Halloween Movie Binge

For this Halloween season, I caught up with a few horror movies from the past year. Although I enjoy horror films, I admit I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to go see them in a dark theatre with the big screen and loud sound. As a compromise, I wait for them to come out on home video so I can watch them in a less intense environment.

I’ll be spoiling these in minor ways, so please be warned.

Late Night With the Devil

I dug the vintage TV found footage aesthetic of this film, but the illusion only holds up in freeze frames. The acting is just that little bit too self-aware and hammy for it to feel real. I enjoyed the character who stands in for the real-life skeptic, James Randi, simply because my personal beliefs are aligned with his. But in the context of the movie, his over-the-top smarminess breaks the verisimilitude.

Longlegs

Probably the most hyped horror movie of the year, due to an artful ad campaign. I appreciated the meditative pacing and visual style, featuring lots of wide angle shots, and compositions which place the stuff that you most want to see (or perhaps least want to see) outside of the frame. Nicolas Cage’s performance is more funny than scary to me, reminding me of that scene in Kick-Ass where he’s on fire and screaming. Overall, the story is too messy, and I couldn’t even really understand how all of the supernatural elements tied together. Having a coherent mythology is important for movies like this, and there were too many moving pieces here to make sense of it. Satan worship, Zodiac-like cryptography, creepy dolls (which were either possessed or were psychic remote controls?), this movie has it all, to its detriment.

Immaculate

The first of two “nun horror” movies this year, and the weaker of the pair. It’s by no means bad, featuring solid cinematography and an effective screamy performance by Sydney Sweeney. But the scares are kind of predictable, and the story’s sole allegorical idea—that women’s reproductive rights are under threat from religious conservatism—is too obvious to be interesting. Notably, nothing supernatural actually happens in the film (okay, maybe you could say it’s sci-fi with its “Jurassic Jesus” DNA cloning conceit), and so the horror comes mainly from the cruelty of human beings against others.

The First Omen

My favourite of the bunch! Far more visually interesting than Immaculate, with lots of cool old-school camera moves. It adds more layers to the themes of bodily autonomy, including the idea that the birth of the Antichrist is a false flag operation initiated by the church to scare nonbelievers straight. Nell Tiger Free’s lead performance is amazing, and there are several memorable shocking moments, including one which answers the question: what if you could fully see the aftermath of the car crash in Signs?