Curry Barker’s Obsession (2025) was really good. It’s incredibly bleak and pulls no punches on the topic of consent. The film is anchored by two strong characters, Bear and Nikki, bolstered by the performances of Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette. The film isn’t wildly imaginative but still very effective, digging into the horror of coercion and brainwashing through the transmuted monkey’s paw metaphor. Of the “careful what you wish for” stories I’ve experienced, this is definitely one of the better ones due to the absolute misery that results for everyone. Solid horror all around.

And let’s be clear: Bear is a monster, and not a victim. He knew right away what he did, and his inaction wasn’t guilt but a mask for the frustration of not getting what he wanted, the way he wanted it. Worst of all is everyone who is brought down with him because of his greed and lust. The One Wish Willow is presented as a gag, but the wistful “I wish she loved me” act is only sympathetic until he ignores her agitated state and complete personality shift. Even if it is hard to fault him in that opening moment due to an apparent gag gift – it seems impossible, after all – his lack of concern is damning. He recognizes something is wrong but also realizes it benefits him and chooses to go with it because he didn’t love Nikki; he wanted to possess her. There is a lot of cat imagery associated with her, beyond the infamous cat sandwich. Bear didn’t really want a partner; he wanted a pet.

The moment that sold me on the film was the scene where Bear used his One Wish Willow to make his wish and the resulting, immediate scrambled behavior of Nikki. I appreciated the way the film showed us the personality of a real person being displaced by an artificial personality and the intense fight within. It is one of the most visceral moments of the film, and one of the least reliant on spectacle as the blood begins to wash over events later. It’s also when Bear should have realized what was happening, but willfully ignored the warning signs. It is where Bear became the monster. We see Nikki essentially rotting and decaying with him, and he still comes off as the most monstrous thing in the film.

I really appreciate the uncanniness of the One Wish Willow, and the conversations between Bear and the product rep, and later the store clerk. It makes me hope we get another film using the One Wish Willow. There is most definitely a potential series of films involving any number of wishes that go terribly wrong. It’s a Twilight Zone concept that makes for a good foundation for a series of stories. There is a lot of potential there to build on the concept.

I quite enjoyed Obsession, and I think I’ll be keeping an eye on what Curry Barker does next. I am perfectly happy to see where he goes from here.

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Without further ado, let’s just get into it.

I have a deep appreciation for House on Haunted Hill (1959) and the 1999 remake. Part of my appreciation for Halloween as a season is the level of camp, and knowing about the production of House on Haunted Hill and the career of William Castle, camp abounds. Hell, the movie has Vincent Price in it.

The thing that always strikes me most about the film is that the ghosts don’t really matter all that much, which is admittedly strange for a haunted house movie. Instead, the best drama and the bulk of the story is driven by maybe one of the most toxic marriages in film. The most shocking events of the attempted murder of Frederick (Vincent Price) by Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) and David’s (Alan Marshal) have little to nothing to do with ghosts. In fact, Nora (Carolyn Craig) is the only person who has any supernatural encounters and those could be played off entirely as nerves.

The ghosts do not matter to the film in that the plot plays out through circumstance and Nora’s encounters only serve to distract from the core drama of Annabelle, David, and Frederick operating behind the scenes. Events would have played out the same whether or not Nora had her encounters given the tensions between the love triangle in question. Or maybe the reason Nora was invited to Frederick’s party scheme is he knew that she had a nervous disposition.

The film suggests that Frederick did not know the full extent of Annabelle and David’s scheme, only figuring it out through observation following Annabelle’s supposed suicide. From there, Frederick loads blanks into Nora’s gun, recognizing the scheme was to push her into shooting him. While part of this could be the result of David, as a medical professional, quickly orchestrating a scheme upon recognizing her nervousness, I am pretty convinced Nora was a plant by Frederick, the host who seems to be far more prepared for the evening than he lets on, even at the end.

Arranging a skeletal marionette gag, at least to me, requires far more foresight than a vague notion that someone was meant to shoot Frederick that night. My guess is that Frederick probably knew more of what the scheme was and decided to “help” David and Annabelle to better achieve the result he wanted.

With all that said, couples therapy is still a hell of a lot cheaper than a murderous mansion party.

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From here, I have three more films to cover to complete this volume of 31 Days of Halloween. I think I will be watching a ghost story, a modern viral horror film, and a holiday classic that is more about Halloween vibes than anything particularly horrific. Stay tuned for future installments of Graphic Content.

Also, I am probably doing this again next year, and I am leaning toward covering every Friday the 13th film. Please comment and try to talk me out of it.

It feels like a bummer to leave the Halloween franchise here with Halloween Ends (2022), given how much of a downgrade it is from Halloween (2018). The David Gordon Green trilogy is an exercise in diminishing returns that picks and chooses themes and iconography from across the Michael Myers films, but does little to weave them into a compelling whole. There are ideas there, but few of them stick the landing and actually add anything to the franchise.

In truth, I don’t really feel like I have much to say about Halloween Ends because I see a lot of squandered potential. I applaud the ambition, but it is wasted without proper execution. The Blumhouse legacy sequel trilogy loosely establishes an escalating corruption of Haddonfield on the back of the murders of 1978. While much of the first two films focus on Laurie and her family, the whole town has fallen under a darkness Michael instigated, and the Shape is no longer a singular madman but a metaphor for generational madness. At least that is what the Blumhouse series is trying to get across, but it doesn’t land all that well. Kills and Ends suffer because there wasn’t enough established in the 2018 film to organically develop the larger point.

