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zimzalabimI love horror films. Anyone who knows me will know this is one of my major personality traits. I love the horror genre, and I love films, and the place where the two meet is one of my favourite places to be.
Last year, I plagiarised got the idea from someone on Twitter and tried watching a horror film every single day in October, fully expecting to not be able to do it. But even in the midst of trying to study for my degree, horror was still more important to me, so I just about managed it. Someone suggested at the time that I try ranking or writing about the films I watched, and while I loved that idea, I simply didn't have the time. But this year, now that I am unemployed uhhhh at a loose end, I decided I would try doing it again, this time watching a new film that I’d never seen before every single day.
In terms of reviewing and ranking, this time I was determined - and I finally had the time. (It has taken me over a month but let’s not talk about that. I’m a perfectionist, read: procrastinator.) So here I present: reviewing and ranking every film I watched in October 2024!
THE TIER SYSTEM:
S-Tier: A 4 or 5 star watch, exceeded my expectations, extremely enjoyable, would watch again and would absolutely recommend.
A-Tier: Exceeded or met my expectations, enjoyable, would likely watch again and recommend to most people.
B-Tier: 3 or 3.5 stars, either a fun watch that I would watch again with friends, or alternatively something that traumatised me enough I don’t want to rewatch (does NOT mean it’s not good) would recommend probably with a warning or two.
C-Tier: 3 stars, decent watch, lacking something for me personally but still enjoyable and may highly recommend to others
D-Tier: 2 stars or lower, did not meet expectations, not enjoyable for me and probably wouldn’t highly recommend but possible someone may enjoy.
Nothing I watched I would regard as F-Tier, there’s definitely something in all of these films, and keep in mind this is informed by my personal opinions and tastes! I’ll be talking about all these films in a spoiler-free way that will hopefully give you a good idea of whether it’s something you’ll enjoy.
DISCLAIMER: Since these are all horror films, a lot of them contain disturbing content that some may find triggering. I have included in depth trigger warnings at the end of each entry for all of the films, but it is inevitable that some of these warnings have spoilers for certain aspects of the films, so if you would really rather not be spoiled, I would recommend skipping them. If you’re concerned about spoilers but also concerned if a film contains any specific triggering content, please feel free to ask me and I’ll do my best to give warnings in the most spoiler-free way I can, or alternatively, doesthedogdie.com is a really good source for finding out if specific content is included in a film.
DAY 1: THE SUBSTANCE (2024, Coralie Fargeat) S
Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is a bloodsoaked satirical body horror that took the box office by storm this year. An “ageing” (the stunning and beautiful Demi Moore) Hollywood actress uses the titular substance to make herself young and beautiful again. But of course, there are rules to using THE SUBSTANCE, and rules are made to be broken.
I went into The Substance expecting to like it, but it still managed to surprise me with how much I enjoyed it. Maybe because it was so popular, I wasn’t quite expecting the body horror to be quite so intense. There were times that I (self-professed body horror connoisseur) felt genuinely nauseous. But aside from the gruesome, I feel that this film’s true strength lies in its sense of humour.
Fargeat is skilled in bringing out a twisted streak of humour even in the most disturbing, one that doesn’t feel out of place or distract from the impact of the horrors we are seeing. I love a body horror that knows when it just had to laugh at itself, because it is ridiculous. The gruesome is ridiculous, our obsession with youth and beauty is ridiculous, Hollywood is ridiculous. Pausing to laugh at the pure excess we have devolved into, while simultaneously completely understanding it, is what I think makes this film so great.
WARNINGS: strong gore and body horror, lots of blood and guts, disfigurement, nails and teeth falling out, bones breaking, injections and needles.
DAY 2: HOUSE (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi) B
House is a delightfully bizarre cult classic Japanese horror, and a film that’s been on my watchlist for far too long before I got around to watching it this month. A story of a group of girls travelling to a seemingly sentient house, it’s a campy, surrealist film that’s completely carried by its audacity, as well as some great performances. Some of the effects are definitely outdated, but in that charming way that often makes older horror films so fun to watch.
House is a film that kind of needs to be seen to be understood, it’s a spectacle that no description can really do justice to. I think if I describe anything more about it, it may sound like I’m losing my mind, so I’m just going to stop here and ask you to trust me on this one - it’s great fun.
WARNINGS: comedic/campy violence and gore (not realistic looking), death of an animal (lizard, implied cat but cat is immortal so it's fine).
