Welcome to the 31 Days of Horror Redux

On this day, 10 years ago, I started a project called the 31 Days of Horror. Thirty-one horror movies in 31 days. It was a way of sharing my love for the genre by sharing some of what I considered, at the time, the greatest films in that genre. Now, 10 years on feels like the right time to revisit the project – but with a twist. Instead of my recommendations, I am going to be listening to the world’s recommendations and watching new films, myself.

Each day this month – October being the spookiest month, I think we can all agree – I will be watching at least one horror film that is new to me. I do not have a schedule planned, but I have a vague idea of the movies I want and need to see. I will write about each film in this space, each day, and share my thoughts on the world of horror.

There are no rules for this project, but I will try my best to seek out a variety of subgenres, marginalized filmmakers, and new voices. This should be exciting, hopefully as much for you as for me. At the end of this month, the goal is to be a better rounded horror film fan than I am as of this writing. I want to learn, I want to grow, and I want to understand the furthest corners (thanks, Frank) of what this wonderful genre has to offer. I hope you will come along with me on the journey.

However, before forging ahead, I thought it would be fun to take a look back. I have been in love with horror for essentially the entirety of my movie-watching life. From the time a misguided babysitter showed me Jaws at the age of 3 and I briefly avoided swimming pools like the plague. Or when that same babysitter, in an even more ill-advised moment, showed me Child’s Play at the age of 4. I had nightmares. I didn’t go to that babysitter much more after that.

The point is: Horror lives with me, and I live with it. I am neither dogmatic nor precious about it. Show me something new. Show me a new take on an old formula. Show me an old formula done well. Show me the schlockiest, most undercooked story and give me a cheap thrill. I love it all. I cannot vouch for the quality of it all, but my love is real. 

So, with that in mind, I thought it would be fun to kick off the 10-year anniversary of the 31 Days of Horror with a list of my 10 favorite horror films of all time. I have never done this exercise, and frankly, I am as interested to see how it turns out as you are.

A couple rules: First, I won’t repeat the same director, otherwise I imagine we’d be looking at a list of almost entirely Wes Craven and Sam Raimi movies. Next, single films only, no franchises, as tempting as it might be to highlight whole groups of movies. Third, I reserve the right to change my mind and update this list in 10 years. Fourth, this is about favorites, not best. While I think most if not all of the films below are legitimately great, my only endorsement here is that I enjoy watching them.

Finally, and this is less a rule than an observation: My definition of horror may differ from yours, and that’s okay. It’s great, even. That is the beautiful thing about horror. What is horrific to you may not be so to me and vice versa. I promise to play fair – no Jesus Camp, one of the most horrifying movies I have ever seen. Let’s see how this goes.

First a few honorable mentions and one jury award: Ginger Snaps, proof that when the right metaphor meets the right theme, magic is made; Paranormal Activity, without question the movie that scared me most as an adult; [REC], when people ask me the scariest movie of all time, there are a lot of candidates, but this is on the list; Trick ‘r Treat, just a ton of fun – all treats from minute one until its wonderful conclusion; and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a horror comedy that delivers laughs and gore in equal measure.

Jury award: Jaws. I had to break this out into a separate section because Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster is simply one of my favorite films of all time, but it teeters on the edge of what I would call “horror.” It certainly scared the hell out of a lot of people and continues to do so, but it’s mostly a drama that veers into thriller territory. Its moments of horror are suitably horrific, but they’re a little too few and far between for me to feel good about including it here.

Okay, onto the list. I wrote about several of these films at length in the original 31 Days of Horror series, so I will link to the longer pieces about each where applicable. Without further ado, my 10 favorite horror films of all time:

10. Leprechaun, directed by Mark Jones

Here’s my promise: Next year, on St. Patrick’s Day, I will devote an entire piece to my love of the Leprechaun films. We’ll get into the history of Trimark Pictures, the Jennifer Aniston of it all, Warwick Davis, and limericks. For now, I’ll just say this was a key piece of my starter kit as a child. There’s even a child as one of the leads. It’s not too scary. It’s not too gory. But it’s a helluva lot of fun, and it represents the kind of low-budget creature feature they don’t make enough of these days. And, it’s holiday-themed, to boot.