I generally like the idea of Corey, a victim of Haddonfield, nearly becoming the next Michael. My problem is taking a trilogy-long story and fitting it into the third act of a trilogy, not allowing the story to develop organically. I dislike the cowardice of establishing such a radical concept only to dispose of him so abruptly, reducing his arc to an excuse to add a final Laurie and Michael fight when the point the movie was building toward was that the Shape is no longer just Michael. Maybe if we had more time with Corey, writing him out in such a way in the final act of the final film would work better.

But it is the unearned confidence of the films, especially that of Ends, that bothers me most. Ends tries to make a grand, sweeping ending cobbled from an abandoned idea, replaced by nostalgia-bait references to previous films and franchise memories. The legacy sequel trilogy plays like a greatest hits played by a cover band at times. In attempting to correct the franchise’s past errors, the creative team simply remixes those mistakes into something equally messy. Halloween Ends is another take on the succession idea flirted with in Halloween 4, referencing Jamie Lloyd’s potential evolution into a monster, which was squandered by its sequel. Ends abruptly abandons Corey entirely, just to revisit the domestic kitchen brawl of Halloween H20, all within the same twenty minutes.

I think that has been the most frustrating element of rewatching the franchise this month, seeing an ebb and flow of bold narrative choices and hesitant, cowardly backtracking. I think that is maybe why I was so taken with Crystal Lake. Halloween is a series of a couple of fantastic highs and a frustrating tendency to retreat upon itself. Crystal Lake is only the second reboot of Friday the 13th, a series that radically changed over a bunch of movies, making choices and sticking with them and not going with constant reboots.

After Halloween Ends, I think I am done with Michael Myers for a good, long time. I would rather wait until a strong concept arrives that moves Michael and Haddonfield forward than risk another reboot that tries to play the hits and backs away from anything meaningful. He is still one of the most beloved and iconic slasher characters out there, and I will always make time for the 1978 original. But if I am going to watch any other film in the series, it would just end up being Halloween III, the only remnant of the anthology concept that the series should have always been.

As for how I would rank the films, here is a complete list from my favorite to least favorite. And yes, I am throwing Halloween III: Season of the Witch in here, though it has nothing to do with Michael because it is one of the best movies.

The Objectively Best Ranking of Halloween Films

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
3. Halloween (2018)
4. Halloween (2007)
5. Halloween II (2009)
6. Halloween Kills (2021)
7. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
8. Halloween II (1981)
9. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
10. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
11. Halloween Ends (2022)
12. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
13. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

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It’s also a filthy, perverted film, and I believe we need to be more honest about our love of these things. So, let your freak flag fly, and let me know what pervert cinema you swear by, alright?

This is going to be a safe space, okay?

I am going to talk about my deep love of garbage, sleazy movies, and, in turn, I will not judge you when you inevitably comment and share your guilty cinema sins, because why wouldn’t you? This is a safe space, after all.

Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) is an elevated example of what I call pervert cinema. If you are anything like me, and I know I am, you may also know this by other terms, such as drive-in fare, midnight movies, mutant movies, or, in more polite company, “cult cinema.” These are the dirty, awful, cheap little films that we watch late at night when we are alone, maybe with a remote handy in case someone walks in on us consuming our filth. The types of movies with, as Joe Bob Briggs describes, “blood, breasts, and beasts.” Often they’re not great works of art, but there are those which transcend and come to carry more meaning and respect than other films of their ilk.

These are the types of movies found on cheap Roku movie streaming apps that have dedicated sections for sexy, murderous nun films, or softcore pornographic slashers where there is a knife, gallons of fake blood, and plenty of excuses for topless women. Re-Animator is of the ilk, but elevated – yet still has that oily, perverted sheen that makes it a film you probably don’t want to watch among the regular folks. Unless you are me, watching it at 2 P.M. with my apartment windows wide open. It’s a dominance thing.

Re-Animator is a dirty little movie that happens to be very, very good. It features great writing, fantastic effects, excellent performances, and still manages to be something that makes you feel a little weird for enjoying.

The Anti-Body Horror of H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft, the original author of the 1922 “Herbert West – Re-Animator” stories that inspired this 1985 adaptation, was not a man interested in the body. If the man could go through his life without eating, I feel like he would have opted for that. His writing, occasionally dipping into repulsive imagery, isn’t overly concerned with the body, but with larger, often more fearfully racist ideas. Lovecraft’s fiction thrives on terror rather than building on physical revulsion. So the choice to adapt one of his more iconic stories as a horny body horror production is fairly fascinating. Almost as though the adaptational choice is a form of commentary pointed at Lovecraft.

Lovecraft hated his work on “Herbert West – Re-Animator,” treating it as paycheck schlock to get him through the diminishing fortunes of his family. His horror was cold and calculated, concerned with lofty ideas and his numerous anxieties. Enter producer Brian Yuzna, director Stuart Gordon, and screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who take a work from the cold, clinical, asexual Lovecraft and throw it into the meat grinder of 1980s low-budget pop horror that absolutely thrived on the warm, gooey, and sexual: Lovecraft gone wild.

What was once a clinically depicted riff on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein becomes grindhouse excellence. I have a complex relationship with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and I have a deep admiration for just how hard Re-Animator swings from him, while still recognizing and building on his work.

Herbert West: The Asexual Pervert

Part of the success of Re-Animator as a work of film is that nobody performing in it treats it as a lesser film, and especially not the lead actor, Jeffrey Combs, as Herbert West. Perversion takes on many forms, and while we may often get hung up on the blood, breasts, and beasts, there are deeper perversions.

