Halloween 2015 #12: Let the Right One In (2008) - Tomas Alfredson

This and American Psycho are the only films from this century on my list.

The inclusion of this movie on several “Best Horror Movies” lists (#15 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list, with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari being #1) as well as it being on Netflix made Let The Right One In the perfect addition to my Horror Movie-cation list.

And it’s foreign! This Swedish film astonished everyone at a myriad of film festivals in 2008, and it is described on Wikipedia as being a “romantic horror film.”

Tonally, it actually does feel like a low-budget romantic indie. The story centers on the blossoming friendship between two neighbors, 12 year olds Oskar and Eli. However, Eli is not what she seems.

Besides a few frightful scenes in which Eli must satisfy her taste for blood, the film really focuses on developing this relationship. Oskar is bullied regularly at school, and Eli is lonely and afraid to let Oskar in (which I’m assuming is where the title comes from?)

I do NOT slay!

But while these two develop a strong connection, the town is busy panicking about the murders taking place. The balance is an interesting and spooky one.

The vampires in the film follow the main rules we all know: they survive by drinking blood, they can’t let light touch them, they don’t age, and they can’t enter a place without first being invited in (oh maybe that’s where the title comes from). Also, I hadn’t seen this one before, but cats can’t stand them? The best part about this movie is how human it makes these traits, as if Eli truly is a child dealing with these obstacles in her life. I mean it’s definitely no mistake that she’s at an age where most girls enter puberty.

But the story is great, subtle in ways that American horror movies usually don’t dare to be. The last scene is filled with a powerful tension that has been building up since we first met Oskar.

I had no clue while watching this, but Eli’s voice is actually dubbed because it was deemed too high for her part. The film skirts around the subject of her gender, which I think is an interesting way to subvert the idea of them being romantically involved. It feels like a coming-of-age story about friendship.

Scary but heartwarming, Let the Right One In is a cool movie all around, and definitely worth the watch while it’s still on Netflix. Plus it has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes!

Halloween 2015 #11: The Fly (1986) - David Cronenberg

If you or a loved one is experiencing physical or romantic attraction to Jeff Goldblum and you want these feelings to stop, watch The Fly.

I can’t believe this movie exists! Someone just thought, “What if a human turned into a fly?” and this nightmare was born. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is great, but so terrifying.

Basically, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) invites a reporter, Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), over to his apartment to show her his amazing invention. It’s a teleporter! Thank god, no more LA traffic.

But after weeks of failed experiments where the teleporter cannot properly transport organic matter, Brundle decides to drunkenly use the machine on himself. There is, however, one small problem. 

The teleporter fuses the DNA of Seth Brundle and a stowaway fly. Thus begins a very slow and horrifying transformation, which includes a sequence where Brundle actually believes himself to be physically superior because of his newfound strength and energy.

Obviously things get much much worse after that.

Veronica straddles the line between a complete rejection of the hideous monster and a lingering love that she developed for the old Brundle.

But Brundle starts to lose his mind over the course of his transformation. 

Which makes it difficult for him to engineer a solution to his problem. As he becomes more physically a fly, he becomes more mentally a fly. Veronica wants to help and also wants to run for her life.

The final scene is incredibly graphic and disturbing, and apparently wasn’t even the most gruesome scene in the original cuts. According to Wikipedia, there was a famous sequence where Brundle teleports a cat and a baboon together and then an unbelievably deformed creature emerges from the Telepod. It attacks Brundle and he must kill it with a metal pipe. But early screeners found that this caused audiences to lose sympathy with Brundle, making the rest of the film fall flat, so it was cut. Also one audience member was confirmed as having thrown up during the scene.

But the film as it is works well to keep you feeling sorry for Brundle all the way to the bitter end. Not to mention the amazing, Oscar-winning special effects by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis elevate the film from disturbing and silly to truly nightmarish. Something about 80s practical effects is just so great. Nothing CGI ever looks as good.

The film has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes (compared to a 95% for the 1958 original version). But this version is definitely a classic in its own right. 

Halloween 2015 #10: Eraserhead (1977) - David Lynch

When I put this movie on the list, I was only 50% sure it was a scary movie. Now I’m 100% sure.