DAY 3: 28 DAYS LATER (2002, Danny Boyle) B
Famous for its iconic soundtrack, and famous for its creation of the “rage zombie” (10x faster, 10x scarier, thanks for the nightmares Danny) 28 Days Later is a hard-hitting and bleak zombie apocalypse film, unforgiving in its portrayal of trauma, death and violence. It does one of my favourite things a zombie apocalypse film can do - ask: who are the real monsters? The zombies, or humans?
The way that it chooses to ask this question is intense (please be sure to check warnings unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t need them) and it did leave me slightly conflicted about the way it went about it in the final act, but overall, 28 Days Later was a powerful and well made film that was worth the watch. Despite all the suffering, there’s a glimmer of hope that runs through the story, enough to keep both audience and characters going.
WARNINGS: violence including eye gouging, death of a family member, attempted rape (of both adult and child).
DAY 4: THE EVIL DEAD (1981, Sam Raimi) B
Another horror classic checked off the list. The Evil Dead has approximately a thousand sequels and remakes, of which I have seen none, so of course I had to start with the OG. It’s a classic cabin in the woods horror, a group of friends staying in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, they accidentally summon the dead. As one does.
What I find entertaining about this film is how it gets immediately stuck in. Once the set-up is finished, we are thrust into chaos immediately, blood and guts and killing people with axes. Bones breaking, skin melting. All that good stuff. The effects aren’t the most amazing you’ll ever see, but honestly, it works. They didn’t need to be fantastic, the over-the-top look of them fits with the rest of the film well, and I adored the use of stop motion. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable mad slasher.
WARNINGS: rape by non-human monster (a possessed tree, definitely still disturbing but some may find it just ridiculous), violence and gore (a lot of stabbing), body horror, onscreen bodies rotting with maggots (stop motion, looks more cool than disgusting and not super realistic).
DAY 5: NOCEBO (2022, Lorcan Finnegan) C
The first of many Netflix movies I watched this month, these tend to be quite hit or miss. There’s quite a few hidden gems on Netflix, particularly in the horror genre, but there’s also quite a lot of underbaked disappointments on there too. Unfortunately, this film falls more into the latter category, which was disappointing, given that I had some high hopes for it.
In Nocebo, a wealthy British fashion designer afflicted with a mysterious illness hires a Filipina housekeeper who begins to use her own cultural healing practices to help her, uncovering dark secrets in the process. This was a unique and interesting setup, but if you’ve seen any horror film before, you’ll probably figure out what is going on about a third of the way through. The rest of the film is spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it gets quite tedious, sadly.
What made Nocebo so disappointing for me was how much potential it had. The opening scene is extremely striking and terrifying, and the scares throughout remain powerful, coupled with the unwillingness to hold back on depicting certain violence. The subject matter is one that deserves care and an unflinching depiction, but all of this is hindered by just how predictable it ends up being.
WARNINGS: medical horror (chronic illness induced by a bug bite), a dog with very diseased skin, hallucinations, gaslighting, death of a child, death of a pet (bird), death by fire (onscreen, graphic, charred corpses are seen), being trapped in a building, a giant flea the size of a dog, sleep paralysis.
DAY 6: BASKIN (2015, Can Evrenol) A
Baskin is going to be a difficult film to properly explain. I found out about it by searching for films that have a depiction of hell in them, something that I find fascinating but very underrepresented in film. A group of police officers investigate an abandoned building, accidentally stumbling into a surreal hell dimension in the process. At least, that’s what I went into the film expecting. Afterwards, I think that the depiction of hell in this film is a little bit more complex than descriptions of the plot gave away.
Baskin is a hard sell, and I can definitely understand why reviews seem so mixed. It’s a weird film, so much set up of characters only to plunge them into a psychedelic nightmare of Hellraiser-esque creatures where nothing seems to make sense anymore. You may leave this film wondering: what was the point?
I’m going to be honest, I’m still not entirely sure. But what I am sure about is that I loved it. I loved that we got to know the characters, I love the depiction of this hell as inescapable, something that follows you, inevitable. Baskin is so wholly unlike any other horror film I’ve ever seen, and I really, really like it. That being said, it’s definitely not for everyone. You should watch it, but you may hate it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
WARNINGS: strong violence and gore (all displayed in a vibrant and almost psychedelic way), eye gouging, gutting someone alive, sexual assault (towards a man forced to have sex with a woman, vaguely implied she may not be a willing participant but unclear and not the focus), lots of people covered in blood, car accident, some transphobic comments (not said towards a character onscreen, mentioned in conversation), child overhearing parent(s) having sex, masks, a lot of frogs.
