It’s Halloween Eve
Nothing says good-bye to the summer heat like the Halloween preseason - or as we like to call it, Halloween Eve. We have a great movie lineup for you this year. and we start by breaking with a seven-year preseason tradition of including only movies available with a Netflix, Prime, or Hulu subscription. The streaming market has changed a lot since the big three ruled, and chasing movies from platform to platform is a moving target that I am just not up for.
When we publish the preseason list, I verify with IMDbPro that all movies are available for streaming. If you can stand the commercials, Freevee, Tubi, Plex, Vudu, and Crackle all have great content – most other services will sell you a month’s worth of streaming for a few bucks and no commitment. Do yourself a favor and give Shudder a spin. All thumbnails include the streaming platform but film titles move around a lot, so if the film you want isn’t there you may have to do a little research. Or drop me a comment and I’ll do it for you.
There are nine new releases on this year’s list – titles that were on our yearly preview or released in the last two years. Umma, WarHunt, Last Night in Soho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Malignant, Hypnotic, Incarnation, Choose or Die, and Antlers. Whenever I despair about the lack of fresh horror, I look back at the last year or so and realize that it is out there. They may not be 5 skull movies, but they are worthy films above the 2½ skull benchmark for watchable horror.
Fourteen movies are making their preseason debut even though some have been out for years. Silence of the Lambs is one of those controversial “is it really a horror movie” horror movies. Happily you, the viewer, get to decide what is horror while enjoying a really great film. I picked a handful of films starring A-List actors like Demi Moore in The Seventh Sign, Kate Beckinsale in Stonehearst Asylum, Kevin Bacon in The Darkness, and Jared Leto in Urban Legend. Go ahead and enjoy the guilty pleasure. Other freshmen films include Thir13en Ghosts, Spiral (the Shudder one, not the Saw one), Hell House LLC, 10/31 Part II (because Part 3 is on its way), The American Scream, Creepshow 2, The Uninvited and a surprisingly decent remake of When A Stranger Calls.
And for reasons that I cannot explain, The Thing has been missed all this time. Seriously, we just made the case for year-round horror.
We round out the preseason with seven favorites from past years. The Haunting in Connecticut, which still gives me chills, Sinister, Halloween Party (a sleeper I found last year), the 2018 version of Truth or Dare, an underrated anthology titled Tales of Halloween, and a pair of my favorite apocalyptic horror films: In the Mouth of Madness and The Mist.
We think this year’s list is the perfect excuse to drag you in from the summer heat and back into your horror caves where you belong. In the comfort of your home with your remote and your furry friends, and a refrigerator full of whatever gets you through the night.
Welcome to Halloween Eve.