Although it is midterm season, I hope you can take the time to enjoy the Halloween season with some of my recommendations. Sit down and watch a movie with yourself, your family, friends and/or roommates!
- Scream
While the scream saga, as of 2024, now has seven movies to its name, I urge you to watch the first classic one that is a Halloween staple. It is about teenager Sidney Prescott whose mother was murdered a year ago. They believe the killer is a man her mother was having an affair with and was responsible for, but not everyone is so sure of this verdict. She and her friends then become under attack from a person wearing a Ghostface costume while trying to grieve as the anniversary of her mother’s death creeps up on her.
- Fear Street Part Two: 1978
The second movie from the Fear Street series, and dare I say the best out of all the movies. It travels back in time to 1978 when a young Ziggy explains to teenagers in 1998 about the curse that has been put on the town of Shadyside. She retells how her summer of fun, not without the usual problems, turned into the murder of her sister and fellow campers around her. For the full picture you should watch the whole Fear Street series. It is very interesting and well thought out and done.
- Child’s Play
The Chucky franchise terrified me as a child, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to appreciate its contribution to the horror genre. It opens with a serial murderer on the run who uses black magic to put his soul into a Chucky doll before dying. Karen, a mother, buys her son, Andy, a Chucky doll for her son which he loves. When Chucky comes to life and kills his babysitter, he tries to tell people about this but instead is called crazy and institutionalized. Now Karen must try to convince the police of Chucky’s murderous intentions before he kills her son or others.
- It (2017)
Adapted from the hefty Stephen King novel, ‘It’ is one of two movies made from this bizarre novel. They are both equally good but to get the full effect you should watch the first one of course. ‘It’ takes place one year after Georgie, Bill’s younger brother, seemingly disappears while going out to play in the rain. It now follows Bill with his 6 friends, Richie, Eddie, Ben, Stanley and Beverly in Derry, Maine who are all outcasts at school. They dub themselves ‘The Losers Club’ but while being terrorized by bullies they also start to be terrorized by an evil entity dressed as a clown that appears every 27 years to prey and eat children.
- Us
This movie is what made me fall in love with the psychological horror/thriller genre. Jordan Peele, the director, who has shown time and time again that he knows this genre like no other. The movie is about Adelaide who returns to the beach where she grew up. She is joined by her husband, son and daughter. She experienced something traumatic here that seems to haunt her but we aren’t exactly sure what that is. One night four masked strangers show up to her house and break in. Horrified to learn that the four strangers are all of their doppelgangers who have been living under the US and are now here to kill them.