DAY 7: DRACULA (1958, Terence Fisher) B
Christopher Lee’s Dracula is probably one of, if not the most famous depiction of him in film, and it’s easy to see why. This was the oldest film I watched this month, and age does tend to show more with horror, audiences are less forgiving towards the outdated scares. But I think that this iteration of Dracula is carried by both its style and the performances, both from Lee and thingy.
In this version of Dracula, after killing Jonathon Harker, Dracula begins to target his family, seeking a bride of his own in Harker’s fiance Lucy. Harker’s friend Doctor Van Helsing seeks to protect the family and destroy Dracula for good. It’s a classic horror and an enjoyable watch. I will always love watching Christopher Lee as a villain, and Hammer Horror is an important part of horror movie history.
WARNINGS: home invasion, male vampire attacking women in a slightly sexually charged way, being locked in rooms.
DAY 8: JU-ON: THE GRUDGE (2002, Takashi Shimizu) A
Ju-on is a Japanese horror classic that you’ll often see mentioned alongside the likes of Ringu, extremely similar vibes, also got an American remake. If you watched and liked either Ringu or The Ring, you will almost certainly enjoy this. I would even go as far as to say this one had a bigger impact on me. On the surface, it’s a simple ghost story, but looking closer its layers go far deeper than that. It tells its story in a non-linear narrative, showing different people across different generations falling victim to the spirit. In this way, there is no major plot in the traditional sense.
The film’s horror is all in its subtlety, the slow-burn, the ghost creeping into everyone’s lives, inescapable. Every time, you want something to be different, somehow for them to defeat the ghost, but it seems there is no way out. It would be easy for a film with this concept to burn itself out quickly, leaving the audience bored, but Ju-on really understands what to show and when, how much it should show, just enough to let that unease creep under your skin. It’s a gem of a Japanese horror that will leave you with that lingering feeling of something watching you long after the credits roll.
WARNINGS: ghostly stalking/home invasion, murder of a partner/spouse (mostly offscreen), killing of a cat (also offscreen), implied killing of a child, death of family members.
DAY 9: I SAW THE DEVIL (2010, Kim Jee-woon) C
I Saw The Devil was a film that was recommended to me as an “evil” film, and it certainly lived up to that description. A police detective’s girlfriend is murdered by a serial killer, and he takes it upon himself to find and take revenge on the culprit. It’s a classic revenge tale only on the surface, as it asks questions about the nature of revenge, and that of violence, neatly snuffing out the easy burn of satisfaction at seeing vengeance carried out. The examination of revenge is fascinating, it questions the concept of eye for an eye and refuses to let the audience be satisfied by a tidy, simple ending. While I enjoyed this aspect of the film, what left me feeling conflicted was just how male-centric it was.
The killer targets women, he rapes and murders them, and because of this, women only appear in this film to be raped and murdered, or at least assaulted. It is the ego of the male characters that allows this to happen, and while the film clearly wants us to see this, women are not able to be present in the narrative any further than this. I would have liked to see the women in this story as more present, more important, instead of being shown the spectacle of their death, rape and torture as a means to further the male character’s story. While I truly did understand and like what the film was trying to achieve, I believe the victims ought to have been more centred in order to make the point cut even deeper.
I Saw The Devil is undoubtedly a well-crafted film, but for me it is held back slightly by tripping over the very issues it is trying to hold up for scrutiny.
WARNINGS: strong violence (mostly beatings) towards both men and women, attempted rape (including towards a child) heavily implied/referenced rape (offscreen), cannibalism, death of a family member/partner.
DAY 10: CREEP (2014, Patrick Brice) A
Creep was a 90 minute slow build of anxiety in the best way. I’m a sucker for low-budget found-footage films, and this one certainly did not disappoint. In Creep, a filmmaker responds to an ad to spend one day making a short documentary film of someone. Naturally, that someone is a less than savoury individual: a strange man who lives alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. From this point onwards, the tension slowly ramps up as it becomes more and more clear that something is very wrong here.
There’s no way to summarise the plot any further without risking spoilers, and I honestly think going into this film blind is the best way to go about it. It’s a film all about the atmosphere, the sense of unease that builds up, and it’s truly carried by the performances of the two lead actors. The only thing I’ll say is I would have liked just a little bit more from the ending, but aside from that, this is a little found-footage horror gem and I’m glad I found it.
WARNINGS: discussion of rape and mention of beastiality (both offscreen), stalking, home invasion, masks, a lot of jumpscares.
