Autumn is the perfect time for horror, with the rustling of leaves, the crunch under every step, as the first chill creeps across the land and the darkness begins taking more of the day for its own. But Winter is a truly spooky month in its own right. The bitter cold and howling winds keep people hunkered within their homes at night, leaving towns deserted and welcome to the prowl of creatures. Everything becomes deathly silent with the somber falling snow. And the Darkness wins over the day, giving way to 14 hour nights ripe for nightmares.
It all started with, of all things, a creepy, kitschy commercial for a local haunted attraction. Last year I would hear the ad every night when my alarm went off at 10pm for work. The ad inspired me to get into the spirit of the Halloween season and I raced out to the local used store to pick up some DVDs. Just basic classics to start: Silence of the Lams, Scream, The Blair Witch Project....
I had never been big on Halloween before, not since I was a kid. In the years prior to 2011 I hadn't even watched a single scary movie to commemorate the holiday, not even on the Halloweens I had off from work. I enjoyed horror movies well enough, but my appettite was satiated by AfterDark's annual HorrorFest, until that series became defunct.
After watching Blair Witch I became enamored with found footage and started gathering up every film I could find from the genre. And at the time I thought it would continue well past the witching month. When October ended I still had a decent sized list of found footage I wanted to see. The problem was, though, I hit all the high notes early: Blair Witch, [REC], Wicksboro Incident. By the end of October 2011 the movies I was watching were b-grade at best and I found myself abruptly losing interest once the month was over.
This year was different. The fun and spooky allure of Halloween began haunting me as early as Spring, and by the time Autumn finally fell, I had long lists of things to watch. It was pretty much the most amazing Autumn of all-time, I was watching amazing new things on a practically daily basis for two months.
I haven't found it so easy to give up on horror this year. Though October has come and gone, I now have a whole host of films that have newly become all-time favorites, I can't simply shelve them for a whole year just as soon as I've discovered them. I've already started rewatching them, one per week. Ginger Snaps 2, Scream 4, Atrocious, The House of the Devil, Let The Right One In, these films are so good I just have to watch them again. And then again. And again. But rewatches alone may not satiate....
I'm already planning a little marathon to celebrate the Winter Solstice, since it is after all, the longest night of the year. I'm thinking something on hourly themes. At midnight I might watch Suspiria, as it is the witching hour. For the 5am hour of the wolf I can definitely scrounge up something wolfy to watch. The premise of Wolfen would intrigue me if it weren't so 1980s. Maybe the Wolfman remake.... And I'm looking for a devil movie for 3am the devil's hour.
Part of me is sad that I won't have a wide host of things to watch next October, since I'm going to be watching horror all year. But there's no telling what form my interests will take next. As unlikely as it seems, it's possible I may not even be in a scary movie kind of mood next October, and then I would have wasted hours and hours of fun I could have been having all year, only to not even watch all the movies I saved. C'est la vie!
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