Horror Movie Halloween

Well, it is Halloween and this is finally over. I started this as a way to just watch these horror movies I've been interested in or just wanted to watch since it was October. So I set the challenge to have a review a day.

That was a larger lift than I expected it to be. I also really feel bad about blowing up inboxes as frequently as I have. I hate companies that send daily sales emails and while I am not selling anything, I can feel the annoyance. Let's get to the movies and what I learned watching these movies.

The Classics

I wanted to watch a few of the classics as every movie we watch now, that comes out now, is always compared to them. Were they good at the time, even up into the early 90s? Sure, there wasn't a lot of competition and the stories were unique.

What really needs a shoutout from that time is more about what ILM, who did all the effects for Star Wars did with Poltergeist. That was the best thing about that film was the way they made light move and sound change, which had never been done before. However, between that and what we have now, we lost that invention.

We have to spend a second with the stories here. I now understand where the idea of "you won't die if you are a virgin" and "All teenagers are having sex" comes from. I didn't grow up in the 70s, so I have no clue of the authenticity of that second one, but I understand why my parents thought it and told that to me for years. The amount of nudity and sex in Carrie - 1976 and Halloween (1978) is beyond what we get now in most movies. Even the ones that are trying to be over the top. Carrie was on the level of Game of Thrones if you really look at it. It was a shock for me now, I can't imagine what all the adults felt at the time.

Late 90s to Early 2000s

You can see a crazy tank in the production value of the movies at this time. You have really bad CGI thanks to the explosion of the CGI from Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace and none of them really did it as well, probably because they weren't ILM. Carrie - 2002 is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and I remember watching "Not Another Teen Movie" and Scary Movie which was a spoof of Scream (one of the better ones) back then.

All of them called on the classics without doing the lifting that they did. I understand why we went a good 10-years without any really good horror movies that hit the world like the classics did. I think Scream might be the only original story that has had a lingering aspect. Wait, I am sorry, I forgot about Final Destination which has and many ups and downs, but has made a mark. The Blair Witch Project was this great found footage, which has a great legacy, but the movie itself wasn't that great which is why we don't have a lot of them for a simple budget.

The Time of Possessions

In the 2010s to now, we get a ton of gore fest movie and possession movies. I find the ghost and possession ones to be the more scary because they do have an element of possibility. I don't know everything, but I do know that if you shoot someone a bunch of times, they aren't just going to sit up and walk away to chase you down 40 years later.

You get movies like Paranormal Activity, which was superb and ran on the found footage style and was cheap to make. We see those take off and then a steady nose dive as they story line just got more and more convoluted and disjointed. You also have movies in The Conjuring universe which has done well, but again this requirement for a series is where you lose a lot of the momentum and quality in the individual movies.

Current Movies

The return of some of those classics with The Shining running into Doctor Sleep, Halloween (1978) to Halloween is very cool. However, Halloween should have taken the Doctor Sleep style and been 1 and done. Based on the reviews, the next 2 were awful which is why I stopped watching those series to watch others like Abigail which was recommended to me (I've had a chat with this person).

What makes me excited for current horror movies is Obsession, Sinners, Nosferatu, A Quiet Place, and Heretic which tell unique and developed stories that leave you with a bit of creep. Not movies like X or Lee Cronins the Mummy which use gore or half completed stories to make you feel more upset than to actually tell something of value. It takes all 3 movies of the X series to complete it's ability to tell you why one of the movies matter; and Pearl probably did more to confirm some Neanderthal's idea of woman not being able to cope than it did to talk about the mental health crisis which is what I think it is about.

Final Thoughts

I am very much one of those people that just want more. I love the Star Wars Skywalker Movie Series and want more of them. I love the Assassin's Creed Series and want them. However, both of those plus the Paranormal Activity Series all have the same issue. They leap without looking. It is this idea that money is more important than the story. We see so many shows based off of books just crash without the books as a true source material and that hurt the fans and the intake of money. So walking into a project with a clear way ahead makes movies work, and I think horror movies are more prone to that.

I have enjoyed this and again appreciate you all standing by as this has blown up your inbox. Unfortunately, for the next 2 weeks or so there will be more emails, but they are not all movies so we can all take a breather from that.

I'd love to know if you have any recommendations, for horror or anything else, or where you agreed/disagreed with me on these movies. Email me below.

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