The Projector #16: Boo! (Patreon)

Let’s keep it simple this week: It’s Halloween, which means it’s horror movie season, which means you’re probably in the market for scary (or scary-ish) movies to watch. Well, let us help you out, with some recommendations from each host. Without further ado — or, should that be “further a-boo? (Sorry. Sorry!)

TASHA ROBINSON

The Orphanage

J.A. Bayona's directorial debut, and still his best film, is a deeply creepy story about a woman who returns to the orphanage where she grew up, planning to reopen it as a refuge for disabled children. Like most horror-movie plans, this one goes badly. The Orphanage is full of butt-leaves-seat shocks, but it's also impressively constructed, deeply unnerving, and by the end, pretty touching. Guaranteed to leave you unsettled by children's games.

Haunter

An extremely underseen little gem from Vincenzo Natali, writer-director of Cube and Netflix's new Stephen King adaptation In the Tall Grass, Haunter puts Abigail Breslin in a house she can't escape with a threat she doesn't understand, and unfolds from there. As usual, Natali plays off his small budget by producing something setbound and claustrophobic, and relying on unexpected twists and a clever concept to offset the disadvantages of shoestring-budget horror.

KEITH PHIPPS

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Look, I’d be lying if I said this was a great movie. It’s not. In fact, it’s one I’d never paid much attention to until a convergence of two events: I kept seeing it referenced fondly on Twitter and I subscribed to Shudder. And, oh boy, is it something. From the barely disguised Canadian setting — calling a high school Hamilton High School isn’t fooling anyone — to the primitive home computers that can seemingly do anything and everything, this is just pure ’80s horror junk at its most delightful. Nominally a belated sequel to the slasher film Prom Night, this 1987 film instead rips off a different horror movie in virtually every scene, from The Exorcist to Carrie to A Nightmare on Elm Street. But it does it with such shameless panache it becomes delightful. All that plus Michael Ironside. Highly recommended.

Bloody Birthday

Look, I believe in horror as an important genre capable of meaningfully exploring profound themes. I also believe in it as a great source of cheap thrills, like this movie about three kids born under a total eclipse who become homicidal maniacs on their 10th birthday, killing those around them with shovels, arrows, and anything else they can get their hands on. Scheduled for a 1981 release, it barely saw the light of day in 1986, but it’s as sleazy as that description makes it sound. Sleazier, really, given that there’s a seemingly endless scene in which one of the kids charges others to watch her sister (future MTV star Julie Brown) undress. It also stars Susan Strasberg (!) and José Ferrer (!!).

GENEVIEVE KOSKI

Death Becomes Her

As a noted scaredy-cat averse to jump scares, gore, and sustained tension, my Halloween viewing tends toward the campy, with just enough of a “scary” flourish to make it feel seasonally appropriate. Hence this 1992 Robert Zemeckis comedic fantasy starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as bitter rivals who both take a potion promising them eternal youth, which they obtain courtesy of a glorious Isabella Rossellini. Also, Bruce Willis is there, but it’s easy to forget about him amid the turned-to-11 performances from the three female leads, and a host of still-impressive practical effects that get more and more over-the-top as the women’s bodies break down.

Jennifer’s Body

Yes, this 2009 black comedy directed by Karyn Kusama and written by a post-Juno Diablo Cody is overflowing with the sort of tortured slang that made Cody an easy target of mockery (ahem, Scott), to which I say move on dot org, people. The willfully weird and unnatural dialogue is part of the whole heightened package, which comprises a messy but compelling rape-revenge allegory and a startlingly physical performance from Megan Fox, who delivers so much more than eye candy here. This one has been going through a bit of a re-evaluation as a forgotten feminist classic in recent years, and while it’s undeniably imperfect and even draggy in a few places, it’s worth revisiting (or visiting for the first time) in that context.

SCOTT TOBIAS

Criterion Channel’s “Val Lewton Presents”

There are lots of classic horror choices on Criterion Channel currently, including a series by goremeister Hershell Gordon Lewis, but I wanted to recommend “Val Lewton Presents,” a nine-film series that also includes Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, a Kent Jones documentary from 2008 that’s narrated by Martin Scorsese. Lewton is a producer known for getting maximum scares from minimal budgets through stylistic direction and single-source lighting techniques. It’s worth exploring the whole series—none of them are longer than 90 minutes, and some are closer to an hour—but I’d first check out Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie, Lewton’s collaborations with director Jacques Tourneur. Both are about humans transformed into monsters, and the mesmerically beautiful havoc that reap.

~~~

With all those recommendations we’re going to save our recommended reading list until next week. This week on the podcast, look for a special bonus(ish) episode on the main feed discussing HBO’s new series Watchmen. Then, next week, buckle up for a Bong Joon-Ho double feature covering The Host and Parasite. (We’re still plotting out future bonus episodes, but we’ll let you know what’s coming up soon.