The Great Halloween Review

It all started a little over a year ago when I heard a kitschy, creepy radio ad for Kennywood's Phantom Fright Nights. I decided to get into the spirit of the season and raced out to the local used CD store. I started with just a few basic classics, The Silence of the Lambs, Scream, The Blair Witch Project. After that, I became ensconced, but by the time I had even started, October was already half over. So ever since then I've been gearing up for my next chance to submerge myself in Halloween spooks. This year I took it as far as I could, with scary movies, creepy documentaries, haunting TV dramas and ominous Halloween music. I had Halloween 24/7 for over two months.

I had been waiting for Fall all year, so when it finally came, I was ready with a long list of things to watch. 42 films and a dozen TV shows I had never seen later, here are my rankings for the best of the best this year. This includes several of the highest quality, most superb TV & films I've ever seen!

But, honestly, I enjoyed all of what I watched. I learned pretty quickly what I do and don't like out of horror, and I chose each movie very carefully. A lot of good films like Insidious, Interview With the Vampire, and Session 9 just couldn't fit on the list. That doesn't mean they aren't excellent, just that they aren't AS excellent. Look to your right for the complete list of films I watched this Autumn.

Films

1. Atrocious

- This is the film that, in an abundantly real sense, restored my faith and interest in found footage, which happens to be my favorite genre. Everything a found footage film can do right, Atrocious achieves. The setting is beyond unsettling, the urban legend which gives the film its impetus is the most utterly flawless, scary, and believable (as an urban legend) fake urban legend I've ever heard. The way she is portrayed as being helpful but also inhuman and potentially sinister if you don't follow the rules seems to mirror so many real life urban legends, and it perfectly encapsulates the eerie hedge maze of the setting. The progression of the story couldn't be more perfect and the ultimate action handily bests the comparable climaxes of Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch. No film has scared me as much as this since I first saw Paranromal Activity 2 in theaters, and that was when I was a much younger (and more impressionable) man (hey, two years can change you a lot sometimes!). Possibly the scariest movie I've ever seen.

2. The House of the Devil

- This is easily one of the most perfect films I've ever seen. The atmosphere is so palpable and affecting you could cut it with a knife. It's not disturbing like Atrocious, it's creepy and unsettling in that classic ghost-story kind of way. Every detail is perfect, down to the super creepy film she sees when she turns on the TV. And the story is so real and believable, it's almost enough to make me not want to watch it alone (in a good way). The 1980s setting is so expertly crafted that it gave me nostalgia I had forgotten I even had. If I caught this film while channel surfing, I may have thought it was actually made in the 80s. The eventual payoff is excellent enough but the real fun in a Ti West film is the journey. The final two short scenes were brilliant, though. And oh, god, the acting throughout.... easily some of the finest acting I've seen in my life. Especially from the husband commissioning the baby-sitter job, he just nails his role with aplomb.


3. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

- This is among those rare sequels that is better than the first. While the original Ginger Snaps was plump with cool gothic style and I love it for that, Ginger Snaps 2 takes a turn for the dark and improves on the first in that regard. It actually cultivates some damn creepy scenes with abandoned asylum corridors, dark wooded areas, and sanitarium mistreatment. Ginger appears only as a corporeal hallucination to calmly harbinge doom for Brigitte. Brigitte, understandably unconvinced that the condition which forced her to kill her sister is a friend and not a foe, continues to battle tooth and nail against the onset of puberty. But can she fight the inevitable  The storyline in this one was even more intriguing than the first, even if it's not as iconic. Is this the best werewolf series of films? Easily.

4. Scream 4

- While Scream and Scream 2 are admittedly better films, Scream 4 may well be my favorite of the series. I'm too young and too new to horror to intimately appreciate the cultural context of the early Scream films, and I've never been an avid or learned slasher film watcher (I haven't even seen most of the classics, it's just not my thing). Alternatively, I am intimately familiar with the rash of recent horror remakes and therefore Scream 4's pitch-perfect deconstruction of that fad resonates with me more deeply than the others could. And, as always, Scream provides a fun, smart, thrill ride of mystery-horror that masterfully achieves the precarious balance between being funny but still maintaining seriousness as a legitimate horror film. A true rarity in the horror genre.