Herbert West is the biggest pervert of the film. Yes, more so than the sinister Dr. Hill (David Gale), who tries to orally rape Meg (Barbara Crampton) with his own severed head. I know that is a bold claim; Hill’s case looks shocking, horrific, and a sinister inversion of the erotic on celluloid. It is one of the film’s most iconic scenes, and genuinely one of the funniest in terms of black humor. It gets people talking. It’s peak pervert cinema: an actor delivering a diabolical monologue as a severed head while a headless corpse fumbles, trying to perform one of the most grotesque sex acts imaginable. 

But West’s perversion is headier and speaks to capital ‘T’ themes that evoke the actual work of Lovecraft. Tune in for the nasty, gross scene; stay for the consideration of what true evil actually is (it’s not just the horny severed head, folks).

Herbert West is a complete monster, driven by very human emotions of pride and envy that cause him to do the most perverted thing presented in the film: tampering in God’s domain of life and death at any cost. Herbert West doesn’t recognize people, only opportunities. With Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) he sees a resource in the form of a basement and later a coerced assistant. With a cat, he sees a test subject. The dead themselves are not immune to West’s research-driven thinking. When Meg’s father dies in an accident, West does not hesitate to use the man as another test subject.

It can be hard to really weigh West’s perversion against, say, Dr. Hill, given the immediate shock of him trying to assault Meg, nude and strapped to a dissection table. The immediate vulnerability and grotesqueness of the mingling of horror and sex really proves effective. But in the long run, due to the strength of the film, West’s evil really does stand out as the pinnacle of perversion and speaks to the overall quality of the production.

Art of the Artless

Re-Animator is sleaze with intent and care. They took a lesser, but still iconic Lovecraftian story and adapted it to the perverted cinema style that exploded in the 1980s with the care and attention of theater kids who understood tension, pacing, and juxtaposition. It is staged sleaze excellence that embraces the fact that sometimes what audiences really want is the stuff they might not want to share with polite company.

I know I have spent this whole time elevating sleaze, but that is just to show that the depraved can be divine. Re-Animator can be a gateway drug that gets you hooked on some real trash and is worth a try.

But now I am curious. Comment on this post with your examples of pervert cinema that you love. Any Russ Meyer fans reading this? Sound off. There are more of us out there than you know. 

With the general success of the re-release of Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) back into cinemas, I think there may be hope for us perverts and our dirty movies finding broader acceptance yet.

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Each one of these has been wildly experimental in what I write about, and often revolves around my first thoughts while watching one of these movies. With the previous film, I had a lot of positive thoughts about the character of Frank Hawkins, which continued into this one, and I was quite impressed by how the writers managed to integrate him into the lore with clever flashbacks.

Turns out it was among the better writing decisions in this legacy sequel trilogy.

But for now, let’s talk about TV Tropes a bit, shall we?

My brain chemistry was forever altered after spending time on TV Tropes as a teenager. I can’t help but recognize tropes as I watch films, and it is funny to me how clearly some of their pithy and ridiculous trope names from the site pop into my head as I consume media.

Case in point: the trope of “Remember the New Guy?” The trope is simple enough. A previously unmentioned character comes to the forefront of a story who is on the same terms of knowledge of events as the rest of the cast, who has apparently been on the periphery of events the whole time. Sometimes this can feel cheap; sometimes it can work.

Watching Halloween (2018) and especially Halloween Kills (2021), I think that trope was executed perfectly with the character of Deputy Frank Hawkins. It worked well enough when he appeared in Halloween (2018), but Halloween Kills (2021) and the related flashbacks to his role that night in 1978 cemented him as a canon character and made for an even better inclusion than the numerous legacy characters brought back for Kills. I had started thinking about this when I did my rewatch of the 2018 film, but it really stood out to me in the follow-up film, really building on the mythology and themes of the franchise.

From a TV Tropes page on examples of this trope in live-action film: “Halloween (2018) features Deputy Frank Hawkins. He was one of the cops patrolling for Michael in the original movie, though he’s only properly introduced here. Granted, we didn’t see any other cops in the original other than Brackett — and Halloween Kills begins with a flashback explaining that he only encountered Michael a short while after Laurie Strode was rescued.”

Frank Hawkins comes off as even more of a legacy character than most returning ones because he also has a very effective character arc, bolstered by strong performances from Will Patton and Thomas Mann. There is a tragedy and guilt to the character of Frank that works well with Laurie’s obsessive intensity and elevates the film’s awful decision to keep her stuck in the hospital for the runtime. Frank, an inexperienced deputy as of 1978, accidentally shoots his partner when Michael uses him as a human shield within the old Myers house. Frank takes a shot, fatally wounding his partner in the neck and letting Michael escape. Thankfully, Dr. Loomis and the other officers of the Haddonfield PD arrive to surround Michael.

The accidental death of his partner is not what Frank considers his biggest sin, however. After all, his superior helps him cover it up in the chaos of the Halloween night from hell. As Frank sees it, his greatest sin is his intervention in Loomis’ attempt to execute Michael. In a moment of mercy, Frank stops Loomis from shooting a cornered Michael. It is a moment that says a lot about the type of man Frank is, but during the crisis 40 years later, he sees it as maybe the worst thing he has done, maybe more so than accidentally killing his partner.

It’s all very compelling stuff parceled out through the film, and gives his revelation that Michael was not coming after Laurie real weight. Frank is a compromised man woven into the fabric of this mythology that Laurie has projected around herself. Just like Michael’s choice to stalk Laurie and her friends in the original film is just circumstantial – she came to the entrance of his nest, and he decided to follow her – so too is Michael’s attack at her home 40 years later, orchestrated by Dr. Sartain. Laurie is compromised by tragedy and does not think clearly, and Frank is one of the few people around Laurie who is equally burdened by that night. The film locking Laurie in the hospital is really only given any real weight because of Frank and his unique relationship to her, and it strengthens an overall narratively frustrating decision.

