film of it's time, but it definitely deserves to be remembered. People's enthusiasm for the film does seem to be slowing and I think it would do our congregation a great service for us to continue singing it's praises.

Overall Grade: A

[thesilkenlair]

(Casey Here!)

As much D&D as I play, you'd imagine I would eventually get around to illustrating some of their most iconic monsters! Which is to say, the ones that I personally find the most iconic. Which is to say, the ones I memorized when I was reading my dad's monster manual at age nine. Purple worm - Sandworms never go out of style. I've seen a lot of rad designs for this bugger over the editions, but I favor the slightly less reptilian older takes for this particular critter. It's kinda basic, but sometimes that's what you want. It's like a shark or a crocodile: Just flat out unchanged across the ages. Hook horror - I've heard it rumored that Gygax used a small Gigan figure to represent this monster. I can't verify that, but it definitely sounds right. Hook horrors are one of the very first things you meet when you play around in the caves, and they kind of remind me of the Father Deep monsters of the Hork Bajir homeworld that way. Mind flayer - Mind flayers! Basically, take all of your Dracula conventions and dip them in a fresh coat of Lovecraft. There's that old "decadent aristocratic upper caste system who literally eats the poor, but still somehow comes across as less evil than the actual real life 1%" setup that will never stop being relevant. Though personally, I see mind flayers as the first alternative for folks who want to play that monster-who-feels-the-urge-to-eat-their-friends-but-refuses-to-do-it shtick but don't want to deal with vampire baggage. You know, the furry option! ... Slimy? Rubbery? Do we have a word for anthro-cephalopods? I'm only a casual furry. Gelatinous cube - I'm not apologizing for giving this one a slot. Froghemoth - So, back when I participated in my very first long-term campaign, I played a druid. You've met Talia before. Naturally, I was chomping at the bit for the day I finally got to turn her into a froghemoth, and celebrated the day my wish was finally granted and she was allowed to chug human-supremacist-cultists like popcorn. Yeah, okay, the froghemoth is one of the classic vore-monsters. But it's a charming design in its own right. Kind of a freaky Hanna Barbara critter, like you'd see Space Ghost fighting. No matter how many artists draw it, they can never shake that inherent goofiness that third edition tried so hard to purge. I would probably cram them somewhere onto Fronterra if I was sure they were public domain. As is, I'm 99% certain that this is what Visser Three turned into when he ate Elfangor. Tarrasque - D&D's original kaiju! Kind of just takes the name and nothing else when it comes to its mythological origins, but I don't mind. The Tarrasque is that endgame "let's test the players" final boss monster... Or at least it's supposed to be. My DM reskinned it for our final Pathfinder session, and one of the PCs still nearly killed it in a single turn. Also, he let Talia turn into one, so maybe Pathfinder is just bullshit? Regardless, the Tarrasque has one of those simple, iconic designs. I've heard rumors it was based on the concept art for Fallout's deathclaws, and like the Gigan-figure, I can't verify this in any way. With its reptilian features, twin horns, spiny carapace and grabby fingies, it has an undeniable lizardlike quality that I can't help but find charming. Kinda feels like a more refined version of Zilla? Though for an insatiable eating machine, I notice a lot of artists give it very little belly to work with. Come on, this guy eats entire cities! Give him somewhere to put it! Rust monster - An icon of icons, the rust monster! Drawing its origin from a bizarre Chinese "dinosaur" toy, later designs have made it more insectoid in appearance, but never feeling QUITE like anything Earthly. It's the four limbs. Between the four limbs and the tail, it's hard to tell if it's an arthropod mimicking a vertebrate or the other way around. I'm pretty sure this is part of what inspired my ossaderm creatures for Fronterra. Also, Ryla can turn into one in our campaign. I have no shortage of havoc to wreak when the opportunity comes. Behir - Dragons in D&D are kind of... extra. Godlike beings, paragons of whatever personality trait they represent. Whenever there's something uber powerful in D&D, it gets compared to dragons. It makes them kind of unapproachable. Behirs provide all the essentials of a dragon - Serpentine body, scaly skin, horns, sapience, breath weapon, taste for human flesh - wrapped up in a smaller, weirder, IMO cooler package. You know, your Lambton Worms. A lot easier to port in and out of adventures, a lot less of an event when they show up, but still a formidable force in their own right. I like the behir. The behir knows how to taunt me just the right amount. Bulette - Another Chinese "dinosaur" figure monster, the bulette is actually another one I associate with Talia. Whenever we faced a problem that didn't have a glaringly and immediately obvious solution, she would turn into a bulette, whether it was for beating up robots, digging through obstacles, trampling smurfs, navigating labyrinths, distracting slashers with cute dog tricks... it was kind of her signature form. But shenanigans aside, the bulette is just an excellent monster. While the "land shark" shtick may be common, there's a lot more going on with the bulette's design. It's rumored to be a mad wizard's creation, as he combined a snapping turtle with an armadillo and mixed in a helping of demon blood to taste. Personally, I always considered that to be a neat little rumor to flesh out the world, but never assumed it to be true. The bulette just feels too naturalistic for that. Like some kind of protomammal or crocodylomorph, or weird triassic monstrosity. Magic and demons and dragons and so on DO affect the ecosystem. I always figured the bulette was just something that evolved to compete in this new biosphere. Owlbear - This one, on the other hand, I fully believe the "mad wizard was bored" explanation. Another chinasaur critter, the owlbear is frequently made fun of. What makes it scarier than a regular bear? It can't fly, so why have owl parts at all? Why trade fangs for a beak in what is at best a latural move? Well, first of all, fuck you, owls are creepy motherfuckers, and that alone is enough to justify it. But secondly, that's part of its charm. Besides some improved vision, the owl DOESN'T make it more dangerous. What makes the owlbear dangerous is that it's an insane, Frankensteinian monstrosity roaming uncontrolled through the wilderness! It doesn't need weaponry, its sheer temperament is enough to make it a worthy opponent. Sure, the practical threat might not be hugely above that of a bear, but storytelling isn't about numbers. Any asshole can go outside and get eaten by a bear. The owlbear is part of this world. The owlbear is a reminder of what magic can do. Someone somewhere actually made this thing, for whatever reason, and now the world is irrevocably changed because of it. Owlbears go beyond practicality. They bring the lore! Also, bears don't have very good eyesight, so the big owl eyes probably make them better hunters. Flumph - Is that a Japanese-style martian? Do we just have aliens in D&D? Dear lord, I love them! Okay, the flumph has got a sizable hatedom. And that hatedom can eat my ass, because the flumph is precious and perfect just the way it is! Flumphs are designed as a sort of sidekick-type creature. They're not very good fighters, but they bring knowledge and lore to the table. Whether they're aliens from some far off star, seeking your aid to prevent catastrophe, or psionic natives of the Underdark eager to bask in your positivity and hopefully stick it to the tyrants they're forced to share real estate with. My group generally treats them as straight up aliens, benevolent but strange. Course, we're all pretty strange, so we get along just fine. Otyugh - Okay so, the aberration creature type implies that this is something from another world that doesn't belong. And yet otyughs, which are aberrations, are an essential part of this world's ecosystem? Okay, I can buy the idea that an alien organism adapted to our world and is now a key part of it. Fronterra's got a TON of that. It just feels like after a point, the otyugh would be considered a beast? Otyughs are great. Every ecosystem needs a decomposer, and every fantasy story needs at least one dive into the sewers. Otyughs provide both, and are intelligent enough to keep the plot moving if it hits a snag. There's always going to be garbage, refuse, carrion, decay, things that need to be broken down and processed. Carrion crawler - The carrion crawler is pretty similar to the otyugh in that it's technically not considered a beast, and therefor must have its origins elsewhere, but feels so integrated into the ecosystem that it just feels like it belongs. They usually can't talk, so they're not just reskinned otyughs, but I still consider them pretty essential. Otyughs find a singular spot where waste is dumped and shovel it down at their leisure, while carrion crawlers skulk through the tunnels, actively seeking their food. The crawler got one of the most radical redesigns on the transition from second to third edition, but I can't really choose a single favorite. The oldschool tentacle-faced cutworm looks like it could be a real animal, while the googly-eyed Halloween decoration feels like it could be from another world, merely having set up shop here. Could there name apply to two wholly different creatures? If so, then I'm not sure which one mine would be considered. I kinda mashed them together into something that doesn't quite feel like either. But I like it for what it is. Maybe I'll sneak it onto Fronterra. Aboleth - Tentacled, telepathic sea creatures who turn humans into slimy minions, who remember everything their race has ever seen, and who are always plotting something behind the scenes. Yeah, the aboleths really crank up the Lovecraft elements. Actually, between the mind flayers, the flumphs and the aboleths, even the most oldschool D&D covered quite a few essential Lovecraftian bases. The flayers are your corrupt yet still recognizable humanoids who can be considered truly evil, the flumphs are benevolent-yet-bizarre guardians who know more than you, and the aboleths are the truly unknowable, sinister intellects. The fact that they can barely function on land honestly only adds to that, IMO. They're inherently difficult for a party to reach, and they offer some nice underwater adventure seeds. Not enough adventures go underwater. There's this perception that the ocean is bad for storytelling because so many writers lack the creativity to make it work. I wanna run an underwater adventure now. Beholder - Icon of icons! THE D&D monster! The beholder! Paranoid, jumpy, always five steps ahead and twenty steps perpendicular! Beholds are fun in just about every way. Between their wacky, diverse designs, their elaborate lairs, their eccentric personalities, their bizarre powers, you're never gonna run out of fun with beholders. Remorhaz - It's always been a thing that bothered me with environment-based monsters. Why does the ice monster who lives in the cold use ice as a weapon? Aren't most of the things it encounters going to be resistant to the cold? Sure, a cone of cold will still kill a polar bear, but a lot of the monsters in the tundra are outright immune to cold. A while dragon's not going to get much use out of its breath weapon fighting frost worms and frost giants. That's one reason the remorhaz sticks out to be. We have an icy tundra beast whose insides are a scorching furnace, which it can intensify and weaponize as it sees fit. Which also conveniently explains why its design - a sort of cobra-esque centipede - invokes warm-weather creatures, despite its icy environment. It's a nice subversion of the usual tropes, plus it's just a memorable, cool looking critter to begin with. On a smaller note, the remorhaz feels like a good loophole for Ryla's "no cold weather morphs" rule. Turning into something elementally affiliated with ice is no good, but a non-magical monster that survives the cold by superheating its insides? That seems perfectly viable to me!

