Well, Spooktober is over, but I suppose I still owe one of these. Let’s hop right into it.

~ Halloween ~

The 1978 original. I don’t go back to this one as often as Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, so it was a nice change of pace. I was absolutely aghast that it wasn’t available on any of my usual streaming services. You’re going to make me pay to rent this genre-defining classic? Huff!

I don’t think I can say anything new or insightful about it, 40+ years later. I do appreciate that its scares are a lot more subtle than just constantly having teenagers chased and tormented by an unstoppable maniac. The scenes where Michael is just standing off in the distance, unmoving and expressionless, before vanishing a split second later are super creepy. If I saw someone just standing in my parking lot, staring up at my unit, I’d be more than a little creeped out. Probably wouldn’t leave for days after that.

It does bother me a bit, though, that Mikey is immortal. You don’t have to go in-depth on why the guy is a mute serial killer, we can blindly accept that. Especially in 2020, when we know a lot more about psychology and mental illness. But it doesn’t make any sense that he can recover from any injury. You can explain away the six or seven gunshot wounds by suggesting that he picked up a kevlar vest somewhere, but the dude got stabbed right in the neck. Characters in horror movies die from way less than that all the time. Outside of this one little detail, Halloween is very much grounded in reality, so it sticks out like a sore thumb. Oh well!

~ Pet Sematary ~

I went against my better judgment here and watched the 2019 remake, instead of the original. I’ve never actually seen the 1989 version of Pet Sematary though, so it’s not like I had any prior investment in this story.

And the story, as it goes, is about a family who moves into a sleepy backwoods town. Their cat gets hit by a truck, and a local hillbilly (played by John Lithgow) shows the father a secret place where you can bury dead things to bring them back to life. Only they come back somewhat more evil. Things escalate when the daughter also gets flattened by a truck and… Well, I think you can piece together the rest from here.

I can’t say that I really enjoyed Pet Sematary, but I was somewhat interested in the main plot line and how it would unfold. There was a secondary plot about the mom’s childhood trauma that really didn’t tie into the rest of the movie at all. Perhaps it was more meaningful in the novel (which I haven’t read), but here it was just an out-of-place distraction. The mom didn’t really have much else to do, but the writers should have been able to give the character a more relevant role.

It also made no sense that dad was able to dig up his daughter’s corpse and not be immediately besieged by a police investigation the next day. Someone would have noticed the gaping hole and empty coffin in the cemetery. It seemed to be right next to a main thoroughfare. There should have been a phone call, at least.

Uh, anyway, I wouldn’t really recommend it. I wasn’t bored or anything, but there just isn’t enough there to make it worth the watch. The characters are flat and there’s too much cruft. This didn’t need to be a two-hour movie. The premise was interesting, but not quite enough so to support a feature film, and it’s probably the most predictable movie that I’ve watched this season. John Lithgow was by far the best part, as he often is.

I know it’s like completely opposite of how you’re supposed to do this, but I find that there are very few things more satisfying than curling up on the couch with a hot cup of coffee on a chilly autumn morning and popping on a horror movie. Totally takes you out of it, but it’s so good. So relaxing. So much easier on big babies who are afraid of the dark.

The Boy

I stumbled upon this one on Netflix when I had intended to log into watch an episode or two of The Haunting of Bly Manor, and when I read the description, it just sounded too stupid not to watch! It’s about a woman who signs up for a nanny job, only to discover that her charge is actually just a doll. What a terrible premise!

But you know what? I think it actually works, to a degree. The mystery of exactly what’s going on with the doll and the house is interesting and hinted at here and there without ever giving away the big twist. Some of the plot points are obvious and clichéd, but I liked how it ended. It’s a twist I’ve seen before, but done in different ways. Also, there’s a scene where the main character tries to show her romantic interest that the doll moves on its own when nobody’s looking, and it actually happens. In almost any other movie, the doll would refuse to move, and the guy would just go on thinking that the main girl is nuts, until the point when the doll murders him. But no! Huzzah! Good on you, The Boy, for subverting at least one of my expectations!

So, praises aside, there’s one teensy-weensie problem: if you spend too much (any) time thinking about it, the big twist doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Like, it makes a certain amount of sense in and of itself, but invalidates almost everything that had happened up until that point. Character motivations become inexplicable. Prior events become illogical. I think what I’m getting at here is, watch this movie exactly once and just enjoy the ride. Don’t think about it too deeply and never watch it again, or else it’ll just completely fall apart.

Lake Mungo

Another recommendation from the Purple Stuff Podcast. The funny thing is that I was listening to an old episode from 2015, and completely forgot that I had taken that recommendation before and watched this movie in 2015. It wasn’t even until more than halfway through that something finally snapped in my head and I was like “Hey! I’ve watched this before!”

Lake Mungo is a ghost story shot as a documentary. I want to say “mockumentary” but I think that implies some manner of comedic intent. There’s nothing at all funny about this. It’s about a family whose daughter drowns on a trip to the beach, and then the escapades that ensue when her ghost starts haunting their house. Only nothing is quite as it seems! There are twists, and turns, and major revelations abound!

While the format keeps the film moving at a fairly slow pace, and makes it so that scares are very few and far between, it works really well. The atmosphere is foreboding, and the story is interesting. It also turns out to be quite sad by the end, which is not something you get from a lot of horror. Lake Mungo is unique in a lot of ways, and while it’s not the most exciting watch, I think its a legitimately good film. I’d definitely recommend this one if you’re open to something vastly different than the usual horror fare.

Considering how much I liked it, it’s more than a little surprising that I had completely forgotten that I’d seen it before!!