Categories
Anime Film TV

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2023

I just realized the other day that I had completely forgotten to put up a post once I finished my annual horror movie marathon this past October (here’s the X thread to prove it), and so here goes. I still love doing this, the 6th year (666?) doing it, following 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. I’m impressed I managed to watch this much, considering that in October we had an 11-day trip to Japan, and also moved to a new apartment. Here then is the list of what I watched, with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd for the movies.

  1. American Horror Story: Delicate
  2. Body Snatchers
  3. Castlevania: Nocturne
  4. Disco Inferno
  5. Five Night at Freddy’s
  6. Flashback
  7. Influencer
  8. Needful Things
  9. No One Will Save You
  10. Pariah Nexus
  11. Resident Evil: Death Island
  12. Smile
  13. Talk to Me
  14. The Blackening
  15. The Boogeyman
  16. The Dark Half
  17. The Exorcist: Believer
  18. The Fall of the House of Usher
  19. The Midnight Club
  20. Undead Girl Murder Farce
  21. Underwater
Categories
Film

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2022

This year marks my fifth year doing a horror movie marathon in October (following 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021), and it was also unfortunately the shortest one as I had to deal with personal issues during the majority of the month, which affected my movie viewing — in fact, I watched almost half of these in just the last few days. But it was still fun to do (here’s the Twitter thread I did), and although I just list the movies I watched here (with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd), I also watched two horror-themed TV series: Midnight Club and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (I still have a couple of episode to watch on the former, and was disappointed in the latter, and kinda stopped watching during episode 6). So here’s what I watched, and I’ll now be taking a break from horror for a while to focus on doing my 1992 movie marathon before the year is over.

  1. Barbarian
  2. Bodies Bodies Bodies
  3. Halloween Ends
  4. Hellraiser
  5. His House
  6. Pearl
  7. Raven’s Hollow
  8. Resurrection
  9. Sissy
  10. Studio 666
  11. Terrifier 2
  12. Tragedy Girls
  13. V/H/S/99
  14. Watcher
  15. Wendell & Wild
  16. Werewolf by Night
Categories
Film

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2021

As I’ve been doing for the past three years (2018, 2019, 2020), I devoted October to a lot of horror watching. The main change this year is that I’ve decided to focus only on films, whereas in past years I’d also include TV series (that said, I still watched some horror-related shows, like Midnight Mass and Brand New Cherry Flavor). The final number is lower than previous years, and I blame video games for that, especially the 30+ hours I spent playing Far Cry 6. So below you’ll find the full list of the 23 films I watched, with links to the mini reviews I wrote up on the Letterboxd website. It was good fun, and I’m sure I’ll be doing it again next year.

  1. A Quiet Place Part II
  2. Candyman (2021)
  3. Carrie
  4. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
  5. Halloween Kills
  6. Malignant
  7. Nightbooks
  8. Old
  9. Omen IV: The Awakening
  10. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
  11. Phantasm
  12. Prisoners of the Ghostland
  13. Saint Maud
  14. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
  15. The Forever Purge
  16. The Neon Demon
  17. The Night House
  18. The Nowhere Inn
  19. The People Under the Stairs
  20. The Silence of the Lambs
  21. Titane
  22. Vampires vs. the Bronx
  23. We Summon the Darkness
Categories
Film TV

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2020

Following the October horror marathons I did in 2018 and 2019, I decided to do the same this year, and what a ride it was. I ended up watching much more this year than in the past (34!), which is especially surprising since that includes multiple episodes of a few series (Lovecraft Country, Ash vs Evil Dead, Creepshow, and The Haunting of Bly Manor). I think that what contributed to this was that since the start of the pandemic, I barely watched any horror — maybe not such a big surprise — and so even though I’d slowly started watching some recently, when I decided to dive in for October, well, I really dove in. So below are links to my short write-ups of everything I watched, or you can get to them all under the “October 2020” tag.