[aion-rsa]

The Best Creepy Horror Movies

https://ift.tt/31YlYtU

Creepy isn’t the same as scary.

Of course horror movies can be scary simply by using loud noises and sudden movements to make their audiences jump, but creepy is harder to pull off. To be effectively creepy, a film needs to establish a certain atmosphere; it needs to draw you in and make you care. It needs to give you something to think about when you’re trying to drop off to sleep at night; to make you wonder whether that creaking noise down the hallway was just the house settling or something lurking in the shadows. Creepy stays with you. It gives you goosebumps.

Here are 85 of the best horror movies (in no particular order) to chill your bones. Enjoy the nightmares.

Us (2019)

Jordan Peele’s follow up to his award winner Get Out is another social horror. While it might not be quite as accomplished or coherent as Get Out (the end is a bit of a mess) Us is arguably scarier than Get Out as a family staying in a holiday home find themselves tormented by evil replicas of themselves. It’s a film that keeps you constantly on edge with the performances of the main cast – Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex – absolutely pitch perfect and never less than convincing as good and evil versions of themselves.

It Comes At Night (2017)

Though the marketing material was somewhat misleading, featuring the above scary-looking dude (who really isn’t a big part of the film at all), It Comes at Night, from director Trey Edward Shults is a claustrophobic slow-burner that insidiously ramps up the creep factor. Joel Edgerton plays the patriarch of a family holed up in a cabin in the woods to escape an unnamed wide spread virus. But when a man, his wife and their young child arrive seeking shelter his family life is disrupted. A coming-of-age horror with one of the bleakest endings around.

Mr. Jones (2013)

Nobody knows who Mr. Jones is. The artist is a recluse, but his bizarre sculptures have made him world famous. When a documentary maker and his girlfriend stumble across what looks like his workshop, they become obsessed with finding out the truth about Mr. Jones, but the truth isn’t particularly easy to stomach.

Read more

Games

20 Scariest Horror Games Ever Made

By Matthew Byrd

Movies

Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

One of the most stylishly shot found footage movies you’ll ever see, the makers know the rules of the genre well enough that when they break them, it adds to the story rather than detracting from it. Also, those scarecrows are petrifying.

Under the Shadow (2016)

Set in war-torn Tehran in the late 1980s, Under the Shadow sees a would-be doctor battling the forces of evil for her daughter (and her sanity) even as everyone around her flees to safer ground. The juxtaposition of earthly and unearthly threats makes this a uniquely terrifying film, and Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is a wonderfully complex and sympathetic heroine. Not many films could make a sheet of printed fabric terrifying, but Under the Shadow manages it.

Gaslight (1940)

Bella (Diana Wynyard) thinks she’s losing her mind. She keeps losing things, and the lights in her house seem to flicker, even though her husband Paul (Anton Walbrook) tells her he can’t see anything wrong. Plus there are those footsteps upstairs… Just from that description, you might think that Gaslight will turn out to be a haunted house story, but the real explanation for all the weirdness is far more sinister than that. Walbrook does sinister like no-one else.

The Babadook (2014)

A character from a terrifying kids book comes to life to haunt a single mother (Essie Davis) grieving for the loss of her husband in this beautiful, sorrowful meditation on depression and despair. Top-hatted Mr. Babadook with his horrible, terrible grin is of course creepy as all, but Noah Wiseman as her needy and uncontrollable child gives him a run for his money in creepiness.

The Clairvoyant (1934)

Maximus, King Of The Mind Readers (Claude Rains) performs amazing feats of clairvoyance on stage every night in front of adoring audiences. The problem is, it’s fake – the mind-reading is all done through a secret code Maximus has invented to communicate with his assistant wife, Rene (Fay Wray). But one night, he meets Christine (Jane Baxter), and his abilities become real. He really can predict the future. If you’ve already guessed that’ll turn out to be more of a burden than a gift, you’re right. Gorgeously shot, wonderfully acted, this is a creepy delight.