5. Pan's Labyrinth

- An adult fantasy is an exquisite thing. Adults actually need fantasy films much more so than do children. For a child, fantasy is intrinsic, intuitive, it happens for them without even trying, whether or not there's a film attached. It's adults who rely on a film like Pan's Labyrinth to remind them that magic and beauty are not wholy incompatible with the harsh trials of the real world. That's what makes a grim but hopeful film like Pan's Labyrinth so unique and so utterly essential. But even if there weren't so few films which attempt this necessary public service as does Pan's Labyrinth, it would still rank among the very best of the form, with its ethereal soundtrack, lifelike creatures, and point-perfect storytelling. Other films have attempted it, but none has ever succeeded like Pan's Labyrinth: it created a fairytale film that was brutal without being obscene, magic without being cheesy, and as sincere as any film can be.



6. The Cabin in the Woods

- The Cabin in the Woods is just pure fun in the best way. It contains a little sprinkle of the best of each world, despite mastering none of them. It's extremely clever and indelibly intriguing to watch. I love fun horror films but the various braindead teen screams just (understandably) flatline with me, so hip, intelligent send-ups like this are a prayer answered. Some of the brilliant deconstruction of Scream, some of the grim excitement of Battle Royale, and some of the classic horror bloodbath of The Evil Dead comes together to make this a unique and essential film. It's the first truly brilliant deconstruction since Scream and it's one of the smartest films I've seen, with likely the most fully- and articulately-realized premise.


7. Let the Right One In

- The Vampire has always had some small romance to it, dating back at least as far as the sexual allegory in Bram Stoker's genre-defining Dracula. But over the decades, vampires have shed their demonic roots and become ever more romantic, to the extent that they've become soap opera characters thrice as often as horror characters today. Let The Right One In is the vampire romance to end all vampire romance, a film that treats its subjects not in soap opera broad strokes but with a realism and mercy rarely attempted. All in all, it's one of the best coming of age films you'll ever have the treat of experiencing (along with Fucking Amal and The Breakfast Club, just saying). One of my favorite aspects of it, subtle though the reveal was, is that it is in fact an LGBT romance film. Whether you interpret the Eli character as intersex, transgender, or simply a boy, it's impossible to spin the relationship as heterosexual.


8. Wilderness Survival for Girls

- Wilderness Survival for Girls was quite a pleasant surprise. The scene where they discuss the anniversary of the murders next to the glowing fire is the single most picturesque, perfectly frightening storytelling scene I've ever seen, it's exactly what I had hoped to get out of Campfire Tales. Then when a brash, foolish squatter barges in on the three young girls alone in their cabin miles away from civilization, they're forced to decide what they have to do to him to protect themselves. Tie him up, kill him, or just let him leave? The moral dilemma, psychological cat and mouse game, and creeping dread over what the man may do to them collides together to craft bar none one of the most nail-bitingly exciting thrillers I've ever had the good fortune of viewing.


9. The Innkeepers

- The modern Master of Suspense, Ti West, treats me to another pulse-pumping treatise in the art of rising tension. The build up is just as well-crafted and terrifyingly fun this time around, as a couple of amateur ghost hunters work in a creepy-as-fuck hotel for it's final weekend before going out of business. The atmosphere is sublime, the story is interesting, the set-up is perfect. Plus, the leading lady is super adorable. Ti can make as many of these films as he likes and I will eagerly watch every one of them, his style suits me wondrously.

10. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

- I can understand why this film didn't land with some people, but it could practically have been made just for me. The dream team brilliance of director Guillermo Del Toro and music director Javier Navarrete inform this film with flawless, picturesque atmosphere as always. My long-tme favorite American Sweetheart Katie Holmes comes out of hiding to grace us with another lovely performance. The story of a child encountering bedtime monsters may be an oft-used go-to scenario, but to me it is by far one of the most inherently chilling premises because of how plausible a parent's denial would be in this circumstance. And the icing on the cake is: in Del Toro's version, the creatures are pre-human faeries! Still-surviving, pre-human, language-speaking hominids are my all-time favorite cryptids behind living dinosaurs.

11. Monsters

- Monsters was a hidden gem. Years ago the world became infected with alien spawn from a fallen satellite  These aliens are not intelligent life (more like animals), but they grow to be absolutely massive and are extremely dangerous. As there's no way to stop them, the world must learn to cope. The romantic drama in the film verges on saccharine at times but it holds a sentimentality fully worthy of classic Spielberg, and this aspect is balanced out by some very extreme and sincere grit that also accompanies the film.

