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chicagofanfictionfan · 2 years

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Home For the Holidays Part 6

Tony began to wake up hearing the subtle movements of people in the house. As he slowly opened his eyes, he found a pair of angry blue eyes glaring at him.

“Mom!” He yelped in surprise.

“What is this I hear about you turning this house into a winter wonderland all by yourself? Doing it while no one was home?” Rose demanded.

Tony tried to glare at Dante but her petite body blocked his view.

“Don’t you worry about Dante, Mister. I’ll deal with him later. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I rested in between, Mom. I didn’t rush around at all. It started as one task that kinda…grew.” Tony sighed. “The next thing I knew I had done the whole house.” He looked up through his eyelashes. “I was bored and I wanted to make it special. We don’t all get together that often.”

“That doesn’t make it ok to push it.” She gently grabbed his chin lifting his head to meet her eyes. “It wouldn’t have mattered whether the house was decorated or not. It’s still special. And each and every one of us would have gladly decorated with you.” She sighed as she continued.

“You always push yourself too hard. You, Jethro, and my wayward son.”

“Hey. I didn’t do anything.” Dante chimed in.

Rose whipped her head around and met Dante’s eyes as he sheepishly lowered them. “Do you want to try that again? Who rushed to tattle on his husband?”

Jack, Gibbs, and Wes struggled to keep straight faces and not laugh as they watched the scene before them. Hearing the door, Dante made a move to answer it.

“Don’t you dare move from that spot young man, I am certain that the three men trying to keep quiet are quite capable of answering the door. Now I’m still waiting for an answer.”

Gibbs went to the door as Dante answered his mother.

“I did. But in my defense, it was because I was worried. I came home and saw all of this-“ His voice tapered off as he saw his mother’s narrowed eyes.

“Want to try that again Dante Wesley Craig?” Rose asked in a tone that brooked no defiance.

“I wanted to get Tonio in trouble as payback.” Dante sighed. His father was having a hard time holding in his laughter as his grown, adult, married 6’1” son cowered at his five foot nothing wife, however he managed to keep it in check as he had no intentions of not sleeping beside her.

“I’m sure that somewhere in that head of yours you were also worried, however that was not the mitigating reason you rushed to inform me of his deeds. If I was able I would turn you over my knee.”

“Mom!” Dante’s eyes widened in shock.

“You know better. Now, apologize to Tonio.”

“Fine.” Dante walked over to Tonio who was desperately trying to suppress a grin. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have exaggerated my concern, though I am and will always be worried. Because Mom is right, you do push yourself too hard.” He leaned down and kissed Tony’s lips as he heard his husband whisper. “Payback’s a bitch.”

Rose smiled briefly before narrowing her eyes at the man lying on the couch. “You will stay there. I want no more shenanigans from you or I will have Ducky administer a pain killer to you.” She grinned evilly. “And it won’t be an oral one either.”

Tony looked at Dante, Gibbs and his dad hoping that one of them would speak up for him only to see them all grinning at him.

“Damn. Ok…I’ll stay on the couch.”

Rose walked over and kissed Tony on the cheek. “That’s better.” As she walked over to Ducky, “Would you please check him over before lunch Ducky? I don’t trust him with his ‘I’m fine’ answer.”

“Of course, dear Rose. It is a pleasure to see you again. I brought some of mother’s English scones for later. I made them from her recipe. It feels wonderful to share them with everyone. I also brought Scottish shortbread, made from a recipe that has been handed down generation after generation.” He looked over at Tony.

“This was the year I’d planned on handing it down to Anthony seeing how my mother loved him. But…” Ducky’s eyes twinkled as he saw the look on the younger man’s face. “We shall see how he does now and maybe he will be able to help me make a batch for Christmas morning.”

Dante whispered to Tonio. “Be good. Those cookies are awesome and your loving husband would appreciate them.”

Ducky walked over to the couch and placed his bag on the coffee table.

“Tell me the truth Anthony, how do you feel?” The look in Ducky’s eyes conveyed he was serious.

Tony sighed, unable to lie to the man. “I’m sore and really tired. Not unmanageable, but I will concede that even though I wasn’t trying to, I may have overdone it.”

