Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween weekend!

I hope that you are getting cozy with pizza, popcorn, M&M's or whatever else strikes you as a treat, and a spooktacular film of your choice. Maybe you are opting for family fare such as Casper or Hocus Pocus. Maybe you are in the mood for something dark and surreal like It Follows or You Should Have Left, or perhaps you are craving a classic such as Halloween or The Exorcist. Either way, get ready for a cool weekend of escapism, pranks and, above all, fun that we all deserve. 

Last horror film watched: Slumber Party Massacre II 

Next horror film to watch: He Knows You're Alone 

   
Top five horror films to see (surprisingly, my list is the same as last year):    

Halloween Kills
Willow Creek  

Ghost Stories (2017)  

Eyes of a Stranger (1981)

Host (2020)

The Spookiest Horror Locations

The scare factor of horror films depends largely on their settings. What is Psycho without the Bates Motel and that creepy old house on the hill? Where would Rosemary’s Baby have been born had it not been for the Gothic thrills of the Dakota?

We associate cinematic stories with their abodes and landscapes, and horror hinges on an environment of fear to provoke a visceral reaction. A well thought out tale wrapped up in the atmosphere of dread or isolation, or even both, is a guaranteed chiller when we need one to escape reality.  

Sure, there are always cemeteries and haunted houses. However, some other locales are even more enticing. A great filmmaker can turn a relatively harmless space into a chilling one, let alone a space as alluring as an abandoned asylum or an isolated house.

Certain horror tropes such as stormy nights and masked intruders have successfully been reinvented in recent years, in large part thanks to the venues that employed them.

This Halloween, make sure to remember the importance of location, location, location.

                                                           Session 9 - Universal Pictures

  
Asylums (The Sender, Session 9, Grave Encounters) - What happens in places that are meant to aid people’s mental wellness? Nothing good or productive if they are asylums from times of yore. Combining this potentially sinister history with the everlasting stigma can create an effective and meaningful horror film. Within this context, one does not even need to infuse the proceedings with a sense of supernatural dread, but the addition is a bonus. Who or what could be wandering those dark halls? What stories can the deteriorated walls and drab rooms tell? Filmmakers have been examining these cryptic places for almost as long as cinema has existed. One of the best genre entries from the past 20 years, Brad Anderson’s Session 9 explores how an asbestos cleaning crew falls under the dark influence of a derelict asylum and its patient history. The Vicious Brothers’ found footage entry Grave Encounters follows a ghost hunting show crew who get much more than they bargained for when they enter an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Chasing ghosts is frightening but, as these films show, infiltrating someone else’s psyche can be downright deadly. 

                                                      Friday the 13th - Paramount Pictures

Forests (Friday The 13^th, The Blair Witch Project, Blood Trails, The Forest) - Nature is incredible. Nature is an escape. Nature should never be underestimated, especially in horror cinema. Forests are frequent locales for the genre due to their shadowy quality and the enigmatic character of the concealed landscape. The terrain can be unpredictable and visitors can get side-tracked by injuries, thirst, hunger or darkness. Furthermore, one can easily get lost in a forest or even take it up a notch and become the object of a long-lost witch’s wrath. The three student filmmakers in The Blair Witch Project soon find out why the locals are wary of entering the woods surrounding the town; those night sounds alone can make you forget camping for a while and that deserted house will give you nightmares. The blood rain nightmare that Friday The 13^th’s Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) describes soon becomes all too real for the camp counselors and The Forest’s protagonist comes face to face with ghosts while rescuing her twin sister from Aokigahara, Japan’s suicide forest. Always remember to bring food and water and make sure that the compass is working… still, the clock is ticking if there are ruthless killers or otherworldly creatures lurking about.  

                                                           The Strangers - Screen Gems

 

Isolated houses (Scream, Them, When A Stranger Calls (2006), The Strangers, You Should Have Left) - Which place is safer than your home? A house is usually considered a residence or, in the very least, a sanctuary of some kind. However, when a house is in a remote location, it can become more of a trap than an oasis. With no police and no other person for miles, a simple situation involving a maniac and a potential victim makes for a frightening narrative. The remake of When A Stranger Calls creates a character out of the technologically advanced mansion where our protagonists babysits; alone and vulnerable, she has to use her wits to survive and save her young charges. Couples seem to be at particular risk. A loving couple is attacked in their country house by random passers-by in Them and a troubled couple is subjected to a relentless home invasion by The Strangers. Sure, a huge property with a scenic view seems idyllic, but it comes with strings attached and possibly some unwanted house guests. Be careful what you wish for.    