12. Grave Encounters

- While not as brilliant of a film as Home Movie (#14 on this list), this was definitely more my style. Grave Encounters takes something a dozen found footage films have done, but they manage to do it well enough that it's actually an excellent and worthwhile film, the best of its particular ilk. The setting is creepy and some of the scares are downright terrifying. The disintegration of the situation is well-crafted and disquieting. I felt the final segment dragged on quite a bit passed where it conceivably could have ended on a stronger note, but the final reveal was quite disturbing none the less. One of the better found footage films out there.

13. Scream 2

- I love a good Scream film and this one more than qualifies as good, Scream 2 matches the quality and caliber of the original in every regard. Keeps you guessing and delivers the requisite body count and snarky dialogue Kevin Williamson is honorbound to court. Frankly I wish there were a million Scream films, because I can't get enough of them. Many consider this even better than the original Scream, and I'd have to say they're about equal: Scream 2 has the best reveal, and deconstruction at least as good as the first.

14. Home Movie

- Home Movie is the realistic tale of extremely apt and loving parents who are forced to confront the fact that their children have a macabre obsession with death and mutilation. The disturbing concepts of this film have haunted me ever since I saw it, almost to the extent that I regret watching it. Doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon but I'd be lying if I said it was anything less than masterfully done. I do have some qualms with the ending, but everything that precedes it is brilliantly crafted to the utmost, one of the best handled and most realistic films I've ever watched.

15. V/H/S

- V/H/S didn't completely fulfill its potential but it's worth a watch merely for the A+ chills of the first "tape." I love found footage and I love anthologies so this was a no-brainer for me. The stories have some interesting twists and, in contrast to most found footage, this film delivers the gore and nudity in bucketsfull.

16. Requiem

- A very competent and deeply affecting coming of age drama, heart-wrenchingly sincere in its portrayal of one poor girl's true life story. Some scenes were so strong I could barely stand to watch them, the realness and force of this film can be staggering. Requiem could have ranked much higher if it didn't end quite so abruptly. I understand the point of ending it there, but they could have still given more resolution without moving any further in her life story.

17. Fun Size

- Victoria Justice and Jane Levy star in this fun teen Halloween romp with a plethora of seriously gut-busting jokes, a crazy town-trotting story, and a motley collection of peculiar characters each with their own individual nuances. Fun Size is an excellent film for what it is.

18. Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

- Horror-comedy is rarely ever my kind of thing, but Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil was so well-written I just had to watch. The jokes are funny and the love story contained within it is by far the most touching love story I've seen in a horror film.

19. Incident at Loch Ness

- Imagine that if, out of the thousands of trips documentary crews take to find cryptids, one of them actually found something. That's the premise of this jocular satire played off as though it were real. It's straight-faced deadpan humor comparable to something like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like Ghostwatch and the TV-version of Incident in Lake County, Incident at Loch Ness utilizes a reputable and well-known personality to lend credibility to the farce, in this case it's the world-renowned documentarian Werner Herzog. As a fan of cryptids I would have been more interested if this premise was played out as less of a satire. But it's an expressly hilarious film, and I certainly can't fault it just for being an excellent comedy. I honestly haven't laughed more at any horror/supernatural comedy than this.

20. Kissed

- A deeply disturbing premise (necrophilia), gives way to a pretty much inarguably high-craft and affecting romance/drama film. The part where she licks the dead chipmunk was a little too much for me, but to call this film anything less than brilliant would be idiotic. Kissed is so excellently put together that it lends inalienable humanity and heart to something inexorably uncomfortable and dismaying. A truly beautiful film in the deepest sense imaginable.

Television

1. The Walking Dead

- Simply unprecedented. Easily the best horror television series ever made, and instantly one of my all-time favorite shows. It seamlessly combines the grit and intellect of Breaking Bad with the expert story-telling and jaw-dropping plot twists of Game of Thrones, then it injects some of the masterful drama of Dawson's Creek for good measure (face it, it's there). Oh and did I mention the zombies? I mean this show is Scary with a capital S. Somehow they manage more gruesome and believable makeup & effects than movies which use up The Walking Dead's entire budget every five minutes. And the way the dead are always a factor, always moving, no matter how okay things seem at the moment the monsters could show up at any minute, it really gets under my skin. Not to mention this is the most genuine and captivating portrayal of the post-apocalypse I've ever seen. The Walking Dead is amazing.