DAY 11: JACOB’S LADDER (1990, Adrian Lyne) A
Jacob’s Ladder is yet another film that I think is better experienced than explained. It feels a little like a nightmare that you wake up from in the middle of the night, disorientated and unable to remember which parts were real. As is the constant feeling for our titular character; Jacob, who is a veteran suffering from PTSD and plagued with hallucinations. The film follows his slow descent into paranoia as he loses his grip on reality.
Jacob’s Ladder is a deeply unsettling experience, it does such a good job at expressing Jacob’s trauma and confusion in a way that us as the audience feel it all along with him, and none of it is pretty. The feeling of wrongness really gets under your skin right from the beginning and stays there, lingering even in moments of respite for Jacob. There’s a lot of issues being addressed in this film, from the horrors of war to the government’s treatment of its army, but at its core this is a film about lasting trauma, and the terrifying way in which it depicts trauma is perhaps partly what made it the scariest film I had watched so far in the month.
WARNINGS: graphic depictions of war violence, paranoia and unreality, being restrained in a medical setting, drug use, needles, referenced death of a child, death of a family member.
DAY 12: RAW (2016, Julia Ducournau) B
For last year’s horror movie advent I watched Titane and loved it, so I was looking forward to Raw, especially given the subject matter (certified cannibalism fan). Raw is about a young woman growing up in a strictly vegan family who eats meat for the first time as part of a hazing ritual at her university, from which point she develops a craving for raw meat, specifically human meat.
The word that comes to mind when thinking back to this film is visceral. New French Extremity horror films have such a way of making you feel the violence in a way I rarely see done to this degree. I loved the weaving of cannibalism and violence with female sexuality, done in a way that still felt as if it was centring women rather than making them the 'other' It was inevitable that I would compare this film with Titane, and of the two I do think Titane is superior in terms of story, originality and characters. Raw is still a great debut and well worth watching, excited to see what this director will do next.
WARNINGS: cannibalism, violence and gore (bodies are seen half eaten with bones exposed), a finger being bitten off, rashes, peeling off dead skin, hazing, death of a pet (dog, the characters don’t seem that upset and you don’t see it die).
DAY 13: RE-ANIMATOR (1985, Stuart Gordon) C
A fun and campy cult classic, Re-Animator is kind of exactly what you’d expect given the title. A mad scientist grad student and his boy-next-door classmate (and roommate… they were roommates) join forces in order to perfect his (bright neon green) serum to raise the dead. Naturally, things do not go according to plan.
Re-Animator is an entertaining experience to watch with some good performances, charmingly outrageous special effects. While I certainly did enjoy a lot of it, I found the treatment of women in the film quite difficult to get past. It’s not uncommon for older horrors (and modern horrors, if we’re being honest) to treat their female characters awfully, but the gaslighting and sexual assault were hard to watch and hindered my enjoyment of an otherwise over-the-top fun body horror flick. Nevertheless, it was mostly a fun time, and I can see why it has amassed a small cult following.
WARNINGS: violence, body horror (somewhat comedic, someone’s head is off and they’re still alive), death of a pet (cat), gaslighting, sexual assault (a woman is stripped then groped while being tied up), needles.
DAY 14: SAW III (2006, Darren Lynn Bousman) S
The Saw franchise has a bit of a place in my heart already, and I haven’t even watched most of it. Saw and Saw II both pleasantly surprised me in how much I enjoyed them, so I was both excited and apprehensive for the third instalment, and I’m glad to say that I loved it too. I have been trying not to spoil any films I talk about in these reviews, but it’s difficult to talk about Saw III without talking about I and II, so spoilers for the first two films await! Sorry, but if like me a month ago, you’ve only seen those two, I won’t spoil III here. On his deathbed, Jigsaw puts his final game into motion with the help of his protege Amanda. This time, a doctor and a bereaved father are the ones who have to escape very different traps laid for them, unravelling lies and truths in the process.
The strength of the Saw franchise comes from two main things for me: complex, likeable (and hateable) characters, and the twists and turns of the plot. Saw III had all of that and more besides, the way the story played out was so engaging and the characters were great. Jigsaw is probably my all-time favourite horror villain at this point, Tobin Bell’s performance as him is unmatched. Saw is just the gift that keeps on giving, I’m sort of dreading the inevitable downgrade in quality when the franchise gets a little more tired along the way of my watchlist. But for now, it’s been nothing but 10s from me.
WARNINGS: strong violence and gore (including someone’s hand being burned in acid, being frozen to death, bones being broken) onscreen brain surgery, referenced death of a child, rotten pig carcasses.