“Where does it hurt?”

“Ribs and head.”

“Alright young man, let’s see what we have.” Ducky began to examine him thoroughly as everyone watched with concern.

“Well my dear boy, it seems that you are none the worse for wear. You pushed too hard and your body is telling you. Tonight you will take a stronger pain pill, no arguments. And tomorrow you shall take it easy. Shouldn’t be difficult with this room full, not to mention those that will be arriving.”

“I dare say you have everything already set so it should be no issue for you to sit back, watch and enjoy everything, should it?”

Tony sighed. “No.”

Ducky patted his leg and gave him a fond look. “Good. Now sit back and relax. I am sure Rose has everything under control.”

“I do indeed Ducky, though considering that Tonio already has the bulk of the food and extra’s cooked, I have had very little to do.”

Tony sent her a sheepish smile. “I just wanted you to be able to enjoy yourself and be able to visit with everyone. Cooking relaxes me and I enjoy it, and I wanted to incorporate some new dishes.”

“Then it’s all done and I see that the rest will arrive tomorrow from the caterers. Anything else that I need to know?”

“Nope.” Tony grinned.

Rose sighed as she smiled. “Everyone will be over tomorrow for the big Craig/DiNozzo Christmas. Do you need to do any last minute shopping Tonio? If you make a list I can take care of it.”

“No Mom, but thanks. Took care of the last bit last week. Not sure about Dante though, he’s not as efficient as I am.”

“Hey, I resemble that remark.” Dante laughed. “But I am all done.”

Wes walked over to the couch. “So what’s on the agenda for tonight?”

Rose looked at her husband. “Maybe we could pop some corn and watch a movie or play a game or two. Tonio really has everything organized and if he takes a nap, he should be up for it as well.”

Ducky nodded. “Sounds wonderful. I don’t remember the last time I sat down to play a game; it’s had to have been years. Before Mother’s Alzheimer’s took over. I remember the two of us playing a variety of old and new games.” He smiled at Tony. “Rose has made an astute point, if you rest for a bit you should feel more like yourself and feel up to it.”

Nodding Tony settled back into the couch.

The house was filled with the sounds of family laughing, talking and enjoying one another as Tony closed his eyes and let sleep take him. Dante brought a blanket over and covered him up, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead before walking over to Gibbs, Ducky and his father who were smiling as Ducky shared a story.

Rose watched from the chair beside the couch not quite ready to leave her son yet as she watched Tony’s breathing even out. She smiled at the group knowing that tomorrow there would be more laughter and noise and couldn’t stop the warmth at the thought that her sons made this large group of soldiers and colleagues a family that was closer than many born of blood.

Love lived and flourished in this home. They didn’t need a holiday to feel or celebrate that.

#Anthony DiNozzo #Jethro Gibbs #Abby Sciuto #Ziva David #Jimmy Palmer #Ducky Mallard #Timothy McGee #Leon Vance #Jackson Gibbs #Original Characters

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Best Horror Movies Streaming on HBO Max

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Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page and come back every month to see the new horror movies on HBO Max.

What ever would we do without horror?

So much of our day to day life is built around logic and known, verifiable facts, and for some, the rest of the time must be supplemented with comforting reassurances that everything is going to be alright. Well if the last year has taught us anything… that’s not the case. Perhaps this is why horror hounds know the best way to face abstract fears is to confront them head on… and preferably with a screen in the way.

So, with Halloween around the corner, we figured it’s time to get in touch with our illogical, terrified animal brain. That’s where horror and horror movies in particular come in. Gathered here are the best horror movies on HBO Max for your scaring needs.

Alien

“In space, no one can hear you scream,” the tagline for Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror epic promised. Well maybe they should have screened this thing in space because I’m sure all that audiences in theaters did was scream.

Alien has since evolved into a heady, science fiction franchise that has stretched out for decades. The original film, however, is a small-scale, terrifyingly claustrophobic thriller.

Altered States

What if you could tap into the vast swaths of the brain you never use? What if you did and didn’t like what we found? And what if it was an absolute psychedelic rush of a cinematic experience?