Frank ends up bearing a lot of the weight of building the legacy alongside Laurie. The inclusions of Tommy Doyle, Lonnie Elam, Leigh Brackett, Marion Chambers, and Lindsey Wallace all feel perfunctory at best and misguided nostalgia bait at worst, all introduced again in Halloween Kills. Most die, meant to pad the body count for Michael. Tommy’s character is poorly written through terrible dialogue, and Anthony Michael Hall feels like the wrong choice of actor for the vengeance-fueled rabble-rouser the story was aiming for. The film tries to make Lonnie Elam more of a thing than he was, creating a new encounter between him and Michael in 1978. Leigh Brackett, father of Laurie’s best friend who died in 1978, has no scene with Laurie Strode in Halloween Kills despite him being the hospital security guard. Marion and Lindsey don’t offer much; Marion is brutally murdered, while Lindsey is written out of the story at the hospital.

But the new guy, the one who was there the whole time according to the two legacy sequels, actually matters. He actually builds the story. His inclusion becomes one of the best parts of the films, and I find that hilarious. It truly is one of the most successful examples of the trope of “Remember the New Guy?”

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Anyway, do you think I am off-base here, or am I just an elder Millennial who is being a grump? Let me know!

Watching Night of the Living Dead (1968) with Gen Z and Gen Alpha students is always a little weird but inevitably ends up the same – some laughing at awkward moments in the film due to budgetary limitations and aesthetic and acting choices of the period, which feel dated, and then shock and dismay at the fate of Ben at the end of the film. Every time. It’s fascinating to me as someone who uses George Romero and John Russo’s classic film in the classroom.

One of the classes I teach is English C1001, which is a critical thinking course. I focus on the theme of horror and monstrosity because it presents a consistent analytical throughline to help explore writing and argument. Monsters (largely fictional, as they are) are representations, and those representations can vary wildly from person to person. Through applying critical thinking, I have students interrogate their interpretations of monster texts while analyzing the interpretations of writers who write on monster texts.

Zombies and Night of the Living Dead provide plenty of opportunities for critical thinking. Most of these students have very real memories of COVID-19, and there is a thematic resurgence of zombie concepts that emerged during that period. When I present the unit on zombies, it comes at the tail end of a block of lectures based on the 1950s and 1960s, and includes an essay about the Marxist interpretations of zombies in Romero’s “of the Dead” series. It’s probably the most straightforward unit of class outside of the week on Godzilla.

In any case, it can be hard enough to get students to actually engage with the texts at home, which is why I end up screening the movie in class. I have been doing that for at least six years now. It presents a fun day (though getting Gen Z and Alpha to actually watch anything outside short-form video is like pulling teeth) and ultimately gives me a foundation upon which I can lecture about the material, given the majority of the class has at least a familiarity with the text.

The following isn’t meant to be a generational discourse bitch session about a lack of seriousness in kids these days, though I really feel like I could lean into that. This is more a series of observations of a practice I have engaged with two to three times a year for about six years now.

Empathy and Sincerity Are Cringe

Maybe the most challenging part I have found in trying to engage students with the film in question is the aura of indifference to empathy and sincerity I tend to see. It feels like sometimes they forget that we’re human beings, even fictional ones, and such understanding can and should be applied to scenarios.

I’ve heard and read quite a bit lately on the concept of performative apathy, where sincerity or engagement is generally frowned upon, and instead a kind of bleak reaction to existence fuels an indifference or mockery toward sincerity. And this is also a broad generalization that does not account for other aspects of life, either. I’m just talking about a zombie movie from half a century ago, after all.

I am looking at this as a lover of arts and literature and someone deeply curious about socialization across generations, and in many ways, I absolutely get it. As a Millennial, I understand that adage of “I am tired of living in interesting times,” and with the accelerationist nature of our capitalistic hellscape, Gen Z (and Gen Alpha) are taking just as much of a pounding as Millennials did in their day, only with even fewer support systems in place. The horrors of my generation persist and grow stronger two generations later.

Apathy is risk avoidance. It is easier to look like you do not care than to risk being ostracized for taking something too seriously or getting too into something. Caring is cringe.

And yes, I am still talking about students’ reactions to elements of a zombie film. It’s not that serious, but it can suggest serious issues in the long run when it comes to interpreting art and literature and drawing meaning from these things.

The Kids Aren’t Alright

Night of the Living Dead is an old film. It is still broadly respected and given significance by larger culture, but often only really discussed or embraced as such by older generations in comparison to Gen Z and Alpha. The film undoubtedly has hokey elements to a newer audience, given the low budget and half a century of developing zombie imagery. But I also think it ultimately wins them over to a degree.

The things I notice every screening are that there is laughter when Ben (Duane Jones) strikes Barbra (Judith O’dea), and audible shock when Ben is shot at the end of the film. I can’t claim that one reaction is inappropriate while another is, as people react in the way in which they react. But I do often find myself puzzled and maybe even a bit concerned about Ben striking Barbra being a source of humor so often while his death hits in the way that I would expect it to hit.

A lot of the reaction to Barbra being struck, to me, speaks to the performative apathy seen in Gen Z and Alpha. As I see it, the laughter comes from the sudden, uncomfortable violence and an inability to understand the reasoning for it.

