When a Stranger Calls (1976)

IMDb plot summary: A psychopathic killer terrorizes a babysitter, then returns seven years later to menace her again.

Directed by Fred Walton. Starring Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Tony Beckley, and Ron O'Neal.

Most synopses indicate this is the babysitter's story, but it really isn't -- while her pieces of the story are by far the most compelling, she's actually only in the first 30 and last 15 minutes or so of the movie. The middle hour is a tedious play-by-play of the murderer's trek through the city and the private detective trying to find him and abruptly announcing at one point that he's going to kill him because, as he says, "The closer I get to this guy, the more he gets to me. I don't know." Gotta love a protagonist who's like, "I dunno, this person bugs me, guess I have no choice but to murder him." Nothing in the movie ever measures up to that first half hour, which is well-executed and feels like an Internet creepypasta in the simplicity of its horror. After that, it's a steep drop downhill, with a sloppy attempt at recapturing those early scares at the end.

How it entered my Flickchart:

When a Stranger Calls < Broken Embraces

When a Stranger Calls > An Ideal Husband

When a Stranger Calls > The Rescuers Down Under

When a Stranger Calls > Dr. Seuss on the Loose

When a Stranger Calls < Steamboat Bill, Jr.

When a Stranger Calls < Happy Gilmore

When a Stranger Calls > Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

When a Stranger Calls > An American in Paris

When a Stranger Calls < The Subject Was Roses

When a Stranger Calls > The Ramen Girl

When a Stranger Calls < Where the Red Fern Grows

Final spot: #1786 out of 3250, or 45%.

When the Lights Went Out (2012)

IMDb plot summary: Poltergeists attack a family in Yorkshire during the 1974 nationwide blackouts.

Directed by Pat Holden. Starring Kate Ashfield, Steven Waddington, Craig Parkinson, and Tasha Connor.

This is not at all a new premise, it's not even the first movie with this plot that I've watched this month, so the question is does it do anything different with it? Well, almost. Early on the family reveals to the media that they have a ghost and start getting tourists who want to see the ghost house, and that seems like a really interesting route for the movie to go... and then that entire plotline just gets droppped. And in fact, a scene or two later, the family is suddenly having to re-convince each other that their home is haunted. This happens a LOT in this movie -- it sets up an intriguing conceit for the next part of the story which then vanishes like it never happened at all. It's one of the most frustrating movies I've seen recently because it keeps turning the corner toward something new and original and then it not only chickens out but continually retcons itself, like the scriptwriter decided to delete that scene from the final script and wrote on without it, but the director filmed it anyway. As a result, it ends up being a strange, tangled mess that mostly just goes back to the same bland tropes over and over again without any kind of narrative consistency.

How it entered my Flickchart:

When the Lights Went Out < Broken Embraces

When the Lights Went Out < As Good As It Gets

When the Lights Went Out < Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

When the Lights Went Out > Sweet Home Alabama

When the Lights Went Out < Herbie: Fully Loaded

When the Lights Went Out > All the King's Men (2006)

When the Lights Went Out > Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

When the Lights Went Out > The Incredible Hulk

When the Lights Went Out < Vera Drake

When the Lights Went Out > Live a Little, Love a Little

When the Lights Went Out < Tab Hunter Confidential

Final spot: #2953 out of 3249, or 9%.

Onibaba (1964)

IMDb plot summary: Two women kill samurais and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.

Directed by Kaneto Shindô. Starring Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satô, and Jûkichi Uno.

This is a very slow build up to a nicely creepy ending twenty minutes or so, and I'm not sure the payoff was quite worth it for me. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, and conceptually it doesn't really kick off until at least halfway through, if not more. It does have a very atmospheric score, which I very much appreciated, creating a very uneasy tone even when nothing much is actually happening. It does look like there's a fair amount of social and political commentary happening throughout this that I just don't have the context to fully appreciate, aside from general anti-war sentiments. I wish the whole thing was condensed down to a 20- or 30-minute short, but as is I found my attention wandering frequently during most of the movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Onibaba < Pitch Perfect 2

Onibaba > As Good As It Gets

Onibaba > Spinning Into Butter

Onibaba < The Deer Hunter

Onibaba > Iron Eagle

Onibaba > My Sassy Girl

Onibaba < The Browning Version (1994)

Onibaba > Wedding Crashers

Onibaba < Frosty the Snowman

Onibaba < Deep Red

Onibaba > Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Final spot: #1862 out of 3248, or 43%.

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

IMDb plot summary: A satire set in the contemporary art world scene of Los Angeles, where big money artists and mega-collectors pay a high price when art collides with commerce.

