It is that time of the year, the period of pumpkin spice latte, costume deals and excessive candy shopping! The falling tree leaves, things around us dying, oooo! Scaaaary! Yep. That’s right. It’s the month of October – one that leads all the way to All Hallows Eve… Or, as it’s more commercially known, the Halloween – dressing up, trick or treating and being afraid of going to the toilet without turning on every single light in the house because you just watched a scary freaking movie. That last one is a super important choice so, to make sure you are prepared for it better than anybody else, we will give you a list of new horrors that you should watch when home alone. Or with mates, family, pet whoever… This list will be for each and every predicament imaginable so…. Here it goes!
One of our favourite people in the game is back! Director/Writer/Actor Jim Cummings is getting ready to unleash his second feature, the follow up to his incredible debut ‘ThunderRoad’. ‘The Wolf of Snow Hollow’ is not a traditional scary movie, come on this is Cummings we are dealing with after all.. Expect dark humour with strange goings on why Jim plays a small town crazy cop trying to figure out what is or who is killing young women in their sleepy town.
Host (available on Shudder)
A lot of us managed to be productive during quarantine, some more than others – and that’s okay. Rob Savage belongs to the latter – while we were in a lockdown earlier this year, Savage got a bunch of his acting friends together and… shot a movie over Zoom. In fact, the movie he shot is one of the best horrors this year: Host. A group of friends hire a medium and do a séance – yeah, you guessed it! – a telecommunications app called ‘Zoom’. And that’s when things start going sideways… Go watch it on Shudder now and, a little tip: be careful when Zooming or Skyping with your pals! Check out our chat with the cast and crew also.
Saint Maude (Cinemas, 9 Oct)
Rose Glass’s directorial debut is one of the best first films within this genre. Maude is a nurse working in a hospice. The woman had recently converted to Roman Catholicism and, after becoming obsessed with one of her dying patients – a former dancer – she starts fearing that she may have been possessed, as her own sinful past also comes into play. The film is an interesting take on the subject of possession and faith, putting focus on salvation – a theme often left unexplored in similar movies. As unsettling as it is, the film is also a hopeful tale that deserves to be given a shot this October.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU84Gltg6g4
The Craft: Legacy (VOD, 28 Oct)
Coming from Blumhouse – one of the main horror revivalists of the last decade – is the sequel to a cult classic from 1996, ‘The Craft’. The original followed a group of young girls who selfishly dive into witchcraft, but their motives are met with dire consequences. This new instalment in what’s now a series is set in a modern world, with a new coven and their own special relationship with magic. Oh, and you wanna know something really creepy: THEY HAD A REAL WITCH ON SET! If that’s not giving you goosebumps, then we don’t know what will, but that’s how dedicated the director was to delivering this one to your doors for Halloween!
Rebecca (Netflix, 21 Oct)
Daphne du Maurier’s novel, ‘Rebecca’, was already brought to the screen once before – in 1940, the master of Horror, Alfred Hitchock, made a pretty good and successful adaptation of the novel. This year, Rebecca is returning in new clothes – from Ben Wheatley, the director of ‘Free Fire’, comes a star-studded Rom Thriller with Lily James (Mamma Mia 2), Armie Hammer (Call Me By Your Name) and Kristin Scott Thomas (Only God Forgives). The film follows a newly-wed young woman who stumbles upon a mystery of her husband’s dead first wife who was named Rebecca. How you feeling about solving this one, gang??
His House (Netflix, 30 Oct)
Since the success of ‘Get Out’, horror genre slowly stops featuring black people just as that 4th or 5th supporting character that dies withing 20-40 minute mark. Instead, they put people of color at the forefront and ‘His House’ is exactly what we want to see more of. The film is a harrowing story of refugees from South Sudan who escape the horrors of a war-torn country only to find themselves in another evil predicament – this time, in a small English town.
Relic (LFF, 9 Oct)
Produced by Jake Gyllenhall (Brokeback Mountain, Nightcrawler) and starring Emily Mortimer (Shutter Island), this vivid film is more of a drama than horror, beneath the surface, but can freak each and every one of us. The film’s main antagonist is a manifestation of dementia that haunts a daughter, mother and a grandmother as they watch their family’s home get consumed by the disease. It is quite a visionary attempt to present a real-life problem wrapped around in the scariest of movie genres, which in its dark and twisted ways is a perfect embodiment of the struggles that people with dementia go through.
Carmilla (Cinemas, 16 Oct; VOD, 19 Oct)
The 1872’s vampire novel by Joseph Sheridan La Fanu was written nearly 25 years before Bam Stoker’s Dracula, but only getting a proper big screen movie release now – Carmilla is a coming-of-age story of Lara, a girl living in isolation, unable to satisfy her curiosity as well as sexuality. Living with her father and strict governess named Miss Fontaine, the girl’s got no other company… up until a carriage crash nearby brings someone new to their home – a fellow young female, Carmilla. The two become passionate friends, to fear and distrust of Miss Fontaine, as Lara becomes more and more enchanted by her new companion.
The Other Lamb (MUBI, Oct 16)
This one is a foreign entry all the way from Poland. Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska, the film follows a young girl born into an all-female cult. As she reaches maturity within the compounds of said cult, she starts questioning the teachings of the man who leads them. The film will be Poland’s entry for this year’s Oscars, so it is definitely worth getting past the one inch of subtitles to watch this chilling and captivating story.