DAY 15: WHEN EVIL LURKS (2023, Demián Rugna) B
I was expecting something dark going into this film, but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for how dark it gets. Evil does indeed lurk in this Argentine folk horror, and it’s not a remotely fun kind of evil. All of the plot descriptions I’ve seen of this film (Letterboxd and Google) did NOT prepare me for what I was about to see, so let me try and summarise myself. In When Evil Lurks, two brothers discover someone in their neighbourhood has been afflicted with a disease that causes a demon to take over the body. Determined not to have this curse infect their village, they try to take the man elsewhere, but this only sets off a chain of gruesome and horrifying events.
When Evil Lurks is a film that does not hold back, and I don’t mean that in a way where it’s trying too hard to shock, it’s the kind of horror that has audacity, it gets under your skin, and it barely has to shed any blood to do so. I thought its atmosphere and worldbuilding was excellent, but it’s a bleak film. One that I am certainly glad I watched, but certainly would not watch again.
WARNINGS: strong violence and gore, body horror (someone is seen extremely disfigured, bloated with sores), death of a child, death of family members, child being attacked by a dog, cannibalism.
DAY 16: THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011, Drew Goddard) S
A satire on the slasher horror genre, this is a film that will work best for you if you’ve seen a lot of horror films. As you might have noticed, that’s kind of my thing, so I loved this. The Cabin in The Woods is, naturally, about a group of friends who go to stay at a cabin. In the woods. There, they accidentally summon an army of the dead - except it’s not accidental. Everything they do is being manipulated by a worldwide conspiracy carrying out a mysterious ritual.
The Cabin in the Woods not only does a great job at satirising the genre, it does it with a completely bonkers concept. This idea only would have worked with complete commitment to it, as well as a lot of knowledge about horror, and it’s clear those who worked on this film had both. Overall, such a great watch, so much fun, and a must-watch for any seasoned (or unseasoned even) horror fan.
WARNINGS: violence and gore (mostly quite comedic), being trapped (unable to escape a certain area), slightly implied threat of sexual violence.
DAY 17: VIDEODROME (1983, David Cronenberg) A
Baby’s first Cronenberg! Yes, this self-professed body horror superfan has taken this long to watch a film from the king of body horror films. This is actually really embarrassing for me. But in any case, Videodrome was a great place to start.
A TV channel owner stumbles across a mysterious broadcast of a TV show that appears to be real footage of people being brutally murdered. Determined to save his dying channel, he thinks this may be the key, just the edge he’s looking for. However, the more he investigates about the show, the more the seams of his reality begin to come undone.
Although Videodrome is not the goriest or most gruesome body horror depiction I’ve ever seen, it’s certainly one that evokes a feeling no other has quite managed to. Blurring the lines between violence and sex, showcasing the modern ambivalence at the sight of violence, this film manages to stay extremely topical even 40 years past its release. It perhaps won’t be the weirdest or the grossest film you’ve ever seen, but it gets under your skin the way no other film does, at least, that’s what it did for me. Perhaps it’s high time I watched Cronenberg’s other work.
WARNINGS: violence, torture (seen at a distance and it’s hard to tell what’s happening), body horror (a LOT of it), BDSM, needles being poked through skin (sewing ones not medical).
DAY 18: THE COLLECTOR (2009, Marcus Dunstan) D
Ah, the consequences of Saw. Hearing this mentioned alongside the famous early 2000s torture porn hits Saw and Hostel (both of which I am a fan of, yes Hostel too) I was looking forward to The Collector. Unfortunately, this one was a huge let down for me. The Collector details an ex-con in debt breaking into a house in order to steal a ruby so he can sell it, only to discover the house is completely rigged with traps - a serial killer got there first, and now there’s no way out. This was a solid setup, combining Saw-esque traps with the fear of home invasion, but this is where the good parts end.
The characters were both uninteresting and unlikeable, it was difficult to care about anything anyone was going through. That much is possible to get past, I’ve enjoyed more than one horror where the main characters are extremely unlikeable. If The Collector had managed to be scary, perhaps all could have been forgiven. But the tension is simply not there. It’s difficult to put into words why exactly, but at no point did I feel the sense of danger or urgency. The film also managed to annoy me with its portrayal of the female characters, as well as an ending that left a lot to be desired. I was honestly a little surprised at how much I disliked this, given that I’d seen it has a minor cult following and several sequels, but maybe it’s simply just not for me.
WARNINGS: strong violence and gore, traps, torture (someone’s mouth is sewn shut) electrocution, death of a pet (cat), death of family members, implied/threat of sexual violence, being locked in, being trapped in a very small space.