Directed by Dan Gilroy. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Zawe Ashton, and Tom Sturridge.

This is a strange, sterile movie where every character has three layers of cool detachment, and that makes these paintings that murder people feel like the *most* alive things in the movie. The horror itself spirals a little too quickly for my taste, but there are some really great pieces, including a very dramatically satisfying death in the movie's final moments. And more than that, I very much enjoyed observing this world and the ins and outs and the drama between competing galleries trying to lure artists to them and the art critic constantly being solicited to write favorable or unfavorable reviews... It's a great setting for the story. It's not perfect by far, but you can see the seeds of something great hiding in here, and it's definitely one of the more unique movies I've seen this month.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Velvet Buzzsaw > Broken Embraces

Velvet Buzzsaw < My Name Is Joe

Velvet Buzzsaw < Kill Bill Vol. 1

Velvet Buzzsaw > My Favorite Year

Velvet Buzzsaw > Junebug

Velvet Buzzsaw > Isle of Dogs

Velvet Buzzsaw > 12 Years of Slave

Velvet Buzzsaw > The Parent Trap (1961)

Velvet Buzzsaw < The Terminal

Velvet Buzzsaw > Death to Smoochy

Velvet Buzzsaw > Hugo

Velvet Buzzsaw > Spanglish

Final spot: #1225 out of 3247, or 62%.

Event Horizon (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A rescue crew investigates a spaceship that disappeared into a black hole and has now returned...with someone or something new on-board.

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joely Richardson.

This is such a strange movie because, on one hand, there's a sense it wants to be Solaris, prompting big philosophical questions about guilt and the past and alternate dimensions, or Alien, a dark edge-of-your-seat survival thriller, but it also has SO MANY moments that are shot and edited and sound designed so comedically that it undercuts both the attempted thoughtfulness and the attempted dramatic tension and keeps landing in the campy B-movie circle, particularly in the final third. It's hard to tell what anyone was actually going for in the end with this, but I ultimately kind of enjoyed the goofiness of it, particularly Sam Neill's performance toward the movie's ending. It's a mess but kind of an entertaining one, you just can't take it quite as seriously as the filmmakers (maybe?) hope you will.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Event Horizon < Broken Embraces

Event Horizon > Persona

Event Horizon > Innocence Unprotected

Event Horizon < Plan 9 from Outer Space

Event Horizon > I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Event Horizon > Blow Out

Event Horizon < Camp Rock

Event Horizon < My Blueberry Nights

Event Horizon < The Sasquatch Gang

Event Horizon < Harry and the Hendersons

Event Horizon > Manhattan

Event Horizon > My Sassy Girl

Final spot: #1873 out of 3246, or 42%.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather Langenkamp play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?

Directed by Wes Craven. Starring Heather Langenkamp, Miko Hughes, David Newsom, and Wes Craven.

This is a fun departure from the series in that it's a meta movie *about* Heather Langenkamp, the actress who played the first movie's sole survivor. Wes Craven, Robert Englund, and other real-life movie people involved in the series also appear as themselves. In this version, Freddy is a real-life evil that can be contained in movies for a short time, so now they have to make another movie to contain him again. Unfortunately it's more fun as a concept than it is as an actual movie. The film is less than two hours but it drags, and it's much less clear than the first movie (the only other one I've seen in the franchise) exactly what our central character is supposed to do to defeat Freddy. Mostly the movie seems to be relying on the various sequences of creepy dream deaths to carry the movie, and one or two of those are pretty effective, but they frequently feel isolated or unconnected from the larger narrative -- like we're just waiting to fulfill our quota of creepy interactions before we can have the final showdown. It's a great idea for a sequel/reboot, but it didn't sell me on the series.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < Broken Embraces

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Persona

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > And Then There Were None

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < Plan 9 from Outer Space

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < How to Rob a Bank

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < Run Lola Run

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > The Hurt Locker

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Real Genius

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Nowhere Boy

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Final spot: #1978 out of 3245, or 39%.

Train to Busan (2016)

IMDb plot summary: While a zombie virus breaks out in South Korea, passengers struggle to survive on the train from Seoul to Busan.

Directed by Sang-ho Yeon. Starring Yoo Gong, Yu-mi Jung, Dong-seok Ma, and Su-an Kim.