Sleep Tight (2011)

The second Jaume Balaguero film on this list is just as bleak and horrifying as the first: Sleep Tight sees a concierge secretly breaking into the homes of the people he’s supposed to serve to try to make them as miserable as he is. When Cesar (Luis Tosar) finds one tenant is harder to upset than the others, his behaviour escalates until he’s committing unimaginably grotesque crimes against the poor girl. The ending will have you shuddering in your seat.

Lake Mungo (2008)

This strange found footage film from Australia takes the format of a mockumentary focusing on the family of a dead girl who think there are supernatural goings on surround their house. It owes a debt to Twin Peaks in its odd neighborhood vibe, and the twisty plot holds many surprises, as the movie wrong foots the audience time and again. It’s creepy throughout but by the time you finally discover what’s really going on it’s not only terrifying but emotionally devastating too.

Dead of Night (1945)

Probably the best horror anthology ever made, this Ealing Studios production includes five individual stories and one wrap-around narrative. The wrap-around sees a consultant arrive at a country home only to find that he recognizes all of the guests at the house – he’s seen them all in a dream.

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Movies

A Short History of Creepy Dolls in Movies

By Sarah Dobbs

Movies

Annabelle: Real-Life Haunted Dolls to Disturb Your Dreams

By Aaron Sagers

Spooked, the guests start recounting their own stories of the uncanny, each more unnerving than the last. Well, except for the one about the golfers, but that one’s just there for light relief before the film hits you with the scariest ventriloquist’s dummy ever committed to film. Just excellent, all round.

Hereditary (2018)

One of the most truly harrowing movies of recent years is Hereditary, the feature debut from Ari Aster. Toni Collette stars as a mother trying to hold together her family in the aftermath of a tragedy while around her supernatural goings on begin to escalate.

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Movies

Hereditary: The Real Story of King Paimon

By Tony Sokol

Movies

Hereditary Ending Explained

By David Crow

Hereditary has been called The Exorcist for a new generation, though it’s so much more than that. In fact at times, Hereditary is almost too scary, so oppressive is it’s escalating anguish and dread. This one is pure nightmare fodder.

Nina Forever (2015)

Rob (Cian Barry) can’t get over his ex-girlfriend. Nina (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) died in a car crash, which is bad enough, but when he tentatively begins a relationship with his co-worker, Holly (Abigail Hardingham), he finds himself haunted by Nina. Literally. She materializes in his bed every time he and Holly have sex – she might be dead, but she’s not letting go.

“Creepy” doesn’t feel like a strong enough word to describe this film – “devastating” might do it. It’s a sensitive and horrifying portrayal of grief, with a sense of humour as dark as the inside of your eyelids, and some extremely upsetting gore. Brilliant, but not one for the faint-hearted.

Robin Redbreast (1970)

When she moves away from London to a tiny country cottage, Norah (Anna Cropper) expected the change to be a bit strange, but nowhere near as weird as it ultimately turns out to be. As she gets to know the locals, she finds herself being pushed towards a relationship with karate-loving Rob (Andrew Bradford), and while she’s initially game, she soon discovers that her choices are being made for her. It’s a little bit Wicker Man, a little bit Rosemary’s Baby, and a lot of creepiness.

It Follows (2014)

Inspired by a reccuring nightmare director David Robert Mitchell had in his youth,It Follows is a clever, freaky take on the slasher movie, featuring, well, a sexually transmitted ghost. Maika Monroe plays a young woman haunted by a shape shifting spectre after a sexual encounter who slowly but relentless trails her everywhere – the film plays with the audience expertly, making us guess whether background characters could really be the monster. Ultra modern and highly effective, this one will leave you jumping at shadows long after the credits roll.

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

A tyrannical landowner is plagued by, well, a literal plague in Roger Corman’s adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story. Vincent Price plays the Satanic Prince Prospero, who rules over his village with an iron fist, condemning people to death for the mildest offence and abducting any woman who takes his fancy, but all of his evils come back to haunt him when he throws a masked ball and Death shows up. Fittingly, it’s got the hallucinogenic quality of a fever dream, and the various incarnations of Death are wonderfully creepy.

As Above, So Below (2014)

A group of explorers heads deep into the Paris catacombs, only to find they’ve gone a little too deep and stumbled into an alternate dimension that might actually be Hell. It’s a brilliantly over the top concept, and the way it plays out is incredibly eerie. Yes, it’s found footage, and yes, it’s a little bit on the silly side – it chucks in quotes from Dante and a few too many sad-faced ghosts – but some of the scares along the way are properly frightening. Suspend your disbelief and let it freak you out.

Oculus (2013)

Eleven years ago, Alan (Rory Cochrane) bought an antique mirror… and then died, along with his wife. According to the police, they were murdered by their 10-year-old son. According to their daughter, the mirror is haunted, and something supernatural caused their deaths. Now Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is out of prison, Kaylie (Karen Gillan) wants to prove he was innocent by conducting an experiment on the mirror… But inadvertently puts both of them in danger all over again.

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Books

“God God – Whose Hand Was I Holding?”: the Scariest Sentences Ever Written, Selected by Top Horror Authors

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

A24 Horror Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

By David Crow and 3 others

It’s chilling. The way director Mike Flanagan plays with reality, building unbearable uncertainty through camera angles and false memories, makes this film both incredibly scary and impossibly sad.

The Witch (2015)

After being cast out of a New England plantation for not interpreting scripture in the same way as the colony’s elders, a family strikes out alone, and soon discovers how inhospitable their unfamiliar new home country can really be. The Witch is a period piece, and the language is suitably archaic, but don’t let that put you off: it’s a brilliantly chilling portrayal of Puritan life, where belief can mean the difference between life and death, and horror is only ever one failed crop away.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Amityville Horror is the haunted house story. If you were only ever going to watch one haunted house movie, it should be this one, because this is the archetypal story: a family moves into a house where horrible murders happened, and then bad things happen to them. It manages a lot of things later imitators didn’t, though, which is that it makes the Lutzes’ decision to buy the house make sense, and also builds the horror slowly, so that they almost don’t notice when the things going wrong in the house switch from annoying issues to outright horror. If you’ve moved house in recent memory, this one’ll hit you where it hurts.

The Conjuring (2013)

If you were only ever going to watch two haunted house movies, the second one should definitely be The Conjuring. James Wan’s ode to ’70s horror has plenty in common with The Amityville Horror, but it also has plenty of ideas of its own – and at least half a dozen moments that’ll make your heart leap into your mouth.

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Movies

The Conjuring Timeline Explained: From The Nun to Annabelle Comes Home

By Daniel Kurland

Movies

Horror Movie Origin Stories: Directors, Actors, and Writers on How They Fell in Love With the Genre

By Rosie Fletcher

The camerawork, the music, the cute kids stuck in the middle of epic spiritual warfare… it all adds up to a completely terrifying experience. You’ll probably need to sleep with a nightlight for a week afterwards.

The Changeling (1980)

George C. Scott stars as Dr. John Russell in this classic ghost story, which is a favorite of The Others director Alejandro Amenabár. Following the tragic demise of his wife and son, Dr. Russell moves into a rambling Victorian mansion to compose music and pick up the pieces of his life. He’s soon being woken by relentless booming sounds coming from the heating system, precisely at 6am every day… Then there’s the old “apparition in the self-filling bath” trick (actually, this may be the first time this happened onscreen, but it sure won’t be the last).