9. Carrie, directed by Brian de Palma

Some things that come to mind when I think about the greatest Stephen King adaptation (all due respect to The Shining): the hand at the end, of course; it is, perhaps, the most honest coming-of-age film ever made; the terror of religious fervor; Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie delivering all-time performances; the number of times I watched this late at night on TNT, sometimes as part of the Joe Bob Briggs show, which was very important to me. A masterpiece.

8. Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero

In 2014, I called this the greatest horror film ever made. Ten years later, that opinion has not changed. There was great horror before Romero unleashed his film upon the world – Psycho, Frankenstein, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, etc. – but this is the dividing line in modern horror filmmaking. This 1968 film sets the template for everything that would come after in terms of intensity, gore, and thematic depth. To this day, few films can match it in any of those categories, let alone all of them.

7. The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont

The feel-bad movie for all time (and the other Stephen King adaptation on my list). That ending. My god, that ending. For about 115 minutes, The Mist is some of the most intense and intensely allegorical filmmaking you are ever likely to see, then its final 10 minutes hit. Gut punch is too light a term. It’s more like one of this film’s monsters burrowed into you and exploded from the inside out. Not for nothing, but it also features one of the all-time great jump scares from my theater-going years, perhaps only matched by The Others. If you know, you know.

6. 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle

Back then, I wrote a lot about this film as a pandemic parable – really, that’s just the text of the movie, rather than parable – and at the time, we were in the midst of the Ebola panic, which turned out to be a blip on the radar. Since then, we have all lived through COVID. Along with Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, this provides a pretty accurate road map of how the world would feel in the grip of a pandemic. Suddenly, the parable that was always text became reality. That only made the movie more terrifying.

5. Tales from the Hood, directed by Rusty Cundieff

This omnibus of horror tales is the film that taught me movies could have a political consciousness. Not just horror movies, but movies in general. I cannot count the number of times I saw this Spike Lee-produced movie before I saw Do the Right Thing, so it was Cundieff who initially enlightened me on the abuses of police power, the scourge of domestic violence, and the false promise of “rehabilitation” in prisons. In many ways, this film is still a political guiding light for me.

4. Evil Dead II, directed by Sam Raimi

I could have gone with the original, The Evil Dead. I could have gone with the return to form, Drag Me to Hell. But if I am going to put one Raimi picture on my list of favorite horror films, it’s going to be this one every day of the week and twice on Sundays. This is the film where Raimi solidifies his status as a horror master. This is the film where Bruce Campell proves his bona fides as a leading man. This is the film where a man cuts off his own possessed hand and attaches a chainsaw to the stump. What else could you want?

3. From Dusk Till Dawn, directed by Robert Rodriguez

I waffled between this and the next film on the list a couple times. Two, three. Three, two. But I ultimately landed on this order because only the final 35-40 minutes of this film are actually horror. Everything before that is just an excellent crime picture. But, it’s that twist that makes this film so memorable. And, those last 35 minutes contain some of the gnarliest action-horror filmmaking you have ever seen. While the rest of you were watching E.R., this was my George Clooney of the ‘90s.

2. The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg

Speaking of, as a ‘90s kid, I should know Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park, and I should know Geena Davis from A League of Their Own. And, I do love those movies, although I actually prefer the Goldblum-led Lost World (a piece for another day). But, this is my Goldblum, this is my Davis, and The Fly is one of the most beautifully tragic romances ever put to screen. I knew that to be true, even as a child. That romance is ensconced in some of the most groundbreaking and influential body horror in film history, but it is a romance no less. 

The destruction of Seth Brundle’s body (pick your metaphor: cancer, AIDS, the ravages of age, what have you) is a brilliant effect, or rather a series of brilliant effects, but none of it means anything if we don’t care about the man at the center of it all and the woman who loves him. Cronenberg gets plenty of deserved credit for his work as a horror genius, but here, I must tip my cap to him as a master dramatist.

1. Scream, directed by Wes Craven

I’ve written about Scream a few times on this site, so I won’t rehash it here. I had seen horror movies before this, and heaven knows I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds since, but this is the one that changed everything. It spoke to me in a way movies had never spoken to me because it was about kids (played by obvious adults, but when you’re 8, teenagers and adults may as well be the same thing) who loved movies, just like I did. They knew everything about horror movies, just like I wanted to. One of the characters worked in a video store, which just seemed impossibly cool.