All three questions are answered in their own way during Ken Russell’s Altered States, a wild sci-fi thriller. In the film, William Hurt stars as a psychologist who begins experimenting with taking hallucinatory drugs while in a sensory depravation tank.

Yes, he manages to expand his consciousness; he also begins to expand his physical body as it transforms beneath his skin. Or does it? Well that’s yet another good question…

An American Werewolf in London

Arguably the definitive werewolf movie, John Landis’ 1981 horror masterpiece has the single greatest on-screen lycanthropic transformation in movie history… and that’s only one of its appeals.

Peppered with loving references to the werewolf movies that came before it and a few legitimate laughs to go along with the scares, An American Werewolf in London is remarkably knowing and self-aware, without ever flirting with parody.

Not enough can be said about Rick Baker’s practical effects, which extend beyond the aforementioned on-screen transformation and into one of the most gruesome depictions of a werewolf attack aftermath you’re ever likely to see. A classic of the era, it still can get under the skin whenever Griffin Dunne’s mutilated corpse rises from the grave to warn his friend to “beware the moon.”

New Line Cinema

Blade II

Perhaps Guillermo del Toro‘s schlockiest movie, there’s still great fun to be had by all in Blade II. As a sequel to the 1998 vampire actioner that starred Wesley Snipes as the titular “daywalker,” Blade II builds on the lore of the first film and its secret underground society of bloodsuckers who Blade must do battle with.

However, del Toro heightens both the Gothic lunacy of it all, as well as the horror quotient. Truly there are few sights as gross in vampire lore as Luke Goss’ Nomak, a new type of monster whose face opens like a flower, revealing a gaping hole of fangs and tongue…

The Brood

I bet you never thought placenta could look so tasty, but when Samantha Eggar’s Nola Carveth licks her newborn clean you’ll be craving sloppy seconds within the hour. She brings feline intuition to female troubles. We get it. Having a new baby can be scary. Having a brood is terrifying. Feminine power is the most horrifying of all for male directors used to being in control.

David Cronenberg takes couples therapy one step too far in his 1979 psychological body-horror film, The Brood. When it came out critics called it reprehensible trash, but it is the writer-director’s most traditional horror story. Oliver Reed plays with mental illness like Bill Sikes played with the kids as Hal Raglan, the psychotherapist treating the ex-wife of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle). The film starts slow, unfolding its drama through cuts and bruises.

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Cronenberg unintentionally modifies the body of the Kramer vs. Kramer story in The Brood, but the murderous munchkins at the external womb of the film want a little more than undercooked French toast.

Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls may be the most unlikely of chillers to appear in the Criterion Collection. Hailing from the great state of Kansas and helmed by commercial director Herk Harvey, who was looking for his big break in features, there is something hand-crafted about the whole affair. There’s also something unmistakably eerie.

The story is fairly basic campfire boilerplate, following a woman (Candace Hilligoss) who survives a car crash but is then haunted by the sound of music and visions of the ghoulish dead–beckoning her toward a decrepit carnival abandoned some years earlier–and the acting can leave something to be desired. But the dreadful dreamlike atmosphere is irresistible.

With a strong sense of fatalism and inescapable doom, the film takes an almost melodic and disinterested gait as it stalks its heroine to her inevitable end, presenting images of the walking dead that linger in the mind long after the credits roll.

The Conjuring 2

Making an effective, truly spooky mainstream horror film is hard enough. But The Conjuring franchise really nailed things out of the gate with a sequel that is every bit as fun and terrifying as the original.

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Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring 2. This time the Warrens head to Great Britain to attend to the Hodgson family, dealing with some poltergeist problems in their Enfield home. The source of the Enfield haunting’s activity contains some of the most disturbing and terrifying visuals in the entire Conjuring franchise and helped to set up a (sadly pretty bad) spinoff sequel in The Nun.

Doctor Sleep

Let’s be up front about this: Doctor Sleep is not The Shining. For some that fact will make this sequel’s existence unforgivable. Yet there is a stoic beauty and creepy despair just waiting to be experienced by those willing to accept Doctor Sleep on its own terms.

Directed by one of the genre’s modern masters, Mike Flanagan, the movie had the unenviable task of combining one of King’s most disappointing texts with the opposing sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick’s singular The Shining adaptation.