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Movies

Dog Soldiers: The Wild History of the Most Action Packed Werewolf Movie Ever Made

By Mike Cecchini

Movies

The Best Horror Movies to Stream

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

This is one of those movies which hits up all the clichés: people go into the dark, gloomy attic to search for clues, and to the library to look up old news archives on the microfiche; they visit the graveyard, and finally, hold a séance (which is overwhelmingly creepy). The eerie soundtrack and skilful storytelling result in a film which peels back its mysterious layers slowly for a satisfying finish.

The Hallow (2015)

If you go down to the woods today, make sure you don’t steal anything or break anything, or the Hallow will get you. Tree surgeon Adam and his family move into an ancient farmhouse to start sizing up the land for developers and quickly fall afoul of the supernatural creatures lurking in the trees, which turns out to be a really bad idea. This film’s got it all: foreboding mythology, grotesque body horror, and the most amazing line of foreshadowing dialogue you’ll ever hear.

The Uninvited (1944)

A couple of Londoners holidaying in Cornwall stumble across a gorgeous abandoned house on the seafront and immediately decide they want to buy it. The owner, a grumpy old colonel, is happy to sell it to them on the spot, but his granddaughter is reluctant. Turns out the house has got secrets, and, yeah, a ghost. The dialogue in this film is incredible in a very 1940s kind of way, and the tone can occasionally be accused of jolliness, but it’s also got its moments of proper creepiness. Best enjoyed with a glass of sherry.

Saint Maud (2019)

One of the best movies of the year, Rose Glass’s feature debut is a study of a young palliative care nurse who starts to believe she’s on a mission from God to save the soul of her dying patient.

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Movies

Saint Maud and the True Horror of Broken Minds and Bodies

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

Saint Maud Review: Elevated Horror That’s a Revelation

By Rosie Fletcher

It’s a film about conflicts between mind, body and soul, but it leans her into genre territory as Maud (Morfydd Clark) hear God talking to her directly and punishes her own body in an attempt to feel closer to her spiritual side, while the cancer riddled Amanda (Jennifer Elhe) celebrates her body as it lets her down. Shot in Scarborough everything about Saint Maud is unsettling right up to the indelible finale. An absolute must watch.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Director Guillermo del Toro insists that Crimson Peak isn’t a horror film but is, instead, a gothic romance. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t creepy as all get-out, though. When aspiring author Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) meets charming baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), she falls madly in love and agrees to move back to his ancestral home, Allerdale Hall – aka Crimson Peak. But the house is crumbling and full of ghosts, and Sir Thomas’s sister doesn’t seem terribly friendly, either…

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Movies

Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

Movies

Lake Mungo: the Lingering Mystery Behind One of Australia’s Scariest Horror Films

By Rosie Fletcher

Del Toro’s visual flair is in full effect here, and every frame of this film (even the scary ones) are stunningly beautiful to look at. It’s a treat.

Baskin (2015)

A group of cops answers a call from the middle of nowhere and unwittingly stumble into something that can only be described as ‘a nightmare’ in this skin-crawlingly nasty Turkish horror. Abrasive, aggressive and deliberately difficult, this is the kind of film that burrows deep into your brain, only to resurface later at the worst possible time. Then again, by the time you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere with only dead colleagues and Silent Hill-style monsters for company, you probably don’t need memories of a horror movie to freak you out.

His House (2020)

A Netflix movie which could make a mark come award’s season the directorial debut of Remi Weekes sees a Sudanese refugee couple seek housing in London only to find themselves haunted by ghosts of the past and present. This is proper horror and it’s creepy as hell but it also leans into the horror of the refugee situation with the two marginalized, restricted, and treated as outsiders from the start – it’s a powerful but uncomfortable watch.

Host (2020)

The defining horror of 2020 – written, shot, edited and released on Shudder in just 12 week – Host is so much more than a lockdown gimmick. Following a group of friends who decide to do a seance via a Zoom chat, this ingenious movie trades on the real life friendships of the cast and crew and the absolute ubiquity of the video software during isolation. It’s seriously creepy too, utilising visions in the shadow but later some seriously impressive stunt work. Director Rob Savage and writer Jed Shepherd have signed up for a three picture deal from Blumhouse on the strength of this movie which absolutely needs to be seen.

The Haunting (1963)

Not to be confused with the remake of 1999, this retro gem not only features some classic sequences of spooky happenings, but a philosophical take on the paranormal. As John Markway says, “The preternatural is something we don’t have any natural explanation for right now but probably will have someday – the preternatural of one generation becomes the natural of the next. Scientists once laughed at the idea of magnetic attraction; they couldn’t explain it, so they refused to admit it exists.

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Movies

House of Dark Shadows: The Craziest Vampire Movie You’ve Never Seen

By David Crow

TV

How The Twilight Zone Influenced Are You Afraid of the Dark?

By Chris Longo

Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) is investigating the mysterious Hill House, whose inhabitants often die in odd circumstances. With him he has Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the cynical heir to the home, the psychic Theo (Claire Bloom, way too cool for school) and Julie Harris as Eleanor, who has some ghosts of her own but figures a free stay in a mansion is as close to a holiday as she’s going to get. Markway is pleased the ladies haven’t done any research into the bad reputation of the house “So much the better. You should be innocent and receptive.” (The old dog.) This is a great, character-driven story with a dry sense of humor, and a mysterious heroine who feels oddly at home with the supernatural.

Unfriended (2014)

A cautionary tale about the dangers of cyberbullying, Unfriended achieves the seemingly impossible and manages to make the standard sound effects of everyday computer programs terrifying. The whole story is told through one character’s desktop, so you get to watch as she Skypes with her friends, posts to Facebook, or picks something to listen to on Spotify. The details are fascinating, and it’s kind of brilliant how the filmmakers manage to express so much about a character through her browser bookmarks and the messages she types, but doesn’t send. Once the horror kicks in, though, you’ll be too scared to notice much more of the cleverness.

Shutter (2004)

Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) is driving back from a wedding with her boyfriend Tun (Ananda Everingham) when she hits a girl – in a panic, they leave the body lying in the road and try to get on with their lives. They start feeling rattled when Tun’s photography is blighted by misty shadows and they both suffer from the odd hallucination which seems to show that their hit and run victim (Achita Sikamana) isn’t resting in peace.

Where would horror films be without photographic dark rooms? Even in the digital age, the dim red light and slowly emerging pictures remain classic tools of terror. Not to mention the room with rows of jars containing pickled animals, and the surprise homage to Psycho. This story has it all. There are also touches of dark humor throughout (the praying mantis is a recurring motif) and one of the most bone-chilling scenes has a hilarious payoff.

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TV

How A Creepshow Animated Special Pays Tribute to Series Legacy

By Matthew Byrd

Movies

The Weird History of A Chinese Ghost Story Franchise: Horror Comedy at its Wildest

By Gene Ching

Directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom skilfully create real characters and have the ability to communicate some of the most powerful and eloquent moments without dialogue.  The mystery deepens as more sinister evidence comes to light and the climax is truly chilling. This is one which will stay with you long after Halloween.