I mean. It’s not a “horror” movie, exactly. But it did scare me. It’s off-putting, it’s gruesome, it makes you think, “What does it all mean?” And nothing is scarier than that.

When I used to think of Eraserhead, I thought of the above gif. That’s literally all I knew about it. Crazy hair, dust flying everywhere.

Eraserhead tells the story of Henry Spencer, who goes to dinner at his girlfriend’s house and finds out that she had a baby. Well… a creature.

It looks like if ET and The Thing had a baby. Henry and his wife move into Henry’s gross apartment and try to raise this thing together.

That’s his girlfriend on the left.

But this is David Lynch! Not Knocked Up! Not Juno! This is actually David Lynch’s first film, which he made while he was a student at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. So it features some serious surrealism.

The line between reality and dreams is irrelevant, and the film travels between the two many times. The sound actually does a lot to blur the distinction, with an industrial soundtrack that works to make the whole experience of watching even more haunting. Lynch has said that he was inspired by the darker parts of Philadelphia to create this atmosphere, since he partly grew up there.

One of Spencer’s main dreams is of “Lady in the Radiator,” who sings songs while also stomping on sperm-like creatures.

Sometimes I get frustrated when movies don’t make sense to me, but I did like this one. It’s very unnerving, which I can tell is what it intends to be. It sets out to make me feel something and it succeeds.

Eraserhead played at midnight showings for years, and praise for it started off small but only grew overtime. It now has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it helped launch Lynch’s career as the preeminent surrealist director of modern film. So go watch it!

Halloween 2015 #9: Scream 2 (1997) - Wes Craven

No spoilers, I promise.

Sequels! I have seen very few horror movie sequels. Only recently did I see the wonderful A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. And I loved it. But sequels to horror films always struck me as blatant rip-offs of the first movie, trying to capitalize on the success of what was probably a great film.

My actual feeling before seeing this movie! But the best part about Scream 2 is that it anticipates this doubt. It’s kind of an underdog in that way, and by utilizing the lack of expectations in what a sequel can be, it succeeds in being awesome.

The film opens at a movie theater scene, the opening night of the new horror movie “Stab.” The movie is literally based on the actual murders that take place in the first Scream movie, with Heather Graham playing Drew Barrymore’s character in an almost shot for shot recreation of the first scene of the original movie. 

In the Scream 2 scene, Maureen and her boyfriend, Phil, are murdered at the theater, one of them in front of the entire movie-going audience. The highly stylized murder is an affront on the rowdy “violence is cool” antics of the audience, and it’s all pretty meta.

Which leads us into a film class at the fictional Windsor college, where the surviving members of the first movie, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Randy (Jamie Kennedy), are students. The students in the film class have a legitimate discussion about the effect violent movies have on the public, and even talk about whether a sequel can ever be as good as the original. 

By constantly criticizing and critiquing the horror genre, Scream 2 rises above the boring “the killer is back” stories of previous franchises. The killer is back this time, but is he inspired by the reality of the original murders, or does he want to be the star of Stab 2? Is this a revenge story or a copycat killer?

Courtney Cox is also back as the sassy journalist Gale Weathers, who wrote the novel that inspired the movie Stab. There’s so much meta-reality here, it’s very fun to watch. 

We also get future Mr. Courtney Cox, David Arquette as officer Dewey Riley.

And new characters!

Sorority girl Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Sidney Prescott’s college roommate Hallie (Elise Neal).

Not to mention the best of all, Portia de Rossi as sorority sister Murphy.

Eyebrows on fleek tbh.

The film is led by the impressive Neve Campbell, who deals with some serious post-traumatic stress after only two years of being “free” of her killer.

What I love about Sidney as a lead character is that she is a scream queen, but she is also capable of taking care of herself. She killed the killer in the first movie, and she’s not afraid to do it again. She’s clearly been through a lot, so we get to watch her genuinely be affected by the horrors of the first movie, not to mention having to relive it when a movie based on her disturbing past is released in theaters (she’s played by Tori Spelling).

And finally, there’s Randy, another Scream survivor. 

