What to stream this Halloween
I'm going to pretend I didn't just get a Shudder subscription for this month
Welcome boys, ghouls, and otherwise-defining horror lovers, to the first annual What’s Worth Watching Halloween Stunt Spooktacular! Every month I recommend a cauldron-full of films and TV that can be found hiding in the deepest, darkest, dankest corners of the streaming entertainment world. With Samhain soon upon us, I have taken it upon myself to present a second edition this October — bringing you the best, boldest, and baddest horror films you can find (online (without subscribing to a specialist streaming service))! Now, prepare your eyes to behold some eerie sights, and read on…if you dare!
Recommendation round up
Paperhouse (1988, Bernard Rose)
An adaptation of a children’s classic, Paperhouse is a kids film the same way that, like, Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are is a kids film. Which is to say it isn’t, really? Before he scarred a whole generation with the better-known Candyman, Rose had a dry run in the abstract terror of dream logic — and the very real, waking world fears which underpin them — with this story of two sick kids who meet one another in their fevered nightmares. Cute, right? Except they’re not alone, and the corruption of this picturebook dreamscape by very adult horrors is chocka with Monumental Horror Images™.
The Terror (1963, Roger Corman)
That directorial credit is not really doing justice to the amount of talent involved in this film, nor its torturous production process. Master of low-budget schlock Corman conceived of this gothic horror cheapie at the end of his cycle of gorgeous, shonky pop art Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, using left-over sets from The Raven. Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman and star Jack Nicholson were amongst the future auteurs who shot portions of this, a wonderfully convoluted tale of madness, witchcraft and mesmerism, with Nicholson unpicking the mystery of a Baron (the peerless Boris Karloff) living in an abandoned castle, and the spectral presence of said Baron’s supposedly-dead wife.
The Innkeepers (2011, Ti West)
Writer/director West is blessedly on the up-and-up, after a brief and undeserved wilderness period. Here’s hoping the success of recent Mia Goth slashers X and Pearl inspire a renewed interest in his earlier work: his The House of the Devil is a fantastically horrible throw-back horror, and The Sacrament a disturbing found footage take on the Jonestown Massacre. I’m going to recommend the lesser-know, somewhat more cuddly, Innkeepers. An oddity in his (or anyone’s) career, it’s a low-key hangout movie about two slacker pals who work at an historical hotel on the verge of shutting down…which becomes a full-blown haunted house flick in the closing act. It’s like if Clerks suddenly swerved into The Haunting of Hill House, and it’s tremendously good fun.
Review of the month (sponsored by he Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mysteries, Baphomet of Lévi)
Actually Happened! Most Terrifying Psychic Phenomena. Psychic Research Team Report. Relived. (2004, Jun Tsugita)
It might sound crazy what I’m about to say, but stick with me: boredom is an underrated feeling in film. You can throw a MUBI subscription and hit a list of arthouse films with distended running times and low-energy plots, but by-and-large, they’re dismissed as outliers. Who would willingly put themselves through a movie that’s actively trying to be dull? That would be like watching paint dry. Or watching Paint Drying (2016, Charlie Shackleton). Downtime between action is vital in almost any story, though. You need some respite from constant stimulation. That’s all the more important in horror films: jump scares don’t mean anything if there’s not been an established calm for them to violently pierce.
This made-for-TV Japanese horror film is as much an exercise in patience as it is in sustained terror. I watched it for the first time last Halloween, on my laptop, headphones on, in a dark bedroom, and it scared the life out of me; despite very little happening for much of its (relatively short) runtime. The snappily-named Actually Happened! is presented as if it were an episode in a Most Haunted-style TV docu-series. Before shooting an episode in an allegedly ghost-filled house, a producer spent the night there and…well, that would be spoiling it. After some preamble, the film consists of the “unedited” footage he shot on his camcorder. That means lots of long shots of darkened rooms and hallways, like the sort you’d now see on Ring doorbell cameras or fancy baby monitors. Reader, it terrifies me!
Decades of visual media has taught us: if we’re watching a shot for a long period, it’s because something is going to happen eventually. The longer the shot is held in this instance, the more the tension builds, to the point that it’s unbearable. It’s like one of those old internet videos that got passed around, which asked you to puzzle out hidden messages in images before delivering a jump scare, stretched to an hour. You’ve almost got your nose pressed to the screen, trying to make out the potential ghoul amongst the pixelated artefacts. Is that a cluster of digital noise, or a spectre, hiding behind the kitchen door? Was that chair always there? It’s a simple, brilliantly-conceived haunted house ride, and it’ll absolutely shred your nerves.
Best of the rest
The Hunger (1997-2000, Various) This anthology horror series, spun-off from the glossy Tony Scott vampire flick, is naturally hit-and-miss; but c’mon, it’s a sexy horror show hosted by Terrence Stamp in the first season, Bowie himself in the second, with episodes helmed with visual panache by Scott and Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy2 (Watch on Prime Video)
A Day With The Boys (1969, Clu Gulager) Long-time B-movie star Gulager’s sole directorial credit is this eerie, elegiac experimental short of lads enjoying some good, clean fun, until it all goes a bit Lord of the Flies (Watch on YouTube)
The Lure (2015, Agnieszka Smoczyńska) You know what The Little Mermaid was missing? Metal bands, strippers, and a cannibalism. A fascinating, gonzo coming-of-age story take on fishy folklore (Watch on Netflix)
My house walk-through (2016, PiroPito) Like the aforementioned Actually Happened!, the format of this provides much of the scares: a “vlog” where the narrator gives an impassive commentary to their increasingly decaying, creepy home (Watch on YouTube)
She Dies Tomorrow (2020, Amy Seimetz)3 Master of mumblecore Kate Lyn Sheil is patient zero for seemingly-contagious intrusive thoughts in this brilliantly conceived small-scale psychological thriller — anxiety as horror villain! (Watch on Netflix)
Home media streaming platform Plex has suddenly started popping up as a UK equivalent to Tubi in the US: an ad-supported grab-bag of genuine oddities and actual gems; there’s a load of Ozu on there! And Argento! For free!
Also: Highlander II: The Quickening’s Russell Mulcahy :(
Seimetz apparently funded the film with her salary from the execrable Pet Sematary remake, which rocks
Class.