Spider Baby (1967)

The Merrye children live out in the middle of nowhere, with only one another and their family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr) for company. Which is for the best, because they’re all afflicted with the family curse – a bizarre quirk of genetics that causes members of the Merrye family to begin to de-evolve once they reach a certain age. When some distant relatives come to visit, intending to challenge the kids’ right to stay in the house, things go sour fast. It’s a horror comedy, this one, but if you’re not a little bit creeped out by Virginia (Jill Banner), the Spider Baby of the title, and her spider game, well, good luck to you.

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Robert Zemeckis directs Michelle Pfieffer and Harrison Ford in this glossy supernatural thriller, with predictably high quality results. Clare and Norman Spencer live the perfect life – especially now their daughter has left for college and they’re enjoying empty nest syndrome. But the neighbors are causing some concern – especially when the wife disappears and Claire believes she is trying to communicate with her from “the other side.”

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Movies

8 Essential Gothic Horror Movies

By David Crow and 1 other

Movies

Horror Movie Origin Stories: Directors, Actors, and Writers on How They Fell in Love With the Genre

By Rosie Fletcher

Zemeckis has admitted that this is his homage to Hitchcock, and true to form, the suspense builds deliciously slowly. When Claire starts seeing faces in the bathtub (where else?) she goes to talk it over with a psychiatrist. A session with a Ouija board proves that somebody is trying to contact Claire, and it’s not long before she’s stealing keepsakes from grieving parents and reading books with chapters helpfully entitled “Conjuring the Dead.”

The result is a strong movie whether you’re enjoying the ghost story or the “Yuppies in peril in a beautiful house” aspect of it (and it doesn’t hurt that Michelle looks luminously beautiful).

Cat People (1942)

Serbian immigrant Irena doesn’t have a friend in the world when she meets Oliver. He’s kind and attentive and they soon fall in love, despite Irena’s lack of physical affection. She’s convinced she’s living under a curse that will mean she’ll transform into a panther and kill any man she kisses, and despite seeing a (deeply inappropriate) psychiatrist, she can’t shake her beliefs. Oliver is initially patient but eventually finds himself falling for his much more reasonable colleague, Alice. There’s no way this love triangle can end happily and, well, it doesn’t. Cat People is sad as well as eerie, with an increasingly paranoid atmosphere enhanced by skillful shadow play.

The Nameless (1999)

Five years after her daughter Angela went missing, presumed dead, Claudia starts getting weird phone calls. A female voice claims to be Angela, and begs her mother to save her. A series of weird clues leads Claudia to investigate a weird cult… but when things slot into place too easily, it seems like someone might be luring her into a trap. Thematically, The Nameless is similar to Jaume Balaguero’s later film Darkness; there’s a similar feeling of hopelessness and despair, a creeping horror that doesn’t let up, topped off with a horribly downbeat ending. Brrrr.

Dead End (2003)

The Harrington family are driving home for Christmas when they decide to take a shortcut. Obviously, that turns out to be a bad idea. Picking up a mysterious hitchhiker is an even worse idea. Dead End isn’t a particularly original movie, and it does have a truly awful ending, but there’s something about its characters, its atmosphere, and the way it tells the well-worn story that’s really effective. And creepy, of course.

The Others (2001)

Every ghost story introduces an element of uncertainty: are these things really happening, or are they in your head? Like The Innocents, The Others is partly inspired by Henry James’ novella The Turn Of The Screw. Grace (Nicole Kidman) has turned being neurotic into a fulltime job; her children apparently suffer from a sensitivity to light, which means the gothic mansion they inhabit must be swathed in thick curtains at all times. This makes things difficult for the new servants, who have turned up in a most mysterious manner… 

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TV

31 Best Horror TV Shows on Streaming Services

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

TV

Best Horror Anime To Watch on Crunchyroll

By Daniel Kurland

Grace’s daughter has an imaginary playmate called Victor; her insistence that there are “other people” in the house vexes Grace until she begins to hear them, too. A piano playing by itself, shaking chandeliers and some truly traumatic hallucinations add to the panic as Grace questions exactly who she is sharing her home with. The tension builds to almost unbearable heights before a truly haunting ending. An intelligent script with a superb twist, quality acting and an atmospheric set (complete with graveyards, mist and autumn leaves) – what more could you want in a creepy movie?

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

“It is happening, and no one is safe.” Night of the Living Dead features some of the most brilliantly ominous radio broadcasts in all horror. When a group of strangers end up trapped in an isolated farmhouse together after the dead begin to rise, no one is in the mood for making friends, and it’s their own prejudices and stubbornness that leads to their downfall. (Well, that, and the fact that no one realized getting bitten by a ghoul would lead to death and reincarnation. Oops.)

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TV

The Walking Dead vs. Real-Life Survivalists: How to Prep for The Zombie Apocalypse

By Ron Hogan

Movies

Night of the Living Dead: The Many Sequels, Remakes, and Spinoffs

By Alex Carter

The zombie imagery is some of the most haunting ever committed to film, as vacant-eyed ghouls wander in and out of the shadows, chewing on dismembered body parts as they lurch around, constantly in search of fresh meat…

Candyman (1992)

Say his name five times into a mirror and the Candyman appears. Despite his sweet-sounding name, that’s not something you really want to do: Daniel Robitaille was a murdered artist, stung to death by bees in a racist attack, and so he tends not to be in a good mood when he shows up. Set in an urban tower block, this film demonstrates that horror can strike anywhere, not just in spooky old mansions in the middle of the countryside. It’s gory, grimy, and really quite disturbing.

M (1931)

A child murderer is stalking the streets of Berlin and, as the police seem unable to catch him, tensions run high. In an attempt to stop the nightly police raids, the town’s criminals decide to catch the killer themselves, and a frantic chase begins. Though there’s no actual onscreen violence, Peter Lorre is amazingly creepy as the whistling killer, and there’s a sense of corruption pervading the whole film. (Since both Lorre and Fritz Lang, the director, fled the country in fear of the Nazis soon after the film was made, it’s tempting to speculate on what M might be saying about Germany at the time, which only makes it all the creepier.)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

An early example of the found footage genre, The Blair Witch Project has been aped and parodied by everyone and their grandma, but there’s something unsettling about it that hasn’t quite gone away. Most of the film is improvised; the actors are really filming the scenes themselves, working from a loose outline of the plot, but without prior knowledge of what half the scares were going to be. That ambiguous ending lets you make up whatever explanation you like for the events of the film, which means whatever the scariest thing you can think of is, that’s what the film is about.

The Orphanage (2007)

Laura (Belén Rueda) is returning to her childhood orphanage with her husband and son in order to open it as a care home for children with disabilities. She’s busy, but still has time to notice that seven year old Simón (Roger Príncep) has found an imaginary friend, Tomas. He might have a sack over his head, but what’s a little creepy mask between pals?

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Movies

The Scariest Films Ever Made and How They Frighten Us

By Matt Glasby

Movies

Katharine Isabelle on How Ginger Snaps Explored the Horror of Womanhood

By Rosie Fletcher

Simón is adopted, so it’s only a little odd when a social worker shows up without an appointment. It’s slightly more odd that she’s snooping around in the shed at night. During a daytime party, Laura has an encounter of her own with a masked child, and then experiences every parent’s nightmare: Simón is missing. What follows is the story of a mother who takes the search for her son to the limits of her sanity. Geraldine Chaplin makes an appearance as the medium who conducts possibly the most spine-tingling of all onscreen séances, and there are some truly terrifying shocks during Laura’s search for the truth.

Director JA Bayona makes every shot count; the movie is visually beautiful as well as fantastically sinister. It’s a bona fide horror film but the ending might make you cry.

Ring (1998)

Ring isn’t a perfect film. It’s a bit too long and ponderous and there’s a bit too much irrelevant mysticism in there. But in terms of pure creepiness, it’s pretty damned effective. The idea of a cursed videotape was brilliant – who didn’t have zillions of unmarked VHS tapes lying around the house at the time? – and that climactic scene where the image on the screen crossed over into reality is bloodcurdling. Sneaky, too, since it managed to suggest that no one was safe. Especially not you, gentle viewer, because didn’t you just watch that cursed tape, too? An awful lot of people must have breathed a sigh of relief once their own personal seven-day window was over.

The Innocents (1961)

Based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, this film sees a young governess heading out to an isolated old house to take care of two young children who appear to be keeping secrets from her. Their previous governess died, along with another of the house’s servants, but their influence still seems to be lingering about. Or is it? Just like in the original story, it’s possible to read the ghosts either as genuine spectres or as the fevered imaginings of an over-stressed and under-sexed young woman. Either way, though, the film is terrifying.

The Skeleton Key (2005)

In a decaying house on an old plantation, an old man is dying. Caroline is hired as his carer, but although her job should be simple enough, she begins to suspect that something weird is going on – especially when she finds a secret room in the house’s attic filled with spell books and other arcane bits and bobs.

Is the old man actually under a spell? Why does he seem so terrified of his wife? And might Caroline herself be in danger? The Skeleton Key is one of those films that’s far better than it has any right to be; it slowly ratchets up the tension to a crazy finale and ends on an incredibly creepy note.

Insidious (2010)

Insidious uses just about every trick in the book to creep out its audience, and for some people, that might seem like overkill. There are lurking monsters around every corner; there’s a child in peril; there are wrong-faced nasties; and there are screeching violins every five minutes. On repeat viewings, the plot doesn’t quite hold up (halfway through, the film switches protagonists, which is baffling) and the comedy relief seems grating rather than funny. But the carnival atmosphere, the nods to silent German Expressionist films, the demon’s bizarre appearance, that dancing ghost… there’s something brilliant about it, nonetheless.

Dark Water (2002)

Part of the initial wave of soggy dead girl movies, Dark Water is occasionally very daft, but still effectively creepy. Yoshimi Matsubara is a divorcee, forced by circumstances to move into a crumbling apartment block with her young daughter, Ikuko. Their new home isn’t in the nicest of areas, but it might be alright if it weren’t for the leaky ceiling – and, um, that creepy little girl lurking in the shadows, the one who’s never there when you take a second look. Directed by Hideo Nakata and based on a book by Koji Suzuki, Dark Water might not be as terrifying as Ring, but it’s still pretty eerie.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

The effects are dated, and the sequels utterly killed Freddy Krueger’s menace, but the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film is still creepy, in its way. The premise is amazingly disturbing – a dead child molester is attacking children in their dreams – and, combined with some of the deeply weird nightmare imagery in this film, it’s more than enough to give anyone a few sleepless nights. All together now: one, two, Freddy’s coming for you…

Uzumaki (2000)

Slowly, inexplicably, a small town is taken over by spirals. Some people become obsessed; others are killed, their bodies twisted into impossible positions. Uzumaki is a live action adaptation of the manga of the same name, and it’s incredibly weird. Unspeakably weird. Visually, it’s incredible, although the green filters look less interesting than they used to due to overuse by every horror and sci-fi movie since. Still, most films don’t go to the extremes that Uzumaki does.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Yup, it’s another soggy dead kid movie, but this time the kid is a boy and the action is set in civil war-era Spain. A young boy is sent to a creepy orphanage, where the other boys scare one another by telling stories about the resident ghost, Santi, who was killed when the orphanage was bombed. Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, this isn’t your average ghost story – it’s a companion piece to Pan’s Labyrinth, but it’s much more of a horror movie than its better known counterpart.

The Vanishing/Spoorloos (1988)

Saskia and Rex are on holiday when Saskia suddenly, inexplicably, disappears. Rex dedicates his time to trying to find her, but to no avail. He can’t move on, can’t live with the uncertainty, so when Saskia’s kidnapper reveals himself and offers to show Rex what happened to her, his curiosity wins out. It’s a simple yet eerie story with an utterly devastating ending.

Audition (1999)

Takashi Miike’s Audition is more often described as extremely disturbing rather than creepy, but if you can get over that ending (which, let’s be honest, most of us watched through our fingers or from behind a cushion while shouting “NO NO NO NO NO” at the screen), the rest of the film may well creep you out. It starts off slow: a middle-aged man is thinking about dating again, but rather than trying to meet women via traditional methods, he holds a series of fake auditions for a non-existent movie. He meets Asami, a shy dancer, and starts wooing her – but Asami isn’t as sweet and innocent as she seems. Pretty much every character in this movie is an awful person, and the way they treat one another is disturbing on many, many levels.

One Missed Call (2004)

Also directed by Takashi Miike, One Missed Call is a parody of the endless string of soggy dead girl movies made in Japan at the time. But somehow it’s still really creepy. The premise is that, as the title suggests, teenagers are receiving missed calls on their mobile phones. The mystery caller leaves a horrifying voicemail: the sound of the phone’s owner screaming in agony. And since the call came from the person’s own phone, and appears to come from a few days in the future, it’s clearly a sign of impending doom. Sure enough, the kids all die just as the missed call predicted. There’s a nasty little backstory about evil little girls, and a bonkers televised exorcism, and generally, it’s a great film whether you love or loathe stories about scary dead kids.

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

You might’ve thought about how you’d survive the apocalypse, but have you ever stopped to consider whether it’s actually worth doing? In The Last Man On Earth, Vincent Price is the only survivor of a mysterious plague that’s turned the rest of humanity into walking corpses, hungry for his blood. Every day, he tools up and goes out to kill the bloodsuckers; every night, they surround his house and try to kill him. It’s a dismal way to live, and a depressingly eerie film. It’s based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend – so skip the Will Smith adaptation and watch this instead.

A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003)

Part melodramatic family drama, part psychological horror, A Tale Of Two Sisters is all scary all the time. When a pair of sisters return from a mental hospital, having been traumatised by their mother’s death, they find their new stepmother difficult to adjust to. The nightly visitations from a blood-dripping ghost don’t help, either. But as always in these kinds of films, nothing is what it seems – you might need a second viewing to get your head round the ending.

Night of the Hunter (1955)

Robert Mitchum might have claimed not to be interested in movies or acting, but he’s great in this. As Harry Powell, a bizarrely religious conman, he’s terrifying, whether he’s preaching about the evils of fornication or chasing the children of his latest victim across the country in an attempt to steal a stash of money he knows they’re hiding. The use of light and shadow in this movie is just stunning; the first time Powell arrives at the Harper house is a particular highlight. Robert Mitchum’s singing voice isn’t half bad, either.

