It MAY Get Scary: 31 Days of Horror
A May Day Parade from a Movie I Won't be Watching this Month (but will be writing a paper on)
My last big night out
before the pandemic was a Tuesday, Alamo Drafthouse’s Terror Tuesday to be
precise. Usually, the Alamo’s steep price point and draconian no-talking rules
send me to one of their competitors, but this Tuesday they were screening Paganini
Horror, for a discount no less. I convinced my girlfriend to take the M
train out to Brooklyn for the occasion. When else would I get to see a shitty
Italian horror film from the director of my beloved Starcrash, featuring
Suspiria’s own Daria Nicoladi, a girl group, musical numbers, and a
cursed violin? It was a fittingly on-brand last hurrah to public life.
The Real Paganini Horror was the Coronavirus!
So now what’s a movie-theater-apologist horror junkie
supposed to do in this time of quarantine? Few pleasures equal the delights of
going to a specialty theater, watching a long-ass preshow while sipping on a
cocktail named after a David Lynch movie and admiring a wall of collectable VHS
tapes, and then shrieking along to every jump-scare with a similarly-minded
audience and staggering into the subway after two hours of transformative
film-going, forever changed. While I’m missing out on anticipated spring and
summer features like Saint Maud and Candyman, I can at least
partake in the golden age of streaming to catch up on the many horror movies
I’ve missed.
Inspired by the Spooktober adventures of likeminded
Twitter users and blogs like Bloody Disgusting, I’m spending this May
watching a horror movie each day and posting a review to this very blog. Armed
with little more than an aging PC, a wifi extender, a brand-new pair of
Bluetooth headphones, and a Shudder subscription, I shall venture into the
recent and not-so-recent past of horror cinema and a take a chainsaw to my Netflix
queue. Joining me on occasion will be my ever-weary girlfriend, who will,
whenever it suits her, chime in to tell you her take on the day’s movie
or, more frequently, why she will not be watching said movie under any
circumstances.
Inspired by Bloody Disgusting, I picked a theme for
each day of the week. Mondays I shall savor the fresh-faced delights of teen
horror. Tuesdays, this Exorcist skeptic will explore an
ambivalent subgenre: possession and the occult. Wednesdays are
for international horror, and Thursdays are a grab bag of
found footage and cannibalism. Fridays are my squirreliest category – grrrls.
I’ll check out (supposedly) feminist horror films that center female
friendship. Saturday I’ll sample the many flavors of Witch films, and Sunday is when I do my homework and view some ‘70s classics I’ve overlooked. All my chosen films are first-time viewings. My picks
unintentionally skewed twenty-first century, since 1995-2014 is probably my
biggest knowledge gap, but there are plenty of older classics sprinkled in. As
I explore the amazing diversity and range of the last twenty-years of horror
films, I’m excited to imagine how future horror fans will characterize the
2000s and 2010s when they do their own retrospectives.
Without further ado, the films!
May starts with a Friday, so my watchlist starts
with grrrls. I’ve been aching to see
Polish killer mermaid horror-musical The Lure ever since the trailer dropped in 2014, before I knew
you could just, like, rent movies on YouTube for the price of a Manhattan drip
coffee. So excited am I to finally lay my eyes on this glittery madness that
it’s my very first pick of the month (May 1). Next up is 2017 social
satire Tragedy Girls (May 8); I’m not quite sure what to
expect from this one but I’ve never seen a plot summary quite like it. Canadian
werewolf classic Ginger Snaps
(May 15) has been on my
radar for a while, and atmospheric murder mystery Knives + Skin
(May 22) had an intriguing limited release in New York that I was bummed
to miss. Finally, I expect all-girl spelunking slasher The Descent (May 29) to make me feel very claustrophobic.
Anticipated scariest: The Descent
Anticipated
most a e s t h e t i c: The Lure
Unlike most recurring horror movie
monsters, there’s not really a stock formula for the witch movie. It’s a
subgenre that can encompass everything from the subdued folk horror of Robert
Eggers’ The Witch to the
more-is-more splatter of Suspiria. There’s just so much you can do with
witches – and I can hardly decide which witch movie I’m most excited for. The
morgue-bound body-horror and mystery of The Autopsy of Jane Doe
(May 2) promises good scares, while zombie maestro George Romero’s
domestic horror Season of the Witch (May
9)
has suburban covens. Anna Biller’s hyper-stylized The Love Witch (May 16) looks like a visual delight.
I love a cursed-music film but they’re few and far between – will Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem (May 23) bring the sonic spooks?
Finally, Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou (May 30) combines prestige coming-of-age drama and
supernatural intrigue.
Anticipated scariest: Lords of Salem
Anticipated most a e s t h e t I c: The Love Witch.
If you ask Robin Wood, the ‘70s was horror’s finest decade – and while I think the
2010s gave it a run for its money, I’d be remiss if I didn’t check out some of
these films I really should have seen by now. I’m fudging it a little by using
the long-1970s and including a few films from 1980. Eh, close enough. We’ll
start things off with an artsy exploration of grief, Don’t
Look Now (May 3), that surely
opened the doors to todays Ari Asters and Jennifer Kents. Next up, John
Carpenter’s supernatural funfest The Fog (May 10), while Ganja
+ Hess (May 17) brings an
arthouse spin to blaxploitation horror. I’ll wrap up with two classic haunted
house chillers, The Amityville Horror (May 24) and The Changeling (May 31).
Anticipated scariest: Don’t Look Now
Anticipated most a e s t h e t i c: Ganja
+ Hess
Watching
Unfriended at the start of quarantine made me a) wary of my many Zoom calls and b)
hungry for the camp, drama, and cheese of teen horror. We’ll start this series
with two modern meta teen-horror comedies, Happy Death Day (May 4) and Final Girls (May 11), that put their own
spins on the teen slasher. I’ll follow that up with ‘80s vampire romp Fright
Night (May 18) - the remake
of which, featuring peak-fame David Tennant, was actually one of the first
horror movies I saw in theaters. I’ll close out the month with a slice of ‘00s
slasher, a subgenre of which I know next to nothing, but All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (May 25) gets Texas Chain Saw Massacre comparisons, and that’s good enough for me.
Anticipated
scariest: All
the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Anticipated
most a e s t h e t i c: Final Girls
As I alluded to above, my hottest,
spiciest horror take is as follows: The
Exorcist is bad, bad, bad. I admit
that skepticism towards the institutions of Catholicism and ‘70s prestige
movies may color my judgment here, but I’ve tried it twice now, each time with
an open mind, and was left a) unscared, b) annoyed. Give me ‘70s indie horror
boom over priestaganda any day. The Exorcist looms so large over
an entire slice of 20th century horror that it’s unfairly soured me
on most of the possession films and many of the occult films that came after. In
the interest of generous viewing, I’ll spend my Tuesdays hunting for a movie in The
Exorcist’s shadow that makes me feel something, anything, other than
harrumph. The Evil Dead franchise usually gets lumped in with zombie movies instead of
possession movies – why is that? That’s the question I’ll ponder as I check out
Fede Alvarez’s twenty-first century take on Evil Dead (May 5). Next week, I’ll
watch The Taking of Deborah Logan (May 12), a
found-footage flick about the horrors of the devil and of aging. Then, I’ll toss an olive branch at
William Blatty by giving cult classic The Exorcist III (May 19) a try. My
last pick, Canadian teen horror Pyewacket (May 26) may turn out to be more witchy than
occulty, but hey, after all that open-mindedness I think I deserve a treat.
Anticipated scariest: Evil Dead
Anticipated most a e s t h e t i c: Pyewacket
While I have films from Poland, Canada, and Australia
sprinkled across my categories, Wednesdays are my day for the latest and
greatest in horror from around the world. Savvy horror fans know that K-Horror
is the cool kid on the block, and that Korean cinema has been producing genre
gems way before Bong Joon-Ho rode class war to Oscar glory with Parasite.
In his honor, I’ll enjoy not one but two very different K-Horror flicks, from
the same year no less – zombie action-thriller Train to Busan (May 6) and paranormal epic The Wailing (May 20). In between those, I’m excited for Tigers
are Not Afraid (May 13), last year’s festival darling from Mexico. And I’ll close out the
series with Claire Denis’ New French Extremity cannibal freak-out Trouble
Every Day (May 27),
which is sure to ruin my appetite.
Anticipated scariest: The Wailing
Anticipated most a e s t h e t i c: Trouble Every Day (blood is an aesthetic, right?)
Try as I might to make all my
picks fit into neat little categories, there were a few films I’ve been itching
to see with little else in common. Oh well – it’s my May of horror; I get to
pick the rules. This one starts with two hidden found-footage gems (or duds,
who knows). The first, The Visit (May 7), comes from M Night Shyamalan, a director
whose work I rarely enjoy, but I’ve always suspected he’s a latter-day B-movie
maestro forced into a Spielberg shape. Freed from chasing The Sixth Sense’s Oscar
days, can he fulfill his trashy potential? I’m hoping so! Meanwhile, my
favorite horror podcasts keep telling me to watch Australian found footage
ghost story Lake Mungo (May 14), and you know, why not. I’ve been jonesing to watch Antonia Bird’s cannibal
western Ravenous (May
21) since reading Alma Katsu’s The
Hunger and there’s no better time. Finally, I’ve heard that that last
year’s zom-com Little Monsters (May
28)
is a delight, and more importantly stars Lupita Nyong’o as a ukulele-strumming
Kindergarten teacher, and you can’t ask for more than that.
Anticipated scariest: Lake Mungo
Anticipated
most a e s t h e t i c: Ravenous
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