DAY 19: MAD GOD (2021, Phil Tippett) S
Stop motion is incredible. I feel like there isn’t much I can say about this film because it truly is all about the visual - it’s a stunning visual. Stop motion animation really lends itself to horror in a way other animation styles perhaps don’t, there’s something about the uncanny way things move that transports it to its own slightly warped dimension. And I adore it.
Like some earlier films, a plot description doesn’t really do this film justice. A mysterious figure descends into a sort of hell dimension, slowly travelling down to the bottom to fulfil some kind of quest. The rest of the film is all about what we see, and what we hear. It’s a film that needs to be experienced, and I would encourage everyone to go and experience it. I’m not even going to warn you that you may not like it, because I think we all need to support stop motion in any way that we can. I love stop motion. Watch Mad God.
WARNINGS: stop motion animated violence, mostly disturbing just for the look and style.
DAY 20: THE INNOCENTS (1961, Jack Clayton) C
Obligatory 1960s movie, as I had already watched the best horror of the 60s (The Haunting) I set out to find something similar. Through my research (Letterboxd lists) I found this classic creepy old house with creepy kids film. The Innocents has a young governess sent to look after two orphaned children by their distant uncle, replacing an old governess who died under mysterious circumstances. After strange things begin to happen, the governess becomes convinced the house is haunted and the children possessed.
Something I’ve noticed about films of this era is how well they do ambiguity. Part of it is probably down to censorship, but I find that with films about ghosts (usually not my favourite genre) the subtle route works really well for building unease. The Innocents is a solid film in this regard, although I did find it to be lacking a little in how much it could have used that fear and tension coming from the uncertainty, but overall it was an enjoyable older horror that I’m glad I broadened my horizons with.
WARNINGS: a character not being believed and feeling she is going insane, implied domestic violence, death of a child, slightly weird relationship between adult woman and young boy (I think it’s just a time period thing but it felt slightly off to me).
DAY 21: THE DARK AND THE WICKED (2020, Bryan Bertino) B
The Dark and The Wicked hovers somewhere between demonic possession and folk horror, an unsettling grey area that leaves enough to the imagination for one to feel very disturbed. An adult brother and sister come back to their family farm to visit their dying father, despite their mother’s repeated insistence that they shouldn’t. Once they arrive, it becomes increasingly clear that dark forces far beyond what they could have imagined are at play here.
This one’s another slow burn, the way the tension and the fear built as the story progressed was palpable. In terms of tone it reminded me of the film of a few days ago: When Evil Lurks. Not pulling any punches, but not just shock value. The feeling of being trapped, coming back to a place you wanted to leave and being stuck there, is something this film does extremely well. I think it was lacking something slightly towards the end, the payoff was not nearly as memorable as the setup. But overall, solid, and one I would definitely recommend.
WARNINGS: violence and gore, referenced suicide, death of animal (farm animals), fingers being chopped off, death of family member, implied death of children, main character(s) losing grip on reality/feeling like they’re going insane, bugs (spiders) coming out of an orifice.
DAY 22: CANDYMAN (1992, Bernard Rose) A
I went into this film knowing very little about it, kind of just expecting another slasher in the vein of Nightmare on Elm Street, but Candyman is very much not that. A grad student is studying the myth of the Candyman, a mysterious figure with a hook for a hand that can be summoned by saying his name in front of the mirror Bloody Mary style. Of course, this turns out to be far from just a myth, as he begins to haunt her.
What sets Candyman apart and makes it really stand out is the way it uses horror as a way to explore racism and gentrification in the US. The Candyman himself originates from a black neighbourhood, and he becomes a more and more complex villain figure as the film goes on. The story ends up taking a different direction than I had really expected, and ultimately it becomes a fascinating and nuanced piece of horror as social commentary. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but I do think it’s definitely worth your time.
WARNINGS: violence (a woman is beaten by a group of men at one point, mostly offscreen), implied sexual assault, disappearance of a baby, being wrongly accused of crimes, a person being burned in a fire, insects (bees) covering a character at one point.
DAY 23: IMMACULATE (2024, Michael Mohan) B
AKA: that nun film with Sydney Sweeney. I seem to remember seeing a lot of mixed reviews for this film, it was difficult to get a grasp on whether people thought it was good or not. Part of me was expecting something a little trashy going into this, but that is very much not what happened. An American nun goes to live at a convent in Italy, where she discovers that even though she is a virgin and this should be impossible, she has somehow fallen pregnant. (If you watched The First Omen this year, this is probably sounding very familiar, but we’re not gonna talk about that here).