Peeping Tom (1960)

Peeping Tom was so controversial when it was released that it effectively ended director Michael Powell’s career. It’s violent, voyeuristic, and since it tells a story from the villain’s point of view; it’s entirely unsavoury. And it’s wonderful. It looks great, it has an amazingly twisted (and tragic) plot, and Carl Boehm is brilliant as Mark, the awkward, mild-mannered psychopath who feels compelled to murder as a result of his father’s deranged experiments. (That’s not a spoiler, by the way – but if I told you how he killed his victims, that might be.)

Psycho (1960)

Happily, 1960’s other movie about a disturbed serial killer was less of a career-killer. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is wonderful, sodden with guilt and tension right from the opening scene. It’s a shame that so many of its twists are so well-known now, because watching this without knowing what was going to happen must have been brilliant. It’s still great – beautiful to watch, genuinely tense and frequently unnerving – but it has lost some of its shock value over the years. (Also, the bit at the end where the psychiatrist explains everything in great detail is utterly superfluous.) Anthony Perkins’ final twitchy, smirky scene is seriously creepy though.

City Of The Dead / Horror Hotel (1960)

Getting the timing of a holiday wrong can have disastrous consequences, as City Of The Dead illustrates. Nan Barlow is a history student who, under the tutelage of Christopher Lee’s Professor Driscoll, becomes fascinated with the history of witchcraft, and decides to visit the site of a famous witch trial… but she arrives in town on Candlemas Eve, probably the most important date in the witches’ calendar. Um, oops.

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Movies

The Underrated Horror Movies of the 1990s

By Ryan Lambie

TV

Best Horror TV Shows on Netflix

By Alec Bojalad

City Of The Dead is often compared to Psycho, and there are enough similarities between the films that you could assume it was a cheap rip-off – but though the campy US retitling supports that assumption, this was actually made before Hitchcock’s motel-based chiller. It’s definitely creepy enough to be worth watching on its own merits.

Village Of The Damned (1960)

For no apparent reason, one day every living being in the English village of Midwich falls unconscious. For hours, no one can get near Midwich without passing out. When they wake up, every woman in the village finds herself mysteriously pregnant. Obviously, their children aren’t normal, and something has to be done about them… Based on John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos, Village Of The Damned is more of a sci-fi movie than a horror movie – but it’s super creepy nonetheless.

Dolls (1987)

Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon toned things down a bit for this creepy fairy tale, but not much. When a group of awful human beings are forced to spend the night in the home of a couple of ancient toymakers, they soon get their comeuppance at the hands of – well, the title gives that away, doesn’t it? You’ll never look at Toys R Us in the same way again.

The Woman In Black (1989)

When a reclusive old lady dies in an isolated house out in the marshes, a young lawyer is sent to sort out her estate. But there’s something weird about her house, and the townspeople aren’t keen on helping sort things out, either. The TV version of this movie is far, far creepier than the Daniel Radcliffe version; there’s one moment in particular that will etch itself on your brain and continue to creep you out for years after you see it…

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

Beautifully shot with a great score, The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a dreamy, unsettling film where nothing is ever as it seems. The wonderfully named Mimsy Farmer plays Sylvia, a scientist haunted by melancholy and hallucinations. She’s never quite recovered from her mother’s suicide, and when she goes to a party where talk turns to witchcraft and human sacrifice, her sanity starts to unravel. But are her problems really all in her head, or is there something else going on? The film doesn’t reveal its secrets until the very end, when all that creepiness pays off spectacularly.

May (2002)

May was always a weird child, and unfortunately she’s grown into a weird adult, too. Unable to form any meaningful relationships with the people around her – not even a class of blind children she thinks might be kinder to her than the people who can see how strange and awkward she is – May decides she’ll need to take this “making a friend” business into her own hands. Dark and twisted and incredibly gory, May is as sad and sweet as it is creepy. A lot of that is attributable to Angela Bettis, whose performance is adorably unnerving.

Nosferatu (1922)

In this unauthorised take on Dracula, the evil Count is depicted not as a tragic or romantic anti-hero, but as a horrifying embodiment of the plague – complete with an entourage of rats. Max Schreck makes a brilliantly weird-looking vampire, all teeth, ears and fingernails; his shadow is especially unnerving. Although the ending as presented seems a little abrupt, it’s conceptually horrifying – as is the fact that, due to a copyright claim filed by Bram Stoker’s estate, all but one copy of this movie was destroyed back in the 1920s.

Vampyr (1932)

In a spooky old inn, Allan Grey is visited in the night by an old man who leaves him a gift-wrapped book, with instructions to open it only on the occasion of the man’s death. Which turns out to be soon. The book explains that the town is plagued by vampires – and, helpfully, gives instructions on how to kill them. Vampyr is an early sound film, so while there is some sound and a little dialogue, most of the silent film conventions are still in place. It has a fairly straightforward, Dracula-esque story, but the plot’s not the point. It’s a deliberately strange film, full of disembodied dancing shadows and weird dream sequences; there’s something almost otherworldly about it.

Dracula (1931)

Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula. With his eerie eyes and wonderful accent, he’s brilliantly threatening as the charming Count, but despite his iconic performance here, he’s not the creepiest thing about this film. Nope, that honor goes to Dwight Frye’s portrayal of Renfield, the lunatic spider-eater under Dracula’s control. He’s amazing, all awkward body language and hysterical laughter. Lugosi’s oddly cadenced speech has been emulated and parodied a zillion times, which takes away some of its power; Frye’s performance, on the other hand, is just downright disturbing.

White Zombie (1932)

A year after Dracula, Bela Lugosi starred as Murder Legendre, an evil voodoo master, in one of the first ever zombie movies. The zombies here aren’t flesh-eating ghouls but obedient slaves, working tirelessly in Legendre’s mill. Even when one of them tumbles into a grinder, work doesn’t stop. When the plantation owner goes to Legendre for help winning the heart of the girl he loves, he’s handed a dose of the zombie potion – and now the only way to break Legendre’s spell over the innocent girl is to kill him. Lugosi is suitably menacing, and the drone-like zombies are properly eerie.

The Cursed Medallion/The Night Child (1975)

For a few years, in 1970s Italy, Nicoletta Elmi was the go-to creepy kid. She pops up in Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood and Baron Blood, and in Dario Argento’s Deep Red, among others, but she’s never more creepy than she is in The Cursed Medallion. Here, she plays Emily, the daughter of an art historian who’s making a documentary on demons in paintings. She’s given a medallion but, as the title suggests, it’s cursed, and she ends up possessed by the spirit of a murderess. It’s atmospheric, lovingly photographed and, of course, Elmi is awesome in the lead role.

The Descent (2005)

A group of friends go off on a spelunking holiday, but get more than they bargained for when it turns out that the caves they’re exploring are dangerous in more ways than one. There’s enough time spent on character development that you really feel it when the group starts to get thinned out; there’s some incredibly painful-looking gore; and there are some amazingly freaky monsters. Watch it in a darkened room to make the most of its wonderfully claustrophobic atmosphere.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

The shine might’ve come off this movie because the Paranormal Activity franchise has become Lionsgate’s new one-every-Halloween cash cow, but there’s something deliciously creepy about this movie. Rewatching it now, even knowing when all the scares are coming, it’s still chilling. In a neat twist on the traditional haunted house story, Paranormal Activity’s entity haunts a person, not a house – so its victim can’t just pack up and move. The found footage conceit is used to great effect, making you stare intently at grainy nighttime footage of an empty room, straining your ears for distant footsteps, before making you jump out of your skin with a loud bang. (Pro tip: the movie has three different endings, so if you think you’re bored of it, try one of the others.)