In the first scenario, regarding the sudden violence, the scene is a complete shock even today. A Black man hits a white woman who is in hysterics. The violence can come off as gendered, antiquated, and hard to reconcile with the character of Ben seen until that point. Laughter may be a response to the discomfort of the mental calculus involved in interpreting the scene, especially given today’s thoughts on gendered violence and race. I find this pretty interesting, as this is probably the same kind of tension audiences faced when dealing with this scene in 1968. As much as Night of the Living Dead is seen as a Civil Rights Era film today, it was largely a coincidence. Romero himself confirms he didn’t cast Duane Jones as Ben for any pointed messaging, but recognizes what that did to the impact of the overall film. It most certainly also influenced his decisions on future films as he leaned into his politics.

But back to the hit. Every time I screen the film for a class, I hear the sound of laughter when Ben slaps the hysterical Barbra. Do I take that as a sign that I am surrounded by emotionally stunted misogynists? No, though there are some students I’ve had that I might question, if I am being honest. Instead, I think this leads to my second point: a lack of understanding for why this moment happens. Or maybe more to the point, a refusal to allow themselves to feel something about the situation.

Mid-century Hollywood does a lot with hysterical women. Oftentimes, those portrayals were so over the top that collectively we’ve pushed back against them. Even though Night of the Living Dead is an independent film, it was heavily influenced by Hollywood horror and monster films; such things are unavoidable when trying to work with a system from the outside. There is definitely a larger topic to be discussed here about the portrayal of women in mid-century film. I have no time to get into it here, but most of us probably inherently recognize what I am alluding to. Barbra in Night of the Living Dead is of that mid-century hysterical female mold that today might be seen as cloying or as a poor portrayal of women. In a lot of ways it is, but as a counterpoint I would point to the Barbra of the 1990 remake who has far more agency. If we judge films solely on the era in which they are made, we are being poor participants in culture.

While Barbra’s characterization fits the antiquated model that most audiences might reject today, it is not a bad one and not inaccurate to the situation. The problem is, to recognize this, one needs to have empathy, not apathy, for the characters and situation. One needs to have an emotional investment in the story playing out to recognize what that scene is doing.

And as we already know, caring is cringe.

I will have Gen Z and Alpha students who get into the film and are able to form that connection to understand what is going on in that moment. It helps cut through the performative apathy and awkwardness of the sudden violence because they understand why it occurs. They also recognize the depth it adds to the portrayal of Ben and Barbra. But this is also the exception to the rule.

For most students, I find that performative apathy has made it hard for them to get into film and understand it from the context it provides them. Without really understanding Ben’s mental breakdown when he monologues his survival story, they do not understand why he reacts the way he does to Barbra’s dissociative episode. I’ve found many do not even understand what the dissociative episode actually is, in the context of the story, though the film practically holds the audience’s hand with clues as to what is happening to Barbra following her escape from the graveyard.

So without being able to invest themselves in the film for whatever reason, perhaps boredom, or more likely sincerity avoidance, they see the sudden violence not as a key moment of characterization, but rather a sudden jolt of what they might interpret as misogynistic violence they awkwardly laugh through because any more complex feelings would potentially make them a target if anyone found out they had them.

Thinking about art means you care about art, and caring is cringe.

So then why does Ben’s death hit so hard?

Generations Change, but Some Things Never Do

One thing that has not changed across generations is systemic violence toward Black bodies in the United States. Night of the Living Dead was released a few months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The film portrays a heroic, complex Black protagonist who is ultimately robbed of his life by systemic white violence. His body is then treated like firewood, hooked, dragged, and burned in a bonfire, with nobody acknowledging the humanity that Ben once had.

Ben ultimately survives the night, a lone survivor, only to be callously crushed by systemic authority like so many Black men in real life from the release of the film to the present day. The hardest part of that ending is seeing it slowly play out, unavoidable. The minute the posse takes shots at zombies outside and Ben begins creeping to the window, you know he will die.

And yet, the death still hits like a truck. The students, too, feel it.

Maybe it is the deluge of continual brutality on Blackness seen in the news and in their lives? It could be that it is something so real and evocative that they cannot simply turn and laugh at it to show they are above caring. Ben’s death, the casual indifference of the universe to a person they end up caring for (a fictional one at that!), may be that one chip in the barricade of indifference they have erected around them. Maybe it is okay to feel something, and maybe it isn’t all that cringe after all.

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Spoilers abound, don’t read unless you’ve already caught up with Crystal Lake (if that is your thing).

Oh, and no this is not a movie, but it is a new Friday the 13th project (they still exist) that came out in October. Of course I am going to watch it.

I wasn’t going to let the month go by without watching a new Friday the 13th production. It’s been nearly two decades since our last movie, but now we have a shiny new premium streaming show to tide us over while the complicated legal tangle of the film series continues to play out. While there have been stirrings of a Jason Universe, it’s mostly been a marketing thing, but that isn’t terrible, either. But now, at least, we have a show, Crystal Lake, which ended up being pretty good – it also did something quite bold, which I respect quite a bit.

It also reminded me of Bethesda’s Fallout, the apocalyptic roleplaying shooter franchise which now has its own hit streaming show. Who knew that Jason Voorhees is the product of Vault-Tec?

Spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.

Atomic Age Anxiety

So there isn’t really a crossover between Crystal Lake and Fallout. It is more thematic than anything. If you have even a cursory experience with Fallout, tell me what you might think about this scenario: imagine a story about a pharmatech company involved with multiple industries attempting to help the human race survive an atomic apocalypse by doing illegal, secretive genetic experimentation involving cockroach genetics and in-utero human experimentation in an Atomic Age setting.

