“Turn Out the Light” by Penelope Love (2015) “The distance they had struggled with all their lives was now made infinite by death.”
The horror of a gulf between mother and son.
===
“The Cemetery” by Franco, Abigail Larson, Wes Abbott, Sara Richard (2022) “Don’t you just want to get this over with?”
How do we learn to navigate the scary stuff? And why do some of us make it while others don’t?
===
Trouble Every Day dir. Claire Denis (2001) “Do you believe in loyalty, Mr. Brown? What about betrayal?”
This pendulum swings from horrifying to erotic and back again so many times it made my head spin. I had to look up what the hell was going on afterward. I’m certainly learning a lot about the New French Extremity this month.
===
Halloween Forever dev. Imaginary Monsters (2016) “Our butternut hero returns to his life as a mundane carved gourd.”
A cute Halloween platformer that hits many horror monster tropes. These sorts of games tend to lean into that “Nintendo hard” mentality but the developers are thankfully lenient and keep it a short and sweet experience.
That German expressionism sure is nice to look at. In fact, googling “German expressionism” mostly returns results for this movie. That art design is just so much more interesting than what we see in 90% of movies, even for the text that’s cut in to display dialogue. The music of the 1994 release that I watched was also so good! The story itself is a quaint yarn right up until the end when a twist I didn’t see coming elevated it several notches (though I feel like I’m more naive or caught up in the moment than most viewers tend to be.) Hey, it turns out I love this movie.
===
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow dev. Cloak and Dagger Games (2022) “Life is for living, not for worrying about what comes after.”
The folk horror has left the strongest impression this month. Just that Lovecraftian sense of confronting the uncontrollable forces that direct the flow of things, which we cannot see nor feel except at our lowest and most desperate moments. And by then, it’s too late to escape. After playing this and Silent Hill, I’m ready for some lighter video game horrors.
The lead-up to October 24th has been a masterclass in suspense.
