“it’s here the yellow eyes / of the so-called // dead turn on like / bus engines // & we have a little / bourbon // we have a / little more bourbon // now water & back / & a tarantella comes / apart around us” – Joshua Marie Wilkinson, “Cold Faction”
Brendan gets to do this on Notes From The Nothingness all the time, and I WANNA TURN. It’s October, and it’s time for everyone to get scared. Now, Mallory and I watch horror movies year-round, so these aren’t just what I’ve been enjoying this month. Then again, I’m also not organized enough for this to be a best of list. So these are the movies/shows that have been sticky enough for me to conjure while blogging.
ODDITY
Maybe the weirdest movie I saw this year! I kinda don’t want to say much, but we got widowers, blind mediums, curiosity shops, golems, doctors who work at mental hospitals, and strangers knocking on the door at night. Did I mention everyone’s Irish?
LOVELY DARK AND DEEP
Don’t go into the woods! It’s a bad woods! The last guy left a note saying “I owe this woods a body!” Georgina Campbell, who you liked in Barbarian, is a park ranger with a personal mission. The woods has other ideas.
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE
John Malkovich plays F. W. Murnau, just trying to make Nosferatu. Wilhem Dafoe played Max Schreck, who may or may not be a nosferatu. This movie came out in 2000. Do I need to say more??????
VIVARIUM
Not a conventional dark and scary horror movie, but very Weird and unsettling and fun. It’s hard for me not to want to watch a Jessie Eisenberg movie, and Imogen Poots is incredible. House hunting, dude. The worst.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) & HIM
Neither of these are perfect movies, but they’re both very good, and both have Tyriq Withers. Wish we could retcon The Social Network to have him playing the Armie Hammer role.
MIDNIGHT MASS
The monologues are unforgivably interminable. Episode four could’ve been an email. But this is still my first- or second-favorite Mike Flanagan show (tied with Fall Of The House of Usher). The climax—the actual midnight mass—is one of the best horror set pieces of all time. The buildup is great. Just because the script needed an editor doesn’t mean this isn’t great.
BELOW
Netflix is a trash heap, but there’s always a gem in the trash heap. You don’t have to do a lot of work to get me to watch a limited series with Josh Hartnett chasing sea monsters. This show was super worth it, a hell of a lot of fun. Shoutout Newfoundland.
MOTHER OF FLIES
Someone on Bluesky said “watch this,” so I did, and you should, too. Great witch movie.
SEND HELP
Maybe he’s not as front-of-mind as when he was directing Spider-Man, maybe nothing’s captured people the way the first three Evil Dead movies captured Gen X, but Sam Raimi’s still got it. Drag Me To Hell was excellent, and Send Help is, too. Rachel McAdams is great, and the movie uses her exactly right.
JORDAN PEELE MOVIES
This year, I’ve watched Get Out and Nope. I’d like to watch Us, we’ll see if I get there. The success of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil has people talking about the similarities between horror movies and comedies, and man. Get Out has so many comedy beats. Cringe, racist microagression comedy beats, but it’s really structured like a Key and Peele sketch with different music. Nope, of course, is one of the best movies ever made.
JOHN CARPENTER MOVIES
Been comfort-watching a lot of Carpenter lately. The Thing, Mouth Of Madness, They Live, even the first and second Halloweens (many of these are every bit as much Debra Hill movies as Carpenter movies). Mallory and I watched Prince Of Darkness. Dunno what it is, but there’s an ineffable Carpenter-only quality to a lot of these that feels so good. Like, they’re very well-made and well-thought-out movies, but there’s also this guerrilla punk good enough minimalist quality. I think that’s why remakes of Carpenter movies seem destined to be mid—there’s a “we don’t know if this will work and we don’t care, we think it’s good” quality ghosting over every movie that a remake will never be able to capture. Huh. Wonder if a singular vision and hard work are important ingredients to creating lasting art. No way to know for sure.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris