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 20^th 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

              And those are the films. Check back tomorrow for glitter mermaids and murder!