Throughout the month of October, I’ll be binging spooky movies. I do this most years, but I figured this time I’d take some notes. As in years past, I’m putting together a mix of favorites of never-before-seens.
I probably won’t be able to squeeze one in every single day of the month, because I have a full time job and also Sydney is not much of a horror fan. I’ll do my best, because I am a gigantic horror film nerd. (I even took a horror film class once)
So here’s how the first week went.
October 1: Lisa Frankenstein. Loved it. The highly stylized 80s-ness of the thing really spoke to my heart. Comparisons to Heathers are reasonably well deserved, but this story doesn’t shy away at the end and have its heroine redeem herself. I also kept thinking about Beetlejuice, the cartoon version where Lydia goes on wacky adventures with Beetlejuice. The Creature’s slow transformation from full zombie to full human was fun to watch, the method of his repairs was quirky and hilarious, and what can I say about that REO Speedwagon cover? Zelda Williams should make ten thousand more films. Instant favorite.
October 2: Doctor Sleep. Been meaning to watch this since it came out, and finally got to it. This is very much a sequel to Kubrick’s vision of The Shining. As such, I have the same issues with its opening twenty minutes; your mileage may vary. I did think the film was entirely successful at what it attempted, with one exception. In many ways, the film “rhymes” with its predecessor (in the sense that George Lucas says the Star Wars films rhyme thematically). I think the ending is meant to be in opposition to the original, more focused on hope … but the overall tone and content of the film left me feeling bleak and hopeless, no matter how much the final dialogue wanted to convince me otherwise. Bleak and hopeless are good things in a horror film, especially one focused on psychological horror.
A big highlight for me was seeing the kid who played Elliott in ET all grown up and pretending to be Jack Nicholson (the recreation of the bar scene was my favorite aspect of the entire film). Overall, I thought it was a great movie and I wanted to turn around and watch The Shining immediately.
October 3: Salem’s Lot (2024). Instead of that, however, I decided to watch Salem’s Lot the day it released on MAX. And honestly, that was a huge mistake.
I love Salem’s Lot. One time, I read the book over the course of three days. Each day when I finished reading, I would watch the corresponding section of both the 70’s Tobe Hooper miniseries and then the same portion of the ’04 miniseries with Rob Lowe to compare both adaptations to each other and the source. I don’t understand the hate the Lowe version gets; I honestly think it’s the best adaptation. It really captures the “every single character, even the ones who only show up once, has a complete backstory and you need to know it” of Stephen King’s writing style. It follows the book slightly better than the original, despite updating it to the 21st century and making some significant changes to certain characters. Rutger Hauer is incredible as a more novel-accurate version of Barlow. And Donald Sutherland obviously had a lot of fun chewing up scenery as Straker. James Cromwell is Father Callahan and no one else should ever try. The “entire town falls prey and succumbs to darkness” aspect is really driven home in this one. My only complaints were the framing scenes, but even those were closer to the original novel than the framing scenes in the Tobe Hooper version. Seriously, it doesn’t deserve the hate. But, as you may have guessed from the fact I’ve been talking about this movie instead of the one I watched, the new version deserves only scorn.
OK, I’ll let up a bit and say this: despite being rushed and inexplicably including major characters like Floyd Tibbets but not telling their stories at all or even really letting you know who they are, the new version clearly signals its respect for both previous versions (including one almost exact recreation of a shot from the middle of the Lowe version), and the decision to leave Dudd Rogers out of it is decidedly for the best.
Oh, and even though he’s portrayed very differently each time, all three versions of Salem’s Lot have rendered Larry Crockett perfectly. No notes.
October 5: The Final Destination. I never caught this one. I have pretty mixed feelings about the Final Destination series. On the one hand, elaborate death scenes are one of my favorite aspects of certain horror films. The Omen is the original masterpiece of this, and Final Destination carries on the Omen films’ tradition of heavily foreshadowing, which lets the audience try to guess exactly how it’s going to occur.
On the other hand, something about these movies always left me unsatisfied. Maybe its the hopelessness. There are never any endings. Death keeps coming, even when the survivors think they’ve escaped … there’s just another elaborate death coming. It’s pointless.
This fourth installment is .. OK, I guess. The 3D effects look hokey, especially in regular old 2D. The cast is perfectly capable, and the causes of the deaths satisfyingly complex and unlikely. I particularly liked the hair salon with its long, tension-building set-up leading to a total fake-out. The combined car wash/swimming pool sequence, by contrast, was just lame. Also working against this film is the core group’s inexplicable familiarity with the rules established in previous instalments. “Some people say…” my ass.
October 6: The Curse of La Llarona. I’ve never dived into the Conjuring universe, so I decided to start with the least connected instalment. (It’s not even listed as part of the franchise on the Wikipedia page, just a related work – despite sharing a character and directly referencing a previous film. Weird.)
This is a perfectly serviceable horror flick. I’m not sure why they chose to set it in 1973, unless it was to make the priest from Annabelle‘s appearance plausible. I love 70s horror, but modern horror set in the 70s is hit or miss. This mostly misses.
The film definitely thinks it has something to say about mothers, child abuse, and infanticide, but I’m not sure what that is. The movie didn’t pull me in far enough to land whatever statement it’s making. Also, any water-based supernatural/demonic horror that involves a priest has a big flaw to overcome when you understand even a little about the rules of holy water. This would have worked better as an hour of an anthology series.
October 7: Misery. Decided to round out the week with an old favorite. I hadn’t watched Misery in probably 15 years, though it used to be a perennial feature of my October marathons. It still holds up, friends and neighbors.
From the opening scene, you can feel Stephen King’s vibe in the vibrant feel-good Motown juxtaposed with what should be a fatal car crash. Throw in Rob Reiner at the height of his game, and stunningly on-point performances from James Caan and Kathy Bates. Bates’ half deranged rant about movie serial cliffhanger endings is one of the greatest things ever put on film, and I agree with her one hundred percent – which makes her villain all the more unsettling.
If you haven’t seen Misery, you risk dying unfulfilled.
What should I watch this week? What are you watching? Leave a comment or find me on Bluesky (sorry, it’s the only social media I use with any regularity) and start a conversation.
As always, have a reminder that I write books and would like more time to write them. You can help make dreams come true (and possibly be entertained for a few hours) by picking up my latest, a cyberpunk thriller featuring a plot to overthrow capitalism and a clone heist. I don’t know how anyone can resist the phrase clone heist.
John A. Underwood 
Leave a comment