Zombie movies are everywhere, but I find these zombies absolutely terrifying, coming to life with a viscerally unpleasant bone-cracking sound as their joints twist into unnatural-looking positions, and the speed and fury with which they charge at their victims only adds to that terror. It's hardly the first film to do fast zombies, but I think it does do them particularly well. The characters are also frequently intelligent, coming up with smart ways to survive long enough to get from point A to point B. The movie has a pretty powerful emotional center over all, though when it falls, it falls HARD, with a couple of almost cringeworthy sentimental moments -- for example, at one point the small child lectures her father with, "You never think of anyone but yourself. That's why Mommy left!" But these are short-lived missteps, and the film definitely regains its footing and ends on a strong note. This and other disease-themed movies certainly hit differently in 2020 than they would have 2016, and I find myself reacting more strongly to the message of camaraderie being both risky and necessary for survival. Overall, I liked this quite a lot and am glad I finally got the push to watch it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Train to Busan > Broken Embraces

Train to Busan > Chronicle

Train to Busan > Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Train to Busan < Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Train to Busan > Ernest & Celestine

Train to Busan < Babe

Train to Busan > Bicycle Thieves

Train to Busan < A Ghost Story

Train to Busan < Across the Universe

Train to Busan > Chaplin

Train to Busan > Guardians of the Galaxy

Train to Busan < Pygmalion

Final spot: #272 out of 3244, or 92%.

Re-Animator (1985)

IMDb plot summary: After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.

Directed by Stuart Gordon. Starring Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, and David Gale.

This is such a delightfully cheesy film, with all the extravagantly gory special effects functioning perfectly as both horrifying and absurd. They just get more and more outlandish as the story goes on -- the segments toward the end where a head on a tray and his lumbering severed body are the primary villains is an especially great combo of the grotesque with the hilarious. Jeffrey Combs as West turns in a very fun performance, really milking his character's obsession for all its worth. The rest of the characters are pretty bland, aside from possibly the primary antagonist, but they're just there to be audience inserts and foils for West's mad scientist plans anyway, so they fulfill their purposes. And the effects are just so much fun to watch. Definitely worth a watch if you like gory B-movies -- it does not disappoint in that realm!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Re-Animator > Letters from Iwo Jima

Re-Animator < My Name Is Joe

Re-Animator > Kill Bill Vol. 1

Re-Animator > Mary Poppins Returns

Re-Animator > Dangerous Liaisons

Re-Animator < Center Stage

Re-Animator > Auntie Mame

Re-Animator > Gone Baby Gone

Re-Animator > The Color Purple

Re-Animator > Unbreakable

Re-Animator > Wonder Boys

Final spot: #863 out of 3243, or 73%.

The Wolfman (2010)

IMDb plot summary: Upon his return to his ancestral homeland, an American man is bitten, and subsequently cursed by, a werewolf.

Directed by Joe Johnston. Starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, and Hugo Weaving.

This is pretty dumb. It's clearly going for an eerie gothic vibe but, like so many movies that try to emulate that look, it just ends up looking gloomy. And the special effects in this just... don't work. The transformations are never scary so much as just cartoonishly gross, and the final image of the werewolf, fully transformed, was never a compellingly scary look. On top of that we have some pretty bad writing -- monologuing, abrupt changes of topic, a romance that never even came close to earning its place as a dramatic plot point in the movie's climax... the list goes on and on. And on top of ALL of this... it's just boring. It's a dull, ugly-looking movie that doesn't do a thing to explore any of the interesting questions monster movies often play with. This movie has no core, no heart, no storytelling motivation propelling it forward. It feels just kind of slapped together because, "Ooh, people like werewolves." A disappointing watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Wolfman < Broken Embraces

The Wolfman < Persona

The Wolfman < Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secretes

The Wolfman > The Long Goodbye

The Wolfman > Fever Pitch (2005)

The Wolfman < Courageous

The Wolfman < Maurice

The Wolfman < Fist Fight

The Wolfman > Lockdown

The Wolfman > The Ant Bully

The Wolfman > Cemetery Man

The Wolfman < The Host (2013)

Final spot: #2927 out of 3242, or 10%.

Phantom of the Opera (1943)

IMDb plot summary: An acid-scarred composer rises from the Paris sewers to boost his favorite opera understudy's career.

Directed by Arthur Lubin. Starring Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Claude Rains, and Edgar Barrier.

