Day 31: Halloween (1978)

“I met him, fifteen years ago. I was metformin hcl 1000 mg side effects told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes… the *devil’s* eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… *evil*.”

Honestly, is there any way that you could properly end a Halloween marathon other than with Halloween? I mentioned it before that I was really pushing for The Exorcist to close us out, because I consider it one of the best (if not the best), but it just didn’t feel right. To keep Halloween from Halloween is criminal, so here we are with the final entry of 31 Days (until the sequel, naturally).

Day 30: Psycho (1960)

“She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?”

Psycho was one of those films where I had seen a part of it so many times that I thought I had actually seen the entire film. I hadn’t. Then, a few years back, I went on an Alfred Hitchcock kick, which eventually led me to Psycho.

What you consider a nightmare or a terrifying scenario varies from person to person, but there’s something naturally unsettling about scary, supernatural sequences that can end up sticking with you longer than any adrenaline rush from an action film. The feeling can be attributed to several things, one of which (probably the most important) is the fear of the unknown.

Day 29: Scream (1996)

“But this is NOT a movie.”
“Yes it is, Sidney. It’s all one big movie.”

I’ve been loving on Wes Craven since we started the 31 Days series, and the reason why I think the guy is brilliant isn’t just because he helped revolutionize teen slashers with A Nightmare on Elm Street, or that he understands fear better than almost anyone out there, but, simply, because my favorite slasher is Scream.

Scream works so well because it’s completely self-aware. It’s a film that looks at pop culture, and, specifically, how horror movies influenced and then were parodied by the same audiences that grew up with them. It’s also a film for movie lovers; for horror aficionados. Scream asks, “What if a film buff took the rules found in horror movies, applied them in real life, and then went on a killing spree? What would that look like?”

Day 28: The Strangers (2008)

“Narrator: What you are about to see is inspired by true events. According to the FBI, there are an estimated 1.4 million violent crimes in America each year. On the night of February 11, 2005, Kristen McKay and James Hoyt left a friend’s wedding reception and returned to the Hoyt family’s summer home. The brutal events that took place there are still not entirely known.”

Normally I’d be against a film like this. It reminds me of Open Water, a film that came out in 2003 about two scuba divers stranded in the middle of the ocean after being left behind from a tour boat. It was “based on a true story,” but really that’s a marketing tool. True stories are more interesting. Sure it was based on the fact that two people were left behind, but no one knows what the hell happened. All we know is they were never seen again. They could have drifted over to the Island.

Day 27: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

“Yeah, Jodie Foster tried this and a skin-ripping serial killer answered the door!“

I remember the three ’90s slasher franchises that launched in the back half of the decade: Urban Legend, Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Summer and Urban Legend followed the success of Scream in an attempt by Hollywood to resurrect the slasher genre. Unfortunately, outside of the success that each of the three new series found, the slasher genre did not resuscitate. And going into the next decade, audiences would be slain by a flurry of remakes (of foreign and domestic films), instead of brand-new stories about high schoolers getting torn apart by serial killers.