If you think of something like Fallout, you’d be wrong. This is actually Crystal Lake. Jason Voorhees is the product of such an experiment in this new continuity. This backstory is pretty much as simple as that too; Jason’s mother, Pamela, goes in for an experimental procedure due to nearly miscarrying her child. She works with a company called Bellflower Chemical. She finds herself in a conspiracy where the company has found that little Jason may be the solution to their search for human survival and experiments on him. That genetic experimentation makes him an ultimate survivor and has enabled him to grow stronger with traumatic events and deaths, allowing him to survive nearly anything while stripping him of his humanity.

And no, before you go and guess that I hate it – I do not. I think it is a lot of fun and makes for a neat angle to a quality show overall. It’s a fun explanation for why Jason is the way he is. And it is at least something complete and declarative, unlike the hints to him being a Deadite in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. I prefer the Deadite angle, how could I not? But if we’re getting more Friday the 13th material thanks to this new continuity, I am just fine with that as well. If Halloween can have 4 different continuities, it is fine that Friday the 13th has 3 of them.

But yes, the Fallout similarities are hilarious to me and I very much found the thought experiment entertaining. It’s not hard to imagine Vault-Tec somehow creating a nearly immortal killer in an attempt to outlast the apocalypse—and the fact that it involves cockroach DNA is peak Vault-Tec. It isn’t hard to consider this as a storyline in some part of the map wherever the next Fallout game takes place. Given how much of a grab bag Fallout is, anyway, I hope the game makes a nod to Crystal Lake.

Did I ever need an explanation of how Jason ends up so powerful? Absolutely not. Did I need a prequel reboot to give me additional backstory for Pamela Voorhees? Again, absolutely not. 

But do I appreciate the risk and overall quality of what Crystal Lake ended up delivering? Absolutely I do.

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It’s been fun going back through the history of the franchise and sharing my thoughts. If you’ve been enjoying the posts, please let me know. Hopefully, this 31 Days of Halloween has been entertaining.

Now on to my second favorite of the Halloween films.

Halloween (2018) is my second favorite film of the Halloween franchise. It also serves as the best sequel to the original film from 1978, which is about as close to perfect a horror film as possible in my estimation, up there with the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, and The Changeling. Halloween (2018) doesn’t quite hit those highs, but among the larger Halloween franchise, it is truly excellent.

We are inundated with legacy sequels of all kinds these days, and it can feel a little gross and cynical overall, with those exceptions of the legacy sequels that truly add something in conversation with their progenitors. Top Gun: Maverick did it. So too did David Gordon Green and Danny McBride with the first of the three legacy sequels to Halloween. As for why their take on Halloween lands so well, allow me to paraphrase George Lucas when he was discussing the structures of his original Star Wars trilogy and his in-production prequels: “it’s like poetry, it rhymes.”

Carpenter’s Halloween and Green’s Halloween have structural and thematic similarities that naturally play off one another to build to a larger whole, separated by nearly 4 decades of pop-culture history. The legacy sequel is so in sync with the film it follows up on that it feels like an organic extension of the themes and insights that first landed in theaters in 1978.

The structural continuity between the two films, separated by 40 years, is also matched within the sequel film itself, which builds on the hunting motif of the original and inverts and comments upon it in satisfying ways.

It’s Not a Cage, It’s a Trap

In Halloween (1978), the film is structured around parallel hunts through predatory figures. Obviously, Michael Myers tearing through Haddonfield is one, but one also needs to acknowledge Loomis’ predatory nature. Loomis is a hunter and would go to further and further extremes in other sequels, but in the context of the first film, he recognizes the threat of Michael and hunts his patient down, not above the tactics of the evil he stalks. Loomis is Michael’s mirror in many regards, and Laurie is a victim trapped in the struggle between two predators. Laurie survives that hellish night in Haddonfield, but in Halloween (2018) she has never really recovered from it.

There is a common theme in many of the films that feature the character of Sam Loomis – he has a certain kind of madness that inspires madness in the community around him. Halloween (2018) is no different, but instead isolates that madness to Laurie. Loomis showed her the boogeyman in no uncertain terms, and Laurie is forever haunted by that knowledge and touched by the same desire to destroy it as Loomis was.

When Laurie Strode meets Dr. Sartain, she refers to him as “the new Loomis,” but she is wrong. Loomis never wanted to know how Michael “worked” after the point of no return. He saw the evil and wanted it obliterated. Sartain wants to understand evil, even to the point of wearing Michael’s mask. Dr. Samuel Loomis would never. Sartain is a fool’s understanding of what Loomis means to the narrative. Laurie is the true successor.

It is in Laurie Strode being Samuel Loomis’ successor in his crusade that Halloween (2018) understands and builds on the structure of the first film. The film understands that to meet the original film on a fundamental level is to require two simultaneous hunts: The Shape hunting people in Haddonfield, and someone hunting The Shape.

There is an interesting moment in the film that discusses hunting. It’s part of a kind of rhythmic structure Green and McBride employ across their trilogy where a dialogue between characters establishes some humanizing quirk or development, makes them feel real, just to twist the knife as Michael Myers slaughters them. It becomes a bit of a joke in their follow-up, Halloween Kills (2021). But in their first film, it’s an interesting technique that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The scene involves a father and his son out at night for a hunting trip. They discuss the hunt, and the son mentions he loves spending time with his dad on these things, but also loves dancing. The father is not entirely dismissive of it, which is a pretty 2000s touch to show how times have changed. The scene is mostly set up to get Michael from the bus crash to Haddonfield and also allows him to have a moment where he kills a child to raise the stakes. But the larger conversation on hunting feels thematically appropriate for what we’ll be seeing in the larger narrative.