This is an interesting take on the character, in that he seems just like a regular quote-unquote "loser" who happens to be hiding out in the Opera House. He doesn't have money or intelligence or remarkable musical prowess or possible supernatural abilities -- he just managed to steal a master key and a prop mask and can now get in anywhere. And after that descent, he's barely in it, and the story switches to being... well, maybe about Christine, maybe about the police trying to solve the murders, but none of them really seem to be the film's central character either. I would maybe argue that this film's protagonist is... opera itself. We get 5-6 FULL LENGTH opera numbers -- it's got to be about a third of the film's runtime. The tone of the film overall is kind of messy and weird, but it does preserve some of the horror of the character and I guess if you're in the mood to listen to opera for half an hour, here it is.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Phantom of the Opera < Broken Embraces

Phantom of the Opera > Persona

Phantom of the Opera < And Then There Were None

Phantom of the Opera < Thoughtcrimes

Phantom of the Opera > Harold and Maude

Phantom of the Opera < In the Heat of the Night

Phantom of the Opera > Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Phantom of the Opera > Ulysses

Phantom of the Opera > The Third Man

Phantom of the Opera < Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Phantom of the Opera < Apocalypse Now

Phantom of the Opera > Don't Look Now

Final spot: #2283 out of 3241, or 30%.

Hush (2016)

IMDb plot summary: A deaf and mute writer who retreated into the woods to live a solitary life must fight for her life in silence when a masked killer appears at her window.

Directed by Mike Flanagan. Starring Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, and Samantha Sloyan.

I am on a ROLL with my October horror movies, because this is another extremely solid one. It draws obvious comparisons to Wait Until Dark, another movie about a woman with a disability being stalked in her home. This one is even more narrowly focused, as it all happens over the course of a single evening, with only one notable time jump. It does a stellar job of placing us inside our protagonist as she explores every option she has, from trying to reason with her stalker to finding her murdered friend's phone to distracting him with a flare and then running... and as her options narrow, we feel her claustrophobia and panic. And it's so easy to get sucked into that along with her -- at one moment when she had a small victory I audibly yelped in excitement. For the most part, she makes smart choices the audience can ride along with (though I'll never understand why she didn't throw something heavy at his head while she was on the roof!). And those early scenes when he discovers she is deaf and toys with her while she has no idea he's there is one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen on screen. Definitely worth a watch!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Hush > Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmelites

Hush > Dust

Hush > Death at a Funeral

Hush < Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Hush < Ernest & Celestine

Hush < (500) Days of Summer

Hush > Fences

Hush < Footloose (1984)

Hush < Romancing the Stone

Hush > The Kid (2000)

Hush < The Parent Trap (1998)

Final spot: #375 out of 3240, or 88%.

The Orphanage (2007)

IMDb plot summary: A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, which used to be an orphanage. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.

Directed by J.A. Bayona. Starring Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep, and Mabel Rivera.

This was produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and I get BIG Del Toro vibes from it, coming in strong with both the scares and the emotionally powerful ending. On the surface it's a pretty standard story, but the scary moments are low on jump scares and heavy on ominous atmosphere, and it's all structured impeccably - at one point I turned to my husband and said, "I don't think I can watch this part, it's too creepy!" But the overarching narrative of the orphanage's history and how our protagonist fits into it is what hit me hardest - I was in tears by the end of the movie, and it's been a little while since a movie hit me quite that hard emotionally. It reminded me a bit of both The Innocents and The Conjuring, two other horrors from this October, but this is scarier and more powerful than either of them. If you liked Pan's Labyrinth or The Devil's Backbone, this film is a great next choice.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Orphanage > After the Wedding

The Orphanage > Chronicle

The Orphanage > Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation

The Orphanage < Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The Orphanage > The Florida Project

The Orphanage > Blue Jasmine

The Orphanage > Parasite

The Orphanage > Submarine

The Orphanage < This Is Spinal Tap

The Orphanage > In the Bedroom

The Orphanage > Take the Money and Run

The Orphanage > Kes

Final spot: #209 out of 3239, or 94%.

The Keep (1983)

IMDb plot summary: Nazis are forced to turn to a Jewish historian for help in battling the ancient demon they have inadvertently freed from its prison.

Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Scott Glenn, Alberta Watson, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, and Ian McKellen.

The plot is just barely clinging together here -- apparently director Michael Mann dran into a LOT of shooting difficulties, and then his visual effects supervisor died two weeks into post-production, and THEN he had to cut down his 210-minute movie to two hours, which the studio then cut down to 90 minutes, and you can see the many, many holes that resulted. That being said... it's undeniably atmospheric. You can almost lean into the barebones plot as missing pieces not because it'd been brutally chopped up but because it's an unearthly tale that we'll never fully understand. The editing makes it almost impossible to tell where rooms in the keep are relative to each other, and while on one hand that's an obvious editing error, on the other it definitely builds the unease and tension, much more than the incessant smoke. Apparently the film has a small cult following, and I totally get why. It's kind of captivating in all its messiness.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Keep > After the Wedding

The Keep < Chronicle

The Keep < American Outlaws

The Keep < Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997)

The Keep < Killing Season

The Keep < Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The Keep > Absolute Power

The Keep > Mudbound

The Keep < Hustle & Flow

The Keep > Frank

The Keep > Dark and Stormy Night

The Keep < Monsters

Final spot: #1576 out of 3238, or 51%.

