Do You Like Scary Movies?

“And if any of them knew horror, they’d know you let the dead rest.” – Stephen Graham Jones, ‘The Angel of Indian Lake’

We fight a lot of battles in life. Sometimes, you gotta fight Ghostface. Sometimes, you gotta fight Michael Myers. Then, once you think you’re peacefully asleep? Well, you gotta fight who the actual movies refer to as “Fred Kruger.” Lotta battles.

The battle I’m fighting is against the sedentary lifestyle of contemporary capitalism. It seems that when you’re an “unskilled” laborer—say, a deckhand or bartender or server or warehouse worker—the bosses demand physicality until you’re completely spent. All of those jobs gave me some sort of injury not serious enough for worker’s comp, but nagging enough that I had to either find a new job or get better educated about how to take care of my body. Then, every office job I’ve had—office assistant, copywriter—led to weight gain because I’d be sitting all day.

What I’m saying is that now, as a stay-at-home dad and full-time unpaid writer, I spend a lot of my day on my feet. I work out while writing, I chase my very energetic kid around, I’m in the kitchen and cleaning house from five to seven. By nine o’clock, kid burrito-wrapped in bed?

Time to watch a MOVIE.

NEW HORROR MOVIES

Last year, when I did this movie roundup column, I’d seen a ton of 2020s movies/shows. Brandon Cronenberg, Fall Of The House Of Usher, Totally Killer, The Cursed, The Clovehitch Killer, etc. This year was a little more about looking backward, mostly inspired by Stephen Graham Jones and the Indian Lake Trilogy. We’ll talk about those in a minute. The new horror movie I watched, well this plus a Ready Or Not rewatch to prepare for the upcoming class war, was HAUNT SEASON.

Cannot emphasize enough how much I love this movie. Brendan and I are talking to Haunt Season star Adam Hinkle on the 2024 Halloween Special Lazy & Entitled Podcast—watch this space for more Haunt Season talk. Seriously, though. Haunt Season is a party for horror fans, made by a bunch of horror fans.

LET’S INDULGE IN SOME VAMPIRISM

They made a new Salem’s Lot, so I had vampires front-o-mind. I’d never seen the old one, so I watched them both. Honestly, I like the old one better—the relationship between Ben Mears and his old teacher and girlfriend’s dad struck me as the kind of intergenerational partnership we never see on film, except Fargo S2, maybe? Well, Fargo S5 between Don Draper and Steve Harrington, but that’s dark. Men cooperating, tho! That’s nice to see. I did like what Jordan Preston Carter did with Mike Petrie more than Lance Kerwin, but maybe there’s simply more of blueprint for his character in 2024 than 1979.

On Brendan’s recommendation, I watched Fright Night, aka Prince Humperdink is a slimy vampire. Revolting stuff in this movie! I loved it. Kinda gave me Nightmare On Elm Street 2 vibes, in a positive way. I enjoyed a semi-faithful adaptation of Dracula done by this upstart production company, Universal Studios—that Bela Lugosi kid’s going places. I loved Last Voyage of the Demeter, aka BOAT DRACULA. I will watch Johnny Utah and Hannibal Lecter take on Scary Oldman Dracula on Halloween night.

I guess watching the new Salem’s Lot counts as watching a “2020s horror.”

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A GOOD SLASHER

Going back to September, I watched/rewatched all the Scream movies. There’s no such thing as a bad Scream movie, and if you’ve been lukewarm on 4, 5, and 6? Go watch them movies, homie, why are you depriving yourself? I watched Alien again—maybe the best slasher ever made. I watched Candyman (1992) for the second time and watched Candyman (2021) for the first time. I’ve really been underrating those movies. It’s a disservice to myself and a dereliction of my civic responsibility as a Chicagoan. Those two Candyman movies are incredible, and kinda feel like if Aimee Bender wrote a slasher? Like with the importance of myth and legend and the wayward grad students? Shit. Now I want an Aimee Bender slasher.