Five distinct hunting narratives are present in the larger film. There are, of course, Michael Myers’ stalking scenes, some of the best scenes in the film, but there is also Laurie’s hunt for Michael as she has waited 40 years for his return and prepared for it. While those are the real hunts that matter, there are three more that reflect people who don’t have the ability to live up to the task that was started by Loomis and taken up by Laurie. The podcasters meet their fate pretty quickly – their hunt for a story gets them involved far beyond what they had expected and murdered by Michael. There is also the manhunt for Michael by the Haddonfield sheriff’s department, but they are institutional power with an already terrible track record, as exemplified by Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), Michael’s original arresting officer in 1978, whose original sin was not doing what needed to be done and extinguishing the evil. Lastly, there is Sartain’s pursuit of understanding about why Michael Myers does what he does, which ends with him having his head squashed like a tomato.

But the core dueling hunt where predator and prey switch positions, exemplified by Michael and Loomis in the original film, is echoed here with Michael and Laurie. The film does several callbacks to the original, placing Laurie as the monster stalking Michael, and it’s satisfying. Her appearance from the shadows, echoing Michael’s appearance from the darkened closet in the original, may be one of the most satisfying callbacks in a legacy sequel ever. In 40 years since that fateful Halloween night, Laurie learned a lot, realizing that to take down the monster, it must be trapped; it can’t be left to escape like it did that night. Her obsessive desire for monster blood, her Loomisness, may have ruined her relationship with her family, but the brutal truth is that it was necessary and right because if Halloween has shown us anything, Michael may be just a person, but there is a darkness within him that must be extinguished. He is fundamentally antithetical to civilization as a concept and should not be permitted to exist.

Had the franchise ended there, with Laurie’s trap house burning down, and no sign of Michael Myers ever again, that would have been the perfect capper to the concept. Halloween 1978 and 2018 would have been a perfect one-two punch, well earned through time, which isn’t something always afforded to stories the way it should be.

But as we’ve seen time and time again, they just can’t let The Shape rest, can they?

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I found the movie to be a fun throwback to an earlier time and it bears a lot of similarities to another movie I watched this month. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Batman has always been the superhero I most associate with Halloween. It’s not just about thousands of kids dressing as the Dark Knight on October 31st every year (as Spider-Man would also have a claim to Halloween in this case), but rather the Batman franchise has the qualities of Halloween I most associate with the season. The world of Batman, or at least the Batman I love, tends to be dark, creepy, and fairly grim. Even a lot of kid-friendly Batman adaptations tend to have some of these tonal markers, just in less extreme qualities. Like any multibillion-dollar franchise, Batman has a flexibility that allows it to reach the broadest audience possible while simultaneously leaning into a specific tone for a specific audience.

One of the things I enjoy most about James Gunn’s current DCU is that there is an emphasis on these superhero films and media having specific tones. With James Watkins’ Clayface (2026) we get a very horror-centric project in the larger DC Comics universe that does not feature a mainline superhero, but rather one of his more iconic but least utilized rogues. Though Batman is not present in the film, Clayface does a fantastic job filling in the world in which we’ll one day see the Caped Crusader.

Batman: Madman and Monster

Part of the appeal of Batman to me is those Halloween vibes, specifically in that Batman primarily fights two kinds of evil in Gotham City: madmen and monsters. This is fitting because these two strains of villainy are a dark mirror of who Batman is. He is a psychologically damaged soldier taking the law into his own hands, while also taking monstrous and violent action to strike terror in the criminal population, with the repercussions of terrifying the city in the wake of his actions. Gotham City is such a breeding ground for monsters and madmen that it takes a little of both to try to save the city.

In that way, a lot of Batman’s rogues are also reflections of the man himself. In early comics Batman fought a lot of gangsters and industrialists. But the theatricality of the Bat results in a reaction where the criminals become more theatrical as well. It’s an arms race of creeps in the world’s most horror-tinged city. Many adaptations also follow this very thread of escalation in Batman’s presence creating a new kind of criminal unique to Gotham. Sure, DC has any number of fictional cities with rogues, but none quite like those from Gotham as far as cruelty and monstrosity are concerned for most fans.

It’s not hard to imagine a narrative where Batman, instead of being a hero, embraces his monstrosity and madness. It’s been done before. It will be done to death over the next twenty years. In that way, Batman is not too far removed from his rogues, and it makes a lot of sense how the rogues could lead their own films. That is exactly the case with Clayface’s Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) because, if one didn’t know who Clayface was, one could be mistaken that a good portion of the film’s runtime could have set Hagen/Clayface as a vigilante, not unlike Batman himself. Where Batman in most cases is one bad choice from being just like his rogues, with the exception of his willpower and monk-like discipline to maintaining his mission, Clayface takes the path of embracing monstrosity.

Clayface: Movieland Monster

The Matt Hagen of Clayface borrows heavily from the original Basil Karlo version of the character from the comics and mostly just cribs his name off the second incarnation of the character. Karlo is a B-level actor who is driven insane by being replaced in a remake of one of his movies and murders people while dressed in a movie costume. The original Matt Hagen of the comics was a treasure hunter who gains clay-like power from a mysterious substance in a cave. So the film has an origin cribbed from Karlo but with a power set of Hagen. You can say this is more or less in the same mold of the DC Animated Universe version.

The DC Animated Universe, beginning with Batman: The Animated Series, has had a major influence on the current DCU so far as. For many fans the DCAU had a tremendous influence on how certain characters are remembered – characters like Clayface. It’s a smart strategy because the Clayface of that animated series is so well handled as a fusion of the two different versions that it ended up being the definitive take. It’s been like that for multiple characters from DC Comics as well. That animated universe feels very much like a template for the current film continuity.