Life After Beth (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A young man's recently deceased girlfriend mysteriously returns from the dead, but he slowly realizes she is not the way he remembered her.

Directed by Jeff Baena. Starring Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, and Molly Shannon.

I had so much fun with this movie. I laughed out loud a lot, especially as the story spiraled beyond the initial two. I also like how the relationship between the two was in crisis even before she died -- the reason it's not working now isn't even necessarily because she's undead now, but because their relationship NEVER worked long-term, that's just exacerbated now. There are a lot of great side characters here, from the protagonist's gun-obsessed older brother to an exceptionally awkward Anna Kendrick to Beth's mom who just keeps taking pictures to commemorate her resurrection. It's a clever and entertaining entry in a very oversaturated genre and was a lot of fun to watch. Definitely recommend!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Life After Beth > The Firemen's Ball

Life After Beth > Whip It

Life After Beth < Leap of Faith

Life After Beth > The Martian

Life After Beth > American History X

Life After Beth > Silver Linings Playbook

Life After Beth < Anatomy of a Murder

Life After Beth < High School Musical

Life After Beth > Spotlight

Life After Beth > 56 Up

Life After Beth > Breaking Away

Life After Beth > The Karate Kid

Final spot: #442 out of 3237, or 86%.

Critters (1986)

IMDb plot summary: A group of small but vicious alien creatures called Crites escape from an alien prison transport vessel and land near a small farm town on earth, pursued by two shape-shifting bounty hunters.

Directed by Stephen Herek. Starring Dee Wallace, M. Emmet Walsh, Billy Green Bush, and Scott Grimes.

This is definitely more comedy than horror, though something about those creatures rolling along after their prey like tiny tumbleweeds IS pretty creepy. I definitely laughed a lot more than I expected to -- while it's not usually laugh-out-loud funny, there was just a consistently lighthearted tone to this that worked for me pretty much throughout, and I kept finding individual moments amusing. It isn't afraid to lean into absurdity, especially when it comes to the scenes with the bounty hunters. It's obvious how low budget this is and how much they're trying to hide that -- the little we do see of the creature design is pretty disappointing. This is one of those movies that might actually benefit from a remake -- I'd love to see these creatures turned into something more ominous now that that tech is more widely available! And it wouldn't hurt them to add in some stronger character development while they're at it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Critters > The Firemen's Ball

Critters < The Black Cat

Critters < The Imposter

Critters < The Bishop's Wife

Critters > Wide Awake

Critters > Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Critters > EDtv

Critters > The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Critters < Bridge of Spies

Critters > Black Snake Moan

Critters < Pather Panchali

Final spot: #1424 out of 3236, or 56%.

Deep Red (1975)

IMDb plot summary: A jazz pianist and a wisecracking journalist are pulled into a complex web of mystery after the former witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic.

Directed by Dario Argento. Starring David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, and Macha Méril.

I've only seen one other Argento film, Suspiria, but the hallmarks of his filmmaking are distinctive enough that they're easily recognizable here -- bold colors, over-the-top violence and gore, a dramatic score. There's a fascinating musical choice made every time we see another murder happen, where it flips from an ominous score to a much higher energy, much more exciting one. That scoring decision along with the fact that we see the murders committed from the killer's point of view, thus obscuring their identity, puts us unsettlingly in this unknown murderer's shoes and sets up these dramatically violent moments as a sort of adrenaline rush. Giallo is a horror subgenre I don't instantly connect with, but by the end of this one I'd mostly come around on it -- it helped that the story was concrete enough that the stylistic choices felt like an enhancement rather than a distraction. I don't know that I'll revisit this one any time soon, but I'm glad I got to see it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Deep Red < Downfall

Deep Red > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Deep Red > Wild

Deep Red < Runaway Bride

Deep Red > Choke

Deep Red > In & Out

Deep Red > First Blood

Deep Red < Interstate 60

Deep Red < Frosty the Snowman

Deep Red < King Kong (2005)

Deep Red > The Love Witch

Deep Red > Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Final spot: #1842 out of 3235, or 43%.

Kill List (2011)

IMDb plot summary: Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.

Directed by Ben Wheatley. Starring Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson, and Michael Smiley.