This film laid the groundwork for a decade of horror cinema that had more influence on my taste than probably any other era of any other genre. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Final Destination, and the many sequels to all of them. I watched them all. I loved most of them. But, nothing holds a candle to the film that started it all. The direction is so smart. The writing is so smart. Within their world, even the characters are smart. All of which adds up to a film that treats the audience as smart, which is one of the rarest and most precious things in horror.

New movie review: Ex Machina

Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson star in Alex Garland's sci-fi thriller Ex Machina.

Empathy is probably the distinguishing feature of humanity. Our ability to care about other life forms and imagine ourselves in their place is unique and a little strange, when you get right down to it. From an evolutionary perspective, it is hardly advantageous to concern ourselves with the feelings of animals or lesser life forms, particularly those we eat and those that pose a danger to us. Yet, vegetarianism and veganism do not seem to be going anywhere, and the list of protected alpha predators just keeps growing.

Other species do not do this. The lion does not think for a second about the zebra before it pounces, but I defy most people – even some avid hunters – to pull the trigger on a deer without a moment of hesitation or a pang of regret. Some of you cannot kill a bug without wondering about the implications. This sense of understanding for the lives of other feels as natural as breathing, but we cannot explain it. This puts humanity in a precarious place when it comes to beings as intelligent as we are or more so.

In writer-director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, not only do we meet that being, but we are responsible for its creation. Garland made his bones writing the screenplays for such intelligent, thought-provoking science-fiction films as 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go, and the critically maligned Sunshine. Now, with his first go around in the director’s chair, he has produced yet another smart exploration of how people understand themselves and each other in extraordinary circumstances.

Domhnall Gleeson (Frank, Unbroken) is Caleb a computer programmer who works for a Google-like corporation. He wins a contest to visit the remote estate of the company’s founder for a week, during which time he believes he will be mentored by the reclusive genius, Nathan, played by Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year). Nathan has other plans. Caleb has been brought to the estate to help test the world’s first true artificial intelligence.

Utilizing a variation on the famous Turing test – in which a computer is said to be artificially intelligent if the tester cannot distinguish between an interaction with it and a human – the two men set out to prove the legitimacy of Nathan’s technological achievement. However, we are well beyond the traditional Turing test, so we are introduced to Ava. She is an AI computer in the body of a humanoid robot brought to life by the remarkable Alicia Vikander.

Complications arise as Ava becomes more and more stunning in her humanness, and Caleb begins to question whether something so intelligent that seems to think and feel as he does should be subjected to testing and confinement such as this. During one of their sessions together, Ava tells Caleb she has never left her room and dreams of going into the world just to watch the people. Vikander sells Ava’s emotions with a perfect blend of computerized affectation and schoolgirl naiveté.

Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina.

This year should be something of a coming out party for the Swedish ingénue, and Vikander’s IMDB page lists no fewer than six films in which she appears set for release in 2015. Based solely on her performance in Ex Machina, she deserves the increased profile. The portrayal of Ava is a tightrope walk. She is a computer and must always have that artificiality, but she must also be so human it is haunting. In Vikander’s mannerisms and line readings, she crafts a complete character from a being that has never before existed, and though she was created by the hands of a man, she is incomprehensible to his mind.

Nathan sees Ava as an experiment, the success of which would only feed his immense ego. When Caleb tells him that bringing about new life is the business of gods, Nathan takes this to its logical extreme, stating: “I am a god.” As the founder of the world’s largest search engine, he already has the ability to peer into the hearts, minds, and souls of humanity through his users’ search histories – an advantage he uses to form the basis of Ava’s artificial intelligence. Now, he wants the feeling of creation.

Part of the brilliance of Garland’s script is the way it plays with certain religious and mythological overtones while still delivering a riveting psychological thriller. The sci-fi genre has always been ripe for allegory because it allows artists to create worlds that reflect our own but show us something we have never seen. Garland is a master at this, hooking audiences on a visceral story level and using that engagement to force them to consider perspectives of which they may not have even been aware.

Nathan comes off as the villain to us because he seems cold, calculating, and mysterious. On the other hand, we connect to Caleb because he is open, honest, and sensitive. Ava is a wild card that represents both and neither. She is the manufactured evolution of humanity – a computer that expresses vulnerability. Nathan can only relate to her as a computer, whereas Caleb relates to her vulnerability. She is a lab rat, part of an experiment Nathan wishes to see through to its conclusion. He pokes and prods and wants results. Caleb sees the rat, but he also sees its pain and how it is afraid.

