This week marks the official start of autumn, which means it’s OFFICIALLY spooky season. While you make the appropriate preparations for this holy time, be sure to check out this week’s recommendations on what to be watching:
Absentia (2011): Mike Flanagan, the man cursed by a haunted scroll to make a new horror movie every year until he dies, started out with this low-budget affair courtesy of a Kickstarter campaign. It’s moody and makes the most of its limited budget, and you can see some of the promise he would make good on in later efforts. Recommended for fans of tunnel hoboes, bridge trolls, and jogging. – David
Crawl (2019): For people who are claustrophobic and afraid of what may be lurking in the water, this movie is terrifying (sorry Caitlin, thanks for watching it with me anyway). Setting the action in Florida during a hurricane, the movie traps a college swim champ and her father in the crawl space under their old family home with gators that have camped out there. The flooding waters provide a narrative ticking clock, and they need to figure out how to escape both a watery grave and the long rows of teeth. While the plot is bare-bones and the character drama is nothing to write home about, the movie delivers where it matters most: creating a tight and suspenseful monster flick. It’s also a great reminder that Florida is the worst. – Tim
Deadly Friend (1986): This film started as more of a dark sci-fi tale before studio interference made Wes Craven add a lot of horror sequences to it to capitalize on his brand. Who knows if the original would have been worth a damn, but this sure isn’t. But the scenes between all the added horror stuff are pretty bland and uninteresting, so it seems like it was likely doomed to fail from the jump. A lady does get decapitated by a basketball, though! – David
Blair Witch (2016) – After another rewatch, I really wanted to like this sequel/reboot of The Blair Witch Project, but it just doesn’t do enough for me. It gets points for trying to build on the original story, and does some creative things in trying to explain the spookiness of the woods, but there isn’t much here that we haven’t seen a million times before in the found-footage genre. You do get a little peeky-peek at the Blair Witch herself, though, if that gets your motor humming. – Steve
The Man Who Laughs (1928): Gave this a rewatch to see if it was any better than I remembered and… nope. Really only tangentially horror, and much more of a melodrama. Its major claim to fame is featuring makeup effects on the lead character that later inspired the creation of the Joker. That visual is pretty great, but the movie is a slog. – David
The Frighteners (1996) – This movie is like watching Marty McFly do horror stuff – which is awesome! A criminally underrated horror movie that sees Peter Jackson team up with Michael J. Fox, this is a fun mystery/horror story that never forgets to also have fun; it also showcases Jackson making full use of early CGI technology. A victim of terrible marketing and a bad release date (the summer?!), The Frighteners deserves a second life. – Steve
Satanic Panic (2019): A real mixed bag. This quirky horror comedy about a witches’ coven has some good direction and gore effects, but thinks it’s way more clever than it is and all but falls apart in the last act. It has some stuff going for it, but it also has a big bad that is built up the whole movie who ends up looking like a dude in a Halloween costume. Horror fans might enjoy picking the meat from the bones. – David
Television
Lovecraft Country (2020): Based off the book of the same name, though with some significant changes, the HBO series is fan fiction in the best sense. Taking the scary and cool elements of Lovecraft’s horror and stripping it of his racist worldview, the show repurposes them to emphasize how terrifying the black experience in America can be, even before the supernatural shows up. Must-see TV for the fall. – Tim