So, again, initially motived by trying to get Jade Daniels’ references, I wanted to watch watch the 80s Big Three: Halloween (the Magic/Bird, if we’re doing 80s Big Threes), Friday The 13th (the Kareem/Parish, for being steady and relatively predictable), and Nightmare on Elm Street (the Worthy/McHale, for being a little more jukey, a little more wild card).1 I’d never seen these horror titans, with the exception of the first two Halloweens and the Danny McBride/David Gordon Green remake trilogy. So I dove in with the kind of greedy hunger for knowledge that I usually only get in bookstores. I skipped Season Of The Witch, but otherwise mostly enjoyed the first six Halloween movies (exceptions below). This wasn’t surprising—the first Halloween is an absolute masterpiece, the franchise was bound to at least be decent. What was surprising is how much I loved the first three Nightmare On Elm Street movies. My first experience of Fred—again, they call him Fred—Krueger was when my cousins would try to scare me with him when we were, like, younger than eight. Freddy Krueger was a mass market joke. NOT IN THEM FIRST THREE MOVIES THO. Genuinely scary stuff in all three, a really satisfying wrapup for Nancy in part three, and a fascinating and wonderful allegory for coming out of the closet in part two. Check out this Chicago Reader piece on fetish horror for some smart part two analysis. Check out this video for some amazingly clueless 80s people. Shoutout to Mark Patton, man.

I guess the new Screams and the new Candyman count as “2020s horror.”

WOW SOME OF THESE SLASHER SEQUELS ARE ROUGH

Pity poor Paul Rudd, having his first credit be the trainwreck-with-resulting-airborne-toxic-event that is Halloween 6. Halloween 5 was pretty uneven, too, even though I was generally with it. Is it blasphemy to say the franchise didn’t need Donald Pleasence after Halloween 2?

All Friday The 13th movies are interchangeable to me. It’s cool that Jason’s mom was the killer in the first one. It was exciting to see him get his mask in the third. I’m gonna watch every one of these movies until he takes Manhattan, just because I wanna see a slasher in a big city. That said? Tough stuff with some of these, no disrespect to Crispin Glover.2 Look, I understand that in the 1980s, it was way harder to see boobs, but the Friday The 13th movies really could’ve tried harder to be something other than “here is a sex scene and then here is a massive knife going through both bodies and the bed/massive pitchfork going through both bodies and the barn hay/massive whatever going through both bodies and the car.” These movies are fun and I enjoy them, but they’re trashy and they don’t put in the effort.

I only watched the first three Nightmare movies and they’re all flawless. I’m a little afraid to even try part four.

SO WHAT DID YOU LEARN THIS OCTOBER CHRIS

Adam and I were talking about horror and its devoted fanbase a while ago, and it made me conclude horror fandom is a little like small press fandom. Not everyone really gets it, but they people who love it really show up for it. Movies in general have been steadily getting worse since, like, 1999? 2008? Horror reliably turns out good stuff on shoestring budgets, reliably makes you care about sound and image, and as I talked about last week, is the genre that manages the most surprises even when painting by numbers. For my money, anyway. And yes, I put 2008 as a marking point for the decline in quality of overall cinema because of the MCU, which I did genuinely love from about 2008-2021, and now simply cannot make myself care about. 2018 me would’ve been all about Deadpool and Wolverine getting a movie together, now? I’ll watch it whenever the hell.

That said, horror is captivating enough for that I’ll tell you Agatha All Along is absolutely worth your time. The last two episodes drop today, October 30th. Marvel famously dogshit at endings, but I have had so much fun with Kathryn Hahn, Aubrey Plaza, a gay teenager who looks sorta like Tim Henson, and Kitty Forman playing around in sets that look like they were repurposed from a movie Tim Burton made when he was making good movies. Kathryn Hahn, whew. She’s come a long way from assaulting John C. Reilly in a bathroom and then peeing in a urinal, but in many ways, she hasn’t changed a bit. We love her for it.

Sorry you got an email,

Chris