This is a film that plays on creepy atmosphere more than anything -- it reminds me a bit of Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, which I watched recently and found frustrating in its being ALMOST a straightforward narrative and then, abruptly, very much not. The creepy atmosphere here does have some effective moments. There's one brief scene involving the use of a drumbeat that completely paralyzed me fear, which was the first movie this month to do that and was kind of a delicious cathartic moment. But I think the movie is relying on more moments like that, of its ending images evoking pure terror to the point where I am affected rather than distracted by trying to figure out what's actually happening at this point in the story. Kill List made a lot of my friends' best-of-2011 lists, so I had high hopes for it going in, but aside from one very effective moment, it left me cold.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Kill List < The Firemen's Ball

Kill List > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Kill List < Four Weddings and a Funeral

Kill List < Biloxi Blues

Kill List > Where to Invade Next

Kill List > The Day of the Triffids

Kill List < The Pajama Game

Kill List > Martian Child

Kill List > Last of the Red Hot Lovers

Kill List > Ocean's Twelve

Kill List > Scotland, PA

Kill List > Lust for Love

Final spot: #2249 out of 3234, or 30%.

Cam (2018)

IMDb plot summary: Alice, an ambitious camgirl, wakes up one day to discover she's been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself.

Directed by Daniel Goldhaber. Starring Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters, and Devin Druid.

Cam is a 2018 Netflix movie about Alice, a camgirl who performs under the pseudonym "Lola." One day, she discovers some other person who looks exactly like her has stolen her account and is doing shows pretending to be her, and no one believes it isn't her. It's a weird creepy story that may very well have some logical loopholes, but ultimately I didn't care because this is one of the most engaging movies I've seen in a long time. I attribute that to a combination of the writing and the acting. Screenwriter Isa Mazzei did work as a camgirl -- the scene where Alice goes to the police for help only to have them ask her with a sleazy grin, "So what's the weirdest thing you ever did on camera?" is apparently taken pretty directly from Mazzei's experience. It's a world I know very little about, but I can *feel* the authenticity in the writing. And Madeline Brewer as Alice is tremendously compelling -- a smart, independent woman who feels like her whole life is inexplicably unraveling. The ending is, again, perhaps logically confusing, but for once I didn't care because it was riveting to watch. Definitely a gem of a horror flick -- check it out!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Cam > Downfall

Cam > Queen of Katwe

Cam < Leap of Faith

Cam > The Muppets

Cam > Cloud Atlas

Cam > Walking and Talking

Cam > Grease

Cam < Castle in the Sky

Cam > Chariots of Fire

Cam < Secretary

Cam < The Legend of 1900

Cam > Network

Final spot: #421 out of 3233, or 87%.

Christine (1983)

IMDb plot summary: A nerdish boy buys a strange car with an evil mind of its own and his nature starts to change to reflect it.

Directed by John Carpenter. Starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, and Robert Prosky. 

John Carpenter directs this adaptation, and it's a pretty good fit. While on the surface "murder car" sounds like a fun silly horror movie premise, where the film really gets scare mileage is in the character development of Arnie, Christine's owner. One minute he's the mild-mannered nerd constantly getting beaten up, the next he is ALL ABOUT letting his car take lethal revenge on his enemies and cracking jokes about it afterward. His mutual friends are worried the car is the cause of this -- one even says at one point, "I don't think he's Arnie anymore" -- but we never see this change, and I find it JUST as likely that all this rage has been simmering below the surface, and as soon as he got enough power to make his revenge fantasy come true, he was happy to take it. That hits close to home in a way "murder car" never could, and this adaptation definitely helps to bring that deeper, truer fear to the front in really interesting ways.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Christine > Downfall

Christine < National Lampoon's Vacation

Christine < A Goofy Movie

Christine < The Fall (2006)

Christine < Madame Blueberry

Christine < Hustle & Flow

Christine < The Beach

Christine > Wreck-It Ralph

Christine > Spider-Man: Homecoming

Christine < High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Christine > It Comes at Night

Final spot: #1594 out of 3232, or 51%.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

IMDb plot summary: When the brilliant but unorthodox scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein rejects the artificial man that he has created, the Creature escapes and later swears revenge.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Robert De Niro, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hulce, and Helena Bonham Carter.

