Smile

I’m a fan of slasher flicks! I love the Scream franchise the most. Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween are all classic slasher franchises, though because there’s so many there’s some real terrible movies in there (Jason X…omg). But the crummy camp is part of the charm.

Creepshow (1982), best horror movie ever

Smile. Seems cheesy, I know, but it’s actually real good. The plot is that someone is trying to stop a curse that cause people to kill themselves, but the thing is, it’s like a virus, so when someone sees the infected person kill themselves, they become infected and do the same.

I occasionally do Halloween film marathons in October (haven’t gotten around to it this year, unfortunately), but if you want some good recommendations, check out the archives of my review blog.

If you’re on mobile, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “View web version.” On the right is a Blog Archive category with dates. Expand each year and click on October. You’ll see a list of all my scary movie reviews.

Be aware, some reviews have spoilers. I’m pretty good about mentioning it in advance in the review, but you can check at the end of the review, in the Labels section. If it says spoiler, avoid that review unless you want that film spoiled for you.

Hmm… maybe I should make a Halloween movie marathon label so people can quickly browse scary movie reviews. I’ll work on that later today.

Autopsy of Jane Doe was very memorable.

As Above, So Below.

Basically: trying to find the philosopher’s stone inside the Paris catacombs: hijinks ensues.

The Thing from 1982 and Annihilation are two of my favourites. The Thing is just well shot and interesting and Annihilation has some gorgeous surreal visuals.

not too scary but thought id drop a recommendation for dellamorte dellamore

If you haven’t seen any of the classic late 60s/early 70s horror movies, they are worth checking out. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, 'The Exorcist, ‘Don’t Look Now’, or ‘The Omen’ are all fantastic.

A less popular one that was surprisingly awesome was His House. Its a Netflix movie but you should be able to find it a few other places as well (🏴‍☠️). I really liked it. Unique, creepy, and pretty well made. Definitely recommend.

Here are a few worth watching in no particular order or selection

Talk to me

Shrews nest

Bones and all

Butter on the latch

Sound of Violence

The Bay

The Ritual

Van Diemens Land

A lot of contemporary horror is psychological, sometimes with one or two gory/violent/jump scare scenes. If you like that, watch recent ones like Talk to Me, Relic or the Babadook (all Aussie incidentally).

Hereditary is probably the best horror of the past decade, and before that, my 21st century favourite was Kill List. But there were so many more excellent horrors, slashers, psychological thrillers, and ghostly dramas last century.

Night of the Living Dead invented the zombie genre and is still probably my favourite movie of all time. Dawn of the Dead skewers consumerism and is similar but in lurid colour. The slasher craze of the 80s started with Halloween in '79 and continued with Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and the many sequels from those franchises.

Other good ones in no particular order: High Tension aka Switchblade Romance, Dead Snow, Eden Lake, It Follows, Green Room, Hush, The Strangers, Martyrs, and if you’re really looking to punish yourself AND read subtitles, check out the works of Gaspar Noe, especially Irreversible. Deeply disturbing. Enjoy!

A little older, but Braindead (aka Dead/Alive) is a really great early 1990’s horror. It is one of Peter Jackson’s earlier films. It is a really good body horror that has a good sense of humor.

You can stream the whole movie on YouTube.