Bonus Movie A: SEX AND THE CITY 2
Girls, if you really want to scare you husband or boyfriend, whip this movie out on Halloween. He’ll turn into a blubbering mess faster than you can say Manolos.
Manolos, that’s like a candy they eat in the movie, right?
Bonus Movie B: THE EXPENDABLES
Fellas, see above. You can turn the tables.
5. LET ME IN and/or LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Either way, you can’t go wrong. The original Swedish version and its American remake each offer suspense and remarkable sweetness hand in hand. If you’re like me and don’t want to put up with subtitles on Halloween because of an abundance of pumpkin schnapps in my/your system, you’ll want to go with the American version, directed by CLOVERFIELD’s Matt Reeves. Kodi Smit-McPhee stars as a lonely kid picked on by bullies. Chloe Grace Moretz is the vampire that moves in next door and teaches him to fight back. They build an unlikely friendship even as Moretz viciously murders various townspeople. Disaster builds upon disaster, and watching children deal with very adult themes like violence and loss makes the film resonate. The best scene involves a twist on the old idea that vampires can’t be let in unless invited. The results if a vampire tries to get around this rule are quite gruesome.
4. INSIDIOUS
This one came out of nowhere this last year, and what a film it is. Starting off like a typical haunted house film, we get everything we’ve come to expect from the genre: a kid with spooky visions, spectral forms hiding in plain sight, adults who refuse to believe the obvious.
But then something strange happens: the movie acknowledges what the audience is thinking and the characters do the smart things we always wish they would. The adults do believe. They move away from the haunted house. They think what we think, which makes it that much more horrifying when it doesn’t matter. The spirits follow them to the new house, and that’s where the really scary stuff begins. Visions and attacks escalate until we take a trip into a nightmare world ruled over by a hideous beast. Like many other entries on this list, the ending will leave drop your jaw faster than a stack of pancakes.
3. THE STRANGERS
He's Right Behind You!
That one moment. You know the one I’m talking about, where Liv Tyler is just standing in her kitchen, minding her own business, when a dude with a bag on his head just skulks right in like he owns the joint, watching her from afar. And just like that, he disappears again.
Turn Around!
This is the movie that made a generation of people check every room in their house when they get home at night. If you haven’t seen it, this should be at the top of your Halloween list. It’s a fairly typical story of intruders preying on victims trapped in a house, but the way they do it will make your skin crawl. Every time the film teases us with some little solace, it tears that safety net away from us and unleashes a new terror. What makes things worse is the random nature of the incident depicted. There’s no answers, no revelations, no final bad guy monologue. The killers killed simply because the main characters were home and they could. Chilling.
Your problems would be resolved instantly if you people just turned your freaking heads
2. MONSTERS
I was going to put CLOVERFIELD on this list, but the film is divisive and Matt Reeves is already on here for LET ME IN. Instead, you should direct your attention to a little-seen movie called MONSTERS. If you thought that CLOVERFIELD didn’t show enough of its giant monster, then MONSTERS isn’t the film for you. However, if you can get past the fact that the giant beasts that give the movie its title are rarely seen, you can sit back and enjoy a wonderful character piece set against an apocalyptic backdrop. The film takes place in a world where giant tentacled aliens have fallen to Earth somewhere in Mexico, turning large swaths of the country into a quarantine zone. A photographer must venture into that quarantine zone to rescue a damsel in distress. With dialogue largely improvised by leads Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, the characters’ relationship takes center stage, making the giant aliens almost beside the point. Just when you think they’ve forgotten that it’s a monster movie, though, an alien rears its tentacles and wreaks havoc. It all culminates in a beautiful, poetic finale at a gas station that might just cause you to shed a tear. This one’s for the sensitive horror lover in all of us. Ha, sensitive whore lover.
1. THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN
MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN opened in non-descript dollar theaters across the country instead of the wide cineplex release it deserved. Not nearly as many people saw it as should have, which is a shame. Based on a short story by Clive Barker, the film stars a pre-HANGOVER Bradley Cooper before he got his career-altering shaggy hairstyle (Seriously, long hair saved that dude’s A). As a New York city photographer, Cooper takes to long strolls in the middle of the night, using his camera to capture the seediest parts of the city. His jaunts take him into decrepit subway stations, where a menacing yet classy Vinnie Jones uses a metal hammer to bludgeon unsuspecting victims to death.
MEAT TRAIN plays out like a cat and mouse game between the photographer and the killer, but as the movie progresses, Cooper’s character becomes increasingly deranged and Jones’s motives are seen in a different light. By the knock-down, drag-out conclusion, we’re delivered a twist of an ending that is both out of the blue yet makes perfect sense given what we’ve just witnessed. To spoil the ending here would do the movie a disservice, so track down MEAT TRAIN and all these other gems ASAP to sate your Halloween blood lust.
Now stop..........Hammer time!
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