I really love Kenneth Branagh as a film director because he turns every film, no matter the original genre, into a grandiose Greek tragedy and I love it. There is noooooo subltety in this film, which apparently really angered the screenwriter, but I found it captivating, especially as someone already very familiar with the original story. Characters scream and collapse and shake their fists at the heavens and RIP OUT OTHER CHARACTERS' HEARTS and SET THEMSELVES ON FIRE, and I love every minute of it. I really have to lean away from realism and into the aesthetic of a Branagh film to get the most out of it, but when I do, oh goodness is it a reward. This film is most definitely NOT for everybody, but it is very much for somebody, and that somebody is me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Queen of Katwe

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < Leap of Faith

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < The Muppets

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Blackbeard's Ghost

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Hidden Figures

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > The Fault in Our Stars

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Kwaidan

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Final spot: #710 out of 3231, or 78%.

Cemetery Man (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A cemetery man must kill the dead a second time when they become zombies.

Directed by Michele Soavi. Starring Rupert Everett, François Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi, and Mickey Knox.

This is a weird, surreal film with these little touches of bizarre black comedy, and I just did NOT grasp how this all came together or what the meaning of it was supposed to be. At first it comes across as just a quirky horror comedy, but it gets more and more surreal as it goes on -- at one point I wondered if maybe it was all in his mind or if it was trying to make some big symbolic point about life and death, and the ending did NOT help solidify that one way or the other for me. It's also a very *gross* movie, and I don't mean gore, I mean people are just always drooling and puking and that stuff gets to me more than basically anything else I can think of. I don't think I got anything out of this -- it's just bizarre and creepy and icky for no reason. Can't recommend this one.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Cemetery Man < Downfall

Cemetery Man < The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Cemetery Man < Monkey Business (1931)

Cemetery Man > A Cinderella Story

Cemetery Man > Live a Little, Love a Little

Cemetery Man < The Good Doctor

Cemetery Man < Bang the Drum Slowly

Cemetery Man > Roger Dodger

Cemetery Man < Fist Fight

Cemetery Man > The Ant Bully

Cemetery Man < The Host (2013)

Final spot: #2911 out of 3230, or 10%.

Dark and Stormy Night (2009)

IMDb plot summary: In the 1930s the family of old Sinas Cavinder, gathered for the reading of his will, find themselves being murdered by a mysterious phantom while two rival reporters compete for the story.

Directed by Larry Blamire. Starring Jennifer Blaire, Daniel Roebuck, Brian Howe, and Fay Masterson.

This is a parody of 1930s horror films, written and directed by Larry Blamire, whose 2003 B-movie parody The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is in my top 50 films of all time. This one doesn't land quite as well for me, though it features many of the same actors and follows the same path of just stuffing the movie chock-full of styles and tropes to poke fun at. We've got an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, a pair of witty fast-talking screwball comedy reporters, the frightened and/or ominous servants populating every gothic horror story... a little bit of everything. That does mean it moves along quickly enough that if a joke doesn't land, just wait a second and maybe the next one will. While I could see this one ultimately growing on me as a quotable delight much the same way Cadavra did, the first viewing produced mostly mild chuckles. The biggest laughs came from tiny throwaway lines, so I'm sure there are other gems to be found, but it's a little underwhelming.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Dark and Stormy Night > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Dark and Stormy Night < Queen of Katwe

Dark and Stormy Night < A Goofy Movie

Dark and Stormy Night < The Fall

Dark and Stormy Night < VeggieTales: Madame Blueberry

Dark and Stormy Night < Hustle & Flow

Dark and Stormy Night > One, Two, Three

Dark and Stormy Night > Nine Queens

Dark and Stormy Night > Mudbound

Dark and Stormy Night > The Misfits

Dark and Stormy Night > Frank

Dark and Stormy Night < Monsters

Final spot: #1566 out of 3229, or 52%.

The Conjuring (2013)

IMDb plot summary: Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse.

Directed by James Wan. Starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lil Taylor, and Ron Livingston.

It's probably worth pointing out that despite being religious and believing in the supernatural myself, demon possession movies typically don't do much for me. They don't really tap into any of my deep-seated fears. I do startle easily, so I definitely react to jump scares or "there's definitely going to be somebody standing behind her when she looks in the mirror," but it doesn't fill me with dread. I found the scares in this one fairly by-the-book, and the characters of the Warrens to take themselves *so* seriously that I couldn't. (I laughed out loud when, apparently at the *end* of a "how to hunt demons" lecture they give, someone asks them what their job title is. Surely that would have been shared at the beginning, but I guess they couldn't come up with a way to make it make sense AND have exposition.) If this is a subgenre of horror you find compelling, this is probably a worth addition. But it's not the one to draw in genre skeptics.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Conjuring < Downfall

The Conjuring > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

The Conjuring < Four Weddings and a Funeral

The Conjuring > My Six Loves

The Conjuring > Millions

The Conjuring < The Inspector General

The Conjuring > It's Complicated

The Conjuring < Paint Your Wagon

The Conjuring > The Ides of March

The Conjuring < Nine (2009)

The Conjuring > Burning Annie

Final spot: #2083 out of 3228, or 35%.