                                                              Annabelle - Warner Bros

Elevators (The Shining, The Eye, Devil, Annabelle) - Where do you go if you have nowhere to escape? What if you are stuck in a tiny space with the Devil himself? How do you manage to watch The Eye’s elevator scene all the way to the end without biting your nails clean off? These are all important questions when it comes to tension that has no place to go. One cannot just leave an elevator while it is on its way and, if it accidentally stops, you are going to get stuck with… something. These locales take fear to the next level if a viewer suffers from claustrophobia, making the viewing experience that much more uncomfortable and often impossible. 2002’s The Eye in particular explores this emotion effectively, with the Pang Brothers utilizing dizzying camerawork as protagonist Wong Kar Mun works out what is going on in her conveyor of horror. Of course, sometimes elevators have a mind and blood of their own, as Kubrick shows us in one of the most memorable sequences of the surrealistic shudder-fest The Shining. Yes, entering a silent metallic box to be transported to a different floor can cost you. Honorable mention has to go to “The Elevator” episode of the 1980s "The Twilight Zone" reboot, which needs to be watched in the dark to get the full effect. 

                                                       Scream 2 - Dimension Films

Universities (Thesis, Scream 2, Urban Legend, Anatomy) - As numerous horror movies of the late 90s and early 00s can attest, institutions of higher learning can be dangerous places for fresh, naive co-eds. If you do not get a killer attempting to bring urban myths into the real world like they do in Urban Legend and Urban Legends: Final Cut, you might be on the receiving end of a killer twisting principles of medicine and the Hippocratic Oath like the maniac stalking students in Anatomy. Other co-eds, like Angela from Thesis, might end up coming across a snuff film when their harmless, innocent intention was merely to write a paper. Universities are one of the most clever places for horror films. Most of these films deal with the fear of the unknown, equating it with the fear of living away from home and handling grown-up experiences for what is likely the first time. One never knows what they might encounter in a new class, at a party, in a lone corridor or if you go to a library in the late hours of the night, as students are wont to do. Every new day at school brings new opportunities but, as these films demonstrate, it might also bring new risks. Stay safe, kids.    

                                                              Duel - Universal Pictures

Highways (Duel, Road Games, The Hitcher, Breakdown, Wolf Creek) - Is there anything more frightening than imagining yourself alone on a highway? As the creepy Wolf Creek and the underrated Road Games show, this kind of nightmare does not even have to have ‘night’ in it. The juxtaposition of the freedom of wide open spaces and sheer isolation makes highways a tempting setting for the horror and thriller genres. An endless road can lead anywhere and nowhere; a road that one is not familiar with can lead to madness. Duel follows a hapless salesman who finds himself being hounded by an ominous truck. Tourists are bait for Wolf Creek’s psychopathic killer Mick Taylor, who knows each of the film’s highways like the back of his hand, which is a rather unfortunate situation for his latest three would-be victims. Disappearances are common. Just ask Breakdown’s terrified and harassed Jeff Taylor, whose wife disappears in the middle of a desert and whom no one appears to have ever seen. A cat-and-mouse game is the centerpiece of Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher, with a homicidal hitchhiker chasing and framing an innocent driver for his crimes. Serial murderer hitchhikers, obsessive truckers, serial killers period… if they do not get you, maybe the downright lonely life on the road will.  

                                                             The Shining - Warner Bros

Hotels (Psycho, The Shining, Vacancy, 1408) - These vacation hubs have been a popular choice for filmmakers for decades. To paraphrase 1408, who knows how many people have stayed in a hotel room and who knows how many have even died there? Similar to university life, hotels and inns are homes away from home for a certain period of time. They are created for comfort and gratification, but they are also places where no one overstays; they are accommodations made for a specific purpose. Their aura of mystery is alluring to the horror genre, which keep mining their unlimited potential and finding new elements of fright in between room service and mini shampoo. The Shining’s Overlook Hotel is overtaken by ghosts of not-such-a-Christmas-past, while the couple in Vacancy are hunted by the deranged owners who habitually exploit their oblivious customers for snuff films. Of course, the room in 1408 is merely an ‘evil fucking room’, in the immortal words and deadpan delivery of Samuel L. Jackson. Hauntings and killers lie in wait for the wretched visitors… that is, if Norman Bates’s mother does not murder you first.

                                                    As Above So Below - Universal Pictures

Subterranean venues (Creep (2004), The Cave, The Descent, Catacombs, As Above So Below) - Okay, so these locales engage the creep factor all on their own, without adding a horror story involving ghosts or other entities. How do you get help if no one knows where you are? How do you get out of a labyrinthine cave system or a network of subway tunnels? How do you avoid creatures chasing you in a pitch black realm? The unknown that sprawls underneath our world is a powerful and seductive element that can become the core of a truly terrifying tale. In the eerie and underrated As Above So Below, the Parisian catacombs serve as the vector for tormenting and murdering the explorers who dare to investigate their secrets. 2007’s Catacombs takes a look at a murder mystery within the titular tunnels from the protagonist’s point of view. The Descent follows a group of cavers encountering mutants as much as it examines friendships and relationships between the adventurers, bringing more depth to its chills. Anything can happen when you find yourself in an unfamiliar place. Even more can happen when that place is detached from the environment that one freely inhabits.