30 for 31 Horror Movie Marathon

Hello. Every year I enjoy watching The Birds directed by Alfred Hitchcock on Halloween. So I decided to expand my watchlist and checkout movies I had never seen. So I am doing a 30 day marathon from October 1-30, watching only horror movies I have not seen. The only qualifier is that I haven’t seen them. My list may change for whatever reason. Since it is now October 11, I have seen ten movies. I’ll post them with my reviews (not all are intensive) and update two more times with 11-20 and 21-30. Hope you enjoy reading about my marathon.

30 for 31

1. Ring directed by Hideo Nakata (1998) ⭐️⭐️⭐️½ A straightforward supernatural story. The American remake in contrast is flashy in comparison, utilizing more graphic imagery than this adaption (it’s based on a novel)

2. Evil Dead directed by Fede Álvarez (2013) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ What if The Evil Dead was redone without Ash and all the continuity connecting it to the previous movies had to be explained by the director because textually none of it is in the movie?

3. Jennifer’s Body directed by Karyn Kusama (2009) ⭐️⭐️ I don’t think due to the dialogue that this movie wouldn’t get made today. Overall this is a product of its time. Couldn’t imagine such a movie being made without going hard on a satirical angle. Would teenagers want to watch this? The soundtrack itself even is from a decade of music that just gets seen as cringe.

4. Poltergeist directed by Tobe Hooper (1982) ⭐️½ I fell asleep. Less than amusing. Might as well have been a weird rendition of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

5. Martyrs directed by Pascal Laugier (2008) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A deeply violent story with little in terms of a plot. However, the plot that is present does take time to reveal itself. The disjointed two halves make you unprepared. The first half is a rough tale of revenge that leads to a second half that is a polished approach to what the story is trying (or possibly succeeds) in accomplishing. A hard movie to recommend, but certainly a provocative one. Many people who can handle the gore might be unsettled by the philosophical horror. At times I kept wondering what the endgame was. The graphical display of violence is purposeful. It doesn’t try to upset you for the sake of scarring you. It goes deeper. But does it adequately achieve that goal? Maybe the audience is meant to question what it all was? Maybe we are meant to question existence as a whole? Maybe the violence itself was the only way to manifest that goal? What was the goal? Without spoiling it, you have to be prepared for something grounded in reality but very unexpected.

6. We're All Going to the World's Fair directed by Jane Schoenburn (2021) ⭐️⭐️ A atmospheric dud. Nothing innovative or truly substantive occurs. The plot feels like a mental body horror mixed with found footage/web cam story telling. By the end you feel like the tropes of genre have been done better before this. At some point I wondered if the actual horror part was not seeing anything really occur. Felt like over the course of the plot, I had to take for granted by on limited dialogue that something was progressing. The indie rock vibe eluded the climax of an actual narrative. Or maybe I did not understand the type of movie this was trying to be.

7. Event Horizon directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (1997) ⭐️⭐️½ A bland but visually decent space horror. The one big flaw is the graphic intensity of story never last long enough to sink in. From moment to moment you want the visuals to be on screen longer. Much of the acting fails to sound more than simple line reading. The only time I truly had a sense of scare, it was taken away almost as fast. The story has an unbalanced pace with a rush to meet an arbitrary plot deadline. It was like being told to expect the tone of Alien but given the speed of Apollo 11.

8. The Fog directed by John Carpenter (1980) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A campy ghost story mixed with collective fear. A wonderful movie.

9. Carnival of Souls directed by Herk Harvey (1962) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ A errie score with an atmosphere of an unknown force make for a spooky time.

10. Skinamarink directed by Kyle Edward Ball (2023) ⭐️⭐️½ A visual unorthodox movie that works better as an art piece than truly a horror movie. Unconventional angles, unconventional plot structure, unconventional use of actors (you rarely saw more than someone from the waist down) can be frightening to those unprepared for what I would considered very experimental. At times I wasn’t sure if the plot was advancing. Other times you have to trust what is on screen is from the prospective of the characters. Other times you just take in an abstract lack of visuals. If anything is truly horrifying, it would be not getting a clear understanding of what is being shown. Feels like someone trying to explain the plot of a movie they experienced within a dream and trying to explain that plot from the perspective of that dream, being very disjointed and twisted.