Wondering what movies have been doing with the horror genre this year? Just in time for Halloween, let’s look at some of the most notable efforts of 2013, while sprinkling in some random oldies as well, because the cemetery of horror cinema is a vast plot.
Posts tagged "horror movies"
Drews & Don’ts: 10 Great Stephen King Adaptations
As perhaps the world’s most preeminent writer of horror fiction, Stephen King’s works are adapted almost compulsively. With 60-odd novels and hundreds of short stories to his credit, there’s no shortage of material to pull from. It doesn’t hurt that his books hinge on ideas and rich characterization, aspects that make his yarns eminently adaptable; they also hinge a lot on expository dialogue and reams of internal monologue, things that don’t translate as easily to film. Three weeks into CBS’s […]
V/H/S 2: Movie Review
Last year, the horror community found itself quite taken by a ramshackle little anthology of found-footage creep-outs, V/H/S; an exciting, high-concept parade of ghastliness, the gleefully nasty little collection found up-and-coming genre directors like Ti West, Adam Wingard, and Radio Silence helming a series of POV horror shorts tied together by a framing story about — I dunno, some douches finding some old VHS tapes or something. Either way, it was a good thing for horror fans, a delicious melange […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 31: Halloween
Well, was anybody shocked? Remember, when I was setting up this series — back with Day 1’s write-up of May — I warned you that the actual holiday’s corresponding movie was going to be a predictable choice. Given that John Carpenter’s Halloween a.) shares a name with the holiday, b.) is set on the holiday in question, and c.) is the greatest horror movie of all time… well, if you’re shocked by this, you may be quite dumb. Regardless, I […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Days 27-28: Tales From the Crypt & Creepshow
As the Halloween season draws to its glorious close, we revert to the well for the final weekend of the month: that’s right, we’re looking at more anthology films. Why, you ask? The answer is almost deceptively simple: because they’re awesome. And as I sit here writing this, fully aware that the impending hurricane currently stalking the east coast just may swipe this review right out of my hands, I’m keenly aware of what my wife and I are going […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 26: Ginger Snaps
The best teen werewolf movie ever made? Apologies to Michael J. Fox, but yeah — Ginger Snaps is rightfully revered as a modern genre classic. It’s hard to articulate why, since teen horror movies aimed at some sort of monster as a metaphor for puberty have become quite en vogue in Twilight‘s unstoppable wake, but I’m assuming it’s got something to do with the cheerful sense of darkness it throws around. (In the opening credits alone, Ginger Snaps throws around snapshots of […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 25: The Nightmare Before Christmas
So here we are: the final week of the Halloween season. It’s almost bittersweet — and in this, our last seven days together, it’s time to bring the Halloween goodies fast and furious. We’re gonna get real scary over the next week, so before we do that, let’s take a breather and enjoy a Halloween flick for the whole family: Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s stop-motion classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. There’s nothing new about a film hitching something sinister to […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Days 23-24: Splinter & The Host
Yesterday, we discussed — among other films — Frank Darabont’s The Mist, which examined what happens when groups of people in extreme danger start to turn on each other. One of today’s films, Toby Wilkins’ Splinter, takes a bit of a different tactic: it examines what happens when disparate groups of people are forced to work together in the face of inexorable peril. The resulting film isn’t much cheerier, but it is a little more optimistic about the human condition. It’s […]
The 31 Days of Horror, Days 20-22: A Stephen King Mini-Marathon (The Mist, The Shining, & Silver Bullet)
Nearing the home stretch of this list, I’m aware that we’ve doubled up before: the weekend of October 6th we looked at George Romero’s first two Living Dead movies, and I got vocal about small but wonderful stretches of the otherwise troublesome Amusement and When a Stranger Calls in a catch-all installment. There are dozens of artisans in the horror arena that deserve multi-movie showcases. Romero, of course. Bava or Argento could easily have been spotlighted for a full-length segment. This year, though, I’m awarding a spotlight slot […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 19: Sleepaway Camp
We discussed, way back on day 4 of this shindig, the intangible sense of pleasure a cheesy ’80s horror movie has to offer; while that entry, Night of the Demons , makes its mark with irrepressible atmosphere and delightfully low-rent ’80s effects, today’s offering is a different beast. Sleepaway Camp‘s claim to fame is twofold: it’s one in a long line of Friday the 13th knockoffs, and it boasts a classic go-for-broke, left-field ending. Spoiler alert: it’s far from a good movie. But again, Night of […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 17: Black Sabbath
There’s something about a horror anthology that has always sucked me in. I remember distinctly my fourth-grade teacher reading aloud Alvin Schwartz’s immortal compendium of terrifying tales, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It was a mean collection to read impressionable young minds, in retrospect — my favorite story was always “Harold”, a three-page yarn about a malevolent scarecrow that began as foreboding creep-out (scarecrows are eerie things to begin with, after all) and escalated quickly in its final paragraph, […]
The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 16: Jeepers Creepers
A few days ago, we discussed I Know What You Did Last Summer , and how my penchant for retroactively viewing my earliest scares through rose-colored glasses often causes me to exaggerate a horror film’s potency in the present. Jeepers Creepers, released four years after Last Summer, is arguably of the same era, but it’s important to note the difference: remembering I Know What You Did Last Summer is often a lot kinder to it than watching it. Having seen Jeepers Creepers during the same time frame, […]