Ju-on: The Grudge (2002)

So much of the effectiveness of a horror movie comes down to its sound design. A well-placed creak, groan, echo, or jangle can make the difference between something completely normal and something terrifying. New scary noises don’t come along very often, but Ju-on: The Grudge managed to come up with something unlike any other scary noise you’ve heard before. Its ghost makes a weird rattling, burping groan as she approaches; it’s kind of like a death rattle, kind of like a throttled scream, and it’s creepier than anything you’ve ever heard before. The film is relentless, light on plot and heavy on jump scares, but it’s that noise that’ll stay with you.

Julia’s Eyes (2010)

Julia and her twin sister, Sara, both suffer from the same degenerative disease – one that causes them to go blind. When Sara undergoes experimental surgery and subsequently kills herself, Julia suspects foul play – and, indeed, something weird seems to be going on, with whisperings about an invisible man lurking in the shadows. But as Julia gets closer to the truth, her own eyesight suffers more and more…The film restricts our vision almost as much as Julia’s; it’s almost unbearably claustrophobic, and ultimately heartbreaking.

The Eye (2002)

Another film about eyes and the horrors of going blind, The Eye follows Mun, a classical violinist from Hong Kong, as she undergoes an eye transplant. Although the transplant seems to be successful – Mun can see again – something isn’t right, because now she can see dead people. And most of them are terrifying. The ending is vaguely preposterous, but the rest of the film is creepy enough that it’s forgivable.

Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)

Lucio Fulci’s unofficial sequel to Dawn Of The Dead features perhaps the creepiest zombies ever committed to film. When a boat turns up in New York harbour with only a zombie on board, investigative reporter Peter West sets out to find out where the boat came from and what’s going on. He ends up on the island of Matool, where the dead are returning to life to eat the flesh of the living… and they’re really, really gross. Zombie Flesh Eaters was initially classified as a video nasty in the UK, and it’s not difficult to see why. Its atmosphere elevates it above your average exploitation movie, though; there’s something really melancholy about it.

[REC] (2007)

When a local news crew decided to tag along with the fire brigade for an evening, they probably didn’t realise they’d end up fighting from their lives in a zombie-infested tower block. Co-written and co-directed by Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero (yup, him again), [REC] is a decent enough zombie movie, until the final reel, when it reveals an even more terrifying ace up its sleeve.

Let Me In (2010)

Although remakes are usually terrible, Matt Reeves’ take on this unusual vampire story was both respectful of and different from the original and, for my money, it’s creepier. Lonely tween Owen doesn’t have any friends until the equally strange Abby moves in next door. They embark on an odd friendship/proto-romance, but Abby has a secret: she’s a vampire. The use of a candy jingle is, against all odds, really eerie, and by paring the story down to its most essential elements (and getting rid of that daft cat scene) Let Me In makes for a scarier watch than Let The Right One In.

Carnival Of Souls (1962)

After a traumatic accident, weird things start happening to Mary. A strange man seems to be stalking her, though no one else can see him, and she feels irresistibly drawn to an abandoned pavilion out in the middle of nowhere. Once upon a time, the pavilion housed a carnival, but now it’s just an empty building… or is it? There’s nothing surprising about the plot of this movie to a modern audience – you’ll have the whole film worked out within about five minutes – but it is gloriously creepy. The climactic scenes at the carnival are pure nightmare fuel.

The Shining (1980)

Probably the most effective of all the Stephen King adaptations, The Shining plonks Jack Nicholson down in the middle of a creepy hotel and lets him do his thing. Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a struggling writer who gets a winter job as caretaker of The Overlook Hotel, where the isolation and/or ghosts send him out of his mind. There are so many creepy images in this film: the twin girls who just want to play, the woman in room 237, the lift full of blood, and, oh, lots more.

The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari (1920)

Appropriately, watching The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari feels like slipping into a nightmare. Caligari’s cabinet holds Cesare, the sleepwalker – a catatonic oracle able to answer questions of life and death with eerie accuracy. Is Caligari a hypnotist, a murderer, or both? It’s a strange story, made stranger with a twist ending, and rendered impossibly creepy by the Expressionist production design. The weird, distorted hand-painted sets give the film a crude, unreal beauty and, if anything, the passage of time has increased the film’s creepiness, because it’s so utterly unlike modern films.

The Exorcist (1973)

An obvious choice, but The Exorcist is genuinely scary. It’s deceptively simple: the filming style is realistic, the locations are ordinary-looking and, by comparison to more modern horror movies, there aren’t many elaborate effects or stunts. But the film makes every scary moment count. It’s atmosphere is oppressive, claustrophobic – there’s an ever-present sense of dread throughout. It ought to feel more dated than it does, but even now, the demonic makeup and scratchy voice of the possessed Regan gives me goosebumps.

The Omen (1976)

Damien is probably the ultimate creepy child. Adopted by the Thorns when their own newborn dies, it doesn’t take long for his dark side to emerge: Damien is the Antichrist.

There are so many iconic moments in this film, so many things that have shaped both the horror genre and our culture’s idea of evil; something about this film really struck a chord, and even now it’s pretty effective. Every death scene in this movie is memorable, but the suicide of Damien’s nanny at his birthday party particularly stands out.

Ghostwatch (1992)

Originally shown on UK TV at Halloween, Ghostwatch scared a whole generation shitless. It’s presented as a live broadcast, starring familiar BBC faces: Michael Parkinson plays host, while Sarah Green and Craig Charles report from the scene as a normal family recount their experiences with the terrifying ghost they’ve dubbed “Pipes”. The shadowy figure of a man is glimpsed several times throughout the show, some appearances more obvious than others, and as viewers call in to share their own stories, things get weirder and weirder…Okay, this isn’t technically a film, but it is so amazingly creepy and brilliant that it couldn’t be left off the list.

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man is a wonderful mishmash of genres: it’s got humour, horror, singing and sex. It frequently teeters on the edge of absurdity. But at heart, it’s deeply creepy. When devout Christian Sgt Howie visits the isolated community of Summerisle, he thinks he’s investigating the abduction of a little girl – and the villagers certainly do seem to be acting suspiciously. But as his investigation continues, it becomes clear that something entirely different is going on. Howie runs headlong to his doom, and its final scene is downright spine-chilling.

Suspiria (1977)

Suspiria is Dario Argento’s finest hour. It’s eyeball-meltingly beautiful to look at, all unnatural neon lighting and ridiculously lavish set design; the music is cacophonous, a never-ending wall of sound that doesn’t let up; and the plot is, well, it’s functional enough.

Suzy, an American ballet dancer, flies to an exclusive dance school in Germany only to find herself in the midst of a murder investigation – and something weird is definitely going on with the teachers. If you haven’t seen Suspiria in a while, treat yourself to the Blu-ray. There’s nothing restrained about this movie, nothing ordinary; it sneaks up on you and worms its way into your brain. It’s brilliant.

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