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And yet, the result is an effective thriller about lifelong regrets and trauma personified by the ghostly specters of the Overlook Hotel. But they’re far from the only horrors here. Rebecca Ferguson is absolutely chilling as the smiling villain Rose the Hat, and the scene where she and other literal energy vampires descend upon young Jacob Tremblay is the stuff of nightmares. Genuinely, it’s a scene you won’t forget, for better or worse….

Eraserhead

“In Heaven, everything is fine,” sings the Lady in the Radiator in Eraserhead. “You’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.”

You may get something short of paradise, but the insular world David Lynch created for his 1977 experimental existential horror film is a land of mundane wonders, commonplace mysteries, and extremely awkward dinner conversations. Lynch’s first feature film is surrealistic, expressionistic, and musically comic. The minor key score and jarring black and white images bring half-lives to the industrial backdrop and exquisite squalor. At its heart though, Eraserhead is poignant, sad, and ultimately relatable on a universal level.

Jack Nance’s Henry Spencer is the spiky-haired everyman. He works hard at his job, cares deeply for his deformed, mutant child, and is desperate to please his extended family. Lynch lays a comedy of manners in a rude, crude city. The film is an assault on the senses, and it might take a little while for the viewer’s brains to adjust to the images on the screen; it is a different reality, and not an entirely inviting one, but stick with it. Once you’re in with the in-laws, you’re home free. When you make it to the end, you can tell your friends you watched all of Eraserhead. When they ask you what it’s about, you can tell them you saw it.

Eyes Without a Face

“I’ve done so much wrong to perform this miracle,” Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) confesses in the 1960 horror film Eyes Without a Face. But he says it in French, making it all so much more poignant, allowing it to underscore everything director and co-writer Georges Franju did right. We feel for the respectable plastic surgeon forced to do monstrous things. But the monster behind the title character is his young daughter Christiane (Édith Scob). She spends the majority of the film behind a mask, even more featureless than the unpainted plastic Captain Kirk kid’s costume Michael Myers wore in Halloween. The first time we see her face though, the shock wears off quickly and we are more moved than terrified.

Like Val Lewton films, the horror comes from the desolate black-and-white atmosphere, shrouding the claustrophobic suspense in German Expressionism. Maurice Jarre’s score evokes a Gothic carnival as much as a mad scientist’s laboratory. After his daughter’s face is hideously disfigured in an accident, Dr. Génessier becomes obsessed with trying to restore it. We aren’t shown much, until we’re shown too much. We see his heterograft surgical procedure in real time. A woman’s face is slowly flayed from the muscle. The graphic scenes pack more of a visceral shock after all the encroaching dread.

From Dusk Till Dawn

Some movies have such a gonzo left turn between acts that audiences will either go with it or throw their popcorn at the screen in disgust. For most viewers, including us, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn is happily the former. An absolutely wild mash-up of the gangster genre that both filmmakers were redefining in the 1990s and the type of schlocky grindhouse thrills they worshipped at 1970s drive-ins, From Dusk Till Dawn is one of the strangest and most satisfying vampire movies ever made.

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With a story that improbably pairs Tarantino and George Clooney as on screen brothers, the flick recounts how the duo’s notorious Gecko Brothers kidnap a nice Christian family ruled by a doubting pastor (Harvey Keitel) in order to sneak across the Mexican border. But once there, the strip club they choose to spend the night in has the unfortunate gimmick of being run by ancient vampires, including Salma Hayek as the Queen of the Undead. It’s batshit good fun, and a far better tribute to grindhouse cinema than the Grindhouse double-feature the same filmmakers would partner on a decade later.

Godzilla

As the original and by far still the best Godzilla movie ever produced, this 1954 classic (originally titled Gojira), is one of the many great Showa Era classics that the Criterion Collection and HBO Max are making readily available to American audiences. And if you want to watch one that is actually scary, look no further.

