Slashers, Sharks, Clowns, Vampires and the Living Dead
Seven more nights of horror history, comfort movies and modern nightmares
By Rory Jackson
Week two belongs to the movies that made us love October in the first place. There are icons here, but also sharks, clowns, vampires, grief and the farmhouse where the modern zombie was born.
H Is for Halloween
There are flashier slashers and bloodier slashers, but Halloween is still the machine everyone else keeps rebuilding.
John Carpenter gives Michael Myers almost nothing human to hold onto. He is a shape at the edge of the frame, a face behind laundry and a pair of blank eyes walking toward home. Jamie Lee Curtis makes Laurie Strode worth fearing for, and Carpenter’s score does half the stalking before Michael enters the room.
Watch it with the lights off and pay attention to the backgrounds. Haddonfield is never as empty as it looks.
Horror-fix alternatives: Hereditary • Hellraiser • The Hills Have Eyes • House • Hush • Host
I Is for It
It works because the Losers Club feels like a group worth joining.
Pennywise supplies the teeth and dancing, but the children give the movie its pulse. Their jokes, cruelties, loyalties and fears make Derry feel like a place where every adult has agreed not to notice what is eating the town.
Bill Skarsgård finds his own strange rhythm rather than copying Tim Curry, and the movie embraces the scale of Stephen King’s nightmare. It is a haunted-house ride with a bruised heart hiding under the floorboards.
Horror-fix alternatives: Invasion of the Body Snatchers • The Invisible Man • Insidious • The Invitation • Inside • Incident in a Ghostland
J Is for Jaws
Jaws is the movie people forget is horror because it became too good and too famous to fit inside one box.
Steven Spielberg keeps the shark offscreen long enough for the ocean itself to become threatening. Then he gives us three men on a boat, each carrying a different idea of courage. The attacks are brutal, the town politics are maddening and Quint’s Indianapolis speech can still silence a room.
Jaws did not merely make people afraid of sharks. It made dark water feel like a mouth.
Horror-fix alternatives: Jacob’s Ladder • Ju-On: The Grudge • Jeepers Creepers • Jennifer’s Body • Joy Ride • Jigoku
K Is for Killer Klowns from Outer Space
The Chiodo Brothers pack the movie with cotton-candy cocoons, popcorn guns, balloon animals and creatures that are somehow funny until they lean too close. It is colorful comfort horror with genuine monster-movie craftsmanship underneath the joke.
If your October challenge has started feeling too serious, this is the pressure release. Invite friends, make terrible snacks and remember that sometimes cinema is a shadow puppet eating a crowd of people.
Horror-fix alternatives: The Killing of a Sacred Deer • Krampus • Kwaidan • Kairo • Kidnapped • Knocking
L Is for The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys is vampires, motorcycles, saxophones, comic books and enough hairspray to punch a hole in the ozone layer. In other words, it is damn near perfect October comfort viewing.
Joel Schumacher makes Santa Carla look like the coolest terrible place to move, while Kiefer Sutherland turns a smile into a threat. The movie balances teenage seduction with monster-movie fun and never forgets that the Frog brothers are taking all of this much more seriously than anyone else.
Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die.
Horror-fix alternatives: The Lighthouse • Let the Right One In • Lake Mungo • Last Shift • Life • Late Night with the Devil
M Is for Midsommar
Most horror movies hide in the dark. Midsommar drags grief into the sunlight and refuses to let it blink.
Ari Aster surrounds Dani with flowers, smiles and rituals that seem beautiful until the community’s logic begins closing around her. Florence Pugh carries the movie through an emotional collapse that becomes something far stranger than recovery.
The running time is patient, the images are gorgeous and the dread is practically baked into the landscape. This is not a cozy vacation movie, no matter how inviting the travel brochure looks.
Horror-fix alternatives: Martyrs • Mandy • Misery • mother! • Malignant • The Menu
N Is for Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is the zero point for the modern zombie.
George Romero took a handful of actors, a farmhouse and almost no money, then changed horror permanently. The dead are frightening, but the people trapped inside are the real engine. Every argument makes survival harder, every good decision arrives late and Duane Jones gives Ben a strength the movie keeps testing.
Its final minutes have lost none of their cruelty. More than half a century later, the film still feels less like history than a warning caught on television.
Horror-fix alternatives: Nosferatu • A Nightmare on Elm Street • The Neon Demon • The Night House • Nope • Noroi: The Curse
The Last Word
We have reached the middle of the alphabet alive.
The next stretch brings the Antichrist, Norman Bates, Samara, Ghostface and a Texas dinner invitation you should absolutely decline.