2. American Horror Story

- American Horror Story is a gorgeously enthralling little love-affair with everything Horror and a little bit of a demonic soap opera. You'll find every kind of horror trope imaginable crammed into this series: serial killers, sorority murders, demonic pregnancy, an undead monster baby, doctors tampering with unholy experiments, every kind of ghost you can imagine... And amazingly, it all works. The drama is exquisite and the atmosphere is top, but the most immaculately ingenius thing about this series is that it just kept building upon itself compulsively and it never failed to tie its threads perfectly. Every episode would introduce new characters, new backstories, new connections between this character and that character which you never could have expected but which in hindsight makes perfect sense. This show is a masterpiece of form, function and execution.

3. Masters of Horror

- Despite disparate creators from episode to episode, Masters of Horror was thick with a brooding atmosphere which really permeated the series. It wasn't always great but the best episodes were brilliant. Among the best episodes: Horror legend John Carpenter lent his talents to the brilliantly unsettling "Cigarette Burns" and the demonically fun "Pro-Life," while William Malone's "The Fair-Haired Child" was creepy as fuck, and another Horror legend Tobe Hooper directed a post-apocalypse with a poignant message in "Dance of the Dead." The only thing Masters of Horror lacks was a wrap-around setup. The Crypt Keeper in Tales From the Crypt, The Midnight Society in Are You Afraid of the Dark, an anthology series without a wrap-around isn't a TV series, it's a collection of random short films.

4. The Vampire Diaries

- I held off so long on watching this because I thought it might suck. It just sounded so hokey and cliche'. Foolish of me to doubt the great Kevin Williamson, I watched a myriad of supernatural teen soaps this October and Vampire Diaries was by far the best, beating out the likes of Teen Wolf, Being Human, and the classic Buffy The Vampire Slayer. In fact it outshines HBO's True Blood. Even more impressive, it outshined Britt Robertson's The Secret Circle, and I consider Britt the new Katie Holmes. The Vampire Diaries is simply written better, with more believable romance and a more interesting mythology than most shows in this ilk. And the incomparable writing of Williamson is always appreciated, the scene where Damon discusses Twilight was an unexpected pleasure on par with any meta dialogue in Scream or Dawson's Creek.

5. R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour

- Despite the rather awkward fact of this show only be 30 minutes, reputable kid horror guru R.L. Stine brings an excellently modern sensibility and a bit more of an adult attitude to his classic, clever bites of horror. Pound for pound I found this show more enjoyable than other horror anthology shows I watched this season including Goosebumps (same style, less mature), Fear Itself (more hit than miss, stories kind of samey), Tales From the Crypt (cool style but it didn't age well), and Are You Afraid of the Dark? (absolutely gorgeous atmosphere but the stories themselves weren't that great).

Music

Top Soundtracks:

1. Pan's Labyrinth (Javier Navarrete)

- Javier Navarrete's work is always brilliant, and Pan's Labyrinth is his best piece. Full of haunting lullabies, enchanting lingering piano, and an ethereal main theme that reoccurs at all the right moments.

2. The House of the Devil (Jeff Grace)

- Like the rest of the film, the soundtrack to The House of the Devil is idyllic and flawless. It's just iconic with it's meandering, fluttering piano chords fading into subtle strings, it perfectly encapsulates the unease the film courts.

Best Halloween-relevant Rock Songs

1. The Ghost Song -- The Doors

- Haunting, groovy, mysterious, almost supernatural... this definitely sounds like a song that ghosts would actually dance to. Soooo atmospheric.

2. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) -- Marilyn Manson

- Manson is the king of creepy and this song so perfectly embodies that Halloween spirit for me. It first came to my attention due to it's gorgeous use in Trick 'r Treat (the best movie ever made), and it's been an ultimate October track for me ever since.

3. Girl Afraid -- The Smiths

- The Smiths have that kind of brooding, atmospheric 1980s quality that to me just intrinsically feels like the soundtrack to a good horror movie, I don't know why. The lyrics here detail a girl's bad feeling about a man's intentions, which fits perfectly with some kind of slasher/stalker type film. "I'll never make that mistake again," I can just envision it playing during some chase scene after the killer dupes her.

4. Talons Out (And Teeth Sharpened) -- DevilDriver

- This kitschy metal track would fit so perfectly with a kitschy self-aware 21st century creature feature that I started imagining what the movie would be like, and even what the sequels would be like!