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In this original uncut Japanese form, the movie’s genuine dread of nuclear devastation, as well as nightly air raids, less than 10 years since World War II ended in several mushroom clouds, is overwhelming. Tapping into the real cultural anxiety of a nation left marred by the memory of its dead, as well as the recent incident of a fishing crew being contaminated by unannounced hydrogen bomb testing at Bikini Atoll, Godzilla encapsulates terror for the atomic age in a giant lizard. But unlike the sequels there is nothing cuddly or amusing about this original Kaiju with its scarred body and legion of tumors. This is the one Godzilla movie to play it straight, and it still plays today.

The Invisible Man

After years of false starts and failed attempts at resurrecting the classic Universal Monsters, Universal Pictures finally figured out how to make it work: They called Blumhouse Productions.

Yep, Jason Blum’s home for micro-budgeted modern horror worked wonders alongside writer-director Leigh Whannell in updating the classic 1933 James Whale movie, and the H.G. Wells novel on which it is based, for the 21st century.

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Turning the story of a man who masters invisibility into a horrific experience told from the vantage of the woman trying to escape his toxic violence, The Invisible Man becomes a disquieting allegory for the #MeToo era. It also is a devastating showcase for Elisabeth Moss who is compelling as Cecilia, the abused and gaslighted woman that barely found the will to escape, yet will now have to discover more strength since everyone around her shrugs off the idea of her dead ex coming back as an invisible man…

Lifeforce

Most assuredly a horror movie for a very acquired taste, there are few who would call Tobe Hooper’s career-destroying Lifeforce a good movie. There probably aren’t even many who would call it a fun movie.

But for those with a singular taste for batshit pulp run amok, Lifeforce needs to be seen to be believed: Naked French vampire girls from outer space! Hordes of extras as zombies marauding through downtown London! Lush Henry Mancini music over special effects way outside of Cannon Films’ budget!!! Patrick Stewart as an authority figure possessed by said naked French space vampire, trying to seduce an astronaut via makeout sessions?!

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… What is this movie? Why does it exist? We don’t know, but we’re probably more glad it does than the people who made it.

Magic

As much a psychological case study as as a traditional horror movie, for those who like their terror rooted in humanity, Magic may be the creepiest iteration of the “killer doll” subgenre since this is about the man who thinks his dummy is alive. Starring Anthony Hopkins before he was Hannibal, or had a “Sir” in front of his name, Magic is the brain child of William Goldman, who adapted his own novel into this movie before he’d go on to do the same for The Princess Bride (as well as adapt Stephen King’s Misery), but after he’d already written Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man.

In the film, Hopkins stars as Corky, a down on his luck ventriloquist who tries to get his life together by tracking down his high school sweetheart (Ann-Margret). She’ll soon probably wish he didn’t bother once she realizes Corky believes his ventriloquist dummy Fats really is magic… and is determined to get him to act on the most heinous of impulses.

The Most Dangerous Game

Before King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack released The Most Dangerous Game, one of the all-time great pulp movies, based on a short story by Richard Connell. This classic has influenced everything from Predator to The Running Man, The Hunger Games to Ready or Not.

It’s the story of a big game hunter who shipwrecks on a remote island with an eccentric Russian Count who escaped the Bolshevik Revolution (Leslie Banks). The wayward noble now drinks, studies, and charms his apparently frequent array of unannounced guests, including two other survivors from a previous (suspicious) wreck. The film quickly boils down to a mad rich man determined to hunt his guests as prey across the island for the ultimate thrill.

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Man hunting man, man lusting after woman in a queasy pre-Code fashion, this is a primal throwback to adventure yarns of the 19th century, which were still relatively recent in 1932. Shot simultaneously with King Kong, this is 63 brisk minutes of excitement, dread, and delicious overacting. Let the games begin.

Night of the Living Dead

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

The zombie movie that more or less invented our modern understanding of what a zombie movie is, there is little new that can be said about George A. Romero’s original guts and brains classic, Night of the Living Dead. Shot in black and white and on almost no budget, the film reimagined zombies as a horde of ravenous flesh-eaters, as opposed to a lowly servant of the damned and enchanted.