She asks Caleb what will happen to her if she fails the test. Most likely, she will be shut off and reconfigured. Put another way, she will be killed. By design, it is unclear if she understands the full implications of her own death, but like any conscious life form, she instinctually knows it is something to be avoided at all costs. Caleb, however, understands what dying would mean, and he can put himself in her place and understand her fear. He is determined to save her because in the end, it remains empathy that makes us truly human – and truly flawed.

See it? Yes.

31 Days of Horror: 28 Days Later

Cillian Murphy realizes he may be alone in 28 Days Later.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 25: 28 Days Later (2002)

I was not going to write about Danny Boyle’s viral epidemic masterpiece 28 Days Later. It is among the most discussed, most debated horror films of the new century and with good reason. A lot of conversations in horror circles focus on its influence on the next decade of zombie pictures and whether or not this even qualifies as a proper zombie films. We will get into that in a bit.

First, we talked a bit yesterday about world events creating new contexts for films, lending meanings that were never intended or shedding new light on themes already present. Well, welcome to Ebola Panic 2014 and the profoundly disturbing implications of this early 2000s thriller. The film’s DVD, which I have owned multiple copies of in my life for some reason, comes with a short documentary included in the special features. It is about how the next great disaster will likely be a disease epidemic of one kind or another.

To those inclined to overreact to misreported numbers and unreliable data, the little documentary included among the deleted scenes and alternate endings may have seemed prescient. After all, in the years since, we have had panics over West Nile Virus, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, and now Ebola. There is little doubt that pandemic disease is possible, and with advances in travel technology and the congregating of large populations into megacities around the world, it is even likely. But we have not even been close.

None of these previous panics has been world changing, except to point out the media’s reliance on fear mongering as a sales tactic, which again, not world changing information. I live in New York City, where you may have heard Ebola just arrived on a plane. I can tell you no one here missed it because there was not one newspaper on one rack devoid of some variation on the banner headline “EBOLA IS HERE.” We scoffed and went about our day, such is the credibility of much modern news.

New York City and London are not far removed from one another in terms of makeup: large cities seen as beacons of the modern world and populated by people from all walks of life – the wealthy to the destitute of all races, religions, and creeds. 28 Days Later is that society, either society, when it collapses. In the film, a virus spread by contact with the blood of an infected person wipes out nearly the whole of England and turns its carriers into monsters consumed by blinding rage.

Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland do a fantastic job of creating a post-infection wasteland for our characters to wander around in, and this is probably where most of us were introduced to the great Irish actor Cillian Murphy – unless you are a fan of Disco Pigs, which I certainly am. It is a classic post-apocalyptic narrative in which a band of survivors searches for lost civilization and humanity while avoiding rampaging hordes of monsters.

Here is where the debate – and if you ask me, the fun of this movie – comes. Are the monsters zombies? You can ask this question on Google, and it will return any number of articles and message boards on this point, so I will not spend much time on this. The short answer is: Yes, they are. Are they the dead come back to life? No, but neither are zombies in their original incarnation. What is a zombie but a mindless killing machine who attacks the living? The monsters here qualify, and one would be hard-pressed to consider them still living, anyway

The argument then follows that they are fast, which zombies are not supposed to be. Well, who says? Allow that zombies are slow because their bodies have decomposed, and these people have not decomposed one bit. They became infected and immediately transformed. Their speed tracks with the in-world logic of the story, and if we are being honest, it is a welcome change for the genre. Now, no one questions a fast zombie, but the reason is because Boyle made it work, and it works brilliantly.

There is a third-act twist in this film that takes the movie even deeper into social-critique territory, but I will not reveal it here to preserve the mystery for those of you who have not seen it. The movie works because it is thrilling and energizing and scary as hell but also because if we look close enough, we can see its themes in our everyday lives. It is about fear, panic, and survival, but most of all, if you pay attention, it is about how the virus will not be what destroys us. When it comes down to it, we will be the ones who caused our destruction.

Tomorrow, we discuss perhaps the worst atrocity in human history – filtered through a zombie movie sequel.