The Innocents (1961)

IMDb plot summary: A young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted.

Directed by Jack Clayton. Starring Deborah Kerr, Peter Wyngarde, Megs Jenkins, and Michael Redgrave.

This is apparently based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw, which I knew absolutely nothing about going into this -- had no idea it had ghosts in it at all. Apparently it's fairly ambiguous whether the ghosts exist or are manifestations of the protagonist's sexual repression, and various adaptations tend to lean to one side or the other. This one plays a little bit with both possibilities, but from the beginning, it becomes clear that this woman is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of a haunting. She pulls her confident solutions out of thin air, and a speech she gives in the latter half of the film about being determined to help people even if it hurts them it gave me chills. The plot of the movie, especially when she learns how the haunting affects the other occupants of the house, is very unsettling, possibly made even more so by 1960s restrictions on how explicitly adult themes could be discussed, which means that it becomes unclear what has and has not happened and creates an atmosphere rife with paranoia. The more I sit with this movie, the more I like it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Innocents > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The Innocents > Queen of Katwe

The Innocents > Revengers Tragedy

The Innocents < Jerry Maguire

The Innocents < Ernest & Celestine

The Innocents < Inglourious Basterds

The Innocents < The Edge of Seventeen

The Innocents > The Bride Wore Black

The Innocents < Shutter Island

The Innocents < Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Innocents > Her

The Innocents < The Devil's Backbone

Final spot: #388 out of 3227, or 88%.

The Black Cat (1934)

IMDb plot summary: American honeymooners in Hungary become trapped in the home of a Satan-worshiping priest when the bride is taken there for medical help following a road accident.

Directed by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, and Julie Bishop.

I'm going to do it, I'm going to only watch horror movies this October. Not necessarily one every day, but everything I do watch will be a horror movie. Let's start with The Black Cat, a 1934 film starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, two actors synonymous with classic horror, only a couple years after their most famous monster roles. The nature of the enmity between the two leads is explained just enough to pique our interest, and watching them battle for both their revenge and the lives and souls of the innocent bystanders is a lot of fun. The film plays a bit with whether or not one of them is a hero or whether both are as villainous as they immediately seem. The plot reveals that do happen are pretty campy and melodramatic, and large eerie pieces are just left unexplained, but this is about atmosphere more than anything, and the film has that in spades. I would have liked maybe a little bit more back story and a stronger connection to the black cat of the title, but it's still very enjoyable.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Black Cat > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The Black Cat > Barton Fink

The Black Cat < Leap of Faith

The Black Cat < Super 8

The Black Cat < Taxi Driver

The Black Cat < Sherlock Jr.

The Black Cat < Fruitvale Station

The Black Cat < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Black Cat < Jack Goes Boating

The Black Cat < Chronicle

The Black Cat > Robot and Frank

The Black Cat > Whip It

Final spot: #803 out of 3226, or 75%.

Village of the Damned (1960)

IMDb plot summary: In the English village of Midwich, the blonde-haired, glowing-eyed children of uncertain paternity prove to have frightening powers.

Directed by Wolf Rilla. Starring George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gwynn, and Laurence Naismith.

This movie has one of the creepiest opening scenes I've ever seen on film, and the rest doesn't quite live up to those expectations, but it's still solid. It's very short at just 75 minutes long and ends up functioning even better as a series of unsettling, unexplained encounters than it does as one long narrative. I had to do some googling to find out if the main child had been dubbed by an adult woman as it sounds, but, no, that was the child dubbing in his own voice, it just sounds so unnatural it brings out the horror atmosphere in full force. The central character struck a realistic balance for me between being eager to study these new creatures and being cautious of them, especially as he begins to see how they intend to use their powers. I knew very little about this movie before watching it, but it's definitely an underrated gem. If you like your horror light on gore and heavy on eerie atmosphere, definitely give this one a watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Village of the Damned > The Dinner Guest

Village of the Damned > Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

Village of the Damned > Revengers Tragedy

Village of the Damned < Jerry Maguire

Village of the Damned < Ernest & Celestine

Village of the Damned < Inglourious Basterds

Village of the Damned < The Edge of Seventeen

Village of the Damned < The Bride Wore Black

Village of the Damned < Best In Show

Village of the Damned > Marriage Story

Village of the Damned > The Ring

Village of the Damned < Knives Out

Final spot: #398 out of 3225, or 88%.