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Still visually striking in black and white, perhaps the key reason to go back to the zombie movie that started it all is due to how tragically potent its central conflict from 1968 remains: When strangers are forced to join forces and barricade in a farmhouse to survive a zombie invasion, the wealthy white businessman is constantly at odds with the young Black man in the group, to the point of drawing weapons…

The Others

Alejandro Amenabar (Open Your Eyes) wrote and directed this elegant ghost story. Nicole Kidman is superb as Grace, who relocates herself and her two small children to a remote country estate in the aftermath of World War II. Their highly structured life — the children are sensitive to sunlight and must stay in darkened rooms — is shattered by mysterious presences in the house.

Amenabar relies on mood, atmosphere and a few well-placed scares to make this an excellent modern-day companion to classics like The Haunting and The Innocents.

Ready or Not

The surprise horror joy of 2019, Ready or Not was a wicked breath of fresh air from the creative team Radio Silence. With a star-making lead turn by Samara Weaving, the movie is essentially a reworking of The Most Dangerous Game where a bride is being hunted by her groom’s entire wedding party on the night of their nuptials.

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It’s a nutty premise that has a delicious (and broad) satirical subtext about the indulgences and eccentricities of the rich, as the would-be extended family of Grace (Weaving) is only pursuing her because they’re convinced a grandfather made a deal with the Devil for their wealth–and to keep it they must step on those beneath them every generation. Well step, shoot, stab, and ritualistically sacrifice in this cruelest game of hide and seek ever. Come for the gonzo high-concept and stay for the supremely satisfying ending.

Sisters

One of the scariest things about the 1972 psychological thriller Sisters is the subliminal sounds of bones creaking and muscles readjusting during the slasher scenes. Margot Kidder plays both title characters: conjoined twins, French Canadian model Danielle Breton and asylum-committed Dominique Blanchion, who had been surgically separated. Director Brian De Palma puts the movie together like a feature-long presentation of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The camera lingers over bodies, bloodied or pristine, mobile or prone, with fetishistic glee before instilling the crime scenes in the mind’s eye. He allows longtime Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann to assault the ear.

De Palma was inspired by a photograph of Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, Russian conjoined twins with seemingly polarized temperaments. There may be no deeper bond than blood, which the film has plenty of, but the real alter ego comes from splitscreen compositions and an outside intruder. The voyeuristic delight culminates in a surgical dream sequence with freaks, geeks, a giant, and dwarves. Nothing is as it seems and an out-of-order telephone is a triggering reminder.

Vampyr

A nigh silent picture, Vampyr came at a point of transition for its director Carl Th. Dreyer. The Danish filmmaker, who often worked in Germany and France at this time, was making only his second “talkie” when he mounted this vampire opus. That might be why the movie is largely absent of dialogue. The plot, which focuses on a young man journeying to a village that is under the thrall of a vampire, owes much to Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu from some years earlier.

Yet there horror fans should seek Vampyr out, if for no other reason than the stunning visuals and cinematography. Alternating between German Expressionist influences in its use to shadows to unsettling images crafted in naturalistic light, such as a boatman carrying an ominous scythe, this a a classic of mood and atmosphere. Better still is when they combine, such as when the scythe comes back to bedevil a woman sleeping, trapping us all in her nightmare. Even if its narrative has been told better, before and after, there’s a reason this movie’s iconography lingers nearly a century later.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Some do not count Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the seventh film in the Nightmare on Elm Street saga, as actually part of the series. As a gleefully meta exercise in self-awareness and self-critique, the film shirks off continuing the narrative from the last batch of Freddy Krueger movies, the last of which had the title Freddy’s Dead. Rather writer-director Wes Craven, returning to the series for the first time as director since the original, attempts to wrestle the horror icon back from pop culture. When Craven and actor Robert Englund created Freddy in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, the fiend was a menacing, demonic child murderer. By 1994, he’d turn into a kid-friendly pop culture personality and huckster.

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With Englund on board, as well as the original film’s star in Heather Langenkamp, New Nightmare has the knotty concept of being about Langenkamp playing a version of herself: an actress who did a slasher movie 10 years ago and is still in some ways haunted by it. In real life she faced a stalker calling her at all hours of the night; in the movie, it’s Freddy. Or a Demon who’s taken the shape of Freddy… it’s complicated. The movie’s reach may exceed its grasp in terms of artistry, but at the very least Freddy was scary again for one last time. And the film’s ambition in crafting a waking nightmare of movies bleeding into our reality is still impressive.

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