  1. Ash vs Evil Dead (Season 3)
  2. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island
  3. Books of Blood
  4. Child’s Play (2019)
  5. Child’s Play 2
  6. Creepshow (Season 1)
  7. Creepshow Animated Special
  8. Death of Me
  9. Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack
  10. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
  11. Halloween: Resurrection
  12. House
  13. House II: The Second Story
  14. Lily C.A.T.
  15. Lovecraft Country
  16. Nocturne
  17. Peninsula
  18. Relic
  19. Seoul Station
  20. Spiral
  21. Spiral (Uzumaki)
  22. Suspiria (2018)
  23. Tales From the Darkside
  24. The Babysitter
  25. The Babysitter: Killer Queen
  26. The Dead Don’t Die
  27. The Exorcist III
  28. The Final Girls
  29. The Haunting of Bly Manor
  30. The Mortuary Collection
  31. The Rental
  32. The Trigger Effect
  33. Vampire Hunter D
  34. Wicked City
Categories
Film TV

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2019

As I did last year, I decided to do another horror marathon during the month of October, to put me in a proper Halloween mood. This year’s list of what I watched (see below) is a bit shorter than last year (20 vs. 27), but I think this year I ended up watching more TV series, which took up more time — and I ended up watching the second half (all made up of movies) during the final week of October. (I’m also watching more pro wrestling these days, so I imagine that affected things too.) So here then is the list of TV shows and movies I watched for this year’s marathon, and I can’t wait to do the next one — you’ll also find all my write-ups under the “October 2019” category.

  1. American Horror Story: 1984
  2. Annabelle
  3. Annabelle Comes Home
  4. Annabelle: Creation
  5. Ash vs Evil Dead (Season 3)
  6. Assassination Nation
  7. Costume Quest
  8. Creepshow (2019)
  9. In the Tall Grass
  10. Les affamés (Ravenous)
  11. Marianne
  12. Midsommar
  13. One Cut of the Dead
  14. Overlord
  15. Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead 2
  16. The Conjuring
  17. The Conjuring 2
  18. The Dead Zone
  19. The Purge (Season 2)
  20. Twilight Zone (2019)
Categories
Debaser Film

The Conjuring 2

And so the final thing I watched during this year’s horror marathon (20th on the list) is The Conjuring 2. I watched it on Halloween night, in a double bill with The Dead Zone. As I’ve written in previous posts, I’ve been enjoying watching all of the Conjuring franchise films, and this made for another fun watching experience. I prefer the first Conjuring film, but this was pretty good too, and the London setting made for a nice change of pace. Even though this marks the end of my horror marathon for this year, I do plan on watching the other two Conjuring spinoff films, The Nun and The Curse of La Llorona, soon.

Categories
Debaser Film

The Dead Zone

On Halloween night I decided that I would go with classics for my final movies of this entire month of horror, and first up on the agenda was The Dead Zone (I next was planning on watching the original Carrie, but ended up watching The Conjuring 2 instead). This is still quite a good movie, with great direction by Cronenberg (one of his very early films), and a nicely odd (but not too odd) performance by Christopher Walken. The best part of the movie is the final sequence, and having not seen this movie in decades, I’d forgotten the details of it so I got to enjoy it yet again. It has even made me want to check out the Dead Zone TV series that was produced in the 2000s, starring Anthony Michael Hall.

Categories
Debaser Film

The Conjuring

So after watching all three of the Annabelle movies, I decided that I would next go and watch the two proper Conjuring movies. The Conjuring is the only movie of this entire franchise that I had already seen, but that was when it initially came out (2013), and so I found myself not remembering much as I was watching it. Also, after watching all those Annabelle movies, it made me appreciate a lot of things I was seeing even more, like the mentions of Annabelle (which I know actually came first, but still, it was fun to see). And the film itself is quite spooky and creepy, and I like that it takes itself fairly seriously — as I’ve mentioned in my posts for the Annabelle movies, it reminds me of those classics from the 70s like Omen and The Exorcist.

Categories
Debaser Film

Annabelle Comes Home

So after watching Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation earlier in the day, I capped it off with the third film (that had come out earlier this year). I really did have a lot of fun watching this one as well, maybe even more than the other ones. I like the fact that it takes place almost entirely in the home of the Warrens (from the Conjuring movies), as well as the connection to those characters — much more than we get in the two other Annabelle films. Overall, I’ve had a blast watching this series, and wouldn’t mind seeing another one (that centres around Annabelle), although at this point I don’t really see where they could go with it, but I’d love for them to try.

Categories
Debaser Film

Annabelle

So after watching Annabelle: Creation (the prequel), I watched the first Annabelle proper. I quite liked this, maybe more than Creation, and thought it made for a nice take on the “creepy doll” genre — especially the idea that it acts as a conduit for evil, and isn’t just possessed. The other thing I quite like from these movies is that they’re all period movies, which makes for a nice change from a lot of the horror movies I watch — and I think it reminds me a bit of the classic thrillers and horror films of the 70s (Omen, The Exorcist, etc.) After watching this, I was quite looking forward to watching the third film.