Something Spooky This Way Comes!

The long summer days are slowly turning into long fall/winter nights.  Soon, but not soon enough, the weather will be changing to the much preferred cooler temperatures.  Pumpkins, costumes, and trick r treat candy are now appearing on retail shelves.  This means Halloween is coming! 

If you don’t know this is, far and away, my favorite holiday.  I’ll be starting my annual horror/sci-fi quote game soon and pulling some scary movies off that shelf that I watch loyally this time of year.  Titles annually include The City of the Living Dead, The Blair Witch Project, and for some reason I always watch Halloween III: Season of the Witch during the week of halloween.  This year I’ll be adding Pieces to the list.

A few weeks ago I blogged about the rise in quality in animation movies.  During the same period of the last few years I’ve been also pleasantly enjoying a rise in quality in horror films that are gracing local cinema screens.  

While some unnecessary remakes still find their way to headlines it seems that the torture porn popularity is fading.  Yes I enjoyed the first two Saw entries but quickly got deterred when they became more about grossing out the audience and less about the story, much like dying Hostel franchise.  I don’t mind some gross out moments in my movies as long as they are there to support the story and not the story being there to support the gross out moments.  After all can you imagine The Exorcist being as effective without the split pee soup vomit?

So what films have been part of the revelation for me?  Let’s start with the Nevermore festival.  I look forward to this every February, and consider it one of the high points in my year.  Many films, such as The Innkeepers, Open Grave, 13 Cameras, and Found, have played at the festival.  The just mentioned titles, and others, are movies that I enjoyed every frame.  There have been some duds for though, Everlasting being one of them.

Now that I’ve mentioned my yearly trip to the Nevermore festival I must mention main stream cinema.  The Conjuring and its 2016 sequel both made me jump with quality scares and an intriguing story.  You’re Next, The Woman in Black, and The Quite Ones all told simple, compelling stories with great jump scares.  The latter two titles even did so with minimal blood and guts.  The Insidious and Sinister franchises both tend to have cookie cutter entries that I find entertaining and reliable horror.  I do feel obligated to mention there have been duds.  The Pyramid & The Gallows lead that pack.  However there seem to be many more good horror flicks out there these days.

I do still enjoy the classics very much.  The Shining being my favorite of the genre.  An American Werewolf in London, John Carpenter’s Halloween, Rear Window, Psycho, and others I watch with much joy.

With all that said I look forward to jumping out of my seat at the movies.