I thought this film was going a certain way, but when the twist came, it was good. It really came out of left field for me in a way that made me sit up and pay a little bit more attention. I don’t want to say any more about that so as not to spoil it, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised by the direction this film went in the end. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster, there are some plot holes and I know Sweeney’s acting is hit or miss for some, but I think this one is well worth a watch.
WARNINGS: sexual assault (forced impregnation not via rape), violence, branding, being buried alive, death of a baby (offscreen).
DAY 24: YOU’RE NEXT (2011, Adam Wingard) S
I am so glad I came across this film when my ideas for what to watch were running low. You’re Next is a gem of a little slasher film, with some cool (if a little predictable) twists and possibly the best final girl any slasher has produced. A young woman goes to visit her boyfriend’s wealthy and dysfunctional family at their large estate when suddenly, only for them all to be attacked by a mysterious killer - who may have to deal with a little more fight in their victims than they bargained for.
The way I described You’re Next to my friends was “Knives Out meets slasher” and I would repeat that here. There’s a lot of comedy in here, mostly coming from the family, conflict between the siblings, the neurotic mother, the children’s spouses and partners forced to sit awkwardly as things unravel at the dinner table. But the slasher element is very much there too, the kills are creative and the tension is good, there’s a great balance of comedy and horror and the twists and turns come at exactly the right points so the plot is never boring. A great film with a great concept.
WARNINGS: home invasion, violence, death of family members.
DAY 25: PHANTASM (1979, Don Coscarelli) A
I feel like I’ve described several films I’ve talked about here as feeling like a nightmare, but this one truly comes the closest to that feeling. Specifically, a nightmare from your childhood that blends slightly with the reality of your memories, to the point you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. In Phantasm, a teen boy and his younger brother discover the existence of a mysterious being known as the tall man, who seems to be killing people and later stealing them out of their graves.
The way this film scares you is unique, and I’m going to say straight away that it won’t be for everyone. If you want a neat explanation and some proper scares, you won’t get it here. What you will get is a feeling of strangeness, the sense you’ve been pulled into an alternate world where everything is just slightly different. I’ve seen this film described by others as delirious, and I would have to agree strongly with that statement. Pure unadulterated weirdness.
WARNINGS: some violence, sense of unreality.
DAY 26: VACANCY (2007, Nimród Antal) C
I have mixed feelings about this one. Based on the concept and things I had heard about it, I was hoping to really enjoy it, and I did at first, but it lost me a little bit around halfway through, which was a shame. Vacancy is about an estranged couple dealing with a bereavement who get lost and have to stay the night at a seedy motel in a place they don’t know. Things go from bad to worse for them when they discover the motel is a cover for a snuff film ring, and they’re about to be murdered on camera.
The concept was an interesting one, and the first half of the film does a really great job at introducing and making you care for the characters, as well as slowly ramping up the tension. However, the film’s momentum starts to falter a little after a while, and by the end I was feeling more irritated than anything else. I think this film could have benefited from a little more complexity in the plot to keep it feeling engaging to watch, it got tired when it should have been tense, and the ending wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it should have been.
WARNINGS: being trapped in a room, violence, implied torture, referenced death of a child.
DAY 27: BULBBUL (2020, Anvita Dutt Guptan) S
Another Netflix film, another swing and hit. Bulbbul was a film I knew little about, but it had been on my to watch list for quite a while, as it kept popping up under the international horror section on my Netflix home page. I finally got into it, and I’m so glad I did. Bulbbul is an Indian film that draws on religion and legend to create a feminist story with a whole lot of bite. Bulbbul is our main character, a former child bride who is now estranged from her husband as an adult, and runs his estate alone. Meanwhile, her childhood friend starts looking into a series of murders that locals are attributing to a “chudail” (witch or demon woman).
If you already guessed the twist from the synopsis, congrats, I think you’re supposed to. Bulbbul is a film that tells you what’s happening and why from the get go, then it turns around and it shows you why. It shows you until you’re ashamed to even ask. Some may say that the story is predictable, and it’s difficult to argue that it isn’t, but I think it works extremely well regardless. Bulbbul is a powerful and heartbreaking depiction of misogyny, the intertwining of cultural religious stories with horror concepts to visualise female revenge and female rage was wonderfully done and very satisfying.
WARNINGS: child being married to an adult man, strong violence and gore (beating with an iron pole), rape (onscreen, very graphic, occurs while a woman is incapacitated and in pain), character is burned in fire, referenced domestic abuse.