The film mocks itself for being a sequel, mocks the horror genre for so many of its lazy sequels, and mocks you as an audience member for thinking you could predict how this one will end. Today, in 2015, the only way to make a sequel is to wink at the audience the whole time (22 Jump Street), and this film is a precursor to that much needed self-awareness. If it wasn’t in on the joke, it’d be the butt of it.

Scream 2 grossed $172 million on a $24 million budget, and it earned an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven’t seen any of the Scream films, definitely watch them in order (I saw Scream 4, then Scream, then Scream 2… oops). There were parts where I didn’t even remember who did what in reference to the first film, and I saw it less than a year ago.

Halloween 2015 #8: Sleepy Hollow (1999) - Tim Burton

Spoiler alert: Helena Bonham Carter is not in this movie.

Crazy, I know. Okay! The year is 1999. The world is ending on January 1st, 2000. People are afraid! Nothing like a good old fashioned horror movie to show everyone that what we should actually be afraid of is 19th century American literature.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving tells the story of Ichabod Crane, an awkward and lanky school teacher who is in love with the town’s most attractive and richest female, Katrina Van Tassel. After failing to propose to her at a party one night, Ichabod rides home, where he faces off with the mysterious headless horseman.

So the 1949 Walt Disney version, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, is actually a pretty faithful adaption of the story. Although Tim Burton did have his winks to the audience as well.

In this version, however, Ichabod Crane is a New York City police constable who is sent to the upstate town to investigate mysterious beheadings.

Johnny Depp really captures the sort of bumbling, flustered aspect of Ichabod well. He’s not inept, just kind of silly. Plus he faints a lot.

Which makes him perfect for the rich and mysterious Katrina, played by Christina Ricci.

Fun note: Christina Ricci was 18 when this was filmed (the age of Katrina in Irving’s original story) and Johnny Depp was 35. They play love interests.

Everyone in the film is a suspect, and the film does a good job of making us suspicious of every one of them. For starters, Katrina is a practicing witch.

The town all fully believes and accepts the origin story of the Headless Horseman, who was a Hessian mercenary in the Revolutionary War before he was beheaded and buried in the woods. Now he rises from the grave in search of new heads.

Oh and he’s also Christopher Walken.

The film is pretty gory, which caused some critics to criticize it for being over the top in its violence. But it has a lightheartedness about it that kind of makes some of the serious violence seem silly. I mean, watching a headless horseman chop someone’s head clean off is sort of comical, right? 

Ichabod focuses his investigation entirely in the realm of science, which leads him down several dead-ends. It’s only when he begins to accept the supernatural in his life that the picture begins to come together. There are interesting contradicting ideas about religion versus logic, or seeing versus believing at play, which makes for a good detective story with the added element of horror.

Sleepy Hollow went on to win an Oscar for Art Direction and is a fun film for any October movie night.

Halloween 2015 #7: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) - Don Siegel

If you need an 80 minute science fiction film on Amazon Prime, this one is choice.

In the small town of Santa Mira, California, Dr. Miles Bennell begins to notice something strange happening to the town’s inhabitants. Aside from a string of cancelled doctor’s appointments, several people begin to believe that their loved ones are not longer who they believe them to be.

Scary, right? Soon, Dr. Bennell’s friend finds a dead body who looks almost identical to him. Our reasonable doctor is suspicious, but remains calm in front of his recently divorced love interest, Becky. 

Before long, the gang discovers pods in a greenhouse that are spitting out bodies that could very well be their clones. It all comes together! Aliens!

Becky clone! Apparently, members of the town are harvesting these pods, and when you fall asleep, the clone absorbs your mind, including your memories and thoughts, and disposes of your original body. But the pod people can’t feel emotions, so obviously we don’t want to become them.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is released in the 1950s, meaning that every bit of it has been examined in relation to McCarthyism. Most critics agree that the alien invasion is a metaphor for the “loss of individuality” under the threat of communism. Both the director as well as the author of the original novel have stated that this interpretation is not intended, but the paranoia of outside invasion as well as the desire to remain autonomous in the face of dehumanization are ripe for analysis.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn’t critically acclaimed until decades later, and now holds a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.