Part of my enjoyment of Clayface was due to me relating it quite a bit to my recent experience rewatching The Invisible Man (1933). That comes across in two ways. The first is that the film plays with the image-obsessed celebrity angle of the most iconic adaptations of Clayface as a character: actor, prideful, disfigured, madness, and monstrosity. It’s a template that builds on an old Hollywood vibe, and while Clayface is set in a modern time, the darker aspect of Hollywood plays out in the film as part of the film is set in another iconic DC locale, Coast City.

The second angle of it all is that the movie very much follows the template of The Invisible Man and has the feel of a Universal Monster film. The only real difference between Matt Hagen and Dr. Jack Griffin is a PhD. Both are men who become obsessed and disfigured (Griffin cannot control his invisibility, after all) and lose their minds when they realize the power they have. They are both presented as tragic in the sense of filmic romance, and they are both driven to self-destruction by their obsession and their minds fracturing under the science that puts them into the circumstances they are in. Both men go on a crime spree, Hagen for pride and bitter vengeance, Griffin for pride and fascistic impulse.

I’d be genuinely interested to see a black-and-white version of Clayface. I think the film’s combination of shadows and neon lights would be a fascinating take on what exists and lend a noirish quality to the underlying horror. The film already leans heavily into horrific Hollywood and the Universal Monsters-style of storytelling, and a black-and-white version feels like it is a missing piece to something a little more transformative. The film is solid, not perfect. The flesh may be lumpy and misshapen in spots, but the bones are good – conceptually. This movie hits right in my q-zone.

The fact that we are fortunate enough to have a DC Studios movie that is essentially a Universal Monster movie, set in Gotham City, is something I find incredibly interesting. It feels so very on point that it’s even wilder that the whole concept was pitched by Mike Flanagan. The odds, for me, a monster fan, comic fan, and Hollywood nerd, that I find a movie so very much in my interest arriving in October, no less, feel like DC Studios attempting to seduce me.

I don’t know how James Gunn and Peter Safran knew I’d be writing these essays this month, but their timing could not be better. Thanks, guys. Good movie.

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But then again, your mileage may vary based on your own appreciation for Rob Zombie’s aesthetic impulses. As for me, I find both of his films in the remake timeline pretty goddamn good, and I am sad we won’t get a third one. I think the story deserves to be told completely, but then again, I am not a movie producer.

I’m just a nerd writing about movies for my 31 Days of Halloween project.

I liked quite a lot about Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, though I do have some quibbles here and there. How can I not? Apparently I take Halloween very, very seriously. I think Zombie’s two films work very well and make for a more cohesive whole than most of the entries in the franchise, with the exception of the Halloween (1978)/Halloween (2018) pairing. I appreciate the ambition of Zombie’s approach and willingness to go his own way within the larger framework of what Halloween is, as we have accepted it as a culture. Halloween II (2009) is a fun commitment to the new ideas and decisions made in his remake; there is no backing down from certain narrative and aesthetic decisions and impulses, and while I do not agree with all of them, I respect the vision, and it works well enough for my purposes.

Case in point, this film really is Sheriff Brackett’s movie. Brad Dourif is an incredible actor, so it’s not surprising he can add a lot of gravitas to the expanded role of the character in this continuity, especially with how the narrative expands his story with his daughter Annie and makes him a surrogate father to Laurie. It’s all very well done, and the character gets put through the wringer as part of the overall darker and more cynical world Zombie concocts for his remake. The cruelty of the universe does not let up, and Brad Dourif plays off it perfectly while maintaining a likable character you just feel devastated for. His expression in the theatrical film’s ending, seeing Laurie approach wearing Michael’s mask, is heartbreaking, especially after just having lost Annie minutes earlier.

This also may just be me fanboying over Brad Dourif, to be fair. I’m not sure I am capable of being objective when it comes to one of my favorite actors.

One thing I appreciate about Halloween II is that Zombie was able to continue his vision, and it ultimately creates a consistency that benefits the story he is trying to tell. Case in point, I was a little down on Michael Myers’ muteness in the previous film. I felt the transition from a talking child to the silent killer we expect from a Halloween film was not quite completely earned. The transition seemed a bit too sudden. However, this film retroactively fixes that, as we do end up getting inner monologue from Michael in the form of apparitions of his child-self and his mother. We see conversations play out in his mind that help bridge the gap between the distinct personality he exhibited as a child and the remorseless and silent killer he is as an adult. I have my issues with the apparitions, to a degree. I think the white horse symbolism is a bit much, and just having Michael speak with the “spirit” of his mother would be enough.

While I am also not the biggest fan of turning Michael into Norman Bates, I understand the impulse and am willing to buy into it. The spiritual apparition ends up recontextualizing the transition from childhood to adulthood in the first film. The fact that Laurie/Angel also seems to have similar visions adds another interesting wrinkle; is the Myers madness hereditary? I don’t love it, but I admire the impulse, and it does something new to move the narrative forward in interesting ways. The fact we never got a third film that explores Laurie/Angel becoming a killer is a missed opportunity (based on the theatrical cut, of course). I guarantee it would have been one of the most divisive Halloween films ever made, but worthy of conversation.

When I first wrote about one of Zombie’s films, House of 1000 Corpses, I had described it as a murder ride – a carnivalesque haunted house ride. Something janky, kind of goofy, but ultimately a lot of fun. I think of Rob Zombie’s take on Halloween in a lot of those same terms. The movies have an uneven quality in them regarding some of the extensions to the lore and story decisions, but there is a wonderful consistency to the ambition and the brutality I cannot help but delight in. Zombie set out to modernize Halloween and apply classic elements to a more cynical crapsack world, and it worked remarkably well.

Just not enough to get that third movie, though, and that’s a bummer.

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