DAY 28: AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981, John Landis) B
Here’s a film that tells you a lot about it in its title. Two American backpackers are attacked by a huge wolf while travelling through English moors, leaving one of them in London, haunted by strange visions as the days count down to the next full moon. If you’ve ever seen any part of this film, it’s probably the infamous werewolf transformation sequence, guaranteed to still make you wince even with its 40-year-old special effects - they still look great.
It’s an interesting film tonally, blending horror with comedy and a little bit of tragedy seamlessly, in a way that none of it feels cheapened. There were several points where I was prepared for (and dreading) it to go in a certain cliched direction, but it just didn’t, leaving me pleasantly surprised and keeping me guessing about where it was going.
I think the great strength of this film was that streak of humour, not quite enough to make it a horror comedy, but certainly enough to make it stand out, feeling as if it had that little bit more depth than others like it.
WARNINGS: animal attack (it’s a werewolf technically), violence and gore, loss of control of one’s own body (becoming a werewolf), a painful transformation scene, a slowly rotting corpse is seen throughout (effects are more funny than scary + it talks).
DAY 29: THE WAILING (2016, Na Hong-jin) A
My second South Korean watch of the month, and definitely my favourite of the two. The Wailing is a small town folk horror filled with dread that builds and builds until it reaches a panicked crescendo. A town is plagued by a mysterious illness that is turning its residents into rage-filled monsters. An ambivalent police detective is forced to take action when his young daughter seemingly becomes infected.
This film taps into the worst nightmares of a parent, being unable to help your child, being unable to even recognise your child anymore. It’s stressful to watch even as someone who doesn’t have kids. The concept itself is unique and terrifying, a disease and a curse combined, an increasingly ambiguous foe for our main characters to fight against. The sense of ambiguity throughout the film is probably its greatest strength, it leaves you feeling every conflicted emotion the characters are feeling as it draws to its enigmatic conclusion.
WARNINGS: strong violence and gore, implied death of a child, death of family members.
DAY 30: DEEP RED (1975, Dario Argento) B
My first giallo and it certainly won’t be my last. I’ve been meaning to watch Dario Argento’s films for a long time now, and I chose Deep Red to be my entry point. After witnessing the murder of his neighbour through a window, a pianist joins forces with a journalist to try and find the culprit, however, things get stranger and stranger the more he investigates.
Deep Red is weird in the best way, the fear and unease is woven directly into the style of the film, it’s visually stunning (despite my disappointment at the lack of neon, I can live with it when it still looks this good). While some of the period typical misogyny was a little bit difficult to stomach, and the film dragged a little towards the end, it was entirely enjoyable and weird-scary in that way I’m always looking for.
WARNINGS: violence, death of animal (lizard), sense of unreality.
DAY 31: HALLOWEEN (1978, John Carpenter) B
Last year I watched Friday the 13th on Friday the 13th, so this year I decided to do something similar: Halloween on Halloween! (groundbreaking I know). This was both my only rewatch and the only film I saw in the cinema, although I somewhat regretted that part. For anyone who isn’t familiar, Halloween is a classic slasher about a masked killer terrorising his former neighbourhood after escaping from a mental hospital. Naturally, he targets young people who dare to have sex (before marriage).
The main issue I had watching this was how absolutely no one in the cinema could take it seriously. Someone dies: laugh. Someone lives: laugh. Music plays: laugh. It got quite annoying after a while. I really like Halloween just for its impact on horror, if nothing else. It’s fascinating to see how many ways that this film has influenced today’s horror, and I think the reason people found it funny is because of how influential it was. We’ve all seen the tropes in Halloween a million times, because it invented them! That’s what made it fun to watch for me, anyway. But I can see how people maybe struggled to take it seriously. I still wish people wouldn’t laugh so much at old film screenings, but hey ho. I still had fun. And that’s what this whole thing was about.
WARNINGS: violence, home invasion.
Horror will always be my favourite genre, there’s just so much you can do with it, so much you can feel, and horror film is still such an underappreciated subgenre. It’s been great to see more and more horror going mainstream, even when it’s franchises I don’t personally enjoy I still feel a sense of pride seeing them do well. I didn’t regret any of the films I watched in October, I’m so glad I was able to watch 30 brand new films from such a range of directors, eras, and subgenres. Even the ones I disliked, I wouldn’t take that time back. If you don’t watch much horror but you’re considering getting into it, this is your sign to do it! There’s so much out there to explore. 
