All the Colors of the Dark (1972)

I don’t get Giallo. That’s basically it. I assume I just haven’t seen the right Giallo film, and once I do it’ll all click into place. In the meantime, here we are. A woman has nightmares, joins a satanic cult about it, and spends the rest of the movie not sure if the things happening are real or dreams. It’s supposed to be tense and stressful, but it winds up being kind-of inexplicable? Basically: meh.

Baskin (2015)

This movie makes good use of squelchy sounds, which I didn't fully appreciate until watching it with proper headphones. At one point, about a third of the way into the movie, I noticed a layer of low shlorping noises under the regular audio, and I was impressed at the subtle, almost subliminal sound design and how effective it was at making the scene even more unsettling. Then I looked over and saw that my cat was sitting next to me cleaning herself. So.
Also, not to be a homosexual on main or anything but Ergun Kuyucu is a straight-up babe and I love his cute lil' sweater.

Cat People (1942)

Was Tom Conway a babe, or do I just love his speaking voice and his cunty little moustache? Either way, this was a surprisingly fun movie. I don’t know that it would pass as horror these days, but I had a good time with it regardless!

Churuli (2021)

I feel like I could be in the jungle, or I could be in flip-flops, but not both. Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie. I don't know what, uh, happened for a bit there, but it was captivating and stressful and weird and I dug it. This is not a particularly eloquent review, but here we are.

Color Out of Space (2019)

Oh man, this movie really bugged me. It could have been so, so good. Instead, it’s just fine. It feels super bold to make a movie so clearly inspired by The Thing, but then use frankly excessive CG to slap it together. TO BE CLEAR, I’m not complaining about CG as a whole. I think that it’s a useful tool, particularly when you need to make a fantastical aesthetic like in this movie. But there were moments in this movie that begged for a puppet or makeup that wound up using egregious CG instead, and that was disappointing. And whether this is fair or not, the closer a movie is to being really good, the more annoyed I am about the things it screws up. So here we are.

Spoilers

Okay so the mom and the son are fused, and it’s gross. The daughter says something to the effect of "it’s like she’s trying to re-absorb him." Later, the dad goes to feed the daughter to the momster who… seemingly intends to just eat her with her humanesque mouth in a mostly-normal way? "Feeding" the blob should have meant the gross goey mom trying to absorb her daughter, it was set up, come ON.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Me, every time Stephen is on screen: ugh, THIS fuckin' guy.
Anyway, I don't know what to say about this movie, besides that It's great, I love how human it is, and I should have watched it sooner. To hell with whatever movies are on about these days, give me dudes in makeup flinging themselves to the ground alongside the truck they're pretending to have been hit by, any day. Any damn day.
This was my #1 ranked movie out of all of Hooptober, as an aside.

Death Becomes Her (1992)

What a camp masterpiece, oh my goodness. Three proper acting powerhouses just hamming it up all over the place. Incredibly timed comedy, frankly impressive special effects, this movie is incredible.

Diabolique (Les Diaboliques, 1955)

All I can say about this movie is that it was my 2nd fave of all of Hooptober. I was captivated, y’all. Go watch it. Here’s the plot summary form Letterboxd:
The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo – his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle’s corpse mysteriously disappears.

film (year)

review

The Forbidden Door (2009)

[Stefon voice] This movie has *everything*: statues of nude pregnant women, weirdly intact aborted fetuses, secret hidden cameras, scenery-chewing child abuse, attempted marital rape, emotional manipulation, overbearing mothers, cheating scandals, Christmas dinner, Russian roulette, secret doors, disappearing padlocks, visibly-breathing murder victims, mental institutions, and a priest breaking the forth wall.

Freaks (1932)

I've been putting off watching this one because I assumed it would be a real bummer, as my closest frame of reference was the Freak Show season of American Horror Story*, but I wound up pleasantly surprised by both the progressive approach to the story and the impressive "after" shot of [spoiler redacted].
*Yet another of the many crimes Ryan Murphy needs to answer for.

Ghostland (2018)

In 2008 Pascal Laugier directed Martyrs, a movie so intense and punishing that it’s widely regarded as an excellent movie that you can’t show to anyone.
Then ten years later he crapped out this piece of uninspired, trite, lazy garbage. Like Martyrs, it is beautifully composed and competently shot. Unlike Martyrs, the antagonists are such overdone cliché tropey horror villains that it undoes anything good the movie had going for it. Literally don’t waste your time.

House (1977)

I mean, I knew I was going to love this movie; that was kind-of a given. And I was right! I loved pretty much everything about it. I loved the frantic editing, the absolutely bonkers soundtrack (and sound effects), the collage-like nature of the sets and visual effects, etc. Truly unhinged (affectionate). Art is cool.

Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)

I’m on the fence with this one.
Pros: the scares in the first 2/3 of the movie were surprisingly effective; having a movie about a pregnant person address the issue of "my needs (including the need to feel desired and desirable by my partner) are being put second to the person I’m growing" is significant.
Cons: The climax is too weak to match the build-up. There’s another bigger con, but it’s also a spoiler, so that’ll be below.

Spoilers:
I kind-of hate the message by the end. Early on, she seems to be excited for the baby, it appears to be a wanted pregnancy. And then, over the course of the story, she repeatedly is expected to give up her passions and her agency for the baby, while her family mocks her and says she could never be a mother, and by the end of the movie, she gives up the baby so she can go be a punk and follow her passions or whatever. And sure, good for her, whatever, but it also means that the narrative proves them all right? And like. Idk, there’s so much out there that supports the idea of "in order to be a mother you have to stop being a person but it’s okay you’ll love it," so seeing her tell everyone to fuck off and embrace parenting and being a complete person would have been cool, idk.

Jaws (1975)

Spoilers here!!


Somehow, despite not having watched it until 2025, I managed to get all the way to the end of Jaws not knowing that they just straight-up explode the shark. They explode the shark! Things were tense and I realized that I didn't actually know how Jaws ended, and then I was like "oh man is he gonna explode the shark?" And then he exploded the shark! The shark exploded! They exploded the shark and that's how it ends. Incredible. No notes. I mean, lots of notes, actually, but they all more-or-less add up to "shark = exploded!"

Kill List (2011)

It was good? I think? To be honest, I spent the entire movie realizing that I had definitely seen it before, but could not remember anything about what was going to happen next. Like. The whole movie. Every time I thought "okay this bit doesn't seem familiar, maybe I just didn't finish it?" the next scene would come and I'd be smacked with faint recognition all over again. Just a solid hour and a half of deja vu. Super weird. This review isn't really about the movie, but it was a heck of an experience anyway.

Kuso (2017)

Ok but… how’d an earthquake do all that?
No but actually, I was unimpressed and annoyed by Kuso. On the one hand, it is clearly transgressive art, and there are a lot of things about it that are striking and inspired. On the other hand, it has no pacing, which damages the transgressive nature of it. If you start at 100 and then keep being at 100 for ninety minutes, it gets old. It becomes repetitive and stops working. Transgressive art needs moments to breathe for the shock value to keep, y’know, shocking someone. Kuso was gross and then it was boring and then it was over.

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

I really don’t like movies that rely on internal monologue voiceover. At all.